Rant of the Day v2.

[OFSO]

The Spanish ladies should get a collective Oscar for their acting after being tackled.

[Rossian]

.....it's like buses innit! Today TWO railcards arrived in the same post - but there's a catch, the chap I spoke to a couple of days ago said HIS one would have a year's subs on it gratis, for my inconvenience any other one won't. Which is his one? Maybe a trip to the station might sort this out?

The Ancient Mariner

[OFSO]

Bearing in mind that Catalan is the legal language of Catalunia.... I just sent a WA to Moviestar/Telefonica in that language and they answered that all communications with them had to be in Spanish and if I wanted to use a 'foreign language' I had to contact their linguistics department.
And that's why seperatists hate Madrid!

[PHXPhlyer]

Car Update:

Took the car in to repair shop that I have been using for the last year or so.
They kept it over night and the next morning the battery was at 7.7 volts. They couldn't find any current draw so determined that the battery had at least one bad cell.
Thanks to the guy at the parts store I knew that the battery was under warranty from the parts store across the street and that the warranty was under the name and phone number of the purchaser. Since I had the name and number of the guy that I bought the car from I used the loaner car to pick up the battery from the garage and took it in to the parts store. Exchanged, no questions asked , approx $230 value.
After they replaced the battery they decided to keep it overnight just to be sure there was no excessive drain. No worries as I still had the loaner.
Next day I picked up the car and as I drove off there were 2 major warning messages. Traction control and power steering, which weren't there when I took it in. Turned around and gave the car back. "Fix it right".
They kept the car for a week and when I went by today to check on it I saw it was out front. Thinking it was fixed I went in to the office and was presented an estimate of almost $2,000. They said that the transmission control module needed replacing ($700 for the part and ~$1,000 labor + tax to drop the engine and replace said module in tranny).
They said the car was drivable but might have issues shifting. I took it with the intention of getting a second opinion from another shop that I trust. When I first left it did indeed seem to be a little wonky shifting but soon settled down and all the warning lights and messages went away.
I will monitor and take it to the other shop if it gets weird again.

PP

[llondel]

When I first left it did indeed seem to be a little wonky shifting but soon settled down and all the warning lights and messages went away.
I will monitor and take it to the other shop if it gets weird again.

I had that with the van on Sunday. Gave me a warning message that the belt tensioner needed adjusting, and the yellow engine warning light came on. When I had the coolant leak fixed, they noted that the warning light was on before they did any work, and I told them what I thought it was. When I checked it later, it told me there were no outstanding messages, and then the light went out after a restart. My guess is that the belt reacted to having several pints of boiling coolant dumped on it and went a bit loose, but when it dried off, the sensors decided the problem had been fixed and the engine management system turned the light off again.

A complete cold start, such as when you replace the battery, often loses a lot of parameters it adapts as the engine is running and starts with a default set. Once it's been running a while, it tweaks some of its settings until it's happy again. I'm guessing they do that so that each engine auto-optimises based on its own state of wear and manufacturing tolerances.

[OFSO]

06:30. Laundry on line. Rain. Laundry off line, in tumbly dryer

[k3k3]

BA have just paid the compensation for replacement clothing after they lost my family's luggage eight weeks ago, thanks to Woody the cases turned up again after six days. My son was frugal, one pack of socks, one pack of shreddies, one polo shirt and a pair of swimming trunks totalling £91 from M&S.

[Pontius Navigator]

Difficult one. MiL generously gave us £120 to 'buy something nice' as we had looked after her for a week. At 98 she is very firmly in the cash generation.

WTF can you use £120 of folding stuff for? You can only spend it in a real shop. If there is only one shop where you can buy something nice, an 4maStacker knows which one I mean, the folding stuff is useless. And of course no banks where you can actually exchange real money for ones and noughts.

Managed to convert it to a credit card balance at Marks and Spencer.

[ricardian]

I am so glad that I got rid of my island car* a couple of years ago - mainly because my cataract meant that I had poor monocular vision and also because at 80 my reflexes are not what they were. Fortunately the only time I need transport is my weekly visit to the kirk where I play the organ (even though I'm now agnostic) and my occasional trips to Kirkwall for appointments with dentist, optician, podiatrist or ophthalmologist; my friends kindly provide me with transport whenever necessary for which I reward them with a home-baked loaf. I've noticed a big improvement in my bank balance now that insurance & road tax are no longer necessary.

