Room 101

[Huddsballetmum]

Sofa Delivery companies!  I purchased a new suite in January - impulse purchase - and was really pleased when the salesman said in could be delivered on a Saturday for a fee.  I didn't mind the £80 delivery charge as I work full time and have to save many of my holidays for the DD and her dance related stuff ha ha!

last week I got a call to say my sofa was ready and they would deliver it on the 13th Feb.  "Great!"says I.  "Cant wait".  "What time will it be as I have DD's dancing commitments so won't be in between 10 - 11.30 and 3.30 - 5.30"  Then the despondency commenced "We don't do timed deliveries.  You will have to stay in until the sofa arrives"

"Not possible" says I

"Tough" says the sofa delivery company

"Can you deliver it on the 20th?" says I  (half term and no CAT classes)

"NO, driver training" says the sofa delivery company

"Cancel it" says I

 

One week passes and I receive a call from the sofa delivery company

"We would like to deliver your sofa on 20th February.  Is that convenient?"

"Yes" says I

 

Why do you have to go through all the rigmarole and stress of arguing and cancelling an order to get a modicum of customer service in this country??

[Fonty]

Has anyone else had to live with the fact that one of their neighbours appears to be barking mad? 

 

I own one of three flats in a converted house in north London.  I have owned it for many years, and have always got on extremely well with all the previous owners.  The flats don't change hands that often, but about 2 years ago the ground floor flat was sold to a woman with two teenage sons. 

 

Anyway, this woman keeps sending letters addressed to The Management Company (no name) complaining about various issues.  I have pointed out to her that the owners of all three flats constitute the management company, and if there is a problem then to email us all and discuss it.  But no, the letters keep coming.  They always contain some sort of legal gobbledegook about various parts of the leases, followed by complaints such as the communal parts are dirty, and ending up with a general rant about how her statutory rights are being infringed.  They really are quite rude, and getting progressively worse. 

 

The only reason I open them is because I am the Company Secretary, and automatically open letters addressed to the company.  I am starting to wonder if the woman is mentally ill.  I don't like to point out to her that by sending these things she is effectively talking to herself!

[2dancersmum]

MOT's

 

Don't know if I am or my car is jinxed but something always goes wrong at the garage on the day of my car MOT (and not even the same place doing it)  That's even without the worry of will it pass!  On the plus side it will be the second year on the trot that I am not charged a penny for it!

[alison]

Broadband. It conks out at the office *and* at home at more or less the same time. GRRRR.

[taxi4ballet]

Ruddy envelopes!

 

I know I couldn't find any envelopes in the house the other day, they were hiding and I turned the place upside-down. Couldn't find them anywhere.

 

I know that I went out and bought some more (I remember using one and posting the letter).

 

So where are the dratted things?!!!!!! They must be here somewhere. They can't have disappeared into thin air. Not again. There is something fishy going on 

[Jan McNulty]

I have that problem with envelopes too!

[taxi4ballet]

Right. I have bought some more now - from an obligingly well-stocked petrol station.

 

If I come on here moaning about envelopes again, will someone please remind me that I have put them in the bureau!!!

[alison]

Ruddy envelopes!

 

I know I couldn't find any envelopes in the house the other day, they were hiding and I turned the place upside-down. Couldn't find them anywhere.

 

I know that I went out and bought some more (I remember using one and posting the letter).

 

So where are the dratted things?!!!!!! They must be here somewhere. They can't have disappeared into thin air. Not again. There is something fishy going on 

 

I have this problem too - particularly with the long thin ones.  Clearly they vanish down the same wormholes in space as biros do, because I swear I keep buying them and then can never find them again when I want them - they must be ending up on a planet somewhere where they can enjoy a uniquely envelopoid lifestyle

[taxi4ballet]

Alison, we're swimming in biros of all shapes and sizes - no idea where they all come from. I will quite often have a clearout and there will be several nice ones I've never set eyes on before. So I ask the family and no, not theirs, don't belong to them, they've never seen them before either.

 

So where do they come from? Whatever strange parallel universe they have sprung from, they bring all their propelling-pencil friends too - we have shedloads of those as well.

 

Hopefully they will bring paperclips and printer cartridges with them next time the space-time-continuum allows.

[Jan McNulty]

Alison, we're swimming in biros of all shapes and sizes - no idea where they all come from. I will quite often have a clearout and there will be several nice ones I've never set eyes on before. So I ask the family and no, not theirs, don't belong to them, they've never seen them before either.

 

So where do they come from? Whatever strange parallel universe they have sprung from, they bring all their propelling-pencil friends too - we have shedloads of those as well.

 

Hopefully they will bring paperclips and printer cartridges with them next time the space-time-continuum allows.

