To bloody hate the admin of life

[cheeseomelette]

Why is nothing simple?

have been trying to get the boiler either fixed or replaced, some medical issues looked at, and a load of other house jobs sorted while managing a demanding full time job where I’m out of the house every day. I can do basic things but plumbing, cars and electrical things are just not in my skill set.

the hassle is unreal. Logging on to things at certain times with certain pass codes, resetting endless passwords and waiting for call backs or arranging visits. I end up buying new things because I haven’t got the time or energy to chase someone down to have my existing things fixed or serviced and that’s expensive and not great for the planet.

i’m having this rant waking up in a cold house because the boiler is playing up,again and the plumber I rushed home from work to let in yesterday didn’t turn up.

I’ve booked a private medical appointment this morning because there is no contacting my GP. They turn the booking system off online and don’t answer the phones.

It’s got to the point where I just feel sick when something goes wrong in the house because I know what a load of stress it’s going to be. I don’t know what the solution is here - I’m even contemplating downsizing to an apartment with a service contract.

He's 79 and never uses one word where 15 will do. When he writes to anybody I go through his text and remove about two thirds of the unnecessary verbiage. Also his writing is very small and not very legible. Any sensible civil servant receiving one of his hand-written missives would admit defeat pretty quickly...

@grumpygrape I am so sorry! Hope you get sorted quickly and painlessly

Finally had the text at 9.00pm last night to say he will be here between 8.00am and 1.00pm today. Fingers crossed.

Back to update that I got a new boiler. Not off the original plumber, a different one. Cost thousands, as these things do.

Installed 2 days ago necessitating being house bound for 2 days and rearranging a tonne of work things, a load of mess and hassle and now the thing seems to have a fault already so I’m going to have to get them back. Fml. I really could cry.

@cheeseomelette sometimes boilers have a little lever underneath you need to pull down to equalise the pressure, could it be something like that? Is there any error message?

Ah thank you - I sorted the pressure out using the levers (and hope that now sticks) but this one is a bang when I switch the heating off which looks as though it might be a valve put in incorrectly causing something called water hammer..!
(all knowledge acquired via google) 😬

What a pita having to fiddle and Google with a newly installed item.
You have my sympathies.

I've found in most cases that if you keep repeatedly pressing # it eventually gets you through to a human!

Finally got a cleaner in (first one in 3 years....). I asked her to clean the oven amongst other things. She also said just show me what to do. Was fantastic overall (helped changed bedsheets, great cleaner.) But went back to oven when she left and she only did the door? Because I opened the oven door and said, look at this? but didn't do the rest?

Hired a local handyman first time. I put x's on the back of the door where hooks were to go. He chose completely different places than the x's. He moved a book shelf and just kept making it protude over the archway. It's a very narrow book case (60cm width) and wall is about 120 cm widht so it's not like there wasn't space to move it more to the left... See also not fitting wardrobe rail straight. back to square 1 again to find a local handman. In south west london!

Was doing a bit of work in the utility room only (hard to find someone to come into to do anythign really. found 2 electricians. 1st electrian could do sockets by the time of the delivery of the dryer however when he visited - he turned off one of the switches on the fuse box that wasn't labelled saying "it's not connected to anything". when he left, realised he turned the oven off (yes, he didn't bother checking the house to see if any power had been switched off.) We have issues with the upstairs bathroom light. he started fiddling with it, broke the light, and left it dangling. I said "are you going to leave it dangling" so he disconnected it, and said be careful thse are live wires. These were just on the visit. so now we have a gaping hole in the upstairs bathroom ceiling we'll have to pay to get fixed.

Lived in the house 10 years so a bit of a long laundry list of electician jobs. Now 2nd electrician visit. We have to replce the fuse box amongst other jobs. He only quoted that and the dryer sockets. We keep writing back - can you do the other jobs? But won't quote.

Why is it so hard to find someone to help with anything! Both husband and I work full time, neither of us can do all of these things...

At least now I have a dryer - sorry environment.

See also - why is it so impossible to get a mortgage interest statement. Surely this can be automatically issed 1st of May. it is always chasing . chasing. chasing. chasing . and not receiving. not receiving . not receiving.

See also - i need to get a full birth certicate for someone in northern ireland. I am holding the short one. send in a request, they can't find the name. send an alt name with the short birth certificate. still can't find it. if anyone knows something I'm not trying on the norther ireland birth certificate please let me know.

I find that pressing the star button repeatedly gets you through, they assume that you don't know what you're doing.

I had a problem placing an order on the Boots.com website yesterday, it never works very well, so I called and the customer service person obviously sussed I'm getting on a bit and was quite infuriatingly patient. She was doing everything except saying "Bless..." but at least I did manage to place my order.

@cheeseomelette oh what a pain :(

He did send texts saying it would be afternoon and finally came at 4pm saying they are always 'all day' appointments. 🙄
Fixed the valve but I think we now also have Water Hammer. At least I know what to tell the operator when I phone for another appointment, thanks to this thread!

I feel like more people should know about password managers as there is a running theme in this thread about people forgetting passwords and going round in a reset loop.

I use Bitwarden and all I need to remember is 1 password to open up the vault which mine has over 300 login details for websites that I have accounts or logins for. I don't know any of the passwords for these and the manager will auto fill and generate a password each time I login to a new website. Half the time I go to a website and forget that I've already created an account many years ago but the manager will just recognise you've got a login. It auto syncs with my laptop/phone/tablet too.

I purchased an extremely long phone cable and now have my printed hard wired phone line cabled into the back of the network hub for this reason!

I had to deal with something for an elderly relative for whom I have POA this week. It took me back to dealing with my mum’s estate. A large insurance company: Trying to find the right team to talk to involved numerous IVR’s, being cut-off twice, being given 2 different phone numbers to call neither of which were accessible to external callers, speaking to 4 different people, finally managed to get to the right team. Total elapsed time to find out where to send some documents took about an hour.

Young people have no idea how easy it used to be. You didn't book everything in advance, dick about with an app, exchange endless texts about everything, try to find people on maps with low signal. You just showed up at the appointed time, so did your mates, and bought tickets/parking/food after standing in a humungous queue in the rain 😆

I know 😔 Makes me quite sad really.

And then I bet you had to submit the documents online? When I dealt with my mum's estate I had to do an id check on line. Stupid system wouldn't scan/upload the documents. Loads of faffing and it still wouldn't work so I offered to pop in with the documents as it was only round the corner. Oh no, it had to be done online. After consulting IT support it finally worked, but what a bloody waste of time......

I think part of the pain of all this is just not being able to do anything in a single call or appointment and not having the time to keep redoing the same task hoping for a different outcome. It’s so frustrating . 4 days to sort the boiler and I really hope it is now sorted.

Made a follow up bupa appointment with the info they wanted. The chap I spoke to had no idea how to help me despite me booking for a specific reason. I’ve now made another one for tomorrow and am crossing fingers. What a total waste of time.

treated myself to an expensive jumper from Vinted to cheer myself up and dpd appear to have lost the parcel. It’s ok though because I have a 48 hour window to make a claim which lands on 25 and 26 December. Ffs

I’m not normally this moany 😬