The grumpy thread

[PhilA]

  On 04/07/2020 at 22:54, wuvvum said:

Would it not be possible though to carry out the smart motorway upgrade in sections, a couple of junctions at a time?  Maybe Hounslow to M25, M25 to Wokingham, Wokingham to Maidenhead, Maidenhead to Reading?  Would avoid the entire population of the home counties losing hours of their lives crawling along at 50 for 30-odd miles.

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I see a signage opposite here. At the beginning of the road work there will be a sign that reads the distance of the road being covered by construction work, accurate to 2 decimal places (ROAD CONSTRUCTION NEXT 2.17 MILES) which has always seemed a bit excessive in terms of accuracy but when FINES DOUBLED IN WORK ZONE is in effect, you want to know if you are 2.16 or 2.18 miles away...

Then there's Texas, upon which you enter crossing the river on I-10 and immediately hit ROAD CONSTRUCTION NEXT 54 MILES which has been there for the last decade at least. They use the space to store their road construction equipment and cones.

 

Phil

[New POD]

  On 08/07/2020 at 12:18, Tadhg Tiogar said:

I've had borderline low blood pressure for much of the last 20-odd years. At one point, the GP found it difficult to find a pulse - might have something to do with my lack of enthusiasm for a great many things.

I can't stand coffee either.

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I love coffee.  After 3 hours on a monitor they sent me home.  My blood pressure isn't so low 105/75. My heart rate went up to 41 or 42.  

I'm.to go back if it drops to 38 for any significant time. Or if I start getting dizzy. Or pains.  I feel fucking miserable. 

[Mally]

They sent you home and you feel miserable

Good job they didn't keep you in then.

[High Jetter]

This is not ideal...

 

The result of your van driver trying to mate the 2011 Vx Combo with the gates of a customer - a car dealership! Repair or s/h door?

[New POD]

  On 08/07/2020 at 17:02, New POD said:

I love coffee.  After 3 hours on a monitor they sent me home.  My blood pressure isn't so low 105/75. My heart rate went up to 41 or 42.  

I'm.to go back if it drops to 38 for any significant time. Or if I start getting dizzy. Or pains.  I feel fucking miserable. 

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Forgot to add, they have taken my off the beta blockers, and my heart beat is a more normal 44 at rest.  Also feel less tired. 

I've added one cup of real coffee back into my diet, which is a real treat. 

[New POD]

  On 10/07/2020 at 18:12, High Jetter said:

This is not ideal...

 

The result of your van driver trying to mate the 2011 Vx Combo with the gates of a customer - a car dealership! Repair or s/h door?

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If you can get a second hand door then it's got to be cheaper.  

It took me a year to Find one in the right colour Z20M petrol blue for my omega, but £25 wouldn't cover the paint let alone the Labour. 

But vauxhall  van in white should be easy 

[rob88h]

Car won’t start ?

[LightBulbFun]

  On 11/07/2020 at 13:13, rob88h said:

Car won’t start ?

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[Borsuq]

  On 10/07/2020 at 18:12, High Jetter said:

Repair or s/h door?

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I'm definitely thinking replacement door.

[vulgalour]

The BX battery looks to be on its way out.  Managed to get it to 50% on the charger and then it started making fizzing noises and the indicator has gone white.  Going to give it a rest and reconnect, sometimes batteries are okay when I've done that with this charger before, sometimes they're not.

The cars are trying my patience just at the moment.  They're both technically road legal and I can't currently use either of them.

[vulgalour]

Well, as a quick addition to the above, I did manage to get the battery up to 75% according to the charger, it no longer makes the fizzing noises, and the little indicator on the battery is green now.  The only difficulty its now offering is an unwillingness to fully charge so I suspect it's on its last legs and a replacement is due.  Should be good enough to at least get the BX started this weekend I hope.

[gm]

I went out for a run this afternoon and a fly flew into my mouth. Except it wasn’t a fly, it was a bee or a wasp ‘cos the little bastard stung me on the bottom lip when I tried to spit it out
 I look like Bubba off Forest Gump now ! 

[wuvvum]

Currently sat in a field entrance in the Mondeo, waiting for the AA.  Fucking thing ran away on me - clouds of smoke and had to stick it in 6th and stall it.  Probably partially my fault - the oil level is way too high (has been since I bought it) and I hadn't got round to emptying any out.  It has proper pissed me off today mind - it's been doing about 33 mpg rather than the 49 that the computer is telling me.  I semi-deliberately ran it out of fuel earlier just to check it wasn't the fuel gauge talking rubbish - I cunningly had a gallon of diesel in a can in the boot but because of the stupid fucking filler flap design you can't get a fuel can spout in there - or indeed anything that isn't exactly the size of a diesel pump nozzle. 

