So trivial, yet it really ticks you off.

[GHT]

We have an under work surface freezer, it's just two years old. It cost, £200 including tax. I managed to break the top drawer, how much a replacement? This is a simple plastic drawer. Cost of freezer £200, cost of single plastic draw, £62. We bought the freezer from a local shop, they were the first point of call for the replacement draw. £62. Online there's a specialist spares website. Genuine part, single plastic draw, £62. Why am I getting the message that there's a whiff of planned obsolescence here? Here's the link, the first entry is the item we need.
https://www.buyspares.co.uk/search.pl?query=hz54we

 

[LizzieMaine]

We had a battery go out this week in one of the UPS units at work, and I discovered that you can't get a separate battery for it anymore. Got to replace the whole device. And people say we're living in an age of technological progress.

 

[Touchofevil]

The FedEx kid who has been delivering in our neighborhood as of late blasting his cursing-filled rap music. Instead of putting the to be delivered package on the porch (as UPS, the USPS, and regular FedEx deliverers do), he leaves it on the walkway leading up to the house for all to see. It is especially annoying when he does when it is raining. Fortunately, I have been home as of lately so that I can meet him at the doorway thus encouraging him to walk those few extra steps.

 

[3fingers]

Our street ends just past our house, hence there is only one way in and out. Our FedEx driver can not understand that our obviously unused front door is not the best place to leave packages. UPS, DHL and all of the others observe our long asphalt driveway with the obvious normal entryway and leave the packages either there or in poor weather, inside the adjacent garage door. We currently have a bit over a foot of snow on the ground. I came home yesterday and noticed a box outside the uncleared front door area.
Our FedEx clown trudged through the 50 feet of snow after passing by the open drive and patio leading to the back door. Some things can't be fixed.

 

[GHT]

The FedEx kid who has been delivering in our neighborhood as of late blasting his cursing-filled rap music. Instead of putting the to be delivered package on the porch (as UPS, the USPS, and regular FedEx deliverers do), he leaves it on the walkway leading up to the house for all to see. It is especially annoying when he does when it is raining.

We currently have a bit over a foot of snow on the ground. I came home yesterday and noticed a box outside the uncleared front door area.
Our FedEx clown trudged through the 50 feet of snow after passing by the open drive and patio leading to the back door. Some things can't be fixed.

Count your blessings guys:

 

[LizzieMaine]

What really stinks is when you need to get a check for one of your jobs before you can send in your car payment and it's two days late and the mailman never showed up at all. Or it ended up in your neighbor's box and they thought it was junk mail and threw it away.

 

[Bruce Wayne]

The other day I saw the most monstrous truck I've ever seen. It must've been jacked up at least 3 or 4 feet, and the tires looked like something off of construction equipment. It was a Ford, but looked like no Ford I've ever seen. The front end looked like the face of a semi truck. As it belched black smoke, I figured that if the Frankenstein monster were ever a vehicle, this would surely be it. The monstrosity of this thing was punctuated by the fact that it was being followed by a hybrid Prius.

Those trucks are called brodozers & the drivers are trying to compensate for their lack of manhood, if you catch my drift.

 

[Touchofevil]

What really stinks is when you need to get a check for one of your jobs before you can send in your car payment and it's two days late and the mailman never showed up at all. Or it ended up in your neighbor's box and they thought it was junk mail and threw it away.

We are fortunate to have a mailman who is a great guy and top notch at his job. He gave us his phone number early on just in case. He had a package that needed a signature, but no one was home. He left a note stating for us to give him a call and if he was out and about, he would bring it on by. Our backup mail person is a former student of mine who is intelligent and a sweet kid.

 

[Touchofevil]

Count your blessings guys:

Yes, we are lucky. Our normal FedEx guy however is quite competent in his job.

 

[V.C. Brunswick]

What really stinks is when you need to get a check for one of your jobs before you can send in your car payment and it's two days late and the mailman never showed up at all. Or it ended up in your neighbor's box and they thought it was junk mail and threw it away.

Getting a past due notice even though you had paid the bill because the check has been sitting in the mail room or on someone's desk for a week!

 

[LizzieMaine]

Getting a smarmy threat from the hospital in the mail over a bill you've been paying off piecemeal for three years with no end in sight. When the revolution comes, hospital collections staff will be the first ones lined up against the wall.

 

[tonyb]

Getting a smarmy threat from the hospital in the mail over a bill you've been paying off piecemeal for three years with no end in sight. When the revolution comes, hospital collections staff will be the first ones lined up against the wall.

On checking in for a day procedure at a local hospital one day last summer it was strongly suggested if not quite demanded that I pay the estimated portion of the charges not covered by insurance. So I wrote them a check for an amount a bit north of two grand.

Turned out that their “estimate” was off by about 500 bucks, in their favor. Took months to resolve the ”discrepancy.” It required my getting every bit as forceful as they were the morning of the procedure.

I learned my lesson. Sorry but no, Mr. or Ms. Healthcare Facility Billing Department. I’ll pay my piece of the action AFTER all the back and forth between you and the insurance company comes to a resolution.

 

[GHT]

Getting a smarmy threat from the hospital in the mail over a bill you've been paying off piecemeal for three years with no end in sight. When the revolution comes, hospital collections staff will be the first ones lined up against the wall.