 

 

They obviously come from Alison!

[Jan McNulty]

I joined a scheme at a theatre a couple of years ago that gave a 20% discount off tickets.  They don't send out reminders so I hadn't noticed but my membership ran out in January.

 

I was able to priority book for a production on Monday (by telephone) so I checked on the website and the scheme still exists and the benefit still showed as being the same.  I rang up and booked for all 7 performances.  My tickets arrived today and the discount had only been applied to 2 performances so needless to say I rang up to find out what was going on.

 

I should explain that when I rang to book I did say I was both a friend of NB (which attracted a discount) but the membership scheme offered a much better discount.

 

When I rang today I was told that the scheme only applied to 2 tickets per show as opposed  to the 2 tickets per performance as shown on the website.  That had not been explained to me, nor had the friends discount been applied to the other tickets.  I was getting nowhere with the individual I was speaking to so I asked to speak to the manager.  The manager was not available but would be asked to ring me back as soon as possible.  This was at around 1415.

 

At 1745 I rang back (I am very glad I had not been holding my breath).  I was told that the manager was not available so I said I had been waiting for over 3 hours for a phone back!!!

 

IN THAT TIME THE MANAGER HAD NOT HAD THE COURTESY TO PHONE ME BACK BUT HAD FOUND THE TIME TO INSTRUCT THE WEB MANAGER TO AMEND THE WEBSITE!!!!!  (As it happened I still had my tab open so could see when I reopened in another tab I could see the wording had changed).  The theatre is not going to honour the terms shown when I booked but the lady I spoke to (who knew all about what had happened so it had obviously been discussed) is going to reissue my other tickets with the Friends discount applied.

 

Given problems I have had with another theatre this week, I am putting BOX OFFICES into room 101 (with the exception of ROH whom I have always found particularly helpful).

[sarahw]

I have the excess biro problem as well. I take a load to the charity shop every now and then - they use them in the shop.

[Jan McNulty]

I have the excess biro problem as well. I take a load to the charity shop every now and then - they use them in the shop.

 

 

Are you taking Alison's biros as well????

[taxi4ballet]

Are you taking Alison's biros as well????

 

 

There is definitely something weird going on here...!

[sarahw]

Probably Janet!!

[Fonty]

Given problems I have had with another theatre this week, I am putting BOX OFFICES into room 101 (with the exception of ROH whom I have always found particularly helpful).

 

 

How annoying for you, Janet.  Although, if you put Box Offices in Room 101, none of us will be able to buy tickets for any show, ever again, will we? 

 

Perhaps, technically speaking, it should be managers who refuse to come to the telephone? 

 

Which brings me smoothly on to my next contender.  SANTANDER BANK.  I am pretty certain they must already be languishing in the depths, but dealing with them on the phone takes endurance to a whole new level.  Yesterday I discovered, to my horror, that my credit card had expired at the end of January.  Shows how often I use it!  However, I am going to Prague  next weekend, and the friend I am travelling with doesn't have any credit cards at all.  So I rang up, and spoke to a lady who assured me my replacement card had been delivered in December.  When I said I hadn't received it, she said she would cancel it.  Fine, I said, when can I expect the replacement?  This is where it all started to go very, very wrong.

 

My partner originally applied for the Santander Zero credit card for both of us, which means you can use it abroad with no fees.  Great, as we travel a lot,   However, for reasons best known to himself, he applied for a main credit card for himself, and an extra card for me.  No idea why he did that.  He claims he thought it would be easier to apply that way.  Anyway, his card is registered to our home address, but I have all my Santander accounts registered to my office address, which is where I prefer to keep them.  This has not caused any problems at all in the past.  However, the lady insisted that she could not send my new credit card to my office address, "because it is not the same address as the main credit card holder."  No amount of my pointing out that all my previous cards had gone to that address, including the missing replacement sent out in December.  She would not budge.  I asked repeatedly to speak to a senior manager, but in spite of being put on hold for minutes at a time, I just got the same lady, who said, "They will tell you the same thing."  

 

After an eternity of listening to VERY LOUD music, I asked if I could apply for a new solo credit card.  After more discussion with an out of earshot manager, and more minutes of VERY LOUD music, they agreed to put me through to a new section.  Where the lady there told me I could not have a new Zero card, as it had been axed last year.  I asked rather sharply why I had not been informed when my previous card had expired.  She asked me what I meant, and I had to explain the whole saga again.  Only to find that people can have their cards registered to whatever address they like, providing they give proof of ID, and she had no idea why the previous lady had told me otherwise.  Another eternity of VERY LOUD music, and I finally got through to a very nice lady who told me my new card would be delivered in the next 5 - 7 working days. 