Fucking moderns. 

[DoctorRetro]

  On 11/07/2020 at 13:13, rob88h said:

Car won’t start ?

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You're welcome to borrow the Fenlander if you get stuck ?

[rob88h]

  On 12/07/2020 at 19:17, TheDoctor said:

welcome to borrow the Fenlander

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Aw thanks man. If all six go down I think I’d need emotional support as well as a Rover loan ?. It was the Volvo the other day - starter motor. I was happily tapping away at it trying to persuade it to spin when it went up in smoke. Trouble is once the smoke has come out, it’s hard to get back in. 

[Rod/b]

FUCKING BASTARD YANK CUNT

[wuvvum]

Looks like it was the turbo pulling oil through rather than it getting past the rings - the intake pipe is full of oil.  Car is currently dumped half on half off the pavement outside my house where the AA put it.  I've taken the intake pipe off the manifold, and once the oil is nice and cold and viscous again I'm going to start it up and drive it very gingerly down to the car park so I can get it up on ramps and drain the oil off.  I'm going to drain it all out because it's due an oil change and hopefully that way it'll get rid of the oil that has gone places it shouldn't, then I'm going to refill it with the correct quantity of fresh oil, perhaps in a slightly thicker grade out of deference to the car's mileage.  Then I'll see how I get on - hopefully it won't need a new turbo.  They're not hugely expensive but it's not a job I'd relish having to do.

[cort16]

  On 07/07/2020 at 15:54, angle said:

The ultra shonky XM that lived on my road has been missing a few weeks, presumed dead. 

At the same time, someone new has moved in round the corner. 

There goes the neighbourhood. Bloody gentrification. 

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Apparently these things cost about 50,000 quid new!

[Shite Ron]

  On 12/07/2020 at 18:31, wuvvum said:

Currently sat in a field entrance in the Mondeo, waiting for the AA.  Fucking thing ran away on me - clouds of smoke and had to stick it in 6th and stall it.  Probably partially my fault - the oil level is way too high (has been since I bought it) and I hadn't got round to emptying any out.  It has proper pissed me off today mind - it's been doing about 33 mpg rather than the 49 that the computer is telling me.  I semi-deliberately ran it out of fuel earlier just to check it wasn't the fuel gauge talking rubbish - I cunningly had a gallon of diesel in a can in the boot but because of the stupid fucking filler flap design you can't get a fuel can spout in there - or indeed anything that isn't exactly the size of a diesel pump nozzle. 

Fucking moderns. 

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There is a tube to put in the filler neck, it is in the spare wheel well with the jack, bottom left below.

This caught me out too, a silly idea!

[wuvvum]

Ah, that's what that odd-looking thing is!!

Thanks for the heads up - I wouldn't have worked it out myself.

[eddyramrod]

  On 08/07/2020 at 18:21, Mally said:

They sent you home and you feel miserable

Good job they didn't keep you in then.

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In Southport hospital?  He's lucky to have walked out of that place, it's like bloody Holby... the only way out is horizontally.  I'm from Southport originally, I know about this!  Good luck POD.

[Tadhg Tiogar]

Trying to send two medium to large parcels to Italy. Royal Mail sez these come within International Signed & Tracked, but local post office sez no and tries to divert me to use Parcel Farce.

This then becomes academic when the post office sez Royal Mail won't carry any car parts, new or used, because Covid.

Fuxake.

[neil1971]

  On 13/07/2020 at 11:27, Tadhg Tiogar said:

Trying to send two medium to large parcels to Italy. Royal Mail sez these come within International Signed & Tracked, but local post office sez no and tries to divert me to use Parcel Farce.

This then becomes academic when the post office sez Royal Mail won't carry any car parts, new or used, because Covid.

Fuxake.

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May not help a lot if they won't take car parts at the moment, but I've always found it's been a lot cheaper to use Parcelforce for international stuff by going via one of the parcel websites like Parcel2Go or ParcelMonkey compared to going direct to Parcelforce. May be worth a look at those two sites anyway as they use a variety of couriers so maybe some will have different policies on what they take?

Basically you put in the parcel weight, size and destination and there's usually a decent range of options

[Lankytim]

A month or so before COVID we ordered a fitted wardrobe for the bedroom. We'd just moved house and remortgaged and had a some left for home improvements, the wardrobe came in at just under 3k which to me is an eyewatering amount but it should at least last us a few decades. 

