Rant thread

[JohnM]

It seems to me that they serve one purpose only, and that is from the energy suppliers side. No need for meter readers, no need for estimated bills. No benefit to consumer.

Edited August 2, 2018 by JohnM

[ckn]

5 minutes ago, JohnM said:

It seems to me that they serve one purpose only, and that is from the energy suppliers side. No need for meter readers, no need for estimated bills. No benefit to consumer.

The first generation meters CAN be redirected to a new supplier with a fairly cheap bit of new technology but it's been overwhelmingly vetoed by all the suppliers as it then makes swapping suppliers even easier.  If they can start bringing in tariffs that benefit only people on smart meters then they make it prohibitively expensive to swap and effectively have extended their existing oligopoly.  Also, the fact that it's the big 6 suppliers only installing these things, it makes it even easier to punish the smaller and newer suppliers.

It would require a simple change in government policy to remove the daft requirement to install these things and postpone it until there's a solid and proven supply of the second generation meters.

Smart meters with demand based pricing is a good thing really for a country that's refusing to properly invest in power generation (not a party political point, they all do it).  It encourages people to do things like put washing machines on overnight or only charge plug-in hybrid/electric cars overnight rather than peak time.  When I had my plug-in car, I simply plugged it in when I got home regardless of the time as it was far more convenient for me, if it cost me half as much to do it after 9pm then I would have changed my practices.

[Jacko45]

5 hours ago, Derwent said:

Did you know it is not illegal to park on someone's drive ? But it is illegal for the homeowner to try and move the offending vehicle. Strange quirk of law.

So what happens if you lock your gates with someone else's car on your drive ??? 

[henage]

Fight 

[JohnM]

2 hours ago, Jacko45 said:

So what happens if you lock your gates with someone else's car on your drive ??? 

Dont know. I suppose it depends on which side of the gates the car is.

[tonyXIII]

I don't know if this is a rant, but it is related to smart meters.

I've recently seen loads of adverts on TV along the lines of: Fred had a smart meter installed and, with the energy he saved, he was able to power his mobility scooter for 1200 miles.

That has to be ######! Changing the device that measures your energy consumption cannot, of itself, reduce your energy consumption. As a trained scientist, I am confident in my logic. Can someone point out a flaw in my logic? Please? Because my blood pressure rises every time I see these lying adverts.

 

[Bedford Roughyed]

2 hours ago, tonyXIII said:

I don't know if this is a rant, but it is related to smart meters.

I've recently seen loads of adverts on TV along the lines of: Fred had a smart meter installed and, with the energy he saved, he was able to power his mobility scooter for 1200 miles.

That has to be ######! Changing the device that measures your energy consumption cannot, of itself, reduce your energy consumption. As a trained scientist, I am confident in my logic. Can someone point out a flaw in my logic? Please? Because my blood pressure rises every time I see these lying adverts.

You save energy by saying 'f*** me thats expensive' and turn something off...

[tonyXIII]

2 minutes ago, Bedford Roughyed said:

You save energy by saying 'f*** me thats expensive' and turn something off...

Exactly. Turn stuff off. You don't need a dumb meter to work that out.

 

[Bedford Roughyed]

2 minutes ago, tonyXIII said:

Exactly. Turn stuff off. You don't need a dumb meter to work that out.

Its a good advert though.  I like the kid and the grandparent.  

[Spidey]

22 hours ago, JohnM said:

It seems to me that they serve one purpose only, and that is from the energy suppliers side. No need for meter readers, no need for estimated bills. No benefit to consumer.

You can have a smart meter installed, then don’t have it “commissioned” that means the supplier doesn’t have any communication to it. Therefore they’d have to read the old fashioned way. 

[JohnM]

Im all in favour of smart meters for remote metering and data collection. 

Im not in favour of advertising them as reducing our energy bills.

[DavidM]

What heatwave ? What drought ?

[Bleep1673]

On 8/2/2018 at 8:42 PM, Bedford Roughyed said:

Its a good advert though.  I like the kid and the grandparent.  