*island car = a vehicle that never leaves the island and therefore does not need an MOT, but still "officially" requires tax & insurance. Another feature of the island car (and "proper" cars) is that learner drivers do not need to be accompanied by a qualified driver (but still have to display "L" plates)

[CharlieOneSix]

*island car = a vehicle that never leaves the island and therefore does not need an MOT, but still "officially" requires tax & insurance. Another feature of the island car (and "proper" cars) is that learner drivers do not need to be accompanied by a qualified driver (but still have to display "L" plates)

If a policeman was on the ferry to Unst the word got passed on and suddenly there was a dearth of untaxed and uninsured old bangers on the roads on the island. Funny that!

[ricardian]

*island car = a vehicle that never leaves the island and therefore does not need an MOT, but still "officially" requires tax & insurance. Another feature of the island car (and "proper" cars) is that learner drivers do not need to be accompanied by a qualified driver (but still have to display "L" plates)

If a policeman was on the ferry to Unst the word got passed on and suddenly there was a dearth of untaxed and uninsured old bangers on the roads on the island. Funny that!

Similar occurrences are not unknown during the 2 hour ferry trip from Kirkwall to Stronsay.

[PHXPhlyer]

Called my cellphone/home 5G internet provider to complain about outages with both home and phone internet.
The first agent sid that there were no problems with their network but he would connect me with tech support to help me with "my" problem.
I went along and after the tech support guy verified my location he asked how long I had had this issue. I told him that my service had always been spotty it was now practically useless. This I backed up with speed test results and in some cases the inability to connect to their own servers to do the tests.
He then asked several times if the problems had begun on the first of this month. He then proceeded to inform me that the cell tower that is my primary connection had a bad radio that was written up on the first with no timeline for completion of repairs.
I thanked him for validating my assessment of the situation and shortly after the call ended I was called by a supervisor in tech support to apologize and offered to make adjustments to my bill for the outage.
To complicate matters, the tower that I have the best LOS with is only 4G with no timetable for its upgrade to 5G. They promise that once it is upgraded service will be better by a factor of 10.
Not holding my breath.

PP

[Hydromet]

PHXPhlyer, you actually spoke to a human? Here, that would be considered a miracle.

[PHXPhlyer]

Because the call was made on my cell/only phone the automated system addressed me by name and asked how it could help me.
I then had to authenticate myself by entering the PIN to my account and then had to state the nature of my call. Only then was I passed on to someone in a call center in the Philippines who then had to verify my billing address and again aked the nature of my call.
As I stated previously the C/S rep denied that there were any problems with their network. It was after providing tech support rep with evidence (results of speed tests, etc.) that they finally fessed up about the tower outage.
The tech rep was actually in Albuquerque but the tech support supervisor who called me back was in the Philippines. He also said that he was crediting my account for my troubles, no mention of amount. Probably the monthly internet charge of $30. We shall see.
Very frustrating to have to prove who you are so many times when they know you by your phone number from the get go.

PP

[llondel]

Very frustrating to have to prove who you are so many times when they know you by your phone number from the get go.

Depending on what you're asking them to do, I can see that they might want extra verification over and above knowing your phone number, but yes, it's annoying that each of them asks for it all over again.

[OFSO]

Re internet: having sent details of their apallingly low bandwidth (1mb) to Moviestar by WhatsApp, they answered on the same WhatApp channel, telling me to contact them by WhatsApp. I did and "an operator will contact you shortly" and she asked me to send details via WhatsApp. Which I did and....
Have a look at Moviestar reviews on Trust Pilot...

[PHXPhlyer]

Spent over an hour first texting then talking to tech support for T-Mobile at their Philippines call center.
I texted them three times to call me as I do not like to text.
Tech support lady didn't bother to read any notes from previous call two days ago so had to do the whole song and dance again.
After a few minutes of radio silence she came back om and said that everything was good to go.
Why can't they make it work all of the time rather than have to put up with all of these resets?

PP

[Hydromet]

Played with a scammer who was unfortunate enough to catch me in a rare idle moment. Claimed to be frm NBN broadband provider needing to reset my modem to improve internet speeds. First he had to hold the line while I went downstairs to see if there were any lights on the modem, then while I came back upstairs to my computer. Then he had to listen while I told him all the devices in the house. My Grandparents, parents, wife, children and grandchildren all live with me and have computers and laptops. It was a long list and I wouldn't let him interrupt. Then I dithered around trying to find the icons (little pictures) he was telling me to click on. Eventually it all got to much for him and he hung up. Just when I was about to give him an earful.

[Karearea]

^ Great fun.

I told one once, Oh, I'm glad you've rung, the man's here now fixing it, would you like to talk to him?

[Karearea]

What have I done? A dozen spam emails in the past two days from casinos and gambling sites, now YT is offering me ads for problem gamblers!