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.

Oh the worst - we moved house so cancelled our broadband. As the area we moved to doesn’t have that broadband they graciously allowed us to cancel🙄

but in order to cancel we had to go i to a shop with some printed out documents. To close an account that was set up and dealt with entirely online

yanbu op, list as long as my arm and all has to be done in pockets of time and left again.

Even the stuff that's meant to help eh vouchers and money off. I am grateful but it's such a faff getting codes, buying vouchers, inputting digits. Like you are being punished for daring to not pay full price.

I got divorced, moved house and changed my name five years ago. I have had countless conversations with my utility provider about why they keep emailing me on the old email address, and why links sent to my new email address tell me I have no active account with them.

Every time I finally get to speak to someone, they assure me the details have been updated. And yet here we are again, five years on.

In my previous house, the utility provider had the wrong postcode for the house. Again, I phoned and phoned and was assured it was changed, yet every communication from them had the wrong postcode on it. For eleven years.

Computerisation has made life too complicated!!!

Yeah when we moved house I stayed with the same energy company - but they said I couldn’t use my email address as that’s forever linked to the old house🙄

Yes I was just thinking this the other day. I needed to access some pension information and also wanted to check my payslip.
Everything is online and I couldn't remember my passwords. It took ages and I had to reset everything and in the end I couldn't even access my payslip so will have to sort that out next week when back at work. It's just a pain. I'm in my 40s and I struggle with it, God knows how I'll cope with all this as in another 20, 30 years that's if I'm still here.

I feel that you’re punished for wanting a discount too.
Why advertise it, then make it hard to do or actually achieve?

I' m glad I live in quite an old fashioned area where you know your local plumber, electrician and you know they'll turn up.

Our car parks are either free or accept coins or cards. I really don't understand the need for parking apps. Why can't you just use contact less. You don't need a store app to pay for shopping so why does parking have to be different.

My main moan is trying to sort something out when you've tried all the useless chatbots and FAQs. Trying to get to speak to a human is almost impossible.

Thr ring go apps and what not are just money making scams. Nothing else really. I only found out on a local Facebook page about not having the notifications on ad that is more money! It’s probably in the small print or whatever , but it’s all just a faff.

Sorry for quoting myself.
Just a quick update on the phone situation, the new mobile provider has indeed disabled my account (no idea why, I assume it is because they 'tried' to deliver it once whilst I was at home but decided I wasn't there!)
The 40 minutes I spent on the phone yesterday to be told my account was fine/still active were a complete waste of time as clearly she was wrong and the email was correct 🤷‍♀️
I am now entirely back to square one.
On the plus side, when I tried to call my current provider to let them know I was leaving I was on hold for 50 minutes with no answer so I never managed to cancel my contract (was another thing on the list to sort).
Every cloud has a silver lining I suppose but I just wish we could go back to dealing with things by speaking to actual people and not having to jump through endless hoops to do so.
If a time machine ever shows up in my living room I am going straight back and making sure the Internet never, ever happens.
Then I am fucking off to my log cabin!

Don't get me started on printers! Frequently out takes me an hour to print one page because my hp printer won't connect to the WiFi but doesn't tell me that's the problem!

When we redid the house I didn’t put in heating or a doorbell etc that relies on wifi because it would drive me nuts!! We had an internet outage for about 4 hours the other day and the neighbours were complaining they couldn’t figure out how to get the heating on. And of course no TV. Made me realise how dependent on wifi a lot of homes are!!

I know that people don’t like them much because of Jeff Bezos , but I find Amazon to be very good and anything delivered or picked up by Royal mail has gone smoothly too. We have some great posties.
Anything phone based is hard though and customer service doesn’t exist in most places anymore. All gone to the walls.

Dh’s smart phone went a bit strange the other day. It’s ok now , but the stress it caused by not working was off the scale!
If they stop working , you are screwed. I gave up my land line due to costs mostly , but I do miss my old phone lines.

This is my kind of to thread, thanks OP. Yea, I agree, life had suddenly got unimaginably harder. Just basic stuff like looking for a window cleaner, plumber, electrician and so on. Cashless car parks ( omg I hate them!).

We need some trees maintaining and after easily inviting 3 rogue “ tradesmen” round to quote extortionate prices for no doubt shoddy workmanship, I finally found a genuine knowledgeable company, but it all takes time.

I have a daily list to work through. Then a list of “ indoor, outdoor, things to buy/ replace and other”. Some of these jobs have been on my list for months!

Then there’s keeping up to speed with my two young adult kids lives (one at uni) and also trying to see my parents
( 150 miles away ) when I can.

DP has Parkinson’s and I have cancer, so we are chasing appointments, scan results, digesting generally shit news and dealing with chemo, whilst downloading yet another fucking car park app!

Arghhhh.. I want to be 10 again! I hate modern life and illness.

It's the friction that makes it all feel so hard. You think you have one thing to do, but the process is now designed to have so many additional steps, that you're not psychologically ready for. And you have to figure it out whereas before a person who worked there would do all the figuring out for you, you did just have one step - get in touch with the person who would help you. The parking app I use was originally set up on my husband's account so it recognises me and my details but if it runs out of money he has to top it up. I've tried setting up my own account but it recognises me and won't let me. But I can't access the payment side of the account. I know the support process will be so horrific that I just keep putting up with the inconvenience.

It's hard when you have a complicated query and you can't get past an automated voice. I just want to speak to a person.

But when you do speak to someone they have a decision tree and if you don’t fit on it then ‘computer says no’

I was very impressed with Bosch when I called them a few months ago about my new washing machine.

Car dealerships in my experience truly awful also. One of the lights on my car dashboard was permanently on after a service and they didn’t know what it was. They said I needed to bring it in for a diagnostic for £150! I even sent the lead mechanic there a photo but was told they didn’t know insisting I’d need to bring it. I’d just paid £300 for combined MOT and service so no way could I afford to do that.

So I dug out the manual and it was simply that the tyre pressure warning light one and would need resetting. So I bought a tyre pump and with the manual sorted it out.

I find it v hard to believe that the dealership didn’t know what it was 🙄

I went outside in the torrential rain at 1am the other night cos I heard our bin falling over and rolling down the steep slope.

I decided that if I left it til the morning it might disappear and I couldn't face the faff of trying to get a new one. I was drenched but I got the bin back.

Barely a week goes by when I don't have to fix something caused by a combination of a computer system and a poorly-trained, demotivated operator failing to use it properly. The default is "you lose" unless you chase it up.

In the last month:

• A false alarm alert from my bank saying that a new payee has been registered to an account that has quite a lot of money in it.
• A flight booking where the confirmation email didn't include the luggage options that I'd bought. I can see the correct options in the app.
• A speeding ticket for a car that wasn't mine (ANPR glitch).
• My medical insurance telling me that they would, then wouldn't, then would pay for a procedure.

Car dealerships are a rip off! You’re not covered if you take it somewhere else , you have to pay loads and mostly it’s just all about the money.

I imagine the only thing you can do is delete your husband's account and then set up your own.

Yes, Bosche were really good. I do have an extended warranty with them though, but answering the phone straight away was just fantastic. It’s sad that something so simple can make you happy , especially as most places are just rubbish at customer service.