Seasons Greetings

All the very best of health and happiness to everyone monitoring my blog. 

I wish you all the very best for the New Year.

7 Reasons to Learn to Drive with BIG TOM - www.BIGTOM.org.uk

Driving Lessons in Peterborough.  Driving Lessons in Grantham.

2012 has been an important year for me personally, as I’ve really got into my Customers' heads to understand what appeals to them.  I know I’m blowing my own trumpet here, but hey, it’s Christmas time, I’m in the mood for fun & festivity!  Here’s 7 reasons why my Customers are learning to drive with me:

Trusted – Look at my Testimonials here, and you will read how my Customers feel that they are respected, and feel comfortable in making mistakes as they learn.  Count how many times you read the word “calm” for example.  My customers like “calm” and I “do” calm.

Support – Take a browse round my website, how do I support my Learners?  There is a Q&A forum that they can put up any questions, they can keep up to date with all manner of driving matters via my Twitter, the Facebook page has got links to ‘tried and tested’ Car Insurers that offer value.  There is no surer sign of a business in touch with it’s Customers, than seeing how easy it allows it’s Customers to get in touch – live chat on the website, email, Twitter, Facebook, phone, Skype.

Results – Yes I have a bank of testimonials that Customers have been kind enough to provide, but look at my Facebook Timeline, you will see that Customers are so pleased with my service, that they are voluntarily posting up their comments.  This goes beyond me simply taking a photograph of a Test Pass and putting it on my Facebook as my competitors routinely do; these comments are from people taking the time and trouble...voluntarily, to recommend me.  Go look now if you don’t believe it!

Value – Yes, we all want value don’t we?  Everyone wants value.  I want value and I know my Customers want value.  I give 40 hours in-car driving experience for £737* – you find an Intensive Driving Course provider in Peterborough offering the same but cheaper than that as standard, and I’ll buy you a set of luxury Christmas Crackers for your Christmas Day dinner.

* Over 25's get even cheaper than that!!

Offering more than standard – Take a look at the comments on my Learner Blog and Facebook page and you will see that Driving Instructors and Learners from all over the UK & Ireland are monitoring my content.  Some have even been kind enough to voluntarily and publicly state how much they value my contributions for their own purposes as Driving Instructors and their own Learners.   As I add to this blog today, I see it's been read 3,633 times, I see that my YouTube driving channel has 22 subscribers and the videos have been viewed 10,522 times and I see 209 people are following me on Twitter.

Method - Anyone who has learnt to drive with me will know how much I believe in the importance of gaining driving experience – you drive more, you experience more and you learn more.  It is a significant difference in how I do business compared to my competitors as I GUARANTEE driving hours on my Intensive Driving Courses.  But one other key difference is making the experience personal to you, every driver is different, and should be treated as such.

Passion – Can you put a value on this?  Knowing that you are investing in training with someone who is passionate about their work.  You can see I run my business with complete transparency, I have blogs and tweets for all to see since I’ve been in the business.  I come from a background in Quality Assurance and I strive in everything I do, to offer my Customers a quality experience.  I acknowledge your trust in me when you sign up for my Course to ensure I deliver respect, dignity, sensitivity, flexibility, and passion.... that is what I’ve discovered my Customers want to see.

  

Please feel free to comment or grade this blog below.  Wishing you all a Happy Christmas.


www.BIGTOM.org.uk

The 1st test on your Driving Test

Sometimes people see the L plates on my driving school car and really go out of their way to try and help, but in doing so, kind of make things a little awkward.  I’m often pleasantly surprised how thoughtful others can be to Learners, but we had an example of this only the other day right outside the Test Centre at Peterborough, while on a standard driving lesson.

My Learner was practising coming out of the Test Centre on to that main road.  For people who don’t know the area, you are attempting to emerge on to a very busy main road.  The Test Centre is situated within an Industrial Estate, so as you immediately exit the car park, lorries can and often do feature.  But after leaving the car park, you then come to a bulk standard ‘T’ junction, that is on a very slight uphill gradient.  So you have a few things to deal with having left the Test Centre car park about 30 seconds previously; let’s look at some of the possibilities:

Vehicle turning into your road.  Very often, a vehicle (including lorries) turn into the minor road as you either approach or are actually at the give way lines. 

Busy major road.  You can (and regularly do) have to wait up to a minute to emerge.  Resisting the urge to just go what with all the nerves flying round your belly is key. 

Uphill gradient.  It is only slight, but enough to make the car roll back if you don’t fully control it.

