Having determined we needed to visit Preston to suss out the Uni there, we needed to book an inexpensive hotel overnight. We'd settle for an expensive hotel doing a cheap deal tho'! As we needed two rooms it made everything twice as expensive - can't wait for Tesco to do hotels, you know, "buy one get one free"!
Having ages to get the best deal I was so pre-occupied with doing this that I missed the best offer which was to book a month in advance with the likes of Travelodge. With increasingly less weeks to go I started to rely upon the late bookings site to get the best deal. Fortunately we had a discount for one of the big chains and that offered a really good discount againt the standard prices and looked like a winner if nothing else came up.
Having signed up for another one of the chains i was trying to get a best deal on that, except the best deal was always better on the public site, and often said they had spaces, whereas when i tried the "preferred site" they often said no availability. Unfortunately, the public site would have its own idiosyncratic ways, as their price would fluctuate. So with two weeks to go i was still waiting on the best deal, starting to have a niggling feeling that I'd end up paying full price somewhere just to get in!
So with a week to go I was sure the next time my chain had a deal i would book it - with five days to go their price stayed as it was. I figured maybe with less days to go they would change and drop the price - No it didn't - So while i needed to book quick i also didn't want to pay a higher price than was strictly necessary. With two days to go I went to book and decided against it - give it one more day! Had a sneak look at work in morning and still price remained - mindlessly checking it in the afternoon the price had gone down! Ah book it now! Except I didn't have my details with me - so got home that evening and fortunately the lower price was still on offer - booked that, and Job done. Checked the next day and the price has gone back up and stayed there. What's that all about then! I do know this experience means I would be rubbish on ebay, I just can't take the pace. Better start thinking about booking summer holidays i suppose!
Monday, February 28, 2011
Tuesday, February 01, 2011
Michelin Tyres
Always being a convert to Michelin tyres, I know its going to be a bit of an expense whenever I need some new tyres. After a heavy winter I needed two new front tyres so thought i'd better try and shop around.
You'd think it would be quite easy to replace the tyres but you need to faff around with exact tyre sizes and then you get a mutitude of different ones to opt for (the cheapest?). After google search (what did we do before that!)I realised that a lot of the codes on tyre relate to the speed rating. So for mine it meant "R" represents a speed rating up to 106mph, "T" is 118 mph, "H" is 130 mph and "V" is 150 mph. Of course the prices go up as the speed rating, so let me have a quick thought - oh i know as i drive like Mr Magoo and the national speed limits are 70 mph I'lle opt for the R rating! Then I had a look at some websites for prices and a lot had "call for our best price" and "this weeks special offer are 4 Pirelli tyres" but I don't want 4 of anything!
I had a look at the actual Michelin website and they seemed to have quite a good deal using their preffered provider which turn out to be one of those vans that come to you. Which could be a good idea if you know that they are any good. There was actually quite a lot of these "vans-to you" service and their prices went from as low-as-you-can-get to a lot higher than a normal tyre shop. I wanted tracking done as well and as wasn't sure whether these people could do that decided to stick with a real bricks & mortar shop.
While doing that tho I came accross the likes of ATS who do have real places in certain locations then use vans for areas like mine so that was a bit in-between! As you had to book online I wasn't sure I wanted to try that out, it being a lot easier for me to just drive down to my local tyre shop.
Which in the end I did, because when i called them for a quote they told me they did price-matching and would go with the lowest quote from a real shop nearby. So I got the best price, maybe not the exact lowest, but one that was affordable and convenenient. And I get to go back in a few weeks to check the tracking is still all OK.
You'd think it would be quite easy to replace the tyres but you need to faff around with exact tyre sizes and then you get a mutitude of different ones to opt for (the cheapest?). After google search (what did we do before that!)I realised that a lot of the codes on tyre relate to the speed rating. So for mine it meant "R" represents a speed rating up to 106mph, "T" is 118 mph, "H" is 130 mph and "V" is 150 mph. Of course the prices go up as the speed rating, so let me have a quick thought - oh i know as i drive like Mr Magoo and the national speed limits are 70 mph I'lle opt for the R rating! Then I had a look at some websites for prices and a lot had "call for our best price" and "this weeks special offer are 4 Pirelli tyres" but I don't want 4 of anything!
I had a look at the actual Michelin website and they seemed to have quite a good deal using their preffered provider which turn out to be one of those vans that come to you. Which could be a good idea if you know that they are any good. There was actually quite a lot of these "vans-to you" service and their prices went from as low-as-you-can-get to a lot higher than a normal tyre shop. I wanted tracking done as well and as wasn't sure whether these people could do that decided to stick with a real bricks & mortar shop.
While doing that tho I came accross the likes of ATS who do have real places in certain locations then use vans for areas like mine so that was a bit in-between! As you had to book online I wasn't sure I wanted to try that out, it being a lot easier for me to just drive down to my local tyre shop.
Which in the end I did, because when i called them for a quote they told me they did price-matching and would go with the lowest quote from a real shop nearby. So I got the best price, maybe not the exact lowest, but one that was affordable and convenenient. And I get to go back in a few weeks to check the tracking is still all OK.
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