WAMT....what annoyed me today!

Energy comparison sites and prices...

I got an email to tell me that my mams electricity bill is rising but the same company can switch her to a new fixed deal for a year and save her a load of money! Great! But the numbers don't stack up.

She currently pays £30 pm and that's going up 7%. The new tariff will save her a bundle and costs £41 pm. WTF?

So, off I went to 4 of the top comparison sites and types in all the various numbers and... they are ALL just random number generators. They claim to be saving £xx per month/year but cost £50 more? WTF?

So, I rang her existing company and spoke to someone in sales who couldn't find his arse with both hands and a guide dog and under questioning about the price changes and savings/increases he just completely folded. WTF?

I keep thinking back to when I worked and I suppose I was a bit hard in that I didn't suffer fools and I'd have someone in my office and I'd ask direct questions but that doesn't seem to be the case these days. People have no idea what they're talking about, numbers don't stack up and all of this could be discovered if anyone at the company concerned gave a flying and logged on to their own site and typed in the numbers.

What a complete shower of total s***.
 
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Watched a program on youtube about Orangutan's and saw one chained to a bed and used in a rural village as a prostitute. What is wrong with these people?

This cannot be put down to these people needing educated as they must know this is fundamentally wrong. If they are smart enough to put their shoes on the correct feet they know this is wrong.
 
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My God. Who would want to...

At the back of my mind though there is the question of "is this true" as it's become pretty clear that we can't take much at face value these days.
 
woof woof said:
Energy comparison sites and prices...
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I ended up creating a spreadsheet, entering gas and electricity units used, standing charges, discounts etc and used each of the major suppliers' tariffs. BG wanted 1200/yr for dual fuel. E-on wanted £900. No brainer.
 
omens said:
I ended up creating a spreadsheet, entering gas and electricity units used, standing charges, discounts etc and used each of the major suppliers' tariffs. BG wanted 1200/yr for dual fuel. E-on wanted £900. No brainer.
Click to expand...

I have all the figures but the websites still tend to be random number generators. Of course things can be updated and might change minute to minute but a headline figure of £47.29 SAVING!" shouldn't turn into costing £50 more when you look at the fine print and the sales department should know what they charge now and will charge if I change my mams tariff. It aint rocket science.

I've had enough for today so I've stopped and I'll have another go in a week or so.
 
Cheap energy club is where I look. I set it to how many kw/h I use per year for each fuel. DD monthlies are just meaningless. I look at kwh costs and standing charges. Generally the tariff comparison rate is a good guide if you've set it up with your figures. If you haven't then it can be way off as with lower users standing charges are more significant and with higher users the unit rate is more significant.

The comparison method forces them to assume you continue on the standard awful tariff after any fix runs out. I just look at the annual cost with what I'm on now and see what the annual cost is with the new one.
 
srichards said:
Cheap energy club is where I look. I set it to how many kw/h I use per year for each fuel. DD monthlies are just meaningless. I look at kwh costs and standing charges. Generally the tariff comparison rate is a good guide if you've set it up with your figures. If you haven't then it can be way off as with lower users standing charges are more significant and with higher users the unit rate is more significant.

The comparison method forces them to assume you continue on the standard awful tariff after any fix runs out. I just look at the annual cost with what I'm on now and see what the annual cost is with the new one.
Click to expand...

I've tried using the basic info they ask for and then checking the fine print and I've tried typing in as much detail as allowed and in each case the numbers are anything from vaguely somewhere there to absolute fiction. Also, the fine detail of the contracts varies from site to site! Absolute joke.

Not heard of energy club so I'll give them a try.

I'm just having a bad day and if I leave it and try again in a week or so I'm sure I'll have calmed down and it'll go as well as can be expected.
 
DorsetDude said:
You mean, they paid it first?! The mind truly does boggle.
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One assumes they paid its human pimp, not the Orangutan itself.

Why would it need money? It can't get to the shops anyway.
 
woof woof said:
I have all the figures but the websites still tend to be random number generators. Of course things can be updated and might change minute to minute but a headline figure of £47.29 SAVING!" shouldn't turn into costing £50 more when you look at the fine print and the sales department should know what they charge now and will charge if I change my mams tariff. It aint rocket science.

I've had enough for today so I've stopped and I'll have another go in a week or so.
Click to expand...
Perhaps it included some cashback deal, that would explain why the monthly's go up but overall cost after cashback is actually less.
 
sitting having breakfast when there's a very LOUD Beeping :(

Take hearing aids out and go and investigate.

