Inconvenient Annoyances

We didn't think about forgetting our wallets. That would have been awesome. If it was mentioned weeks and weeks ago that they'd like to go out,  but could we pay,  it would have been no big deal. But to word it as being in our honour and dropping that fact on us last minute chapped us both.  Hubs was trying to figure out how to get out of it, but we went. The whole evening was centered around the 11 year old nephew who needs sterner discipline. They are so wishy washy with him that he knows own if he gets louder he will get his way.  Lovely.

Well, let's see.

Short story:
I spent two hours speaking with Ovo and Eon, two energy companies, because one of my neighbors was setting up their gas and electric last month and gave their company the wrong address canceling my energy contract with MY company. Apparently my neighbors don't know their own house number. *facepalm* I am royally annoyed.

Long Story:

I called Ovo, to let them know I had received mail to one of their customers that wasn't currently living at my address. I just assumed it was a previous tenant. It turns out that the person on the letter must be one of my neighbors, because they had changed the energy company for my house to Ovo! A neighbor who doesn't know their own house number. *facepalm* The guy I was speaking with seemed to think I was lying about living at my address. He even looked up on the national database to see what company was listed as servicing my house! Which it was Ovo, to my surprise. I finally convinced the guy that this was done in the wrong and he got off the phone to call their customer and I called Eon. I ended up calling Eon 3 times.

On my first call I find out my account with Eon was canceled with no warning to me, even though they should have mailed a letter asking why I was leaving. The customer service rep told me I had to start up my account again, going over all the tariffs and all that. I got off the phone and started thinking about the two calls. Ovo told me they had taken over our address on Sept. 24, 6 days ago. The woman from Eon told me it takes over a month to switch between service providers. Something really wasn't right. What was going to happen to us while we were still technically Ovo's customers.

So I called back, only to be brushed off by someone who said, "This happens all the time, it's no big deal. We've already fixed the issue by reinstating your account." It just seemed like that was too easy...  I just wasn't satisfied. So I called again and spoke with someone else, I told them, "I won't accept this. Something needs to be done." So they brought on another guy who resolves customer problems. He didn't do anything but have me talk to a guy in Erroneous Transfers. This apparently happens often enough that they have an entire department devoted to correcting it. WTF? It's a good thing I persisted because our home's energy is currently in someone else's name with a company who doesn't have our payment details and now my husband and I don't have to deal with correcting it. It's all Eon's problem now.  And, we don't have to make any payments now until November at the earliest.

I am worried about if and how we have to pay for this coming month's energy costs, since Eon didn't seem able to answer me that. I'm going to call them tomorrow to ask how that's going to work.

We didn't think about forgetting our wallets. That would have been awesome. If it was mentioned weeks and weeks ago that they'd like to go out,  but could we pay,  it would have been no big deal. But to word it as being in our honour and dropping that fact on us last minute chapped us both.  Hubs was trying to figure out how to get out of it, but we went. The whole evening was centered around the 11 year old nephew who needs sterner discipline. They are so wishy washy with him that he knows own if he gets louder he will get his way.  Lovely.

My friend kept an old cancelled credit card for just these purposes. He would ostentatiously offer to pay and then the waiter would come back saying the card was declined. He would make a fuss, "How can this be?", "There must be an error!"

Incredible, lyonaria!     Have the neighbours done anything to sort this out?

Incredible, lyonaria!     Have the neighbours done anything to sort this out?

Nope, they haven't. I'd kind of like an apology, but I don't even know WHICH neighbor it was. We live on an estate and there are about 14 townhouses and it really could have been any of them. I do have a feeling it was the new guy next door though... I'm just glad I called Ovo about it and that Eon is now dealing with everything. Because this is partially Eon's fault as well.

And....

Now my phone is shut off. This week is just AWESOME! *facepalm*

 

Gack!

Can you get some help from Citizens Advice -- or some local consumer's board?

Delta beat the living hell out of our luggage this trip. I have never seen our cases in such bad shape, ever. The metal logo telling the brand of mine was ripped off, despite being riveted on tightly. They are scuffed and scraped and the edges frayed. Hubby brought home some tins of Heinz beans, since he can only get them at an international store 46 miles away for $1.99 plus tax a tin. Each and every one of them is dented horribly.

We've had a bit of damage here and there through the years, with Delta and other airlines, but nothing like this.

While worse than an IA, it isn't big enough for me to post in the 'worse than..' thread.

My phone was formatted, and I lost all my text threads, including the one with my sister that I intended to never delete. Hubby's phone was also formatted, and not one of his text threads disappeared.

Gack!

Can you get some help from Citizens Advice -- or some local consumer's board?

Sorry, meant to reply to this ages ago!

And I don't really know. Both companies told me it happens all the time, but I don't see why it should be happening. My company, the last person i talked to on my 3rd phone call told me that they would handle everything and I don't have to worry about it. My neighbor on the other hand was in a bit of a pickle... I still don't know who it was.

Watching my nieces at war both publicly on Facebook and privately offline, is both annoying and painful. My oldest niece, 23, moved to Indy, about 3 hours away from the family, with her loser fiance, and is now upset because her family isn't contacting her every few seconds to see how she is doing. She is also upset that no one likes the fiance, although she can't see it is because he treats her like crap. Her sisters (21 year old twins) are trying to get her to see reason, but the way they are going about it is a disaster. The oldest comes across as bitter and resentful, the other two are more or less telling her she shouldn't expect everyone to send her messages and call her every few minutes and she chose to go away.

It is a bunch of hurt feelings turning into anger, resentment and a huge mess. They are adults which makes it hard to step in and mediate like we did when they were children. Sometimes I miss those days. Ickiness could be solved with a time out if necessary.