We had it all designed, chose the colour and the handles, drank coffee in their showroom and eagerly waited the agreed 3 weeks for the wardrobe to be manufactured and fitted. 

The fitter never showed up and after a call we found the wardrobe wasn't complete and still needed a few bits making to finish, fair enough, then of course COVID took over and we've only recently been able to arrange fitting after lockdown was lifted.

A couple of days were arranged and we endured no-shows and had to rearrange, all juggling work and ensuring someone was in. The wife is a counselor working with the relatives of cancer victims, some of who had to be rescheduled, I work nights so slept on a camp bed downstairs, only for nobody to come round anyway. Phone calls produced the standard excuse of "the last job the fitter was on overran", "the factory made a mistake and are doing it again" ,"they lost a door so had to make it again" ,or "they're just finishing it now". 

Eventually a wardrobe was delivered and the following Friday a couple of fitters installed it. Except there's no doors, and other parts are missing. "we'll get the doors and fit them on Monday" .Of course, today is Monday and the doors still haven't been manufactured (as usual, we had to chase them). Wednesday is the day now apparently but i'm not holding my breath.

To make matters worse, when we looked at what has been delivered and installed it's completely  different to what we agreed on, lots of internal shelving is simply missing and has been replaced with a hanging rail. 

The fitter let slip that the reason the doors hadn't been made was the company had hit their 50k credit limit with the factory and all manufacturing had stopped until they settled the tab.

Overall the whole experience has been a disaster and there's no real sign of it being sorted out. I'd checked the company out online and they had some good and some bad reviews but we had a personal recommendation so decided to go with them. A little more digging revealed a catalog of negative reviews, all similar to our experiences, some were much worse. Households left without a kitchen at all for weeks on end, stuff arriving and not fitting. One guy even has a youtube channel devoted to his botched kitchen installation that never got finished! The company offers to pay some customers to leave good reviews and one 5 star review was even left by the managing director!

One reviewer revealed they had to make a section 75 claim to their credit provider to recover money paid for a botched kitchen replacement.

A look at companies house shows a company with the same name was dissolved in April 2020 but there are several similarly named companies registered at the same address with the same directors listed. All very odd. 

It feels good to have a whine about it all, although i'm absolutely kicking myself now for not doing more research and heeding the bad reviews online. We paid half of the total via credit card so if things do go completely tits up there's always section 75 that we could perhaps claim on. 

Urgh!

[Tadhg Tiogar]

  On 13/07/2020 at 11:44, neil1971 said:

May not help a lot if they won't take car parts at the moment, but I've always found it's been a lot cheaper to use Parcelforce for international stuff by going via one of the parcel websites like Parcel2Go or ParcelMonkey compared to going direct to Parcelforce. May be worth a look at those two sites anyway as they use a variety of couriers so maybe some will have different policies on what they take?

Basically you put in the parcel weight, size and destination and there's usually a decent range of options

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I'll give that a go

[Fumbler]

 Grandmother Fumbler's latest display of 83 year-old driving excellence* was discovered when we found out that the central heating pipes in the garage have been squashed and creased to the point of not letting any water flow through them. That explains why her NSF wing is all bent up then!

[vulgalour]

Going through a period of unhappiness with the cars just at the minute.  I just want to drive them, I'm fed up of fixing them, chasing mystery faults, and having to stop a job part way through because I simply don't own the tools to complete it.  I mean, this is all normal but still, it's driving me absolutely spare.

[MarvinsMom]

  On 13/07/2020 at 08:36, eddyramrod said:

In Southport hospital?  He's lucky to have walked out of that place, it's like bloody Holby... the only way out is horizontally.  I'm from Southport originally, I know about this!  Good luck POD.

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Scarborough General is just the same...... they make Mid-Staffs look ok!!

[eddyramrod]

  On 13/07/2020 at 17:17, vulgalour said:

Going through a period of unhappiness with the cars just at the minute.  I just want to drive them, I'm fed up of fixing them, chasing mystery faults, and having to stop a job part way through because I simply don't own the tools to complete it.  I mean, this is all normal but still, it's driving me absolutely spare.

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That's all so familiar!  Good luck my friend, hope it improves for you.

[320touring]

  On 13/07/2020 at 17:17, vulgalour said:

Going through a period of unhappiness with the cars just at the minute.  I just want to drive them, I'm fed up of fixing them, chasing mystery faults, and having to stop a job part way through because I simply don't own the tools to complete it.  I mean, this is all normal but still, it's driving me absolutely spare.

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Similar here after discovering that the rear brakes on the burds Clio are shot again..

Consoling myself with the fact that even broken, the cars here are still cooler than anything else in the street:)