They are ACTORS.

[ckn]

Car insurance companies. 

Went through a well known small furry rodent insurance comparison site. 

Try 1: Post Office quote was £50 more expensive but it had built in NCD, guaranteed courtesy car and all the other stuff included. Went to their site and it was treating all those things as “optional and here’s your real price”. Sod off...

Try 2: Churchill. Decent price but it simply would not accept my debit card for payment. Kept saying “invalid card”. I don’t want to waste my time calling them to get it and their call centre closed at 8  

Try 3: can’t remember who but the first thing it said was “we didn’t say but you have to have a black box fitted.”  Sod off. 

Try 4: Halifax. Did they design their site in 1995 and haven’t felt like updating it since?  About as slow as AOL dial-up. I gave up after half an hour. 

I’ll try again tomorrow....

[DavidM]

Actors on adverts will say , do , try and flog owt for plenty of coin . It’s a perfect world of trying to con you into believing anything . And these z list celebs on funeral, insurance etc adverts during the day ....

[ckn]

12 hours ago, ckn said:

Car insurance companies. 

Went through a well known small furry rodent insurance comparison site. 

Try 1: Post Office quote was £50 more expensive but it had built in NCD, guaranteed courtesy car and all the other stuff included. Went to their site and it was treating all those things as “optional and here’s your real price”. Sod off...

Try 2: Churchill. Decent price but it simply would not accept my debit card for payment. Kept saying “invalid card”. I don’t want to waste my time calling them to get it and their call centre closed at 8  

Try 3: can’t remember who but the first thing it said was “we didn’t say but you have to have a black box fitted.”  Sod off. 

Try 4: Halifax. Did they design their site in 1995 and haven’t felt like updating it since?  About as slow as AOL dial-up. I gave up after half an hour. 

I’ll try again tomorrow....

Gone with Churchill.  Found the problem with them, their system doesn't like my Co-op bank card.  The Co-op used to issue Electron cards against that card number range and then switched it to Visa back in 2012 (or so).  There were some problems around 2012-14 with some places not recognising (including many pay-at-pump for petrol) them as Visa but system updates got rid of them over the years.  Churchill seem to be the only provider I know that still have the ancient card ranges in their system.

The rather confused young lady on the phone sorted it out for me.

That's car insurance sorted for another year and another year of 2-for-1 cinema & food tickets

p.s. John Lewis car insurance was our previous supplier, I'm not impressed that the renewal letter said they were subbing the insurance to Axa.  Can't stand Axa, they'd rather be personally flogged all the way up to Board level than pay even the simplest of claims without putting the claimant through unnecessary pressure.

[ivans82]

Caught a news item last night concerning a Woman who ran a stable for young people with disabilities to ride horses , She owned the field opposite and had the gate chained and locked .Some "travellers" arrived cut the chain and lock and took the field over .They interviewed people who said they had heard loud music to 3am,witnessed fights , a dog had injured a goat in the next field,they had run up a bill over £100 in the pub and walked without paying ,and they showed the mess that was all around the field . The Woman contacted the local Council and they said they would help Her evict the "travellers" , but it would cost HER £20,000....What sort of country are we living in when things like this are allowed? If this was me and you they would hound us to death , but the "travelling community" it appears are above reproach .

[ckn]

Vodafone have forced an update to my phone where they set auto-join to Vodafone WiFi whenever I went into range of a hotspot. I wouldn’t mind but it forces full-page adverts every two pages or so of browsing. 

I don’t see it as Vodafone’s privilege to auto-enrol me onto what I consider insecure WiFi services. Especially when it’s my phone and I’m on a sim-only plan. 

Thankfully, Apple have finally added a button to stop auto-join on these things. For years, all you could do was hit “forget this network” just for the network provider to add it back again. 

