The grumpy thread

[Fumbler]

1 minute ago, Bren said:

What car? What work?

The BX, to correct the 4 or so MoT advisories, plus 2 additional jobs (replace worn bush in rear height corrector linkage, replace binnacle lamp(s)). It turns out replacing the front brake flexis weren't as quick as they'd said it would be.

[mat_the_cat]

It's a growing annoyance that several times a week, we get post for a couple of neighbours, because of their incorrect address. Yet despite telling them multiple times going back years, it still keeps on happening!

We live in a pretty rural area, and the address is simply the house name (in our case Dolwen) followed by the nearest town, and postcode (shared by the cluster of houses close by).

The confusion arises because they keep putting our bloody house name on their address, as well as theirs! With ours being the oldest house in the area, one or two people refer to the cluster as Dolwen, although it's not on any registered address.

So we get a pissed off courier who's wasted time coming up the track to our place, then has to turn around and go to theirs. Or if we're out, coming home to a package we then have to let them know about. I honestly feel like just chucking it in the river sometimes, and see if that forces them to change.

[omegod]

Wife is watching the Brit awards, I have headphones on and can still hear the noisiest bunch of annoying utter fucking twats trying to outshout each other with unintelligible wanky cool speak 

Get in the sea you massive cunts 

Yeah, my moods not great tonight 

[purplebargeken]

Last two weeks I have been getting pains in both legs and feet at night, a dullish slightly more than an ache all over plus ice cold feet. It is uncomfortable enough to make getting to sleep difficult, plus it also wakes me up.  I suspect possible peripheral vascular issues.

However, GP feels it is linked to my slowly but steadily degenerating back.  He has requested an MRI and has given me a prescription of gabapentin, a neuropathic pain... pain killer.

I can understand his logic but this feels entirely different to the ongoing crap that I have with my spine, the arthritis and 6 knackered discs. This is not sciatica.

[Popsicle]

@purplebargeken without wishing to sound dramatic and without wishing to concern you, I was prescribed gabapentin for a smashed up hand a few years ago, its nasty stuff in my experience. Obviously I hope it agrees with you but it fucked me over big time and did bugger all to alleviate the pain. It left me in a constant bad mood, unable to sleep, mouth, eyes and nose drier than Gandhi's flip flop and most worryingly and I'm not joking, my cock stopped working.

Really hope it works for you but be observant to the side effects, particularly the bad moods. Duloxetine is a similar pill and I fared much better with that, in so much as pain relief, but it still had some shitty side effects.

Good luck with it.

[New POD]

8 hours ago, mat_the_cat said:

It's a growing annoyance that several times a week, we get post for a couple of neighbours, because of their incorrect address. Yet despite telling them multiple times going back years, it still keeps on happening!

We live in a pretty rural area, and the address is simply the house name (in our case Dolwen) followed by the nearest town, and postcode (shared by the cluster of houses close by).

The confusion arises because they keep putting our bloody house name on their address, as well as theirs! With ours being the oldest house in the area, one or two people refer to the cluster as Dolwen, although it's not on any registered address.

So we get a pissed off courier who's wasted time coming up the track to our place, then has to turn around and go to theirs. Or if we're out, coming home to a package we then have to let them know about. I honestly feel like just chucking it in the river sometimes, and see if that forces them to change.

The previous owner of my place has been getting demands from various places like Coventry city council, the DVLA, and HMRC. After 2.5 years I've decided to stop re-addressing them, and am now returning to sender.  I write on the front of the envelope.

Name Spelt Wrong 

97-99 does not exist. It's 97 or 99. 

99 is empty and the person you want does not live at 97 and moved in 2019. 

RETURN TO SENDER. 

[jamescarruthers]

12 hours ago, Fumbler said:

Had some work done on the car... dropped it off at midday Friday and most of the work was done at the end of the day. I've just received the invoice thinking it'd be £200 or something. Well nope

Fuck. Only 18% of that is parts. The rest is labour and VAT.

Yes, that does sound like a trip to Chevronics! I think last year or the year before I had a bill that was similar— the funny thing is that there was a newer C5 with lower miles, slower but more reliable engine, on the forecourt for-sale for a few hundred pounds more than the bill to fix the car. To be fair, I don’t think I could have gotten it fixed somewhere else at all and the car has been good as gold since… well until it ate it’s newish clutch for breakfast but that’s not their fault. 
 

