The grumpy thread

[loserone]

On 07/04/2025 at 07:37, loserone said:

PayPal.

 

Had a friend's and family transaction reversed a few weeks back as an unauthorised card payment.  They took the payment from my account immediately.

They've now closed the case and charged £14 for the privilege of not getting the money.

 

Absolutely fuck PayPal.

Case closed as far as PayPal are concerned, they didn't get their money and the other account is suspended, so I am THE SELLER and will take the hit on their fees.

 

I know and trust the sender, and [circumstances which aren't for here] but they are out of pocket too and it's not their fault in the slightest. 

 

Can I just reiterate: fuck PayPal.

 

[wuvvum]

1 hour ago, Talbot said:

Assuming you can just repair your own car with parts from a breaker somewhere, how bad was the damage to the other car?  Is it potentially repairable (bumper etc.) or more than that?

You may well find that your insurance doesn't actually go up that much anyway.  Is there any grey area over the fault here?

No, 100% my fault.  The other car is a write off - I hit the side so both doors and wings are fucked, curtain airbag went off etc.  It was a 2012 Polo so wouldn't take much to write it off.

[Talbot]

20 minutes ago, wuvvum said:

No, 100% my fault.  The other car is a write off - I hit the side so both doors and wings are fucked, curtain airbag went off etc.  It was a 2012 Polo so wouldn't take much to write it off.

Or maybe to pay the market value of the car to the owner to prevent it going down as an insurance claim?  What is a 2012 Polo worth? (I have no idea)

[wuvvum]

Probably about £3K, maybe slightly less.  Unfortunately I don't have a spare £3K knocking around at the moment.  It's a moot point anyway, it's already been reported to the insurers on both sides so it's in their hands now.

[Talbot]

1 hour ago, wuvvum said:

Probably about £3K, maybe slightly less.  Unfortunately I don't have a spare £3K knocking around at the moment.  It's a moot point anyway, it's already been reported to the insurers on both sides so it's in their hands now.

Reporting to insurers and making a claim are two different things... you can report it but still make an "out of insurance" settlement.  Doesn't sound like you're in a position to do that though, so indeed it's a bit moot.

Sounds like a bit of a shitty situation...

[Zelandeth]

The M25 can get in the fscking sea.

102 miles done on it today, and that's 102 too many.

What an utterly hateful piece of road.  That sodding grooved concrete surface on a bunch of it is just the icing on the cake and makes an already unpleasant experience bloody torturous.

[Popsicle]

Went to pop out earlier in the couriering caddy, fired it up and got a whiff of diesel. Thought no more as it had the injectors replaced on Tuesday and it had behaved perfectly on a run out to Wrexham on Wednesday, so I set off and glanced in the mirror at the top of our street and saw it gushing out.

Oh bollocks, there goes a few gallons of it down the street.

Fucking thing.....

[robt100]

2 hours ago, Popsicle said:

Went to pop out earlier in the couriering caddy, fired it up and got a whiff of diesel. Thought no more as it had the injectors replaced on Tuesday and it had behaved perfectly on a run out to Wrexham on Wednesday, so I set off and glanced in the mirror at the top of our street and saw it gushing out.

Oh bollocks, there goes a few gallons of it down the street.

Fucking thing.....

Any idea what did it? Might have not put a pipe on fully after putting on the new injectors??

[Popsicle]

39 minutes ago, robt100 said:

Any idea what did it? Might have not put a pipe on fully after putting on the new injectors??

The return pipe by the diesel cooler had unclipped itself. So nowhere near where the mechanics had been on Tuesday. I got it up on the ramps on our drive and pushed it back together, but it would pop back out with very little resistance. Rang the mechanic up and popped it round to them. He said the joint was just worn out, put a new one on for me and seems to be holding up so far.

Just one of those things I reckon.

I filled it up when I got back home yesterday and topped it back up after this - £29.37 worth of diesel down the drain ☹️.

[reb]

FUCK YOU TREES

[wuvvum]

Not been sleeping properly since the accident on Tuesday.  A combination of anger at myself, residual stress over the accident itself, worry about the implications on my insurance renewal and consequently the future of the fleet, and my brain coming up with scenarios as to how the accident could have been way worse than it was.  It's a vicious circle as the more tired I get the more anxious I get and therefore the less sleep I get.  Hopefully it'll fade with time but it's been a very long time since something affected me this badly and I'm not really sure how to deal with it.

