A bit like the Shark Vacuum Thread but life in general.

[chipsticksmammy]

I seem to spend my life these days chasing things with companies or wondering what the fuck now. It’s like everything you do/touch/buy falls apart or ends up causing endless problems.

Am I being too sensitive and therefore unreasonable? Is this normal? I’m currently on HRT and I don’t know if things have shifted with me.

Is this a reasonable amount of challenge or have things changed for the worst? Or maybe it’s just bad luck?

My examples:
I’ve been fighting since April with Fenwicks and Whistles for a refund on a dress. Worn once, fell apart on the night out.
Etsy order from UK seller turns out to be coming from China. Month overdue, no sign of a refund. Messages ignored.
Handbag I bought was posted weeks later and will cost me money to return.
I am in an endless spiral with my utility billing. They just keep increasing the DD but my spend remains unchanged.
No local pharmacy has my HRT, I run out on Monday…
Washing machine threw a fit, stopped working two weeks after JL installed it. Getting them to have someone look at it has been a total grind. The big washing machines at the petrol station are cool though.
BUPA claim was billed wrongly by the hospital in July. Nobody at the hospital seems to know how to fix it with BUPA. Nobody replies to emails or answers the phones. So it’s showing as an overdue bill with me. At this rate the poor lad at BUPA will be on our Christmas card list. He phones me more than my husband.

I could write these out all day. I seem to have a permanent list that never really gets shorter.

Is this just life now? Do we all have a list like this? I don’t lead an exciting life, I do have kids who take up most of my time and I would just like something/anything to work and stay working 🤣

FYI my shark hoover is bloody rubbish.

(This is lighthearted, I know there is so much going on in the fairly horrible world at the moment. I just need a whinge about the list of little stuff as I block out the big stuff of care homes and elderly parents)

YABU - Welcome to Middle Age
YANBU - Nope, we’re all going slowly down the drain too.

I like to get in to work a little early and blast my way through stuff like this. I find it quite satisfying

Same. Pre 8am with a cuppa. But it’s never just a call or an email. Every aspect seems to be a delay or a deflection. Chatbots, emails, no phone numbers.
It took two months for Fenwicks to tell me to speak to Whistles directly. Then they wouldn’t deal with me as I had bought in store and didn’t have an order number. I still have no outcome from something I started in March.

I have a list like this too. I hate it because they aren’t ’tick off’ items that get done in one go. They are endless back and forths. Customer service everywhere is non existent. I also blame the modern excess of choice thing. Late stage capitalism is not a happy place. Technology and internet has made things much more complicated (esp cybersecurity!!!). I can’t see it getting better. AI I think will make things a lot worse in the short term as we all fail to fail to realise that the most convenient option leads to a lot of complexity later down the line.

Very odd.

I have found department stores and chains pretty much bend over backwards to resolve in my favour just to close the matter swiftly and not incur time and admin waste

I think this is very true. The days of any meaningful human interaction are long gone.
When ‘computer says no’ kicks in, even human interference can’t resolve things.

OMG, thank you so much for this. I seem to be firefighting stupid things on so many fronts now that I am exhausted. All things that should take minutes take hours and so much stress! While I would not wish it on anyone, am glad I’m not alone!

You presumably have the receipt for the dress

the only time I have had an issue is when I didn’t have the receipt

It’s super odd. It’s not even difficult.

Fault developed, here’s the receipt, have your money back thank you.

I suspect it’s a fault of dealing with people on both sides who aren’t that well trained or new. Which again plays into, no investment in customer services just corner cutting.

Receipt and screen shot of card transaction.

Have you lost a lot of weight?

my niece is a shop assistant in a clothing shop and she said that amount of people trying to return pre weight loss injection purchases is unreal!

I’ve lost two stone in the past year, but it’s not related.

However the seam has gone and I was fully arse out on first wear. Not caused by the size of my arse but the seam had been really poorly stitched 😂

YABU to think this is a modern phenomenon. The Flanders and Swann song The Gas Man Cometh is about exactly this. Just without chatbots.

