Latest Moan From You and Me 2024

Same with electricity, why can't we just pay one tariff, I'm completely baffled about the so called 'deals', tying myself up for a couple of years with something that looks a good deal, only to wonder 'Why did I do that!'

It's smoke and mirrors, slights of hands to baffle us into paying extra.

 

Competion doesn't really exist, although they like to tell us it does.
Price fixing is going on all the time in every thing we buy.
And the more expensive things are the bigger the tax rake off.
So no chance any government is ever going to change things.

 

Took a few photos in the garden and put the camera down while I move some stuff arouind, managed to knock the camera off of where I had put it.
Luckily it fell into the bird bath, which broke its fall, unluckily it was full of water, camera now acting strange.
I've put it in the airing cupboard in the hope it dries out the inner workings.

 

Yikes, @pete, that's a PITA.

 

Place the camera in a box of uncooked dry rice, then put the complete package in the airing cupboard for two days

 

And then you should have a nice rice dish to go with your curry!!

 

OH has been on tenterhooks the last 2 days, waiting for a parcel to be delivered and tracking it as it came near, got lost in the driver's GPS and ended up at a local SM which takes parcels. There's me thinking it was a delivery for Belgian and French Mothers' Days which fall soon.

Not a bit of it.

He's treated himself to a new summer golf bag for Fathers' Day!

 

Much more likely to be the infamous 'loyalty penalty'.

If you used them two years in a row and accepted the price hike after the first year, then you're in their database as a lucrative customer.

Do a search on a comparison site. Get the cheapest price. Then phone LV. Tell them you don't want to renew. It's a fairly safe bet that in the conversation that follows, they'll ask you what you've been quoted elsewhere, then suddenly, they'll magically find that they can match the cheapest price you were quoted.

 

I did that one year @Clueless 1 v2 when I found I couldn't cancel by email - I would never phone unless I really had to do it.
That's how the conversation went - the woman wouldn't take no for an answer, and was trying to lower their renewal quote, and I eventually had to say "what bit of 'I'm cancelling' do you not understand? " She got the right hump.

 

Completely agree, but to be fair, we did get the price down from what was their initial quote.

I don't want to play 'their' crooked game anymore, a lot of it is sharp practice.

The media is hardly helping, for months now they've been droning on about how car insurance is going up. Instead of being complicit perhaps they could do a bit of investigative work to expose such sharp practices.

We don't live in a fair and ideal world though, meanwhile we plod on and cough up. I can only imagine the higher premiums will result with more uninsured cars on the road, and for that we've got to pay more for our insurance. It's a merry-go-round and it would be lovely to step off.

 

I'm so glad I don't have a car ...

 

You can't get away with out insurance for long these days, not if you want to go anywhere.

 

The thing is, some people can get away with stuff. Take speeding. Apparently it is not possible to curtail nighttime racing in very expensive cars through areas of London. Yet you or I go 25 mph in a 20 zone, and, lo, clamping down can be managed just fine.

 

I like my household insurers, and on several renewals, the price was quoted high. Rather than go through the fuss of changing, I phoned them and explained that I understood why the cost was increasing (I had to deal with insurers or brokers, much of my working life). I was prepared to be charged more, but not higher than x or y. Given my good claims record, I felt that I could get away with it.
And I did. But occasionally, I accepted an increase, because they do keep note (as I found) of customers who try this tactic often.
After two larger claims in one year recently, I just had to swallow the increase. Even alternative insurers were no better. Insurers do share such information.