Back in our younger days, my Sister and i both had modified Sierras, hers was a pretty mint and well sorted XR4i, anyhow, time came to buy an alarm, and she chose, what at teh time was pretty much, the De'Facto unit.. The Clifford Concept 50.

My sister worked 7 days a week in Morecambe, so being without the car for more than 1 day would be a logistical nightmare as i was dropping her off for work and picking her up again later from Blackpool, so, all we had to do now was find a suitable local installer.

We tried a chap in Blackpool, and he stold us no problem, decent price, but 3 DAYS to install!! Val made her excuses and tried a few other places, turns out that no one else in Blackpool was authorised to do Clifford's0 so she headed further afield, to, i recall, Blackburn...

"No problem luv, can do that in about 4hrs... no problem"
Excellent, car was dropped of, val ferried to work, car collected later that night... simple. What a quality piece of kit it seemed to be too.. apart from the occasional (Hourly) false alarm... "It will need time to bed in" they said, when she complained.. "Bedding in" period ensued.. false alarms continued... (hourly)

Back to Blackburn, day off work... "Fine tuning" is carried out...

Val drives home, outside lane of motorway at, i expect, 70mph clunk, engine stops dead. No ignition....

Coast over to hard shoulder with no power steering....

Car starts again and is fine, for a few days, until.... going to work in Morcambe.. 70mph again, clunk, engine stops dead again.... and theres a burning smell eminating from behind the dash!!

Anyway, cut a LONG story short, it turns out these cowboys have made a hash of the installation and the main circuits are being imobilised live... Val gets onto Clifford HQ and they arrange for her to meet the UK area rep at their nearest appointed Clifford Dealer... hmm.. now wheres that? You guessed it.....

The chap who wanted too long to do the job in teh first place.....

So, the local clifford dealer carefully strips back the cowlings under the watchfull eye of Clifford uk and after some carefull investigation, it transpires that the dealer had actually INTERUPTED teh MAIN Live feed to the Ignition and sent the whole fooking lot through the Clifford, so the poor thing was literally melting inside!!

Once it was concluded this was definately what was wrong, in Front of this dealer and my sister, the Clifford UK chap gets on his mobile, calls this place in Blackburn, asks for the manager and then, in earshot of everyone says "Get all your Clifford stock and point of sale stuff together for collection please, im sending a van across, youve lost your dealership as of this second"

Val got a thousand appologies, Clifford paid this local dealer to install a totally new alarm properly and this local dealer got on very well with Val from then on, even fully understanding why she went elsewhere to start with, we all saw how a job should be done properly and WHY it takes so long to get them 100% right, and, well, one thing led to another and Val married him some 3 years later.

The local dealer in question, is of course, Stu@BSC over the road from me.