Back in the day, different cars seemed more distinctive. There was no confusing a Morris Minor with an Austin 7, even if they were about the same size. A Vauxhall Velox looked nothing like a Ford Zephyr, and the Vanguard station wagon, the family vehicle of my childhood, was completely its own marque.
These days, to my ageing gaze, while the engineering may have reached a stage of near-perfection, all cars of a similar size seem pretty much to look like every other car.
Well OK, that’s not quite true. I have owned a Honda Jazz, in three sequential iterations, for the better part of three decades: once you’ve got used to a type, it tends to stick.
And I do notice when I see another such, and especially if it’s of my same colour.
And while I have no legal qualification, it has amused me that my number plate starts with JUJ.
I have put up quite a mileage in my current model, the great majority of which has been accumulated in trips to Central Otago. But other than two or three rides up to Christchurch, my car has never been driven north of the Waitaki River.
As inexpert as I may be with modern-day car recognition, I am one step ahead of Wilson Parking. Last year, I received a demand for some dollars in the mail, accusing me of illegal parking in Mount Wellington, which is in Auckland.
This document came with photographic proof, with "my" car guiltily sitting, unpaid, in a company parking area. Except, of course, it wasn’t my car. It wasn’t even a Honda Jazz.
I can’t tell you what it was, other than it looked like any other modernish car that would pass you on the road. What it did have, in common with mine, was a JUJ number plate. Unsurprisingly, though, the numbers were different.
This document gave me cause for a wry smile, and offered the opportunity for a bit of witticism at the expense of the sender, which indeed I grasped.
I wrote back to Wilson, suggesting that unless my car had been channelling its inner Chitty-Chitty Bang-Bang, it was unlikely that my Jazz was the guilty party. OK, it was a bit unsubtle, but I thought they might have smiled.
However, apparently channelling their inner Queen Victoria, Wilson were not amused.
And so another document, slightly less friendly, arrived and the dollar amount demanded bumped up. Oh dear. I will need to reply unwittily, unambiguously, and state some simple facts.
These simple facts were, however, unacceptable: yet another demand arrived, and some more dollars added to the penalty. So I responded, a little more robustly, restating some simple facts.
This, I am afraid, did not achieve the desired result. So I called the offered 0800 number, again restating the simple facts, the quite friendly person at the other end seeming to listen sympathetically, and this should have been an end to it.
But no. Some weeks later, another email into my in-box. Another phone call, and we thought the matter sorted. Here’s how they responded: "We can confirm that this account has been closed on our client’s instructions with all collection activity ceasing immediately." And so it seemed, some months passing by.
Aaarrgh! Now an email, from a debt collector’s customer service department: "Our client has advised that they are prepared to accept the sum of $85.00 in full and final settlement of this account."
I blame AI. On the confident expectation that either the people, or the news-scanning algorithms at Wilson, look at these columns in the Otago Daily Times, I’m hoping this may be an end to the matter.
JUJ not, lest ye be JUJed.
— Mac Gardner is a retired Dunedin doctor.