[artdjones]

1 minute ago, wuvvum said:

Not been sleeping properly since the accident on Tuesday.  A combination of anger at myself, residual stress over the accident itself, worry about the implications on my insurance renewal and consequently the future of the fleet, and my brain coming up with scenarios as to how the accident could have been way worse than it was.  It's a vicious circle as the more tired I get the more anxious I get and therefore the less sleep I get.  Hopefully it'll fade with time but it's been a very long time since something affected me this badly and I'm not really sure how to deal with it.

Give it time, it will take less of your thinking time every day, then hopefully one day it drops into proper perspective.

[Wibble]

28 minutes ago, wuvvum said:

Not been sleeping properly since the accident on Tuesday.  A combination of anger at myself, residual stress over the accident itself, worry about the implications on my insurance renewal and consequently the future of the fleet, and my brain coming up with scenarios as to how the accident could have been way worse than it was.  It's a vicious circle as the more tired I get the more anxious I get and therefore the less sleep I get.  Hopefully it'll fade with time but it's been a very long time since something affected me this badly and I'm not really sure how to deal with it.

Completely understandable. It just takes time. I’ve only ever been involved in one significant accident, when we were rear ended whilst on holiday:

Both our kids were taken to hospital, they were ok but traumatised and bangs to heads and I drove over 400 miles home in a hire car with constant anxiety every time we had to slow down, keeping an eye on the rear view mirror.

It gets easier eventually, although I’m still slightly paranoid and very conscious of what’s coming up behind me.

Everyone makes mistakes, don’t beat yourself up. I called the guy who hit us everything under the sun and my youngest had a right go at him, whilst crying his eyes out, bless him. I ended up apologising to the guy, acknowledging we all fuck up.

[Popsicle]

55 minutes ago, wuvvum said:

Not been sleeping properly since the accident on Tuesday.  A combination of anger at myself, residual stress over the accident itself, worry about the implications on my insurance renewal and consequently the future of the fleet, and my brain coming up with scenarios as to how the accident could have been way worse than it was.  It's a vicious circle as the more tired I get the more anxious I get and therefore the less sleep I get.  Hopefully it'll fade with time but it's been a very long time since something affected me this badly and I'm not really sure how to deal with it.

Like others have said, its understandable how you feel. Your mind will be running at a thousand miles an hour, analysing everything that you could/should have done. It will also give way to intrusive thoughts and images, offering far worse scenarios than what actually happened. I ain't no doctor/psychologist but it sounds like a dose of PTSD, which is pretty normal after what you've been through.

Try not to be too hard on yourself, take things easy and try to occupy yourself. Time is the great healer for these incidents, but get yourself booked in with a doc to be checked over. They'll give far better advice than a bunch of middle aged shite car pervs on the internet.

[Mrcento]

1 hour ago, wuvvum said:

Not been sleeping properly since the accident on Tuesday.  A combination of anger at myself, residual stress over the accident itself, worry about the implications on my insurance renewal and consequently the future of the fleet, and my brain coming up with scenarios as to how the accident could have been way worse than it was.  It's a vicious circle as the more tired I get the more anxious I get and therefore the less sleep I get.  Hopefully it'll fade with time but it's been a very long time since something affected me this badly and I'm not really sure how to deal with it.

It's normal. It's basically a form of shock. I was the same when i had an accident about 5 years ago that wrote my Vectra off. Overriding thing is just plain anger at yourself, even if it was a combination of a hundred things at once, you think that if you hadn't let even 1 of them be an issue you'd not have had the incident, you chew over every little detail on how it happened, how you didn't see x or y, what else was going on at the time, what you were thinking about, where you were looking, the location, the car, every little thing and replay it a million times over thinking what you could have done better, and wear yourself down. But time does help and you realise once the shock wears off, beating yourself up doesn't undo what happened, the only way to react in time is to control the controllables in future and take it as a lesson.

Fwiw, i don't know if it'll be reassuring or not, but 1 accident on insurance i've found didn't change things too much. Obviously premiums do go up (and the most annoying thing is having to declare it on every quote for 5 years) but i found it didn't hammer me to the extent i thought it would, i was expecting my premiums at the time after the accident to near enough double and be closer to a teenagers 1st policy given i was 11 years no claims and got the majority of it wiped by the claim, but in reality it only went up about 15ish% for the first year, and a little bit of snooping to see the effect it had if i never had the accident showed  that even some of that was just premiums in general going up, realistically 11 years NCB and a clean record v 3 years NCB and an accident claim actually made my 11 years NCB feel massively undervalued given how little it would have saved me, by the time i'd added another year on to 4 years NCB the difference was pretty negligible again. About £40 a year more.

