Snooze

Well, with current threads debating the quality of the club, I'd just like to say thankyou to anyone/everyone here who has directed me towards Phoenix, whom I wouldn't have known without the helpful advice here. Massive, MASSIVE shout out to Mark and Paul for the work they did last week (especially for squeezing it in during what I can see was a busy week). Once again, words cannot describe how happy I am with the guys at Phoenix and the work they've done. Most of all, I want to say a HUGE thankyou to Mas. A fellow member here who I have never met in real life, but sorted me out with an MOT-saving exhaust (breezed through the emissions re-test this afternoon ) - mate - I owe you enough drinks to make you seriously ill! None of this would have been possible without the club here and its members.

Yep - I'm with NTL at the moment for broadband, but switching to Sky when they get everything sorted (long lead times at the moment).

No Top Gun yet?

You're more than welcome, mate. As well as maybe helping me attone for my wanton meat-eating , it's actually a total relief that after all the fantastic help and advice I've gotten with my car from the members here that I've now got the opportunity to use what knowledge I DO have to help out a fellow member. Keep the questions coming!

It's actually a 6 digit code referred to as a BIN code (actually, seems to be increasingly referred to as an IIN code), but these are always changing! Interestingly, I just found this: http://all-nettools.com/toolbox,financial It's an online BIN lookup. Now you could try and use this something like as follows: 1) User enters card details 2) Behind the scenes, you send an HTTP call to the nettools site and parse the response 3a) If the Card Type in the response includes "CREDIT", you show a confirmation to the user informing them that an additional fee would be charged and letting them confirm before continuing (with the additional fee added) 3b) Otherwise proceed with the transaction as normal with no additional fee. I wouldn't really advise this because (a) the user experience of throwing the additional fee at them at the last second is really bad and (b) I'm not sure you can guarantee the accuracy of the nettools database. ben

Those four are pretty standard, but I'm not sure about PrePaid Visa cards. It's also going to depend on what your chosen payment gateway actually lets you specify in the interface - all you can really do technically is map from the user input to the payment gateway interface, so all you can offer as a selection to the user is based on what the payment gateway allows you to specify. One other thing that you might consider is that debit cards typically have an "Issue Number", so if the customer wishes to select the debit card option (to avoid the additional fee), you force them to enter an issue number, which will then (if supported by your payment gateway/merchant bank) be used as part of the validation. But it really depends on your choice of gateway: a few payment gateways I've seen accept a "Type" field which allows you to distinguish specific card types. Some distinguish credit/debit cards by the existence of an "Issue Number" field. Some don't distinguish at all, so you can't tell whether the Visa number you're passing will be handled as a credit or debit card and don't know whether to add on the additional fee.

I guess you're referring to "PrePaid Credit Cards", Sonic? These are a new thing - they've been around in the US for a while and there's a few springing up over here - they're useful for balance control, poor credit history users, etc. Cashplus and Cash2Go are the two I've looked at (briefly). To be honest, I don't know how these are processed - whether they are "Credit" (read - high, usually % transaction fee) or "Debit" (lower, usually fixed) transactions that are used to process them. I fact, you can't realistically in general differentiate between transaction types yourself. Although there IS a big list of "bin numbers" (the prefixes which distinguish different card suppliers, eg. differentiating "Barclaycard Visa Credit Card" from "Lloyds Bank Visa Delta Debit Card), this is a HUGE list, and I believe is issued by Visa (Mastercard do their own for their cards) on a daily basis, so maintaining software to check it yourself is not really viable - only big retailers and payment system providers tend to actually do it. If you want to charge differently for (eg.) Visa (Credit transactions) and Visa - Delta (Debit transactions), the only viable way is to make the user select, and make sure you use a payment gateway/merchant bank that will validate this. If the user selects the wrong type, you just have to display an appropriate error message and make them re-submit. I believe that most vendors who do not differentiate (just offering a single "Visa" option), merely end up swallowing the charges themselves. It means the price of your items (or sometimes just an added "transaction" or "booking" fee) has to include an arbitrary amount which you believe will cover the merchant fees at the other end. Sorry it's not an ideal solution! Good luck! ben