[SSoutherner]

2 hours ago, ivans82 said:

Caught a news item last night concerning a Woman who ran a stable for young people with disabilities to ride horses , She owned the field opposite and had the gate chained and locked .Some "travellers" arrived cut the chain and lock and took the field over .They interviewed people who said they had heard loud music to 3am,witnessed fights , a dog had injured a goat in the next field,they had run up a bill over £100 in the pub and walked without paying ,and they showed the mess that was all around the field . The Woman contacted the local Council and they said they would help Her evict the "travellers" , but it would cost HER £20,000....What sort of country are we living in when things like this are allowed? If this was me and you they would hound us to death , but the "travelling community" it appears are above reproach .

they tried that around here pulling up in a field about to be used for the horse events at a country show (anti traveller earth berm had been removed that week for the purposes of the show), the local farmers turned up on mass in tractors and gave them 30 mins to move before they lifted the caravans out with the bale spike - plod were called (by the travellers) when they arrived and saw the 2 sides facing up the single copper said he would be back in 40 minutes and left. Travellers were gone 15 mins later and when the copper returned only the farmers were there (clearing the field). Travellers are basically cowards and will go for the easy victim

[ckn]

M&S.

M&S are giving me fewer reasons to shop with them every time I buy.  I like swapping my shirts once they wear out with like-for-like replacements from the very good M&S collection yet their desire to chase after the younger market who won't shop with them is just making me look elsewhere.

I have tried three times to buy the shirts I want in store but the store staff look like they couldn't care less.  The last time was at Westfield (Stratford) where all the Luxury shirts were jumbled up with classic fit in "tailored", "tailored" in slim and no clue on whether you're going to pick a classic collar or cutaway unless you want to spend ages doing the store staff's job of sorting them.  The idiotic colour scheme of the labels makes it hard to spot without taking each one out and looking at them compared to the old edge labels that allowed me a single glance to go "that's the classic fit yep, classic collar, yep, double cuff, yep, 17" collar, done"

I want a classic fit, classic collar shirt with a mix of double and single cuffs.  I'm not "tailored" or "slim" fit, I sodding well haven't been "slim" fit since my teenage years and haven't been "tailored" fit since the 1990s.

Even on their website, can I buy them in anything but white now in the plain colours?  No.  M&S seem to have gone chasing after the younger buyer with the cutaway collar without thinking that maybe the classic fit ones are better for those of us who don't want to look like estate agents.

All I want is to keep replacing my shirts with new ones in white, blue and pink.

  That's what the M&S of old used to do well, they just had solid and boring choices that suited me perfectly.

Even their shoes have gone from good, solid shoes to Clarkes knock-offs but with less reliability and "designer" branding on the bases of many.  Who the hell wants to advertise their rubbish shoes are M&S brand?

I can't even get replacement shirts from House of Fraser as their suppliers have seized their stock for home delivery orders.

Just give me somewhere solid and boring to buy the same stuff year after year and I'll be happy.

[tonyXIII]

37 minutes ago, ckn said:

M&S.

M&S are giving me fewer reasons to shop with them every time I buy.  I like swapping my shirts once they wear out with like-for-like replacements from the very good M&S collection yet their desire to chase after the younger market who won't shop with them is just making me look elsewhere.

 

 

I have tried three times to buy the shirts I want in store but the store staff look like they couldn't care less.  The last time was at Westfield (Stratford) where all the Luxury shirts were jumbled up with classic fit in "tailored", "tailored" in slim and no clue on whether you're going to pick a classic collar or cutaway unless you want to spend ages doing the store staff's job of sorting them.  The idiotic colour scheme of the labels makes it hard to spot without taking each one out and looking at them compared to the old edge labels that allowed me a single glance to go "that's the classic fit yep, classic collar, yep, double cuff, yep, 17" collar, done"

 

I want a classic fit, classic collar shirt with a mix of double and single cuffs.  I'm not "tailored" or "slim" fit, I sodding well haven't been "slim" fit since my teenage years and haven't been "tailored" fit since the 1990s.

Even on their website, can I buy them in anything but white now in the plain colours?  No.  M&S seem to have gone chasing after the younger buyer with the cutaway collar without thinking that maybe the classic fit ones are better for those of us who don't want to look like estate agents.