 

It only took one hour and 10 minutes.    Do you ever get that feeling you are stuck in an infinite loop sometimes?  

[Fiz]

Santander bought up the insurance company with which my father in law had left a rather large sum of money for our youngest dd. It took me ages to track down who had bought the company and practically an act of Parliament for before Santander would actually release the money! I was highly unimpressed.

[Lisa O`Brien]

I know the feeling. I was thrown out of the back seat of a taxi by a dangling aerial wire in 2007. I opened the door ,stepped out and was thrown out of the thing. The only part of me left inside the taxi was my right leg. I felt my ankle do something weird straightaway. Turned out it was broken and dislocated. I had been a regular customer of the taxi company several times a week, ever since I moved to Newry in 1999. The [new] owner of the company [her husband bought her the taxi company as a wedding present] was informed that day by the driver about what had happened. I wasn`t expecting a bouquet of flowers from her,but a quick phone call at some point that week or week after would have been nice. Nothing. I waited a further two weeks,then went to see a solicitor. I was a single mum with a seven year old who I could not walk to school because of my ankle. It was also two an a half weeks  before Christmas. I had a total of 12 hospital appointments,mainly with the physiotherapist,who told me i had CRPS or Complex Regional Pain Syndrome. It was quite nasty. My ankle swelled up like a balloon and was completely frozen and immobile and my foot would tremble and shake uncontrollably. The owner of the taxi firm said I must have thrown myself out of the taxi deliberately and that she was going to counter sue me. The taxi driver told her exactly what really happened as he was there and saw the dangling aerial wire for himself. Her reply? " Oh,well can we not pretend she threw herself out deliberately anyway?" Long story short, I was awarded £15,000 in compensation.Two months after me a little boy fell out of another one of her taxis and broke his arm. I told everyone and anyone what had happened to me.The company went bust and the former owner`s marriage ended about a year later. I now see the former owner`s ad every week in the local free newspaper. She offers her services as a Tarot Reader. I kid you not. What does all this have to do with Santander? I made an appointment to see our local Santander manager.I was with them anyway. I put £8,000 of the money into a special Bond type of account. About a year later I needed to withdraw a thousand pounds of it. No trace of the money.Couldn`t find the account details,even though I gave them the exact account number where it was deposited. Advised to telephone Santander`s Head Office in London to see if they could find its whereabouts. Ages on the phone to London and goodness knows how many trips into my local branch.They were all perplexed as to what had happened to my money. It may not be a lot to some people,but £8,000 was a lot of money to me,for the bank to lose it. Finally about five weeks later it finally "emerged" from somewhere completely different to where they all thought it should be. The manager was terribly apologetic and asked me if I still wished to withdraw a thousand pounds of it. I told her I wished to withdraw every penny of it and that I was closing my current account with them. I transferred it all over to another bank and have had no problems. Whenever I hear the name Santander,or see the ad on TV I shudder,I really do.
 

Edited March 2, 2016 by Lisa O`Brien

[Fiz]

Good for you, Lisa! They really are awful.

[Lisa O`Brien]

Good for you, Lisa! They really are awful.

Funnily enough at the time I was complaining about it to a friend and he said the exact same thing happened to someone he knew and his money... Only it was £25,000 they "misplaced".

[Lisa O`Brien]

The friend after a week,marched into the local branch with his solicitor.Words to the effect of hand me over the money of mine you have lost or i will take you to the cleaners. They had no choice but to write him out a cheque. I don`t exactly know if that last part is true or not.I don`t see how a bank can write out a cheque to give to someone if there was no proof of the money in the account,or indeed of the account existing in the first place. But that`s what I was told.

[Fonty]

Lisa, that sounds terrible. 

 

I used to quite like the old Abbey Nat, and I suspect most of the very nice and very helpful staff in my local branch are left over from that company.  But Santander seem to make no effort at all, and when trying to talk to someone on the phone it really is a complete lottery as to whether I get my problem solved. 

[Lisa O`Brien]

Lisa, that sounds terrible. 

 

I used to quite like the old Abbey Nat, and I suspect most of the very nice and very helpful staff in my local branch are left over from that company.  But Santander seem to make no effort at all, and when trying to talk to someone on the phone it really is a complete lottery as to whether I get my problem solved. 

Abbey National. I`d forgotten about them. It was my bank when I went to Urdang when I was 16. What a blast from the past !

[taxi4ballet]

Nationwide are very nearly as bad. I moved my current account from them over 20 years ago, but at the time I forgot all about the savings account I had as well. Since I'd also moved jobs, I wasn't working anywhere near a branch any more so I never bothered going in to close it.

