Things that make you go aaarrrggghhhh thread

[kiloran]

Mum's house is now unoccupied so I notified the insurance company. I just got the updated schedule with a covering letter, which states that the change to the policy incurs an administration fee of........ £0.01!!!

--kiloran

[Leothebear]

That too much for you?

[Dicky99]

Mum's house is now unoccupied so I notified the insurance company. I just got the updated schedule with a covering letter, which states that the change to the policy incurs an administration fee of........ £0.01!!!

--kiloran

Insurer's do strange things at times. One year my car insurance renewal docs came through and it stated that my car was parked in the street overnight when in fact it was kept in secured off street parking. So they charged me an extra £40. I wrote a complaint letter and they refunded it but only as a good will gesture, explaining that their increased premium was correct as it reflected statistics.

[SimonS]

One of my big irritations is companies who write to you with "noreply" email addresses. I need to contact them, but they then don't allow you to reply to their email. Invariably one has to go to their website and FAQ's and go round the houses 3 times there, before, if you are lucky, eventually finding a contact email or telephone number. The way I see it, if they can email me, then I should be able to email them in reply! It all makes me feel like, in some, way blocking no reply emails.

It's the profit margin that's at stake. Answering questions is expensive, but if they put you on hold on a premium line for half an hour, with a subtle countdown (You are 32nd in the queue, your call is valuable to us , you can do all sorts of things on our website... etc, etc ...we know you will hang on because we made it bloody hard to find this number and made you jump through all sorts of hoops 0on the way just to talk to a temporary staff member reading from a script who won't be here when you repeat the call after finding out the information wasn't quite the answer you wanted... yiou are number 27 in the queue..."

A variation on this is the American company who holds something like an insurance policy for you. Recently the bank handling their payments has stopped issuing or taking cheques, but they won't take a credit card that isn't backed by an American Bank. Not just an American Bank, but an American bank sited in America! So i was informed that my account with Citibank, advertising itself as truly global, wasn't adequate because it was a dollar account set up with Citi who had hived off that business to Citi UK, and my Amex card wasn't accepted because they charge too much for the bank to use them and my Mastercard wasn't acceptable because it came from the European subsidiary evem though it was initiated in the States (decades ago) so the only way to pay was to use Wells Fargo's money transfer system to pay Wells Fargo's financial management system and pay a bank fee, a credit transfer fee, a cash conversion fee, a foreign services fee and then the payment default fee when the payment was put into the wrong account at Wells Fargo by Wells Fargo and Wells Fargo couldn't find it.

One can imagine the glee at the meeting where the finance officer told the board that they had finally solved their problem of being a bank by getting rid of people so they could get on with the truly profitable business of gambling with the money in "deposit accounts" that had been abandoned because it was too difficult to access them any more without travelling to New York, finding the truly unimpressive office under a bridge in Brooklyn and negotiating an appointment with a customer services officer who hasn't been hired yet.

[Dicky99]

Yesterday when taking the bus home from a long walk I was driven to have an irate exchange with a yoof who was listening to music, videos etc on his phone on speaker phone. Then the final straw was when he took a call on speaker and the person on the other end was using a lot of foul language.
It made me ponder that so many young people have ear buds seemingly permanently attached to their ears, such that they are incapable of engaging with those around them, except of course when they are on public transport, cafes pubs etc when they'll share their noise with all around them.
Last year I travelled around Morocco by train and an essential part of my travel kit was a pair of noise cancelling was buds. Not to listen to music with, but because I knew that I would need my ear buds on long train journeys to block out the noise from phone users who were not using their ear buds

[Tedx]

Yesterday when taking the bus home from a long walk I was driven to have an irate exchange with a yoof who was listening to music, videos etc on his phone on speaker phone. Then the final straw was when he took a call on speaker and the person on the other end was using a lot of foul language.
It made me ponder that so many young people have ear buds seemingly permanently attached to their ears, such that they are incapable of engaging with those around them, except of course when they are on public transport, cafes pubs etc when they'll share their noise with all around them.
Last year I travelled around Morocco by train and an essential part of my travel kit was a pair of noise cancelling was buds. Not to listen to music with, but because I knew that I would need my ear buds on long train journeys to block out the noise from phone users who were not using their ear buds

Even if the user is using earbuds to take/make the call, you still hear one half of their conversation though.

