PSA: Capable Garage

Doki,

If the accusations that you are publicly making are untrue, you want to hope that the garage owners you are 'knocking' are not reading these posts (or someone point them out to them), as they may well take a little umbrage at the libel that you have written - and go knocking on Zen's door for your name and current address for some 'compo'. :-)

Brian G

I think Doki's been posting long enough to realise that Usenet is a public forum.

Obviously he doesn't think before posting as the other person is correct. We only have one side posted here so don't know the other side. It is possible people connected with a business or those who beg for a discount in return for advertising also post here. No one knows.

Having seen everything I've written above with my own eyes, I'm perfectly happy with what I've written. I mean, my mate's mum with a Mini could conceivably be lying when she told me she gets all the work done on her car at Sytners, but I really do doubt it. In fairness to Mick's tyres, they did eventually get the job right, but they're nowhere near the standard they used to be at.

And you've never posted anything complaining about a company? I have in several forums but I always make sure what I'm posting is the truth because I know I could be sued. I'm pretty sure Doki does the same, he's been posting on usenet for long enough.

F*ck me. I can just imagine that now: Me: "Excuse me tyre fitting bloke, but can you give me a fiver off putting these tyres on if I promise to say you did a good job on uk.rec.cars.maintenance?" Tyre fitter: "What the f*ck is uk.rec.cars.maintenance?"

I could understand if this were one of the big internet fora with thousands of posters, but I doubt there are many more than 25 vaguely regular posters to this group, with only one that I know of who's local to me, in fact, given the number of people who seem to pop up in several different (and fairly unrelated) newsgroups, I'd say the number of people who actually post to or read newsgroups in the UK is pretty small, certainly under 1% of the population. Granted it is impossible to know how many people actually read the group.

OTOH, I've got a pretty strong suspicion that people do plug stuff on forums in return for mates rates or whatever - there's the mass of people there to advertise to, and generally these things are based around a very specific interest (ie, single marque car forums, detailing forums etc.) so it's worth bothering with, and I have personally bought repro parts off people on ClubGTI's forum that was rated as being the absolute dogs bollocks, and turned out not to be. The fact is that a) it wouldn't be worth anyone's cash to have their garage plugged on here, IMO, and b) I've been posting here for a good few years and have very rarely recommended any particular garage or product.

You're correct that nobody knows, but it all seems a bit on the unlikely side to me.

Steve Dunsford, Old Mill Lane, for a proper job.

is pretty small

Most Internet users these days don't know what newsgroups are, which is why web-based forums are so popular.

We were somewhere around Barstow, on the edge of the desert, when the drugs began to take hold. I remember "Brian G" saying something like:

You are full of s**te. Now f*ck off and stick your head back up your arse, where it belongs.

We were somewhere around Barstow, on the edge of the desert, when the drugs began to take hold. I remember "Rob" saying something like:

And another wanker chimes in. What the f*ck do you know, eh? All you do is spout s**te.

The message from Grimly Curmudgeon contains these words:

I hope you can justify that, Dave. If it turns out he's 20% wind instead he'll be along to sue you in a while.