[wuvvum]

3 hours ago, Wibble said:

Everyone makes mistakes, don’t beat yourself up. I called the guy who hit us everything under the sun and my youngest had a right go at him, whilst crying his eyes out, bless him. I ended up apologising to the guy, acknowledging we all fuck up.

Yeah, that's pretty much what happened with the guy I hit, he was extremely pissed off to start with (quite understandably) but soon calmed down and apologised. 

1 hour ago, Mrcento said:

 i was 11 years no claims and got the majority of it wiped by the claim, but in reality it only went up about 15ish% for the first year, and a little bit of snooping to see the effect it had if i never had the accident showed  that even some of that was just premiums in general going up, realistically 11 years NCB and a clean record v 3 years NCB and an accident claim actually made my 11 years NCB feel massively undervalued given how little it would have saved me, by the time i'd added another year on to 4 years NCB the difference was pretty negligible again. About £40 a year more.

I have 10 years' NCB on this policy, but I haven't really noticed much difference in premiums compared to when I only had 4 years, so you might be right.  Not sure how much of my NCB this is going to wipe out though, I'm not sure exactly how they calculate these things.

[Metal Guru]

8 hours ago, wuvvum said:

Yeah, that's pretty much what happened with the guy I hit, he was extremely pissed off to start with (quite understandably) but soon calmed down and apologised. 

I have 10 years' NCB on this policy, but I haven't really noticed much difference in premiums compared to when I only had 4 years, so you might be right.  Not sure how much of my NCB this is going to wipe out though, I'm not sure exactly how they calculate these things.

You should pay the extra for protected no claims . You can normally have 2 claims  in 3 years without losing it.

Having said that, my wife had a claim (her fault), in her second year of having insurance in her name, and although the insurer who paid the claim put the premium up a bit, on renewal there were plenty of others lower.

[chadders]

I've found keeping busy is the best way so I don't have time to dwell on it in the day and I fall asleep pretty quickly as I'm knackered.

I'm sure that there's plenty of work that can be done on your fleet, especially given the good weather.

[MikeR]

On 08/04/2025 at 17:50, wuvvum said:

I think it's OK if you declare yourself as the main driver but you add a relative on as an additional named driver - in some circumstances that can help lower the premium, although usually for very young drivers.  The problem comes when you're insured as an additional driver but you're actually the main driver of the vehicle.

Our car setup was like that , it was the wife's car till I retired , then she gave up driving to a great degree and I was a named driver for a year , 2 years ago I became the main driver as she no longer drove unless in an emergency , it made no difference to the cost but its bit more honest about what driver is behind the wheel .. 

[Zelandeth]

Just attempted to get the fuel line reattached to the car on the Renault.  I got about 90 seconds into the job before being absolutely besieged by sodding ants.  So much for getting that done today.

They really do make doing anything which involves sitting or laying on the ground and utter misery here.  Never got cold enough this last winter for them to bugger off fully at any point either.

I just need to find someone who's willing to take on the list of essential jobs that car needs done and get it transported to them.  It's never going to get sorted where it sits just now.

[myglaren]

Squirt them with white vinegar and washing up liquid.

[Sunny Jim]

Wanted to get on with changing the radiator on the hearse this afternoon.

Someone more knowledgeable and experienced than me would have thought to check if new bushes would be necessary. Another lesson learnt and another delay while I wait for some to arrive.

[grogee]

16 minutes ago, Sunny Jim said:

Wanted to get on with changing the radiator on the hearse this afternoon.

Someone more knowledgeable and experienced than me would have thought to check if new bushes would be necessary. Another lesson learnt and another delay while I wait for some to arrive.

Do they actually do much? Could you cut some equivalent out of rubber sheet? 

[Zelandeth]

1 hour ago, myglaren said:

Squirt them with white vinegar and washing up liquid.

The problem is that basically the entire garden (and most of the town) is essentially one giant ant hill.  

It would be quicker to list areas outside where they don't come from than where they do.  They're just one of those things which is basically just omnipresent around here and have been as long as I've been coming here - though at least you usually got a couple of months without them being an active nuisance over the winter!

[barefoot]

I solved a similar problem with a totally infested back garden by pouring a tbsp full of petrol down all of the holes and lighting them up. The lawn smoked gently for much of the afternoon, but I've not seen an ant here in 30years.

[Sunny Jim]

1 hour ago, grogee said:

Do they actually do much? Could you cut some equivalent out of rubber sheet? 

They're actually fairly chunky and should be top and bottom to locate the rad, there are no other fixings to hold it in place. Three were AWOL and there was only remnants of the fourth which can only have contributed to the old rad's demise. After spending nearly half what I paid for the car on the new radiator I figured I might as well do the job properly. £20 and a few more days wait for these to turn up.

