The RANT thread (often contains fruity language)

[rafletcher]

It would be nice if companies gave you an option (if at a nominal cost) to choose your preferred courier, or say "definitely not that one".
Local knowledge of how well a particular courier delivers to you doesn't replicate at national scale; you may hate Hermes and find DPD to be perfect, in another town it may be the exact opposite.

Very good point. Although Hermes do seem to be universally shit.

Not around here they’re not. Yodel, otoh, can fuck right off.

[hellymedic]

Advanced Consumer Technology:
Your technicians (NOT engineers) are a load of fucking work-shy skivers.

Charlie visited us on Friday afternoon (28 May) and wrote 'All Batteries Changed' in his receipt/worksheet.

Were they FUCK?

Blinking Sleep Detector started wailing at 20.55 this evening.

The so-called '10 year' lithium battery hasn't lasted long, has it?

Tomorrow is a Bank Holiday; maybe I'll wait with phoning your office till Tuesday...

[Kim]

The so-called '10 year' lithium battery hasn't lasted long, has it?

I looked into this while being kept awake by FireAngel products.  They're surprisingly sensitive to environmental conditions.  Ours were managing anywhere between 18 months and 5 years, seemingly due to the upstairs/downstairs temperature differential.

The '10 year' figure is the magic number beyond which they don't rate the calibration of the electronics, the idea is the battery should out-last this.  Seems unlikely.

(I can report that the Proper Fire Alarm which replaced them is happily float-charging the battery at 26.7V, with no issues^[1] since it was installed in August 2019.)

Presumably your technicians' standing orders are to note the presence of a sleep detector with a sealed lithium battery and shrug.


_{[1] Other than routine testing, a couple of power outages, and various things being on fire.}

[hellymedic]

I sit at my laptop, facing the sleep detector in my kitchen.
I sat here on Friday, when the chap came, couldn't recall him touching said item and recorded this in the alarm system diary in my computer's Notes.

SD bleeps 53 hours after tech's visit.

I might sit here like a crippled piece of Plasticine but I am no fool!

[grams]

Not really a rant, but:

Cunts on campsites chatting and laughing until 1am with no sign of stopping.

Cunts.

[citoyen]

Not really a rant, but:

Cunts on campsites chatting and laughing until 1am with no sign of stopping.

Cunts.

The only way to respond to that is to make as much noise as possible when you’re up at 5am.

[ian]

What kind of weirdo is asleep before 1 am? That's when the exotic spirits in plastic bottles come out to play.

[barakta]

I sit at my laptop, facing the sleep detector in my kitchen.
I sat here on Friday, when the chap came, couldn't recall him touching said item and recorded this in the alarm system diary in my computer's Notes.

SD bleeps 53 hours after tech's visit.

I might sit her like a crippled piece of Plasticine but I am no fool!

I suspect there is an element of crip-factor there, assuming cos you're disabled that you won't notice them scamming you. I wish you all the best in LARTing them and getting them to make suitable amends ASAP.

[Mr Larrington]

Not really a rant, but:

Cunts on campsites chatting and laughing until 1am with no sign of stopping.

Cunts.

The only way to respond to that is to make as much noise as possible when you’re up at 5am.

Oh yes.  Labor Day w/e 2017, Yankton SD.  Early start.  Big noisy V8

[hellymedic]

I sit at my laptop, facing the sleep detector in my kitchen.
I sat here on Friday, when the chap came, couldn't recall him touching said item and recorded this in the alarm system diary in my computer's Notes.
SD bleeps 53 hours after tech's visit.
I might sit here like a crippled piece of Plasticine but I am no fool!

I suspect there is an element of crip-factor there, assuming cos you're disabled that you won't notice them scamming you. I wish you all the best in LARTing them and getting them to make suitable amends ASAP.

Situation solved itself as alarm went off first time we were both away from abode in 16 months and monitoring station phoned me to tell. I reckoned 'Garden' sensor was faulty, so Ignore but made my displeasure about previous evening's beeping well understood. Chap said he'd send report to technical department.
Reset alarm on my return, then attended Family Gathering and alarm went off again.

[PhilO]

What kind of weirdo is asleep before 1 am? That's when the exotic spirits in plastic bottles come out to play.

What kind of weirdo sits around after dark, then wastes the first few hours of daylight the next day?   

[Kim]

I sit at my laptop, facing the sleep detector in my kitchen.
I sat here on Friday, when the chap came, couldn't recall him touching said item and recorded this in the alarm system diary in my computer's Notes.
SD bleeps 53 hours after tech's visit.
I might sit her like a crippled piece of Plasticine but I am no fool!

I suspect there is an element of crip-factor there, assuming cos you're disabled that you won't notice them scamming you. I wish you all the best in LARTing them and getting them to make suitable amends ASAP.

Situation solved itself as alarm went off first time we were away from abode in 16 months and monitoring station phoned me to tell. I reckoned 'Garden' sensor was faulty, so Ignore but made my displeasure about previous evening's beeping well understood. Chap said he'd send report to technical department.
Reset alarm on my return, then attended Family Gathering and alarm went off again.

Sounds like you've got a not-at-home detector to go with the sleep detector...

[Beardy]

What a complete and utter pile of shite the new pension portal is, and that’s before I get into the complete and utter pile of shite the services is behind the portal.

