Page 3 | Expensive mistakes

Original poster

Roominmyhouse · 27/11/2021 12:57

@justtheonedc

Rob Beckett calls these things idiot tax. Every year you're allowed £1000 idiot tax. If that makes you feel better? I ordered made to measure blinds - 1 metre too short!

Love the idiot tax!

So yesterday I got lucky and fixed my mistake. I managed to sell the wrong tickets and to buy the right ones. It cost me £16 more but that was it! I was bloody delighted.

OP posts:

peaceanddove · 27/11/2021 13:16

Travelling to Cornwall I booked us into a hotel I thought was on the outskirts of Bath. It wasn't. It was on the outskirts of Bristol. Room non refundable.

Once in Cornwal, discovered that the boutiquey shepherds hut I thought I'd booked costing £1500+ was in fact a shed in someone's garden and there were issues with its septic tank. Left early.

Went down to visit DD at university booked hotel room for the wrong Friday. Non refundable.

This has all been in the last 6 months. I used to be super efficient. We've just booked flights to the Caribbean for next Easter, DH refused point blank to let me book them. To be honest, it was a relief

blueskiesrule · 27/11/2021 13:28

Another blinds one, although my measurements and ordering were impeccable. The blinds duly arrived (velux so not cheap). I was excited to get them up before dh got home as a surprise in new house. Couldn’t get the tape off the box so used a sharp knife to cut it. On opening one of the blinds had a precise row of multiple cuts Zorro style all the way down it - we couldn’t afford to replace so lived with them for 5 years - during which I was banned from opening any further parcels of any kind….tbh it made quite a nice filigree pattern but not quite what we had planned!

NearlyThereMum · 27/11/2021 13:53

@Roominmyhouse

I’ve just released I’ve booked the wrong tickets for an event and a non-refundable hotel so I’m now over £100 down and gutted. Going to try and sell the tickets but it’s unlikely. 😞😞😞

Make me feel better and tell me your stories of expensive mistakes so I feel less of a tit! I could have sworn there was a thread like this before but couldn’t find it by searching.

I reversed my first car into the lamp Post in our garden 🙈 had to get the door replaced and re sprayed, it was a really old car and the paint work. cost more than the whole car

Fuuuuuckit · 27/11/2021 14:04

@Dilbertian

Turned up for the wrong flight home. Right time, right airline, right terminal, wrong gate.

I had been travelling with my 10yo dd and our return flights had cost less than £200 in total. It cost us nearly £600 to get back home.

My dsis did similar coming home from Canada - right time, right airline, right terminal, flight departed 24h earlier.

They'd got real bargain advance tickets, new tickets cost £2k

SpangoDweller · 27/11/2021 14:06

Putting a long weekend city break on a credit card because I really wanted to go, and swearing I’d pay it off quickly. I didn’t, and it ended up costing the same as a few weeks in the Caribbean.

NoOtherShadeOfBlue · 27/11/2021 14:10

So many! Scraping my car, dropping a cup of coffee on a brand new cream carpet, booking hotels for the wrong date, making a mistake on my tax return and getting fined plus I'm an optimistic yo-yo dieter so forever losing weight, buying new clothes and donating the bigger sizes to charity and then gaining it all back and having to buy more. I never learn and I definitely exceed the £1000 idiot allowance every year.

PipeOfPringles · 27/11/2021 14:24

@blueskiesrule

Another blinds one, although my measurements and ordering were impeccable. The blinds duly arrived (velux so not cheap). I was excited to get them up before dh got home as a surprise in new house. Couldn’t get the tape off the box so used a sharp knife to cut it. On opening one of the blinds had a precise row of multiple cuts Zorro style all the way down it - we couldn’t afford to replace so lived with them for 5 years - during which I was banned from opening any further parcels of any kind….tbh it made quite a nice filigree pattern but not quite what we had planned!

I swear that is something I would do. I cut a hole in a new bikini cutting the price tag off.

Figmentofimagination · 27/11/2021 15:40

Went on holiday to Disney World, hadn't been for 7 years. On our first day there I was too enthusiastic in my excitement and knocked my sisters expensive prescription sunglasses off her face. She had to wear sunglasses with scratched lenses for the rest of the holiday. 🙈

Appiandterri · 27/11/2021 16:43

We had lived with bare concrete floor in the kitchen for several months following a DH incident that involved the decent flooring having to be ripped up. We finally settled on, and saved for, the new flooring and had it laid. DH needed to touch up the pain at the top of the door frame and promptly ripped the new flooring with the bottom of the ladder as he moved it into position.
He also, when fitting the new kitchen worktop, cut it incorrectly so we had to buy a whole new piece.
I’m putting off hemming the expensive curtains for the patio door as I know I will mess it up and ruin them as I am equally calamitous.

RemorselessNorsemen · 27/11/2021 16:51

Last Christmas I was cooking dinner when MIL called in. DH asked if she wanted to stay and eat and she was chatting to me as I cooked. When I'd done I flicked the switch off for the hob on the wall as it beeps otherwise if you put a tea towel on it.

By 10pm we realise we have no heating or hot water. Boiler is ancient and we'd planned to replace anyway, but had hoped to wait until the summer. Changed fuses etc, nothing worked. New boiler ordered.

Two days later boiler men arrive and as I'm making a drink one of them mentions the 'batshit electrics in this kitchen', he says he cant understand why the isolation power switch for the boiler is 'over there' and points............Right next to the hob power switch.

To this day I have a sneaking feeling I was so distracted by MIL I flicked the wrong switch and the result was a £2k boiler.
I've never told DH.