Coming from a ceiling mounted thingy - curse mildly [well .... ] and go and look for something to prod it with to see if it will stop. Stops of own accord . check no flames or smoke anywhere. Finish brekkie and the bl.... thing chirrups.

Phone my plumbers [ nice helpful folk - honestly they are] - this you understand is now 8am. Boss is in and says may be the CO monitor as I was able to tell him fitted about the same time as the Central heating . Will send someone up this morning to check- will also check the boiler whilst he's up.

This sort of thing I can well do without - I can cope at the time but go to pieces afterwards - I realise how very much I'm on my own :(
 
I hope the plumber boss suggested you got out of the house ASAP just in case it was the CO alarm sensing CO rather than it being a rogue bleep. CO is odour and tasteless and creeps up on its victims. Hopefully it's a false alarm and I'm suggesting slight overkill BUT I'd rather suggest the overkill than let it actually kill you! By the sound (!) of it, it's probably the battery needing replacement.
 
Oh - all windows and doors are open :) [ well those I can see and leave open safely ]

My immediate reaction was that it was the battery and I don't think it's a CO monitor - I've just spotted one in the corridor that leads to where my boiler is and that monitor says CO on it. That CO monitor flashes lights at me when it's battery needs replacing and that was done last year

I reckon now , that's it's just a rather ugly smoke alarm - but I still can't climb up and change it's batteries - I'm also going to be asking the nice man when he comes to change a light bulb for me as well - I've got the bulb [ last big one - 100W ] in a dark corridor - again I can't climb to do it.
 
scottduffy said:
Watched a program on youtube about Orangutan's and saw one chained to a bed and used in a rural village as a prostitute. What is wrong with these people?

This cannot be put down to these people needing educated as they must know this is fundamentally wrong. If they are smart enough to put their shoes on the correct feet they know this is wrong.
Click to expand...
The things they do in Norfolk....:naughty:
 
The cost of funeral flowers, compared with the cost of non funeral flowers.
 
Big Andy said:
Somebody I used to know ran a florists and he loved the funeral business, get rid of all the old stock as you knew it didn't have to last long.
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Some folk beggar belief.
 
Never forgotten my Father-in-Law's funeral - as the wreaths were being carried into the Crematorium Chapel one - the family one , left a trail of yellow Chrysanthemum petals all the way from the entrance to the coffin :(
 
Look at an arrangement with a comparable amount of blooms.
Add the word 'funeral', and double the cost.
Add to that the fact that some florists won't deliver a non funeral spray to a funeral director.
 
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Flipping heck !!

See earlier moan about beeping Smoke alarm - which was solved.

Looked at top landing ceiling more carefully this morning

on wall - 3 [ yes no less than 3 ] bell boxes of varying sizes - don't know which actually work !

on ceiling 3 [ yes THREE ] smoke / CO alarms - one is the twin of the one downstairs so presumably battery AND mains , one very elderly and ugly and a much smaller flat square one which is like nothing else in the house.

This is going to be fun to sort out - more bills to be paid as I'll have to get the nice man from Friday back.

OH and the ceiling is artex as my mother-in-law liked it !! This means that even if the ceiling mounted stuff is not working I'm not taking the darn thing off as I do NOT want the fuss of doing the ceiling repairs !!
 
If you can take a few snaps of the boxes, people might be able to identify them for you. Also, depending on the pattern in the Artex, it can be fairly easy to make small repairs (chances are that the alarms are only fixed with2-3 screws.)
 
Judging by one ceiling box which had been removed , leaving an oval empty space with 2 LARGE screw holes - the artex is at least half an inch thick !! It's certainly thick with swirly patterns all over it - horrible stuff - a real dust catcher. I HATE it !!

David's going to have to come back to deal with the twin of the one he's already done - the battery in that clearly will need replacing since the one downstairs had to be done - he can look at the others while he's here.

The Artex has been in the house since before we took it over - and that's 12+ years ago. I reckon the Friday's Smoke alarm was installed soon after we moved in as we had Central Heating put in under the First Scottish Government Scheme to install Free Central heating systems for Pensioners without adequate heating - and that described this house down to a 'T' - that alarm was put on top of the Artex , not sunk into it
 
Revolting weather! It's supposed to be summer. Roll on this time next month.
 
Could be worse - we could live in the South Hams! At least here in Exeter we can get out a bit if we need to! We'll stay relatively local until 1st September, then we'll be heading up past you to BRS and onwards...
 
WAMT - people being rude on forums when it's just as easy to be polite. Why do some people feel they have to have the last word and rudely too?
 