It is a bunch of hurt feelings turning into anger, resentment and a huge mess. They are adults which makes it hard to step in and mediate like we did when they were children. Sometimes I miss those days. Ickiness could be solved with a time out if necessary.

Ugh. I feel ya. I watch my brother and [insert any friend or family member here] do this all the time, and right now I am the object of his anger because I asked him not to bring any sugar into my house because of a borderline blood test in early pregnancy and a DEMAND from my midwife that I give up all sugar IMMEDIATELY [she also made me take a first trimester glucose tolerance test, which is no joke]. He took this, like he takes everything, as a personal assault on him, and accused me of 'passive-aggressively hinting that I wanted him to leave'.  So he DID, and is now blaming me for kicking him out--which I did no such thing.  And now he is HOMELESS and my mother is NEEDLESSLY STRESSED, all because he can't conceive of something not being about him. Or that someone's actions or requests IN THEIR OWN HOME might actually JUST be about taking care of themselves and not in any way PASSIVE AGGRESSIVE. I have never been called that in my life!

Everyone is out to get him.  Every single one of the 10 different households who have sheltered him over the last 2 or 3 years, are, according to him, miserable and jealous of him and that's why they 'kicked him out'.  I now doubt that anyone [except my Aunt, who told me herself that she did] every actually kicked him out.  I think folks just got sick of his constant b*tching and bad moods, his terrible sleep and other habits, and any number of other things, and told him to cool it, or to smoke further away from the door, or to, you know, respect their space a little more, and he got angry and blew up at them and left. In a flurry of nasty text messages, accusing them of every flaw he sees in himself, but is unable to admit.

I know I am mentally ill.  I suffer from pretty bad OCD and anxiety.  I know I can be hard to deal with.  But my life is stable.  I keep  my kids fed and take care of myself and my household.  Before I became a mom, I went to college while holding down sometimes multiple jobs.  I always kept a roof over my head, all on my own most of the time, and food on the table. In his 15 years of adulthood, this has NEVER been the case for him.  Even when he had a stable job, he never earned enough to pay for his own place in full, and jobs never lasted long. 

I am NOT the one at fault here, and I refuse to take the blame. I know this is slightly more than an IA, but it's still petty, so I'll stay off the other thread for now.  It's just that he called me just now--three and a half weeks after the fact, and when I've finally gotten my life back in order after all the chaos he caused [most of which I didn't even realize at the time was because of his presence]--SCREAMING at me for venting to some of my friends the day it happened.  Blaming me for not coming to him first [I tried to be reasonable with him about it repeatedly before I turned to my friends. He wouldn't hear it, only accusing me of 'kicking him out' and 'causing him to be homeless without a penny to his name AGAIN'].  He conveniently doesn't remember his own reactions, just his projected idea of my behavior.

Ugh.  My therapist told me to not give him any more energy and to block his number. But I can't actually do that, because if I do, and he tries to contact me, he will eventually get through somehow and will be so irate that it will just be worse.  I shut him down as well as I could, but this is no guarantee that it'll stop. He claims he no longer has a sister.  I told him I wasn't going to respond to that statement, but if he wanted to communicate with me about something, it had to be cordial or not to bother.  I hope he just leaves me out of his mess until I'm fully back in therapy.  I see a new therapist next week.

Thanks for listening, all

The thing with the nieces comes and goes now, so hopefully they are running out of steam and remembering they love each other.

Current one: Co-workers, husband and wife, who never have any money, are wanting to buy our old phones. They are forever asking for their checks early because this utility or that is about to be shut off, or rent is due NOW and they have no money. She calls in sick on occasion and he (maintenance man) is off at least once a week for one ailment or another. The only reason he still has his job is because he is awesome at it when he is there. On top of that, they don't prioritize their spending to see that bills are paid first.

Where the problem comes in for us is, they want to buy the phones, and are thinking $25, maybe $50 each since they are used phones. Even being a year old, they are still valued at $400 each. While we realize we won't get quite that much out of them, we am sure we can get $100 - $200 each for them. It is hard to politely tell them we want far more than they are thinking, and that we would need it up front since the odds of seeing it later on would be slim. Not saying they are bad people, just that they can't manage money and we don't want to more or less give the phones away.

I wouldn't feel badly about refusing their offer, TamaMoo.  You can always say someone else has already paid you x amount for them which is more what you were looking for.

I ordered and paid for 4 kitchen appliances from Curry's, pre booked delivery date, received a text the day before confirming delivery. On the day of delivery I received a call from the delivery guy saying none of my items were on his truck and I should call customer service. It turned out that none of my items were in stock, the online order (placed one month before delivery) shouldn't have gone through, the automated text shouldn't have been sent, they couldn't deliver for another 2 weeks, AND they couldn't (read "wouldn't") immediately refund my ££! Amazing how when you buy something the money disappears straight away but a refund takes 5-7 days!

So then I found another, cheaper source for the same appliances, AO.com, who could deliver the next day. Great! Except that 2 of the 4 items were damaged and had to be taken away and redelivered. So that's the original day I'd set aside to receive the Curry's delivery, followed by 2 blocks of 4 hours I had to wait at home for deliveries from AO.com. Replacement items delivered but one of them turns out to be faulty.

Skip to yesterday when I waited in for the 3rd time. The replacement for the replacement was delivered AFTER the 4 hour window without a call or text to warn me that they were running late and, wait for it, this item is also faulty!!

1st world problems I know, but why is my time (and blood pressure level) considered worthless by companies kept in business by their customers???