[servodude]

Yesterday when taking the bus home from a long walk I was driven to have an irate exchange with a yoof who was listening to music, videos etc on his phone on speaker phone. Then the final straw was when he took a call on speaker and the person on the other end was using a lot of foul language.
It made me ponder that so many young people have ear buds seemingly permanently attached to their ears, such that they are incapable of engaging with those around them, except of course when they are on public transport, cafes pubs etc when they'll share their noise with all around them.
Last year I travelled around Morocco by train and an essential part of my travel kit was a pair of noise cancelling was buds. Not to listen to music with, but because I knew that I would need my ear buds on long train journeys to block out the noise from phone users who were not using their ear buds

Even if the user is using earbuds to take/make the call, you still hear one half of their conversation though.

Yeah - but... they normally sound passibly human; not processed through a filter the resonance of which is tuned to amalgam fillings!

You must remember when mobiles were first available to the plebs and any space within 20yards of any public transport would be full of little scrotes trying out every possible earbleeding ringtone? Trading them like Panini stickers (how come we had to made do with two players to a sticker? Even shineys!?)
It was tinny hell

[UncleEbenezer]

You must remember when mobiles were first available to the plebs and any space within 20yards of any public transport would be full of little scrotes trying out every possible earbleeding ringtone? Trading them like Panini stickers (how come we had to made do with two players to a sticker? Even shineys!?)
It was tinny hell

It was worst in the earlier days of the walkman. When supposedly-personal headsets were loud enough to be annoying throughout a railway carriage or similar-sized space. At least the modern ones are genuinely personal.

[SimonS]

You must remember when mobiles were first available to the plebs and any space within 20yards of any public transport would be full of little scrotes trying out every possible earbleeding ringtone? Trading them like Panini stickers (how come we had to made do with two players to a sticker? Even shineys!?)
It was tinny hell

It was worst in the earlier days of the walkman. When supposedly-personal headsets were loud enough to be annoying throughout a railway carriage or similar-sized space. At least the modern ones are genuinely personal.

Another behaviour I would like equated to treason (ie an immediate visit to the headsman's axe) is the playing of music at extreme volume in a car, with the windows open so that one can appreciate how truly, mind-numbingly (literally) daft the driver is, It isn't just the intrusiveness, it's the realisation that this is another person who will be deaf in their fifties if not before and they will expect everyone else to a) pay for their treatment, hearing aids, therapy animal, rehabilitation etc and b) expect special consideration and sympathy for a self-inflicted injury, BECAUSE THEY'VE GONE DEAF, YOU KNOW.

[88V8]

Royal Mail delivering what is clearly a week's accumulation of post, whilst pretending that they are providing a normal daily service and charging for First Class which no longer exists.

V8

[Leothebear]

We drink Kenco instant coffee (shock horror). I always check the price per 100g of the "eco" sachet bag thing and compare it with the glass jar, the normal container. The "eco" option is always about 15% more expensive. Being a tight bastard I always buy the jar. Why can't they price the two options at least equally?

This irritates the hell out of me, I'm not that keen on cofee anyway.

Leo

[doolally]

We drink Kenco instant coffee (shock horror). I always check the price per 100g of the "eco" sachet bag thing and compare it with the glass jar, the normal container. The "eco" option is always about 15% more expensive. Being a tight bastard I always buy the jar. Why can't they price the two options at least equally?

This irritates the hell out of me, I'm not that keen on cofee anyway.

Leo

I've always found the sachet to be cheaper, but a quick check online shows that the jars are currently on special offer so they are cheaper. Presumably a short-term anomaly
doolally

[bungeejumper]

The "eco" option is always about 15% more expensive. Being a tight bastard I always buy the jar. Why can't they price the two options at least equally?