The new pension portal is now live. It isn’t password manager friendly. It demands minimum length, upper and lower case, number and a special character from a limited number of special characters. It can’t seem to remember a newly inputted password for more than 30 seconds. I reverted to manually putting in a simple password so I could actually remember it and type it. That worked. Once. I managed to actually log on briefly and there is no history of my two commitments to take my pension. Or,of,any of the quotes.

I’d ring them up and complain but see below. It’s just as well they are not in completion with anyone because their current customer service levels would see them without any customers in very short order. Wankers.

The history.
On 8th May I committed to taking my pension but had to sign a piece of actual paper to complete the process. That paper never arrived and in the mean time they took the website out of service for 3 weeks while they updated it. 5 weeks after my initial commitment I called them because the web site was still down to ask where the paper was. ‘It must have been lost in the post!’ Yeah, right! So I made a second commitment to take my pension over the phone with promises that the paper that needed my signature would be in the post. That still hasn’t arrived.

I’m going to try and change my password again now that I’ve calmed down a bit.

[Beardy]

Having switched to a proper computer I have changed my password AGAIN and managed to log on. But it won't let me complete a commitment to a quote because it doesn't acknowledge the digits in the sort code and account number fields as numbers proclaiming in a large red unfriendly font that 'this filed is necessary' What a shower.

[ian]

All financial services websites ever.

[Mrs Pingu]

Estate agent/solicitors and/or their clients.
Bah.

[andrewc]

Having switched to a proper computer I have changed my password AGAIN and managed to log on. But it won't let me complete a commitment to a quote because it doesn't acknowledge the digits in the sort code and account number fields as numbers proclaiming in a large red unfriendly font that 'this filed is necessary' What a shower.

I logged onto it last week, before they actually announced it had gone live & have had no serious issues.   I don't think it liked the password that Safari on Mac generated, so I had to make one up, but I can log on from my own machine, my phone & from the work laptop with no problems.   


Not tried to do anything with it yet, apart from purse my lips at the size of the quotes.  They really screwed us when they extended the age for a full pension by 5 years. 

[Beardy]

It’s not entirely their fault, although they do bear some responsibility. I think it was Lawson that started the big raids on pension pots which caused the company to take their first payment holiday, then Brown compounded it by removing the tax relief on dividends previously enjoyed by pension funds. The company changing from final salary to defined contribution 12 years ago, in response to the shortfall caused be Lawson and Brown, was the first big kick in the teeth, although I didn’t do too badly given the timings. I lot have done significantly worse than me though, and I think it sucks.

[andrewc]

Yes, the people who've joined since the final salary scheme closed are not going to have it easy.  I was encouraging 2 of the 30 year olds on my team to increase their contributions if they could, and maybe look at moving out of the default fund to something more adventurous.   I'm thinking about doing that myself, as the bog standard SL fund (risk level 4) doesn't compare well to some of the stuff from Vanguard or Baille Gifford at level 5 you can move into.   

[Mrs Pingu]

I keep meaning to move one of my funds from a 5 to a 6 but there's too much choice and I don't know how to decide.
It would help if they let you filter them easily so you could compare the performance of them all in one place instead of making you open a seperate pdf sheet for each one.

[andrewc]

Luckily Standard Life, who do our pension let you select funds to look at & then give you pretty coloured graphs showing their performance against what you are currently invested in.  Do I want to pick the orange, purple or navy lines, all of which are doing better over 3,5 & 10 years than the default pale blue fund.  Look at the last 12 months & the default doesn't look so bad.  Partially invested in boring bonds, so not so much affected by the Covid blip.

[Beardy]

Totally incompetent.
I received an email form the pensions ‘help’ desk telling me to make sure there are no spaces sort code or account number? What? Do you think I’m stupid? <fx:resigned_voice> Oh well, let me try again. The only spaces in the numbers are those that the form auto formats in, and the format example have, so you can’t mean those can you? After all, the form isn’t going to let me delete that whitespace is it? Well, as nothing else seems to work, just let me try that. Oh. Ok, that worked. 
Just out of interested, was any of this, you know, actually tested? I mean, you had the portal down for three weeks. That was for final CAT wasn’t it?
Wankers
And no, I don’t want you to ‘post’ the forms to me, your track record isn’t great. 
Twats.

ETA
The form I’ve signed has a check list and one item on the check list is that I’ve checked that I’ve put the right bank details in. On the form ‘for security reasons’ only part of my account number is printed, that’s fair enough. But if there’s a way for a mere user to find and check their bank details on the portal, I’ve yet to find it. I’ve sent them an online request for information because I really don’t want to have to speak to the idiots, but I’m probably going to have to bite that bullet and ring them soon.

[hellymedic]

Sounds like you've got a not-at-home detector to go with the sleep detector...

I think Teh Kim is right.

Again

[hellymedic]

What kind of weirdo is asleep before 1 am? That's when the exotic spirits in plastic bottles come out to play.

What kind of weirdo sits around after dark, then wastes the first few hours of daylight the next day?   

I live with one of those, except it's not a 'few' hours of daylight.

He is only *just* emerging from the bathroom now (16.30).

I can't make phone calls until he has emerged...

[ian]

If I slept that late, my wife would put a Sonos speaker either side of my head on the pillow, push up the volume sliders for those two speakers, and retreat downstairs to utter, sotto voce, Alexa, play the Greatest Hits of Slayer.