I’m a big big fan of the place but yeah it can get expensive. I guess they are successful because they really do know how to bill hourly work but they also do know what they are doing with old Citroens. On the other hand I’ve benefitted (occasionally) from other garages clearly undercharging over the years from simple work that has gotten out of hand when things have gone wrong. 
 

I think this makes the BX a keeper now as it’s crossed an investment frontier?! I’m hoping that’s nearly everything fixed now? 

[sierraman]

12 hours ago, Fumbler said:

Had some work done on the car... dropped it off at midday Friday and most of the work was done at the end of the day. I've just received the invoice thinking it'd be £200 or something. Well nope

Fuck. Only 18% of that is parts. The rest is labour and VAT.

Christ. What’s their hourly labour rate?

[AnnoyingPentium]

Bloody Vodafone wants me to phone to sort out the black box in the Fabia since it apparently requires a service call... It's continued ringing since 9am. Fifth time I've had to phone this shower of arseholes.

[AnnoyingPentium]

Got through to Vodafone. They're going to have to send a technician out to get the box telt.

[jakebullet]

Idiot sister is getting her "fur baby pupster" on Saturday. She has purchased an IP cam so she can sit on her fat arse and watch the dog rather than actually interacting with it.

Ma says can I go up there and set it up, as idiot has been looking on youtube and it's really complicated. Ok. It's your typical IP cam, install the app, scan the QR code on the camera, enter your wifi password and away you go. Simples! Except idiot sister is involved. She's a sharing caring social worker by trade, which means she's better than everyone else and knows everything. She's also mega aggressive by default.

Ok, go to the play store and search for shitdogcam app.
NO! I've seen on youtube you scan the barcode on the box. Do that then! Big surprise it just brings up a link to the play store.

Ok, click add camera by QR code. 
NO! I've seen on youtube you have to go into manual setup, and follow a really complicated sequence!
Humour me. Scan the QR code. It then asks for wifi password. Put your wifi password in. Don't know it. It's on your router. Well where am I supposed to put it? This is so complicated and we should have done it like on youtube. Put it in the box there. The one that has password at the side of it.

Camera springs to life. The bracket is a flat disc with an arm sticking out, and has 4 screws / wall plugs so clearly intended for wall mounting.

Well this is no fucking good! I want to put it on top of the unit pointing down at the floor. On youtube they just leaned it sort of sideways and it points at the floor. Er, I didn't design the bracket. Well on youtube it works. Well then miss youtube, you can put it like that and it will be fine won't it?

How do I set alarms?
Go into the menus on the app and I'm sure you'll find it. Strangely I don't know the menu layout of an app I've never seen and you're not allowing me to look at. 

This is so shit! You've done it all wrong not like on youtube! Fuck it, get out out of my house and I'll start again and do it properly like on youtube.

TLDR: Youtube.

[New POD]

Looks like a nice bit of kit. Can you recomend it? 

[Pieman]

Is your sister's name Veruca?

You showed remarkable restraint, I'd have smashed the thing to pieces and told her that if she knows better so much then don't fucking talk to me again.  (Or is your family the same as mine, where if you upset your sister the entire family refuse to speak to you for a week and you get Resting Bitch Face off all of them constantly whenever you're near them?)

[chaseracer]

Why do people tolerate this kind of shit from others?  Probably a rhetorical question.

[jakebullet]

45 minutes ago, New POD said:

Looks like a nice bit of kit. Can you recomend it? 

Not really. It was £40, feels a bit flimsy and only has 1 LED for night use. You can get similar from China for about £15, so it's £25 extra for an almost English manual. If you can handle Chinglish & fiddling a bit get a China one instead.

29 minutes ago, Pieman said:

Is your sister's name Veruca?

You showed remarkable restraint, I'd have smashed the thing to pieces and told her that if she knows better so much then don't fucking talk to me again.  (Or is your family the same as mine, where if you upset your sister the entire family refuse to speak to you for a week and you get Resting Bitch Face off all of them constantly whenever you're near them?)

