The angry thread

[weave]

And you're going to explain that to SWMBO how???

[emjaybee]

I haven't laughed that hard since my wife bent over and our (at the time) 6 month old cat launched himself at her arse and hung there like a Garfield car window stick on while my wife yelled head off!

[Trainfish]

Having never done a lateral flow test before I discovered on the Wednesday morning that I didn't have Covid and in fact had never had it, I just hadn't read the instructions properly. 

How can you do it wrong? I hope you didn't put the cotton bud thingy in the wrong orifice. You didn't did you? 

[emjaybee]

He's gonna be on dog walking duties for months, and months, and...

[jpendle]

Having never done a lateral flow test before I discovered on the Wednesday morning that I didn't have Covid and in fact had never had it, I just hadn't read the instructions properly. 

How can you do it wrong? I hope you didn't put the cotton bud thingy in the wrong orifice. You didn't did you? 

I thought that any red line was positive, our team in Singapore provided test kits with no instructions at all, so I was watching a blurry (jet lag & alcohol) video on my phone 

John P

[jpendle]

And you're going to explain that to SWMBO how???

Already done and dusted. She already thinks I'm a moron, so no harm done 

John P

[jpendle]

So two separate "angry posts" in a month, this time about Holiday Inn and Parking Eye.

We stayed ay a Holiday Inn Express in Manchester in August for 2 weeks. It has free parking and is only a 7 minute drive from my son's house in Stockport.

When we checked in the helpful fellow at the front desk said that he'd enter our rental car's licence plate into their Parking Eye system, at least that's what I thought he said.

Now 6 weeks later and I already had FIVE £60 fines processed by Avis and charged to my credit card along with their £30 admin fee, so £450 in all.

That's despite contacting the hotel over 2 weeks ago and asking them to sort this out, which they said they had done.

I've now been forced to lock my personal credit card, remove my corporate card from my Avis account, just in case, and am now faced with a long, and no doubt painful, appeals process to get my money back.



The only saving grace is that with the pound collapsing, it's not costing me quite as much as it would have done.

Regards,

John P

[Bealman]

That's bloody disgraceful. I hope you get it sorted. 

[stevewalker]

I've mentioned before that my wife is disabled and entitled to PIP. We had been looking at her getting a Motability car, but she didn't have the requisite 12 months to run until her next assessment. She was due to be assessed in August last year and she put in all her paperwork in July. They told her there were delays and someone would call her soon, but her PIP payments would continue in the meantime. Eventually she ended up speaking to someone who said that she might be entitled to a higher rate and extended her entitlement to March to give them time to get round to assessing her. That go extended to June, then July, then September and then December. Each time being too short to look at Motability and more and more cars kept dropping off the list, plus the up-front payments kept rising. Not to mention that her Blue Badge keeps running out and she has to re-apply, but they'll only give a new one (at a cost of £10) up to the new expiry date of her entitlement!

Anyway. Yesterday she phoned again (that's when she was told it was now December), so she asked for a letter to pass to the council to confirm the extension, so that she could get another Blue Badge (hers has expired again and she is restricted where she can go without parking). The woman she was talking to asked her to hold, went to talk to an on-call medical assessor, who went through it all, approved her entitlement on the spot and said that he couldn't understand why she was on a 2-yearly review anyway, as she has a lifelong, degenerative condition and moved her to a 5-yearly interval.

All well and good, but two weeks ago the last of the most suitable cars all disappeared off Motability's list. We looked to see what was available and found one that was nowhere near as good for her, but okay. The upfront payment was £0 for the base model and £199 for the higher model. We planned to go and look at the dealer's today ... only to find that those upfront costs have increased to £499 and £799 overnight 

The failure to assess her on time has now left her without a car for the last 6 months, frequently without a Blue Badge as she has had to wait for a new one and hundreds of pounds out of pocket (both on the up-front payment and on me having to take unpaid time off work to get her to appointments).

And none of it was necessary if they hadn't wrongly put her on a two-yearly review!

[dannyboy]

I think that is what is called 'bureaucracy' ! Notice how the last four letters are spelt and could be pronounced?  . Hopefully your Wife goes on okay Steve.

[joe cassidy]

What is a Motability car ?

I assume it has the steering wheel, pedals, etc. modified depending on the needs of the user, as well as the driver's door & seat adapted for wheelchair access ?

[stevewalker]

You can have whatever adaptations are needed. However, she doesn't need any, as long as it has a boot big enough for her mobility scooter and nowadays, is an automatic - as her arthritis makes using a manual progressively more painful.

[Newportnobby]

I have frequently said the 'hands on' folk are great but sadly they are often let down by the pen pushers.

[Skyline2uk]

I have frequently said the 'hands on' folk are great but sadly they are often let down by the pen pushers.

Experience with the NHS, removals firms, jewellers, wedding venues and some schools suggest you may be onto something.

Skyline2uk

[Bealman]

I'll go along with the schools bit.