Deal or no deal?

I'll shock the world with this very comment: "I got up at 7:15am this morning!" WTF?! I couldn't even begin to tell you the last time I got up this early, it was probably the morning after our wedding last year when we got up at 6am to travel down to Gatwick.

I had set my alarm for 7 as I wanted to be up early to have a bath, get my work clothes ironed and find out the paperwork for my new car. I've only had my Renault Laguna for 10 days but the petrol costs are crippling me and with it being a 2.0ltr I've already put £137 in petrol in and only done less than 500 miles so far. There's no way I can stretch to £80 a week on petrol. Life was going to be tight as the football season draws to a close and my refereeing money ends for a few months and that was with the C3 that cost me about £40 a week to run. Now i'm having to find £90 a month for the new car as well as putting in so much petrol. It might be a tough one but hopefully I can take the car back and get something more affordable.

I'd decided to have a drive to the couple of garages just a few hundred yards from the college. The first one I could barely find anything under £7k so left them fairly sharpish and turned into Stoneacre, where I bought my first 2 cars. I'd had a couple of bad deals through poor advice their though so wasn't too fussed about getting another from them but wanted to at least see what they had on display. There wasn't much choice for my price range but there was a C5 the same price as what I paid for the Laguna and was only slightly older and had done less miles. It was also a 1.5 and Diesel, which I'm led to believe is better than petrol?!

A sales guy came out as he'd seen me looking at it and I explained the situation, that I'd recently bought the new car but was struggling to run it and wanted to exchange it for something cheaper to run at about the same value. He explained to me that it would be difficult for them to do anything for me and recommended taking it back to Parkway. First he said to ring the finance company and see if there was any cooling off period where I could terminate the agreement, just so the garage at least know that i've done my homework in case they are stubborn.

When I got home from work I called the finance company but they said the agreement has no cooling off period, but aft a few minutes of me seeing what else could possibly happen, they mentioned that if Parkway had a more suitably priced car for around the same cost as the Laguna, then the agreement could be modified. I then rang Parkway and explained to Richard, who I'd dealt with that I was struggling and so he invited me back tomorrow morning. He said they would only be able to help if the finance company agree to a change, and if their head office agree to it too.

I really hope they do otherwise i'm stuck with a car I really cannot afford. Why do I never do my homework before these things?? 3rd time now! Fingers crossed for tomorrow.