So all the above will probably be going round your head as you sit there waiting to turn left or right.  But what I witnessed the other day was really quite odd.  As my Learner was sat waiting to emerge right, a cyclist in the major road, coming from the right, saw him, and actually stopped!  What?!  There was a bit of staring at each other for a few seconds, before eventually, my Learner gestured to the cyclist to say ‘after you’.  Although the cyclist was attempting to be really considerate, what he didn’t realise was that my Learner couldn’t emerge because there was so much traffic on the major road.  This kind of thing does crop up from time to time, maybe a pedestrian at a zebra crossing, waves you through the crossing, or maybe a car flashes you to drive across them.  All very kind, but they are not necessarily aware of who else is around them, that makes what they intend, really hazardous.

For example, going back to my Learner the other day, imagine for a second what a mess would have developed if a driver intending to turn right into our minor road, had spotted the cyclist waiting for us to emerge, and ALSO waited to allow us to emerge!  So you would then have increasing pressure on my Learner to emerge as we now have traffic queuing up to the left and a cyclist waiting to the right.  But, what about the traffic coming from the right?  Do they necessarily give 2 hoots about us in the minor road, do they realise why the cyclist in front of them has stopped, and do they have to normally wait for a car turning across them?  Hmmmm..... very hazardous, remember you should not make anyone stop, swerve, or slow.  You would need to assess that whole situation before you, and realise that actually, emerging in front of traffic coming from the right is not the best of starts for your Driving Test. 

Generally speaking, it is not our job as we drive round, to tell others what to do, where to go and control when they do it.  The reason is, you simply can’t necessarily be totally aware of everything that is around you, so gesturing for a pedestrian to cross the road, or waving a lorry out on to a main road are things to be avoided.  But, in this particular example, I quite like the way my Learner dealt with the cyclist.  The cyclist simply waved to my Learner and continued on his way.  My Learner then emerged shortly after.

Being able to assess these kinds of situations is no small thing, and comes with experience.  Last week an examiner took hold of a situation my Learner found himself in, and assisted dealing with some rather hazardous road works.  Full respect goes to that examiner, we are truly blessed with some excellent examiners at Peterborough Test Centre.       

Booking Your Driving Test

There's loads of ways to book your Practical Driving Test, click here for a very useful starting point.

If you do book online, make sure you are using the above link, because if you were to Google 'Booking Driving Test', you could end up going through to a link that is not an official site, and you end up paying more than you need to do for the test (this applies to the Theory Test as well).  So be warned!

In order to book the Practical Driving Test, you will need to provide your Theory Test Pass reference number, so you MUST have passed your Theory Test before you can book up the Practical Test.

Some organisations would have you believe there is some kind of Driving Standards Agency (DSA) waiting list and they have a 'special arrangement' to shortcut this waiting list.  Do remember that the DSA are providing a public service in the booking and undertaking of driving tests, they would not be allowed to associate themselves in some prejudicial way with any organisation.  So if an organisation is making claims such as that they can provide you with a test date 75% quicker than the normal DSA waiting list - ignore it.

What you and absolutely everyone is able to do is enquire either online or via the phone number the DSA provide, to see if there are any cancellations currently available.  These cancellation slots crop up frequently in any working day, and can be providing you with a test slot literally in a few days time.

In summary, there is no need to feel pressured in any way at all about the booking of the driving test.  Many of my Learners have said they prefer to ring through to enquire, as you end up speaking to a human voice, but you can also pick up cancellations online too.

Hope this has helped.  Feel free to grade or comment below.

Thank you.

Incorporating Customer Feedback

I've got a number of ways that I attempt to capture my customers thoughts and feelings after they have passed their driving test.  A couple of months ago I had a specific campaign that was beyond the normal activity I do.  I was very grateful to the customers who participated.  It's a little sad that they probably will not be seeing the fruits of their comments as they tend to move on once they've finished their driving lessons.

Nevertheless, it's very important to me to continuously strive to improve in ways that my customers say is important to them.

I'm looking forward to demonstrating that I'm prepared to invest the time, effort and money to do just that ...... big, exciting changes are coming soon.

Passed my driving test - which car to buy?

I was discussing this subject with a Learner on his last driving lesson before his driving test last week.  I thought I'd expand on it a bit to possibly help others.

Your first car should be small, economical, not too powerful, cheap to maintain, low insurance and with good visibility all around it.  

Small because you're going to need to do those manoeuvres and starting out in a small, agile car has got to be a good move; bay parks, parallel parks etc are going to be so much easier for you in a small car.  So think of a size of a Corsa, 205, Polo, Ka, and aim for no bigger.  