We had an odd extremely brief interruption to the mains power about 2 hours ago, the lights flickered so briefly that it was a what was that moment. The TV sort of rebooted as well

Checking my PC system, not a sign of issue but I do have surge protection and the indicators show nothing untoward.

But later I noticed the mobile phone network was down and s far still down :( this is 3 network and online there is nothing to show of an issue.

I have clicked the report problem but it felt like chucking message in a bottle into the sea!

I surmise a local tower has failed???

Edit - this is Surrey near Guildford...... anyone else had similar issue.
 
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Sitting in a hide and my local reserve and being invaded by 2 woman with a variety of kids, none of whom, and I include the mums, seem to have a volume control, one kid insisted on jumping off the bench seats, making the 2 babies in pushchairs scream whilst mums continued talking over the noise.
Decided to move on and even at another hide I could still hear them, about 15 minutes later they decided to invade the 2nd hide, scaring everything away :banghead::banghead:
Last week I had a child knock one of the benches over, hitting me whilst they were clambering over it..
Why do parents bring kids to nature reserves and let them run riot ?
I've spent lots of time actually talking to and telling kids what different birds etc. are , if they are interested, which once you start talking to them they are
 
Gremlin said:
Sitting in a hide and my local reserve and being invaded by 2 woman with a variety of kids, none of whom, and I include the mums, seem to have a volume control, one kid insisted on jumping off the bench seats, making the 2 babies in pushchairs scream whilst mums continued talking over the noise.
Decided to move on and even at another hide I could still hear them, about 15 minutes later they decided to invade the 2nd hide, scaring everything away :banghead::banghead:
Last week I had a child knock one of the benches over, hitting me whilst they were clambering over it..
Why do parents bring kids to nature reserves and let them run riot ?
I've spent lots of time actually talking to and telling kids what different birds etc. are , if they are interested, which once you start talking to them they are
Click to expand...

We get that at the reservoir (which is a nature reserve with a hide) because it's on the edge of a town, but thankfully they never stay long in the hide. It's not a problem at the reserves out in the sticks (I wonder why..........).
 
Gremlin said:
Sitting in a hide and my local reserve and being invaded by 2 woman with a variety of kids, none of whom, and I include the mums, seem to have a volume control, one kid insisted on jumping off the bench seats, making the 2 babies in pushchairs scream whilst mums continued talking over the noise.
Decided to move on and even at another hide I could still hear them, about 15 minutes later they decided to invade the 2nd hide, scaring everything away :banghead::banghead:
Last week I had a child knock one of the benches over, hitting me whilst they were clambering over it..
Why do parents bring kids to nature reserves and let them run riot ?
I've spent lots of time actually talking to and telling kids what different birds etc. are , if they are interested, which once you start talking to them they are
Click to expand...

Jannyfox said:
We get that at the reservoir (which is a nature reserve with a hide) because it's on the edge of a town, but thankfully they never stay long in the hide. It's not a problem at the reserves out in the sticks (I wonder why..........).
Click to expand...

Only slightly related to this sort of annoyance, there was a new reserve opened in Woking area and before it did I was in email comms with someone 'official' about it. It is a intended as a general amenity area as well as a reserve.

To cut to the chase, we visited within the first week of opening and the thing that caught my eye immediately was that the reserve area with its lake and what passed for a hide (more like a small blind) was fenced off and though I was reassured (in the email comms) that the dog walkers would be prohibited from accessing that section/area there were no signs to that effect and the dog owners were entering it and indeed there was one way in that was unfenced.

WAM about it was the risk of the future nesting birds getting disturbed :mad: and no one there to police it! When I wrote to the 'official' with my visit thoughts he did not reply even though up until that point he was most helpful in telling me about and promoting the site ~ we have yet to go again so will have to see if the zoning and access control has improved but cynic that I am I suspect not.
 
Milk burst in car boot on the way home. On the upside the cheap boot tidy took the brunt of it. At least any stench of off milk will hide the new car smell :eek:
 
Google changing the backspace key functionality in the chrome browser.
 
When is 12 weeks not 3 months..............when it is a 12 weeks PILON payment.

Such is life :(
 
:D

WAMT was myself. Trying to knock 7 bales of crap out of the ball rather than concentrating on getting it straight.

Weather was frickin' gorgeous though - almost too hot.
 
Our shop's policy of only hiring school kids not proper staff this year. It doesn't work!
 
WANMT ( and every day for the last several months), crappy internet speeds and talk talk saying there is nothing they can do, and "closing" my complaints!

0.34Mb Download speed
0.39Mb upload
 
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