It's absolutely ridiculous putting this on road tax - that doesn't actually hit the people who USE the petrol. I mean - you could own a Supra and drive it 1,000 miles a year and only burn 200L of petrol, and have to pay £1,800 tax, whereas you could own a poxy Prius and actually cause more ecological harm by doing more mileage!!! Surely the proper way to handle this is to increase PETROL tax, not ROAD tax - you should be taxed for DRIVING your car, not just for OWNING it - but then everybody complains about petrol tax increases too, I guess!!!

.....it was a shih tzu :D

Man goes to a zoo. There's no animals there except for one dog.....

d'oh - double post!

'bout 7ish near Brooklands? That'd be us on our way to Sainsbury's! It's amazing - new babe in the back and a bootfull of shopping. As I told her all along, the Soop is a good, practical, family car and most definitely does NOT need replacing! Nice car you've got there, Jon!

Be thankful he didn't know it was an N/A.

PM'd

Q. How do you turn a duck into a soul singer? A. Put it in a microwave until it's Bill Withers

Hi from one Guildford owner to another! Unfortunately, I'm not aware of any renowned specialists in this area. Mine goes to Phoenix in Watford for any work. Well worth the journey.

I wanted a high power, RWD car. Also, back seats (even cursory efforts like the Soop's) was a necessity. There really weren't many other choices. Certainly not in the The other cars I considered were a 300ZX (went for the Soop for the extra stock power and apparent superior reliability), a BMW M3 Evo (but my last car was a BMW, so wanted something different), and an RX-7 (was hard to find a decent example).

I am about to purchase a Toshiba 37WLT66.

Saw a Grey/Gunmetal Supra in Compton at lunchtime today - 'bout 13:30ish.

Yep - my mate has a Z3 M-Coupe here and we've gone up against eachother a few times now (I'm pretty much stock TT). From a standing start, you'll have to get a damn good launch to keep up with him - the turbo lag really shows. In the twisties, the difference actually isn't THAT bad - don't get me wrong, the M-Coupe definitely handles better and faster, but I didn't seem too far behind (may come more down to driving ability here). From a driver's perspective, the M-Coupe is superior I'm afraid - the seating position is so far back you really get great feedback on every move the car makes. From a rolling start, we've been neck and neck all the way up to about 140 leps. Ran it several times, so I'm pretty sure that it's almost even. Not sure about topping out - neither of us were that brave!!!! (oh - of course his car cost over twice as much as mine and those BMW service bills make me laugh!) (oh - and his car looks silly too, of course) (oh - and it's a BMW!)

I voted egg because I think stereotyping drivers by their choice of marque will bite you all in the ass, you bunch of FnF wanabee ricer chavs!

Erm - you're supposed to be looking in your rear view at the cars behind - not at yourself!

hehe - yeah - I remember - you were busy before so you made your own way up for the game. I chatted to you just after you arrived at Don Valley Stadium when you were still a bit shaken after getting pulled - you said the coppers clocked you at around the ton and were quite nice about it but were worried about you speeding past all the holidaying caravan traffic, as I recall.... ? I'm tempted to make you keep guessing, but feel it wouldn't be fair, really! It's Ben here, mate - played behind you at LB for quite a few years!

Oh great! Now I'm going to have to guess who you are! Now I remember some time back (before I had a supra myself) admiring a supra owned by one other Knight - in fact, looking over that helped firm my decision to ultimately get one. If I remember rightly, it was a Red SZ and it belonged to Scott. That wouldn't be you, would it?!?!?!

Most of my playing was for a team called the Personal Assurance Knights, based in Guildford and Aldershot: http://www.paknights.co.uk/