It’s blog time again. I have struggled to write blog posts in recent times. Questioning their value, and if I have time for them. Which is likely to my detriment. That being said, I have a story I need to tell.
Before we get into it, don’t judge my decisions. I tried to the best of my ability to manage the situation I was in with the knowledge that I had.
In June or July of 2023, I was driving my car. It was my first car. I had worked for years to get to a place where I could afford it, It was a Renault Sandero Stepway. I loved it. I was under the impression that it was made in South Africa, so parts would be affordable and available. I had it all planned out.
Then as I was driving down a hill, the breaks started to feel weird and the engine light went on. I thought, I know that light — let me not panic. I went to the nearest petrol station and asked them to check the oil and water. Little did I know that would be the last time the car ever started. I tried to turn the car on, I tried everything, the petrol attendant told me I was doing something wrong, so he tried to turn the car on. It didn’t work.
I called out help from my insurance company because I thought it might be the battery. It wasn’t.
Then I called out a tow truck to keep the car over night before sending it to a mechanic to have a look at it. The first shop we sent it to said the only thing they could do was replace the engine completely for R50k. Then I remembered the car was still under warranty. We took it to Renault, who after weeks wouldn’t tell us what was wrong with the car and wouldn’t give us a quote on how much it would be to fix. They did, however, make sure to tell us that we wouldn’t be covered because we had waited too long between services.
So, we scrambled for another plan that we could afford. An idea popped up, we had a family mechanic who had fixed my wife’s car before and fixed cars for family of ours. So we thought, let’s take it to him. He gave us a price and told us exactly what was wrong with the car. We felt relieved. Our car was going to be fixed and at an affordable rate. If you can call R30k affordable.
I would follow up with our mechanic about once a month, to which he would usually give me an update. After awhile, his replies started slowing.
I remember the last proper update was around May of 2024, he told me the car was predominantly fixed but he found an issue with the crankshaft — whatever that is. I was like I wouldn’t want to drive with a broken crankshaft. So he kept the car.
Or the engineers had the car, I don’t know. I kept following up every couple of weeks, often to no reply. Then one day he phoned.
He told me the car was going to be done in a few weeks, he just needed R10k for the last final parts. Fortunately, I told him, I don’t have that money. I did, stupidly, negotiate and offer him R5k on the guarantee that he would get me the car back in 2 weeks.
As you can probably tell, I didn’t get the car back in two weeks. I then started following up at least once a week. He stopped replying.
Then it started to click, he had stolen our car. We didn’t fully believe that though, because he had given us a few stories that seemed plausible and he had returned a car for us in the past. We wanted to make sure of what we were accusing our mechanic of before reporting the car as stolen.
We checked where he used to live — he had moved.
We phoned a lawyer — he said it was stolen.
After that we reported the car stolen and submitted an insurance claim. The police did nothing, other than, tell us they had created a case, and then tell us that they couldn’t find the car so they closed the case.
Our insurance told us, “uuuuhhhhmmm, yea, we’re not paying you out.” According to them we did not take sufficient precaution and took too long to report it stolen. In our case, we didn’t think it was stolen until the week of us reporting it…
This was after an insurance investigator came to my house and interrogated me about my car being stolen. I felt like the criminal in the situation.
The worst part of all of this is, I got R35k poorer and I am paying a couple of grand a month for a car that I no longer have any access to or know where it is. We’re adults here, we can be honest, this situation got me into a lot more debt than I’d like to be in.
So, I need to pay off this car quick. I am at point of considering setting up an interacial couple TikTok or setting up a gofundme campaign. I mean that all feels deplorable, maybe I should rather sell drugs or my body.
Don’t worry, I’m not actually going to do any of that. Here is what I am actually going to do:
I need help to pay this thing off. So, I am going to try use my actual skills to earn enough money to get the car paid off as soon as possible.
Those are content marketing skills. A huge help would be to tell people you know that I can help them with content writing, AI editing, podcast editing, SEO, data analyis, and a few more things.
If you need my skills get in contact, or if you know of someone that could use my skills, just telling them would be a huge help. I have a pitch deck here, which you can download and send to your friends/connections!