One Purfleet reader contacted me following last week's diatribe about the difficulty, not to mention cost, of attaching towbar electrics to my new Vauxhall.

An unfortunate Citroën owner emailed to tell how she was threatened with a bill in excess of £600 to fit a towbar to her new car... or no warranty.

She wrote: "It it the car manufacturers' ploy to get you to have add-ons fitted by their dedicated agents.

"I recently took delivery of a new Citroën. As a caravan owner and tower I, of course, wanted a towbar fitted so made inquiries from the Citroën agents about how much they would charge – more than £600 plus VAT. I made the same inquiry from a caravan dealer and the price was over £200 less. When I told the Citroën dealer this, the answer was that if I had the towbar fitted by other than an authorised Citroën dealer I would invalidate the warranty on my new car and from that point on anything that went wrong with the car, anything, would not be covered.

"I had a similiar situation with a previous Citroën where I wanted to fit a sat-nav system. More than £1,000 for the Citroën system; off-the-shelf at Halfords £300 to £350, but I could not have it wired into the car system because I would, yes, you've guessed, invalidate the warranty.

I could only use the sat-nav as a mobile unit stuck in a holder on the windscreen and plugged into the cigarette lighter socket."
My understanding is that EU rules forbid car makers to include restrictive clauses in their new car warranties. You don't have to use a franchised dealer for servicing, for instance, so long as the work and any replacement parts are a match for the franchised dealer's.

A warranty can't diminish any of the rights a consumer has under the Sale of Goods Act (for example the right to reject a faulty car).
And the Unfair Terms in Consumer Contracts Regulations 1999 also apply to warranties. These regulations strike out any term in a contract which is deemed to be "unfair" to a consumer. So if the terms of your warranty are unreasonably difficult to stick to, seek legal advice (cribbed from WhatCar.com).

Reader Mr R.V.F. Smith, of Pott Row, was more concerned with built-in obsolescence and built-in awkwardness.

He wrote: "Last week's Purfleet highlighted all the woes of modern-day technology, which appears to create more problems than it solves."
Mr Smith bemoaned the loss of the days when you could maintain your own car saying: "Now they make it virtually impossible" explaining that to change the alternator belt on his car you have to take off a front wheel and the inner-wing panel to reach some still fairly-inaccessible bolts.

"Why has a relatively simple job turned into an expensive and frustrating nightmare?

"Why design cars, or any machine, so the parts are so hideously expensive and the job of fitting them takes twice as long as it needs?"
Well, I think we all know the answer to that one!

He goes on to say, quite rightly, that parts and labour together with, after a short while, the unavailability of spares, make some jobs uneconomic to the point of the machine having to be scrapped and completely replaced.

"How good is this for the environment? Is this progress?" he asks.
Continuing the "is this progress" theme, Mr Tom Davies, of Springwood, says: "May I add to your comments concerning the changeover to digital television/ recording of same?

"Do any of your readers know, when the television signal goes digital-only in West Norfolk in 2011, if the Belmont transmitter will also distribute BBC East/ Anglia ITV signals as well as BBC North/Yorkshire ITV?

"If the answer should be yes then viewers who don't currently have satellite TV can look forward (at long last) to again receiving local news. However if the response is no then should we commence trying to change the answer now as I believing leaving the topic until 2011 will simply be too late?"

On a different subject Mr Bob Cooke, of Nelson Street, Lynn, reported on Friday: "I've Just tried to access the Environment Agency website to check the current flood warning situation and it is down for 'service maintenance'. Chocolate teapots come to mind!"

Well done all of you, official members, with me, of the Grumpy Old Men (and Woman) Club (irrespective of ages).