Going back a few years she tried to run me over with a kia picanto. Which was great as it gave me a perfect excuse to never interact with her in any way. Managed 3 years of no sister bliss, then some drunk hit her parked car at 4 am, and I got roped in. Now Ma blackmails me into helping her with her gormless problems. I still try to stay away as much as possible.

Sister is probably extra pissed today because it's her birthday and I gave her a bottle of lambrini, a cake and a headlight polishing kit. These will have been deemed shit gifts. I should perhaps point out for my birthday last week she bought me a pack of chocolate digestive biscuits. I think she's come out on top in the gift stakes.

[NigeT]

Got round to replacing Ypsilon's rear spring which it failed MOT on, only to discover aforementioned spring had absolutely nothing wrong with it. At least I now have a spare stashed away. 

[artdjones]

19 hours ago, Fumbler said:

The BX, to correct the 4 or so MoT advisories, plus 2 additional jobs (replace worn bush in rear height corrector linkage, replace binnacle lamp(s)). It turns out replacing the front brake flexis weren't as quick as they'd said it would be.

I've never used Chevronics (wrong country for a start) but talking to others Citroen specialists have a tendency to overcharge. I've done quite a lot of work on BXs and Xantias, and a C5, including replacing various pipes, unseizing height correctors, properly setting up ride height, flushes, and radius arm bearing replacement. Also sphere changes. I honestly never found any of it that difficult. So I can only think some of these people are greedy and take advantage of ignorance.

My eyes were first opened years ago when a friend was charged the most of £1000 for changing a pair of radius arm bearings.

[wuvvum]

3 hours ago, jakebullet said:

Now Ma blackmails me into helping her with her gormless problems. I still try to stay away as much as possible.

The solution, as I recall people on this very forum advising you many years ago, is to move out.  (And not answer the phone.)

[MikeR]

Charity shops . . I had 2 wing back chairs and 2 cane chairs and a cane 2 seater to be gone 

Had it got a fire label ? 

Is it new looking ?

We can only pick up on a Tuesday !  , That means waiting 2 weeks .

It's ok I will sort it out , filled the skip at the council tip ,and the car is sat outside stuffed with mine and next doors shite ready for a morning skip filling session ...

Fussy buggers.  

[Bren]

1 hour ago, artdjones said:

I've never used Chevronics (wrong country for a start) but talking to others Citroen specialists have a tendency to overcharge. I've done quite a lot of work on BXs and Xantias, and a C5, including replacing various pipes, unseizing height correctors, properly setting up ride height, flushes, and radius arm bearing replacement. Also sphere changes. I honestly never found any of it that difficult. So I can only think some of these people are greedy and take advantage of ignorance.

My eyes were first opened years ago when a friend was charged the most of £1000 for changing a pair of radius arm bearings.

When I had my xantia there was a chap in Widnes who was ex citroen. I had water pump  timing belt and spheres replaced. I paid £350 for the lot. Sadly he is no longer with us.

[Pieman]

4 hours ago, jakebullet said:

Going back a few years she tried to run me over with a kia picanto. Which was great as it gave me a perfect excuse to never interact with her in any way. Managed 3 years of no sister bliss, then some drunk hit her parked car at 4 am, and I got roped in. Now Ma blackmails me into helping her with her gormless problems. I still try to stay away as much as possible.

She intentionally tried to run you over?!

As for the blackmail bit, that's exactly the same as me.  If my mother asks me to do a job for my sister, I usually reply "Well I can't say no can I, cos if I do her, you and dad will send me to Coventry for about two weeks."

[Fumbler]

10 hours ago, sierraman said:

Christ. What’s their hourly labour rate?

68 full fat English pounds.

[Fumbler]

2 hours ago, artdjones said:

I've never used Chevronics (wrong country for a start) but talking to others Citroen specialists have a tendency to overcharge. I've done quite a lot of work on BXs and Xantias, and a C5, including replacing various pipes, unseizing height correctors, properly setting up ride height, flushes, and radius arm bearing replacement. Also sphere changes. I honestly never found any of it that difficult. So I can only think some of these people are greedy and take advantage of ignorance.

My eyes were first opened years ago when a friend was charged the most of £1000 for changing a pair of radius arm bearings.