It's not just coffee. If you buy handwashing soap in a squirty dispenser, you'll generally find that the eco-friendly bag of the same soap costs more.

BJ

[stevensfo]

One of my big irritations is companies who write to you with "noreply" email addresses. I need to contact them, but they then don't allow you to reply to their email. Invariably one has to go to their website and FAQ's and go round the houses 3 times there, before, if you are lucky, eventually finding a contact email or telephone number. The way I see it, if they can email me, then I should be able to email them in reply! It all makes me feel like, in some, way blocking no reply emails.

I actually came close to registering my own domain, just so I'd be able to send off thousands of my own 'Noreply' emails in retaliation, but I decided it would be rather childish and not worth the effort.

Particularly annoying, as well as worrying, are Noreply emails from banks that have no name or phone numbers attached. Any emails that don't contain some contact info, I regard as anonymous and therefore suspicious. Isn't that all part of 'Due diligence' and KYB?

Somebody once pointed out that if you reply to a Noreply email, the company does in fact receive it and it will go to a folder where somebody should, in theory, do a quick random check before deleting them. If the company does indeed receive such replies, it would be interesting to know where you stand legally.

i.e. If I send a letter to our council marked 'No Reply', will I be justified in throwing away any letters they send back?

Steve

[UncleEbenezer]

Particularly annoying, as well as worrying, are Noreply emails from banks that have no name or phone numbers attached. Any emails that don't contain some contact info, I regard as anonymous and therefore suspicious. Isn't that all part of 'Due diligence' and KYB?

Red Flag.

All emails are potentially suspicious. Contact information of any kind may be bogus, and almost certainly will be if the email is from a fraudster. If you can't verify the email cryptographically then you should independently verify contact information - e.g. look up a bank's contact details on existing correspondence, its own website (not as linked from the email), or in a branch.

I say all emails there, but of course the same applies to phone calls, letters on paper, or any other medium. With the added difficulty that those can't be cryptographically secured.

[Mike4]

We drink Kenco instant coffee (shock horror). I always check the price per 100g of the "eco" sachet bag thing and compare it with the glass jar, the normal container. The "eco" option is always about 15% more expensive. Being a tight bastard I always buy the jar. Why can't they price the two options at least equally?

This irritates the hell out of me, I'm not that keen on cofee anyway.

Leo

I can't help finding myself wondering if these two statements might be connected in some way....

[servodude]

We drink Kenco instant coffee (shock horror). I always check the price per 100g of the "eco" sachet bag thing and compare it with the glass jar, the normal container. The "eco" option is always about 15% more expensive. Being a tight bastard I always buy the jar. Why can't they price the two options at least equally?

This irritates the hell out of me, I'm not that keen on cofee anyway.

Leo

I can't help finding myself wondering if these two statements might be connected in some way....

It's like one of those maths problems where you have to cancel out terms to reveal the answer

[Leothebear]

I used to watch Pointless, that is until I'd had it up to here with the smug know-all Alexander Armstrong's endless showing off, knowing all the answers.
He'd be my choice for room 101.

[stewamax]

If I send a letter to our council marked 'No Reply', will I be justified in throwing away any letters they send back?

Not if any response starts Dear Mr No

I reckon stevensfo is a nom de Fool, and:
a. you are of Chinese, Korean or other Asian descent, whose family name always appears first (like Kim Jong Un)
b. your first name is Reply (to distinguish you from your twin sister Replica)

[Tedx]

You know what really annoys me at the moment? When, for whatever reason, a 'click' of the mouse doesn't register.

So you're left there, staring at the screen waiting for something to happen and it doesn't and it's only after a few seconds of looking like a muppet that you realise this and click again and it works. THEN you start to read what it is you want to read and as soon as you've taken your hand off the mouse the privacy notice pops up. Then when you've gotten rid of that, a few seconds later another box pops up asking if your ok with notifications being sent to you. Then 'exciting' offers. Then halfway down the piece it says you need to subscribe to read the rest of this article.