 

For the last 20+ years, I have had an annual statement showing the balance posted here, but in my previous name. The other week, I was doing some filing/shredding of old stuff and came across the paperwork, so I phoned and asked if they could close the account and transfer the balance.

 

Apparently it's not that simple. Since the account is dormant, they can't do anything over the phone, or by letter. I have to go into the branch where I opened the account with two proofs of identity. I explained that I have since remarried, so all my ID is in my current surname, but I am living at the same address. Well in that case, believe it or not, they want my original birth certificate, photographic ID, my original first marriage certificate, my decree absolute, my second original marriage certificate, a bank current account debit card, and a utility bill, and then they might consider it.

 

Not sure whether I want to bother doing all that for £1.28

Edited March 2, 2016 by taxi4ballet

[sarahw]

The cost of getting there would be more - not to mention your time in getting it all together.....

[Lisa O`Brien]

Nationwide are very nearly as bad. I moved my current account from them over 20 years ago, but at the time I forgot all about the savings account I had as well. Since I'd also moved jobs, I wasn't working anywhere near a branch any more so I never bothered going in to close it.

 

For the last 20+ years, I have had an annual statement showing the balance posted here, but in my previous name. The other week, I was doing some filing/shredding of old stuff and came across the paperwork, so I phoned and asked if they could close the account and transfer the balance.

 

Apparently it's not that simple. Since the account is dormant, they can't do anything over the phone, or by letter. I have to go into the branch where I opened the account with two proofs of identity. I explained that I have since remarried, so all my ID is in my current surname, but I am living at the same address. Well in that case, believe it or not, they want my original birth certificate, photographic ID, my original first marriage certificate, my decree absolute, my second original marriage certificate, a bank current account debit card, and a utility bill, and then they might consider it.

 

Not sure whether I want to bother doing all that for £1.28

Wow Taxi. I know i` tell them what they can do with the £1.28 ! 

[Yaffa]

I have the excess biro problem as well. I take a load to the charity shop every now and then - they use them in the shop.

I've also acquired a huge collection of biros, none of which I recall buying myself. For some reason, whenever I try a bunch to give away, I hear later that none of them worked... Once, before an important meeting, I grabbed an impressive looking heavy ballpoint pen instead of my usual bank-branded biro. The lady I was meeting with watched me carefully as I tried unsuccessfully to get the thing to open and she suggested that I twist the top a bit further to the left and then press extra hard. It worked! I asked her how she had known how to get the pen to start. Her reply: 'Because it's mine...'

[Jacqueline]

My mother used to work for a well known high street bank and we had plenty of their biros. They were cheaper than cheap and would run out at the most inopportune moments. Apart from one time, we had been to see Amadeus at the National Theatre. Mother was a long time fan of Paul Scofield so we went round to the stage door after the performance. Mr Scofield appeared in due course but somebody else got in first for his autograph. Unfortunately for Mr S, this person wanted him to sign with an actual quill as it would be in keeping with the character of Salieri.

I remember Mr Scofield, who was always a gentleman with the most beautiful manners, looking at this quill as though it was something from outer space. He must have been very tired and thought what the ...!!! I asked him if he would like to borrow my biro and he accepted. We held our breath as the cheapie biro managed to get through several autographs without failing. Would have been ironic if it had conked out just as he got to my turn!

Edited March 3, 2016 by Jacqueline

[swanprincess]

The stubbornly bouncy tutu which I have spent the last 4 hours tacking.

[orchidblue]

Not sure exactly what/who I would like to add to Room 101 but I work as a part time merchandiser. My job is flexible and I very rarely have face to face contact with either of my bosses (in fact, one of them I have never even met!). I love the flexibility and make sure that I start very early so I can be finished by lunchtime on the days that I work. Some days I'm even finished before 10am. It drives me mad though that having finished work & switched off that part of my life, I have to deal with constant texts & phone calls from either of my bosses who both work full time. So even though I work only 15 - 20 hours a week I am mithered 6 days a week. ????

Know I shouldn't complain really as I have an easy life compared to lots but I do wish they didn't have my number!! I've tried not answering but then I just get phonecalls constantly until I do.

Some days it just drives me potty!!

Edited March 15, 2016 by orchidblue

[taxi4ballet]

I'm freelance and I get this sometimes - you could try telling them that if they call you when you are 'off duty' you will add the time to your hours. Either that or change your phone number!!

[taxi4ballet]

I'm going to add to Room 101 - people who ask your advice about something and then argue the toss with you. 

[orchidblue]

I think when my phone contract comes up for renewal I shall get a new number for personal then switch my work phone off when I finish. Can't imagine that going down well but they shall just have to deal with it!! ????