When my wife's dentist retired, she couldn't take to his replacement. She gave notice and went to a different practice. She did it all formally, in writing, hand delivered to the practice. Hasn't stopped them sending out her next appointment. Missed appointments are charged at £50. She went along, with a copy of her letter, they told her it was a computer error and to ignore it. £50 fine arrived in the post. It took threats of legal action and of reporting their incompetence to the local newspaper before she received a written commitment that no action would be taken. What about an apology? She's still waiting, but not holding her breath.

 

[Fading Fast]

Getting a smarmy threat from the hospital in the mail over a bill you've been paying off piecemeal for three years with no end in sight. When the revolution comes, hospital collections staff will be the first ones lined up against the wall.

One thing we've found with hospital bills is they are continuously negotiable. I'm sure you've already battled to get the total down, but you can go back and try again months later and, sometimes, it works. Also, "working up the chain" can help as, sometimes, someone higher up can make a decision to cut a bill that the person under them can't.

It's all fake - the total, the negotiated amount, the insurance amount, the you-pay amount - all of them are just numbers on pieces of paper, so to speak. They aren't real representations of anything - so fight on and you might get it cut down again. Also, and of course this depends on you having the money to do so (which can be hard as these bills can be big), but if you offer to pay it off in one shot, they will sometimes discount it further (we had 25% lopped off in one shot doing that on one of the big bills).

With three elderly parents, my girlfriend and I have spent plenty of time "negotiating" insurance and hospital bills in three states - it's all a game in which persistence pays off.

 

[tonyb]

Early in 2014 I had a minor surgery for which I was billed something like four grand, after insurance. The hospital farms out billing to some outfit in a right-to-grovel state down South. The belle with whom I was discussing my obligation offered to knock off a grand if I made payment in full by some quickly approaching date. I did exactly that.

I figured they get stiffed often enough that they'd rather have 75 percent of the dough now than devote hours and hours of personnel time chasing down accounts that in the end won't yield even that amount.

It all points to a much larger problem, of course. When I see how much the providers discount their services to the insurance companies it leaves little doubt what a fiction it all is. Alas, it's a fiction that devastates millions of our fellows. That part is as real as real can be.

 

[LizzieMaine]

I'm at the point where I'm going to have to cancel followup care for my recent eye surgery because I can't afford to pay for it because of all the other medical bills I'm having to pay off -- and that's working three jobs, and having insurance. It's the proverbial snowball -- once it starts rolling, it's only a matter of time before it catches up with you and crushes you.

 

[Bushman]

I'll admit I bribe my postal worker to make sure I get my stuff done as early as possible. Well, it's not REALLY a bribe. It's just a Christmas card with a gift card inside because my postal carrier never gets a delivery wrong, and always gets me my stuff as earliest as possible. She's a wonder worker. I can also tell when she takes a day off because the other postal carriers aren't as courteous as she is.

 

[tonyb]

I'll admit I bribe my postal worker to make sure I get my stuff done as early as possible. Well, it's not REALLY a bribe. It's just a Christmas card with a gift card inside because my postal carrier never gets a delivery wrong, and always gets me my stuff as earliest as possible. She's a wonder worker. I can also tell when she takes a day off because the other postal carriers aren't as courteous as she is.

Very rarely has the USPS let me down, despite the best attempts by some to kill the agency. My only real complaint is that the frontline customer service staffing levels at the Post Offices I visit remain constant no matter the day of the week or hour of the day or day of the year. So you can imagine the lines during the 11 a.m. hour of the second Saturday in December when two clerks are staffing the counter while the other three or four stations remain unstaffed. You could spend an hour waiting your turn.

It isn't the clerks' doing, of course, although it takes no great innate gift for logistical processes to see how some clerks could expedite the process. For instance, she COULD measure length and width and height and then punch in the date rather that measuring the length, putting down the tape to enter that info, then measuring the width, putting down the tape and entering that data, and then measuring height. She could spare us all the mildly spaced-out chitchat and more devote her attention to the task at hand.

I should get her a copy of “Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance.”

 

[Bushman]

The clerks at my local office are equally as slow, but I am incredibly thankful they hire extra staff during the holiday season to ensure a faster experience. We typically have only 2 clerks, but they hire a third and extra trucking staff about mid-November.

 

[Zombie_61]

...When the revolution comes, hospital collections staff will be the first ones lined up against the wall.

You'd be aiming too low; you need to line up the people who establish those falsely over-inflated costs in the first place.

I'll admit I bribe my postal worker to make sure I get my stuff done as early as possible. Well, it's not REALLY a bribe. It's just a Christmas card with a gift card inside because my postal carrier never gets a delivery wrong, and always gets me my stuff as earliest as possible. She's a wonder worker. I can also tell when she takes a day off because the other postal carriers aren't as courteous as she is.

Years ago our regular postal carrier was equally conscientious and took her professional duties seriously, even taking it upon herself to track down a package that had gone missing--one of four in a six-month period, and she even determined why those packages went missing and put an end to it which was something the supervisor at our local USPS branch was unable or unwilling to do. So at some point during the holidays we'd give her a Christmas card that contained a gift card for one of her favorite local restaurants; not a bribe, but a way of showing our appreciation for her efforts throughout the year. She developed some health issues that forced her to leave the USPS, and ever since we've had no idea who delivers our mail and such because it seems to be a different person every week.