Economical is all about the amount of fuel it uses to drive.  Electric cars will soon be with us, so all you do then is just plug into the mains at night to re-charge, but until then, you will need to choose between running on petrol or diesel.  Although diesel is slightly more expensive to purchase, you do tend to get more mileage from a car running on diesel compared to petrol.  To give you some idea of what you should be roughly aiming for from the car you purchase, let me give you the stats for my Hyundai i10 for you to compare with when you are car hunting.  As of today, it costs me £41 to fill up the tank with petrol, and that is 30 litres of petrol.  That will provide me with about 255 miles of driving on driving lessons.  As 30 litres = 6.6 gallons, then my car is running at about 38 miles to the gallon.  When you speak to people about fuel economy they tend to speak in terms of “miles to the gallon” – although the size of a ‘gallon’ is an old, imperial size, and we all now talk in newer ‘metric’ sizes, old habits die hard it seems.  If you want to get quite precise about fuel economy, then you would need to account for the average speed at which the car is running at, and you hear terms like ‘urban’ (meaning driving in town), and ‘rural’ (meaning non-town driving), but to be honest, that is a little geeky, just taking an interest in the general miles to the gallon is a sensible question to ask any seller.

When I say ‘not too powerful’, I’m referring to the engine size.  My i10 is a 1.1 Litre (or 1100cc) engine.  This refers to the size of the engine; 1000cc = 1 L.  Generally speaking, the larger the engine size, the less the fuel economy, the more your insurance premium will be; also the larger the engine size in a small car = the faster it will drive.  I would suggest anything over about 1.3L as your first car is going to be quite a poky small car.  Might be quite flash for your mates to sense that acceleration and speed, but probably not the best idea in terms of a ‘safe’ option for a small car – a conversation to be had with your Parents perhaps.

You will be surprised how cars differ in terms of maintenance costs.  Things to think about are the cost of parts, general availability of parts, whether you want to service the car at a garage that is authorised for that make of car – how far is the nearest service station for that make.  Reliability is a big concern for drivers, some people don’t chance it, and buy separate break down cover in case something goes wrong.  In general terms, you may remember hearing about the ‘bath tub curve’ relating to reliability for products.  When a product is brand new, and when it is nearing it’s end of life, you can reasonably expect to experience faults crop up.  Some makes of car have got a reputation for being more reliable than others.  Cars will get through what is called ‘consumables’, these are things like tyres, bulbs, brake pads, exhausts, wiper blades – and ideally you should budget every month for these things cropping up as they inevitably will; it has nothing to do with reliability, it is simply acknowledging the fact that to run a car on the road, will automatically result in needing to replace certain parts that have a fairly short life cycle.  I can purchase a new tyre for general driving in my i10 for £37, I choose to pay a little bit more so that I know my tyres are slightly better quality, as it’s a Driving School car, so I pay £47 per tyre.  A new tyre in my family car costs £260, so pay attention to the detail when you choose your new car.

Cars generally fall into ‘insurance groups’, not everyone knows about them, but most do.  It’s sensible to check what insurance group a car you like the look of falls into.  The higher the number of the insurance group, the more the premium will cost.  You can get this information easily enough from the internet.  Insurance companies generally speaking don’t like to hear about ‘modifications’ to cars, as they inevitably demonstrate that the car is a) being altered from it’s original design capabilities, and b) is not going to be used in a standard way.  Look out for any changes to a prospective car that you are interested in, as you would be contractually obliged to inform an insurance company of non-standard features like exhausts, bodywork, wheels, windows, engine, lights.  Failing to do so and then attempting to claim on your insurance, could affect your claim.  My Facebook driving page has got links to good insurance companies that my Learners have been kind enough to allow me to publish for others to benefit from.

Now although ‘visibility’ is last on this list, personally, I’d place it quite high up in importance.  You will be amazed how the size and position of windows in a car affects vision, which affects safety and ease to drive.  You might like the look of the car when you are standing 10 feet away from it, but get in the drivers seat and actually assess the vision all around.  How big and low is the rear windscreen for you to see the kerb behind, how easy is it to do that blindspot check over your right shoulder, how big are the side mirrors.  My advice is not to underestimate this point, the link between amount of vision, safety and insurance claims is strong.

You may have noticed that I haven't put 'safety' of the car on my list.  The reason is because it's a massive subject that would take over this entire blog.  On a practical point, there are certain features that are nice to see in a car.  Knowing how well a car handles impact from different points of the car for example.  How well 'equipped' it is with features such as ABS, Traction Control, airbags etc. And how 'solid' it has been built - by that I mean compare how a vehicle hitting one of these tiny 'Smart' cars will affect the occupants compared to some other car makes that employ size, stability, crumple zones, space in an entirely different way.  At least if you are aware of these factors when you are choosing your first car, you can compare them.  

Hope this is useful to you, please feel free to grade it below, or add any comments.  If you have made a good decision for your first car, leave a comment for others to benefit from it.

Thank you.