[BorniteIdentity]

20 hours ago, wuvvum said:

Not been sleeping properly since the accident on Tuesday.  A combination of anger at myself, residual stress over the accident itself, worry about the implications on my insurance renewal and consequently the future of the fleet, and my brain coming up with scenarios as to how the accident could have been way worse than it was.  It's a vicious circle as the more tired I get the more anxious I get and therefore the less sleep I get.  Hopefully it'll fade with time but it's been a very long time since something affected me this badly and I'm not really sure how to deal with it.

How are you today, bud?

I've only had one spectacular accident but both the ex-wife and I would have been dead in anything old.  She'd never driven the (old) Haughley Bends, got it horribly wrong and we bounced from nearside to offside to nearside crash barrier like a pinball.  I would say it took me a good few months to be both comfortable as a passenger in a car again, and she's still quite nervous at night 21 years later.  As someone else said, this is a natural reaction to trauma and it WILL pass.

It is impossible to tell what it will do to your insurance because A) it's a mystery anyway and 2) with a trade policy it's even more complicated.  Try not to catastrophise all of the outcomes.  If they start taking an interest in how much trading actually happens, then you cross that bridge when you get to it.  In the meantime, let them do what you pay them handsomely to do and try to relax (easier said than done, I know)

As for being angry at yourself? We all make mistakes.  Feel free to re-read the time I spent an entire Bank Holiday buying a MK1 Freelander to scrap it 2 months and £1200 later!  

You're good.  Keep truckin'

 

[wuvvum]

Thanks Daniel.

The funny thing is I've actually been OK with driving.  It's definitely knocked my confidence a bit, and I'm possibly now over-cautious when it comes to junctions, especially the one the accident happened at, but so far I haven't had any real issues getting back in a car - which is good as I'm due to drive down to my parents' in Somerset for Easter.  I think if the accident had been worse (i.e. if there had been injuries etc.) it might have been a different story.  

My brain has still been going a mile a minute today but I've tried to keep myself busy to give myself something else to think about - so I've actually been reasonably productive today.  I got a bit more sleep last night too (although still not really enough) as I didn't have to get up for work this morning.

Your second paragraph is absolutely spot on and is what I have been trying hard to do, but it is indeed easier said than done!  I'm hoping spending a few days with my folks will take my mind off things for long enough that I have time to wind down a bit.

[Marina door handles]

Mail ordering things has definitely bitten me on the arse this week. Living out in the sticks I am maybe a bit over reliant on Amazon, Ebay and anyone else offering home delivery..

This week I ordered a brake reservoir cap to butcher into a brake bleed tool for the 827 what arrived in the post was this.

Yay a mystery slave cylinder for something possibly MG/Rover....

Next cock up was an alternator for my old Subaru. What arrived looked like an alternator, smelt like an alternator and was actually slightly easier to fit than the old one and both the electrical fittings fitted.  Being vaguely sensible I decided to carry out an alternator test after fitting...... Engine off 12.8 volts across the battery terminals.

Fire the engine and drum roll............

12.35 volts..... hang on the old one I had condemned was producing a miserable 12.4!

I then checked the connections on the back of the fuse box, the earth strap to the engine etc and cleaned all the connections I could find.   Re tested it, same result, re fit the old one.... Still getting slightly more at 12.4. Just need to contact the seller and see if I can return this dudd.....

 

[EyesWeldedShut]

1 minute ago, Marina door handles said:

12.35 volts..... hang on the old one I had condemned was producing a miserable 12.4!

I then checked the connections on the back of the fuse box, the earth strap to the engine etc and cleaned all the connections I could find.   Re tested it, same result, re fit the old one.... Still getting slightly more at 12.4. Just need to contact the seller and see if I can return this dudd.....

That sounds familiar.... out in the sticks here too.
About two years ago my 940 blew the alternator, after arsing around (penny pinching) I ordered in a 'recon' from some place in the East Midlands. It arrived promptly* and, after fitting it - effin' thing was not alternating fuckall.
Ebay seller got all shitty on it so I sic'd AmEx on them and got a refund direct. eBay's 'buyers protection' was only for 30 days so - if they take a bloody fortnight to (drop)ship the bloody thing and you then take a week to fit it and a week to complain? Out of time, sorry, goodbye. Thanks eBay.

I'm now a bit more particular on the eBay stuff and double check for 'free'* returns and any time limit.

*I have to pay the return postage which is £12.50 on £230 quids worth of stuff currently packed up and awaiting the Postie tomorrow.