These were all pretty meanial tasks as well so I do wonder if they charged the book time for some of these jobs. I'll query it tomorrow as I'm collecting the car on Friday, but this has been a good bit of motivation to upskill in car maintenance.

[jakebullet]

10 minutes ago, Pieman said:

She intentionally tried to run you over?!

As for the blackmail bit, that's exactly the same as me.  If my mother asks me to do a job for my sister, I usually reply "Well I can't say no can I, cos if I do her, you and dad will send me to Coventry for about two weeks."

I'd been somewhere with Ma on the train, and she was insisting she would come and fetch us from town, despite we could walk in less time than it would take her to get there. I made some comment about the 2 ft deep mcdonalds packaging in the car, and she was all get the fuck out of my car. So I did, being a full 5 minutes walk from home. She then pulls up and says "are you getting in or what?", so I told her to fuck off.  So she drove onto the pavement and tried to squash me between front wing and the wall.

The other thing with her blackmail jobs is you have to remember at all times she's very IMPORTANT. Brakes will have no pads left, but she will allocate you between 12:02 & 12:07 pm, and if you protest you can't do it in 5 minutes flat you're a useless lazy cunt, and she'll take it to the garage instead. After driving it with no brakes for a month or two.

Or Ma will volunteer me for jobs I can't do. She wants the roof pointing 'cos she found 2 cm of concrete fallen off. Best call a roofer then hadn't you? Last I heard on that one she was trying to claim off the insurance for "storm damage" every time it was windy.

[Jazoli]

I don't understand why you put up with this shit and don't just fuck her off and do nothing for her, by capitulating and doing things she needs you are just feeding the monster, fuck her off and live your own life, and tell your Ma to keep her gob shut, honestly, families are a fucking nightmare.

[Pieman]

Sorry to be so blunt, but she deserves a punch in the fucking gob.  And if someone mounted a pavement in a car and deliberately tried to hit me, I would be straight on the phone to the police.

[BorniteIdentity]

1 hour ago, Fumbler said:

68 full fat English pounds.

Fair enough truth be told. The village grease monkeys charge me £50 per hour and the Jap specialist (who are amazing) £75ph. 

The alternative is running something mainstream and end of life, but who the fuck wants to do that out of choice? 

If your only bill for the year is £1200, that’s good by my maths. After all, what price style? The alternative is a 2005 focus with shitty arches and the smell of stale fags. You’re doing it right man

[jakebullet]

I do the best I can to avoid her and her stupid ideas. Only got roped into "dog cam", 'cos Ma is going nuts over impending dog, and will make life hell if dog related things don't happen. Said puppy is being collected this weekend, and I intend to be 90 miles away so I can't get the blame or more jobs.

I've already got it wrong by saying I find this whole puppy thing suspicious. I think idiot must have found it on facebook, so my first thought was is it some scum breeding dogs in a shed? Oh no, she's a famous professional dog breeder who shows at crufts. So why is she selling said puppies for half the going rate? And why when I google her name doesn't she have a website? Why only facebook? Stop being a stupid boy! 

They was supposed to be collecting on Saturday but now Sunday as famous breeder forgot she's going to crufts on Saturday. But.... crufts is in March??? Well some other dog show then. They're either going to come back with a breeze block in a box, or a puppy that isn't what they think it is. It's not that hard to setup a facebook page pretending to be someone else after all.....

[Fumbler]

17 minutes ago, BorniteIdentity said:

Fair enough truth be told. The village grease monkeys charge me £50 per hour and the Jap specialist (who are amazing) £75ph. 

The alternative is running something mainstream and end of life, but who the fuck wants to do that out of choice? 

If your only bill for the year is £1200, that’s good by my maths. After all, what price style? The alternative is a 2005 focus with shitty arches and the smell of stale fags. You’re doing it right man

Yeah, now that I've had a day to think about it, it's not too bad, just unexpected. Apart from this the big bill for the year is insurance, and like you said, I think I'm going quite well considering the miserable alternatives.

[jamescarruthers]

1 hour ago, Fumbler said:

Yeah, now that I've had a day to think about it, it's not too bad, just unexpected. Apart from this the big bill for the year is insurance, and like you said, I think I'm going quite well considering the miserable alternatives.

I do wonder if they had a few people on it at once too if they did all of your tasks quickly?