I find tweeting grievances to retailers or using insta gets their attention. Why are Fenwicks telling you to contact Whistles? Your contract is with Fenwicks, surely? Unless it was an instore concession?
I’ve had this with Argos telling me to liaise with the brand directly, but that was for electricals they wanted to repair rather than refund. You could argue a dress wasn’t fit for purpose for a reasonable length of time (Martin Lewis is your friend for the correct legal phrasing here, not me!).

👏🏻👏🏻👏🏻👏🏻👏🏻
That song is a banger and sums it up nicely, but as you say with chatbots!

In time since I started this thread, I have gone to try to sort my HRT in the big branch of Boots.

We’ve spotted something missing on the repeat.

Back to the GP I go…. But I can’t call them or walk in, oh no prescription queries are done online.

SIGH.

I have the nhs app

it’s AMAZING!!!

I request all my repeats on that, and it’s authorised same day

I’m in Scotland. There is a website for the surgery.
I had to change my password to get access and I got an error when I submitted my request.
It’s me, Hi. I’m the problem, it’s me.

When we needed John Lewis to fix our washing machine they said a 4 week wait for an engineer was "normal"
This when I had 3 kids one of which was only 6 months old!

I have a similar issue with attempting to sort loads of admin things out for my Mum following my Dad's death. Mum has problems with her hearing and vision so Dad organised everything and had almost all the household bills etc in his sole name. Obviously I understand that businesses need to make sure my request to change things are legitimate and I expect to be asked for a copy of the death certificate etc but some places seem to make it incomprehensibly difficult to deal with what must surely be a fairly common situation (ie death of a customer).

I think there should be a list of companies who deal with these things sensitively and quickly, and those who make it as difficult as possible. The best I've dealt with have been Octopus energy and Virgin money. Most difficult have been

• 02 (had to make 3 different calls to get through to someone who could deal with the idea that no, I did not know the passcode and no, I they could not speak to the account holder)
• Sky TV/phone/broadband- still getting nowhere. There was a fault on the landline (important for an elderly person who struggles with mobiles) that was not fixed for months. They promised a refund of the landline charges that has still not happened. Also realised that because parents are out of contract they have been charged over 3 x the advertised price for what they receive. Every time I call I need to put Mum on the phone to go through security authorise them to speak to me. They will do this each time but will not put a note on the file to allow them to speak to me every time which means I can only deal with this when I visit mum (2 hours away). Every time we are on hold for ages then told someone in another department needs to look at it and get back to me. No one ever calls back and I never speak to the same person twice. Each time they send a letter to say they tried to call back but no one answered so they assume the 'query' is now dealt with. Each time I call they seem surprised that Mum is not keen to sign up to a new 24 month contract.

Yep. I actually remark whenever an interaction with a company goes as planned. It is DEFINITELY getting worse. I use my work lunch breaks to deal with all the admin.

I try not to buy anything from JL now.

Their customer service is awful.

Until the HRT is removed from the app because you need an HRT review with the nurse and no one tells you. You have the HRT review and they don’t add the prescription back to the app. You get hold of the surgery in desperation and they add it back but change your preferred pharmacy to the crap one with a queue out the door and no stock of anything. The pharmacy don’t tell you they’ve only fulfilled part of your HRT repeat and you nearly lose your mind in the pharmacy when you still have no patches after all of the above.

Repeat the above for all life admin.

OP is not unreasonable.

Oh dear. Shit surgery. Not something I have encountered in 6x years on hrt thank goodness!

I’m so sorry for your loss. It’s lovely that you can help your mum and it will be very appreciated. Losing your dad must be very scary for her and being treated like rubbish (as that’s what it is) by companies they have probably used for years is just not good enough when someone passes.

When a loved one passes away, companies should make it seamless. When I worked in banking in the 90s, we used pink paper forms to catch just an account name and contact name and number. We took minimum details to make it as easy as possible and it was personally dealt with by a team leader or manager. Yes, all checks were made but the form had to be fully completed and signed for so we didn’t make a single mistake.

It recently took 4 hours of a 5 hour train journey on WhatsApp chat, after two weeks of previously trying, to cancel my Sky account. The bill increases just got stupid in the end. I was with them for 20+ years and I am never going back.

I feel your pain.

My HRT was not on the GP website. I have requested the old one, with a massive note in comments about what I need and what dosage.

I don’t have faith.

I expect to have to go see the GP to change the mistake on the prescription.