Room 101

[sarahw]

Just be careful it doesn't make them 'fix' your hours.......

[Jacqueline]

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

Absolutely! Along with the people that ask you for directions, look dubious when you tell them what they want to know and then go and ask someone else. More often than not, where you can still see and hear them. I say "My directions not good enough then?"

[taxi4ballet]

Absolutely! Along with the people that ask you for directions, look dubious when you tell them what they want to know and then go and ask someone else. More often than not, where you can still see and hear them. I say "My directions not good enough then?"

Even worse - people who have a thorny problem (at work) and need to find an answer. They ask your opinion, pooh-pooh your answer, and then a week later you find that your idea is now official company policy, and your colleague is taking all the credit for having come up with the solution.

[Jan McNulty]

Oh yes! I remember that one Taxi!

[porthesia]

The plethora of scumbag companies who keep phoning me up about my accident that I had in January.  Yes I had an accident and no I can't claim off the other party as it was actually my fault, been with the same insurance company for 20+ years and they are dealing with the claim.  I keep blocking the numbers but then they switched to using a local dialling code so I have to answer - just in case.  DD said I was rather rude to the last one and that he was only doing his job.  My retort - well he should work for a proper company!

[Quintus]

BT sneaky charges.  It's worth anyone on BT checking their bill, given my experience.  I get phone and very creaky broadband from them, as being in a rural location I have no alternative.  Some time last year they bundled in free 'BT Sport' as an extra - some kind of online sports streaming service.  I had no interest in this whatsoever, but it just turned up.  I recently noticed I had twice been billed £17 for it. It turns out they 'converted' the unwanted freebie to a paid taken up service without asking; and this de facto change was apparently communicated somewhere on the e-bills (which to be frank I never look at unless the headline figure is unusual).  I think this is a really underhand way of doing business, more akin to the scammy techniques of a double glazing firm than a big corporate. Adding a charge should have involved a direct and dedicated communication, giving the consumer a choice.  It has taken me a lot of heated argument and escalation to get them to cancel and give me a credit - and they still won't admit there's anything wrong about the practice.  So I suggest forum members with BT go check their bills...

[Jan McNulty]

Very good advice Quintus.

 

I was surprised, a couple of months ago, to receive a larger than usual bill from Virgin Media.  When I queried it, it transpired that a "loyalty discount" had run out.  The very helpful young man did a bit of jiggery pokery to get me a better deal and then told me to remember to contact them at the same time next year to renegotiate again.  He said people should do this annually.

[2dancersmum]

Good luck with that one Porthesia.  I'm still getting phone calls about a car accident I had over 5 years ago. A minor accident as I was stationary and the rather large lorry I had stopped for was only going a few miles an hour as he misjudged the corner and caught me with the back end of his vehicle.  Apparently I could claim thousands for whiplash and injuries!! Now I just tell them they have false information - that I have never been in an accident as it is the only way to shut them up.

 

I'm going to add in to room 101 - drivers of large lorries and coaches that when a main road is closed because of an accident, decide that rather than follow the diversion and police instructions, they would rather attempt the twisty turny roads through tiny villages, ignoring the weight and height advisory signs and thus getting stuck and needing to reverse or get all the drivers coming the other way to reverse..  Chaos around here today as there was extra traffic for the races too.

[Lisa O`Brien]

A sister [insert your own relative or friend in space] who doesn`t have a computer but has a jewellery obsession and telephones you several times a day ,for days on end as there is something she has just seen on Gemporia.com that she HAS to have.Only you have just changed over your bank details and your new Pay Pal account hasn`t come through yet. But she still keeps ringing several times a day to see if it has yet, so she can have her [yet another] diamond ring that she wants you to order online for her,and then she will send the money on to you a day later. Or else she rings you wanting me to look up the make and model of their boiler which has conked out,to see if I can find a website that tells her how old hers is . How would a website know when the council fitted her own boiler into her flat 40 odd years ago?? l feel like shouting to her,get your own computer. But they can`t afford even a telephone landline,let alone internet access. Has money for lots and lots of diamond jewellery though,which her sister has to spend hours looking for her though. [Missed both episodes of Two and a Half Men tonight].Grr.

[Lisa O`Brien]

I told her I will be going to bed at 10.30 tonight and she said,oh good,so I have up until then to ring you if there`s something nice I want you to buy for me on Gemporia.com.[Waiting for the phone to ring yet again at any minute].

[Melody]

She buys diamond jewellery every day but can't afford a land line?

[Lisa O`Brien]

She buys diamond jewellery every day but can't afford a land line?

Exactly Melody.

[Fonty]

Does she watch all those shopping channels, Lisa?   Next time she rings, tell her you have internet problems and you are unable to get on line.  And your provider has said it may take weeks to fix.  :smile:

[Yaffa]

When there's a charge or something that seems ridiculous, I've found it can be helpful to search/Google the matter on the MSE site e.g. a Google search on "site:moneysavingexpert.com BT sports charge" gives you the following:

http://www.moneysavingexpert.com/news/utilities/2015/08/bt-agrees-to-refund-customers-for-unwanted-new-sports-package. Usually doing this can make you feel less alone and you can pick up some useful tips on what to do.

