Hi,

>			...  I no longer give
> verbal agreements any credibility whatsoever and get everything in
> writing that I can...

 In some countries, with more civilised legal systems, a verbal
agreement before witnesses is legally binding. This is true in
Scotland (though not England, the legal systems are fundamentally
different) and, I believe, in New Zealand.

>	... My recommendation (although extreme) is to go to the
> shop, get your stuff back, and take it someplace else.  If they aren't
> there when you go, take a day off work....

 This is fine if (a) there's an alternative and (b) you can afford
to take time off work. If I had enough spare time to chase
unprofessional businesses then I would have time to do the work
myself.

 All you can do is learn from your, and other peoples, experience:
If someone pisses you about then tell the world. If enough people
do this then the *******s will go out of business.

ObVW:  The garage that reconditioned my '68 engine last month was
      very professional and friendly, too (a little slow, because
      they were busy, but they said so beforehand and completed
      the job *before* they said they would). The engine had been
      "reconditioned" only 40,000 miles earlier by a different
      garage: I didn't take it back there....
       I'd like to have done the job myself but don't have the tools,
      time, alternative transport or a workspace here so I couldn't.

Cheers,
	W.
PS. My email system (MS-Mail with HP/OpenMail) occasionally sticks
   garbage onto the end of my messages. Sorry about this, I'm trying
   fix it but I don't know how and I can't reproduce the problem.
   If anyone has a fix then please let me (and *not* the list) know.

.......................................................................

Item Subject: WINMAIL.DAT
Could not convert Microsoft Mail Message Data item to text.
Will attempt to 'shar' item as file '0041jlb' at end of msg.

# This is a shell archive.  Remove anything before this line,
# then unpack it by saving it in a file and typing "sh file".
#
# Wrapped by openmail at cfwcs002 on Fri Jun 21 15:23:31 1996
#
# This archive contains:
#	0041jlb	
#

echo Compiling unpacker for non-ascii files
pwd=`pwd`; cd /tmp
cat >unpack$$.c <<'EOF'
#include <stdio.h>
#define htoi(c) (c<='9' ? c-'0' : c-'A'+10)
main() {
	register int c, c2;
	while ((c=getchar())!=EOF) {
		if (c=='\n') continue;
		c2 = getchar();
		putchar((htoi(c)<<4) + htoi(c2));
	}
}
EOF
cc -o unpack$$ unpack$$.c
rm unpack$$.c
cd $pwd

echo x - 0041jlb '[non-ascii]'
/tmp/unpack$$ >0041jlb <<'@EOF'
789F3E22000001100004000200000001000100
@EOF

chmod 660 0041jlb

rm /tmp/unpack$$
exit 0