 

 

All I want is to keep replacing my shirts with new ones in white, blue and pink.

 

  That's what the M&S of old used to do well, they just had solid and boring choices that suited me perfectly.

 

Even their shoes have gone from good, solid shoes to Clarkes knock-offs but with less reliability and "designer" branding on the bases of many.  Who the hell wants to advertise their rubbish shoes are M&S brand?

I can't even get replacement shirts from House of Fraser as their suppliers have seized their stock for home delivery orders.

Just give me somewhere solid and boring to buy the same stuff year after year and I'll be happy.

There used to be many stores that would have suited you. Sadly, their clientele have all but died off. This means the likes of you have to suck up the price and go bespoke. The likes of me just grab whatever Lidl has. (Actually, Mrs tonyXIII grabs whatever Lidl has, I just wear it).

[Derwent]

2 hours ago, ckn said:

M&S.

M&S are giving me fewer reasons to shop with them every time I buy.  I like swapping my shirts once they wear out with like-for-like replacements from the very good M&S collection yet their desire to chase after the younger market who won't shop with them is just making me look elsewhere.

 

 

I have tried three times to buy the shirts I want in store but the store staff look like they couldn't care less.  The last time was at Westfield (Stratford) where all the Luxury shirts were jumbled up with classic fit in "tailored", "tailored" in slim and no clue on whether you're going to pick a classic collar or cutaway unless you want to spend ages doing the store staff's job of sorting them.  The idiotic colour scheme of the labels makes it hard to spot without taking each one out and looking at them compared to the old edge labels that allowed me a single glance to go "that's the classic fit yep, classic collar, yep, double cuff, yep, 17" collar, done"

 

I want a classic fit, classic collar shirt with a mix of double and single cuffs.  I'm not "tailored" or "slim" fit, I sodding well haven't been "slim" fit since my teenage years and haven't been "tailored" fit since the 1990s.

Even on their website, can I buy them in anything but white now in the plain colours?  No.  M&S seem to have gone chasing after the younger buyer with the cutaway collar without thinking that maybe the classic fit ones are better for those of us who don't want to look like estate agents.

 

 

All I want is to keep replacing my shirts with new ones in white, blue and pink.

 

  That's what the M&S of old used to do well, they just had solid and boring choices that suited me perfectly.

 

Even their shoes have gone from good, solid shoes to Clarkes knock-offs but with less reliability and "designer" branding on the bases of many.  Who the hell wants to advertise their rubbish shoes are M&S brand?

I can't even get replacement shirts from House of Fraser as their suppliers have seized their stock for home delivery orders.

Just give me somewhere solid and boring to buy the same stuff year after year and I'll be happy.

TM Lewin. Can’t beat their shirts. Got a great sale on at the moment too.

Edited August 16, 2018 by Derwent

[gazza77]

48 minutes ago, Derwent said:

TM Lewin. Can’t beat their shirts. Got a great sale on at the moment too.

Or Hawes and Curtis, or Charles Trywitt. Much of a muchness cost & style wise, just go with whichever fits and/or has best voucher code on any given day. 

[getdownmonkeyman]

48 minutes ago, Derwent said:

TM Lewin. Can’t beat their shirts. Got a great sale on at the moment too.

Their three for two deals are great. Throw Charles Tyrwhitt in their too, though I do prefer TM Lewin.

Couldn't agree more on M&S, can't remember the last work shirt I bought there. Also, their shoes are expensive for what they are.

[Futtocks]

The last smart shirts I bought from M&S had really uncomfortable collars. Thankfully, with the new job, I won't (unless I balls up spectacularly) need to don the interview get-up for a good long time.

For a less formal look, I've bought a few shirts and other tops from Sainsbury's, of all places. The TU range is Fair Trade, and everything I've had from them has been pretty well made and long lasting. On the downside, the selection is pretty small and it's really a case of taking a look once a month to see if there's anything new in stock that you like the look of. 

Edited August 16, 2018 by Futtocks