 

Yaffa (with no ties to MSE, just passing on the info)

 

BT sneaky charges.  It's worth anyone on BT checking their bill, given my experience.  I get phone and very creaky broadband from them, as being in a rural location I have no alternative.  Some time last year they bundled in free 'BT Sport' as an extra - some kind of online sports streaming service.  I had no interest in this whatsoever, but it just turned up.  I recently noticed I had twice been billed £17 for it. It turns out they 'converted' the unwanted freebie to a paid taken up service without asking; and this de facto change was apparently communicated somewhere on the e-bills (which to be frank I never look at unless the headline figure is unusual).  I think this is a really underhand way of doing business, more akin to the scammy techniques of a double glazing firm than a big corporate. Adding a charge should have involved a direct and dedicated communication, giving the consumer a choice.  It has taken me a lot of heated argument and escalation to get them to cancel and give me a credit - and they still won't admit there's anything wrong about the practice.  So I suggest forum members with BT go check their bills...

[taxi4ballet]

Not only do we have to pay 5p for supermarket carrier bags now (when you forget to take your own like I frequently do!) but surprise surprise, they have made the bags smaller than before, so you have to buy more of them.

 

Yes Tesco and Sainsburys - I'm looking at you

[Yaffa]

Speaking of carrier bags,I pick up a lot of them on my travels and used to be able to tell (by label and by feel) how robust they were, and which would be best for rubbish, storage, trips etc. Now, for some reason it's much harder to know. I just reached up to retrieve a bag of USB cables from a shelf and all the papers on my desk have been sprayed with the confetti remains of the bag. I did actually retrieve the cable I needed but unfortunately it landed in my cup of coffee. Grr...

[taxi4ballet]

Tesco ones are biodegradable, we've stored stuff in them in the loft and been showered with tattered confetti too.

[Fiz]

So have we. It's maddening!

[rowan]

I didn't know they biodegraded. I assumed we'd been infested with mice chomping away at them for nests!

[Melody]

I suppose it's a good thing on the whole that they're biodegradable but it does have its drawbacks apparently!

 

I have a bunch of the Tesco bags with ladybirds on them, which we'd buy when we visited the UK so we had a carrier bag available without having to take one over, and they're quite popular with the checkout staff at our local supermarkets. I had one lady accost me while I was shopping a couple of weeks ago, asking "are those from Tesco? I remember them from my trip to the UK." The last time I was over there, the ladybird bags didn't seem to be available, though, which is sort of a shame.

[alison]

I thought the idea was to mark bags as biodegradable, specifically so you didn't put things away in them for years and then find they'd rotted ...

[taxi4ballet]

Depends what you mean by years. Only about 18 months in this case - not long-term archiving!

[Fonty]

It does appear that carrier bags are less robust now.   I seem to put holes in them very easily, whereas before I could keep them and reuse them for ages. 

[Fiz]

I agree, Fonty, particularly with the "Bags for life".

[Melody]

Which is very convenient for the shop if you have to keep buying new ones.

[alison]

Not if they're Bags For Life, it isn't, because they would lose out big-time if they had to replace them free of charge on a regular basis.

 

Actually, since the 5p charge legislation came in over here back in the autumn, I think most of the big stores say they give the money to charity, or something, anyway.

[2dancersmum]

I thought the policy for the major supermarkets in the UK at least was to exchange a bag for life when your old one is worn out - free of charge. At least for those thick plastic ones - not sure about the heavier duty ones - though once in Tesco I went once went to pack my heavy duty bag and it split at the base and they immediately gave me a replacement free of charge.

[taxi4ballet]

The profit on the 5p charge for bags isn't kept by the shop - they have to hand it over to the Inland Revenue. (I win the "Most Boring Trivia Of The Day" prize)

[alison]

Manufacturers of pre-prepared meals and other such things who are heavy--handed with the pepper (and maybe other spices and so on): I can always add more if I want, but I can't take it out of your products, and I hate the clutching-at-your-throat-and-gasping-for-water look!  I mean, the other day I picked up a reduced-price soup mix in Waitrose, thinking I could knock up a batch of mixed-veg soup for supper.  It never occurred to me that they would have added pepper to raw, cubed vegetables, but yes, they had!  Too much of it, of course

[Yaffa]

Manufacturers of pre-prepared meals and other such things who are heavy--handed with the pepper (and maybe other spices and so on): I can always add more if I want, but I can't take it out of your products, and I hate the clutching-at-your-throat-and-gasping-for-water look!  I mean, the other day I picked up a reduced-price soup mix in Waitrose, thinking I could knock up a batch of mixed-veg soup for supper.  It never occurred to me that they would have added pepper to raw, cubed vegetables, but yes, they had!  Too much of it, of course

That also drives me nuts.  There are some workarounds at http://www.spiceography.com/too-much-pepper/  Personally I usually drown whatever it is in tahini (sesame paste - the real stuff, 100% ground sesame seeds, not the diluted sauce which often comes with a strange combination of strong spices). Mind you, I usually drown everything in tahini anyway :-) 

[Fonty]

I think I am probably heavy handed with the pepper myself.  It is the salt I find overpowering in many of these things. 

[Anon2]

People who stand too close to you when in a queue, sniffing, texting away oblivious to your personal space. Back off!

[porthesia]

Echo what you say Jane, particularly when you're trying to pay at the till in a supermarket..  I've had to ask, particularly children, to give me space.  They were almost watching over my shoulder!