Gripe of the day - What is yours?

[garynortheast]

Originally Posted by admin

They go down to months and days! That's pathetic.

Sent from my Nexus 7 using Tapatalk

I'm sure if I dug deep enough I'd be down to hours and minutes!

[Seeker]

HMRC (part 3). The website says any foreign income over £300 requires a Self Assessment to be filed. I called HMRC and said income was from US social security, lady didn't know if that foreign income included social security or whether it was exempt. I told her that I would be under the tax threshold but she enrolled me for SA anyway (unasked).
I get a letter with a UTR (unique taxpayer ref) followed by a hostile reminder 2 days later to fill out my SA.
I attempt to fill out SA but having a dot gov Gateway password and having being enrolled in SA isn't sufficient you have to request a 12 digit activation code.
I get the code and fill out the SA which asks many questions that left me baffled (google helped). Vague threats from the website didn't help. The last thing the SA website does is calculate how much tax you owe and the answer was £0 because I was under the tax threshold.
I would have thought that the lady I spoke to at HMRC should have known that.
What a waste of time.

[SV650rules]

The stupidity of the employees is in inverse proportion to the amount of computers an establishment has.. but then again that is why the computers are there to de-skill the jobs, and sometimes the computers don't help.

My wife was practice manager for a medical practice in Australia and someone sold the bosses a singing dancing computer system. Problem was when you were on the phone flicking back and forth between screens took time, ( and when computers crashed it was hopeless), and patients would dither around between dates, in the end they went back to a calendar an appointment book and a pencil with an eraser on the end. When and if the patient turned up for appointment the staff would then use the computer system to log details for record keeping and other purposes.

[Bibio]

State Pensions.. whats all this talk of such things... there wont be any in 10 years.

[Heorot]

Central heating boiler stopped working yesterday so I called in a heating engineer who has condemned it and shut off the gas supply. Due to corrosion, it has been leaking Co1 into the house, specifically into the roof space above my bedroom.

I'm looking at £2000 - £3000 for a new system including labour.

[maviczap]

Originally Posted by Heorot

Central heating boiler stopped working yesterday so I called in a heating engineer who has condemned it and shut off the gas supply. Due to corrosion, it has been leaking Co1 into the house, specifically into the roof space above my bedroom.

I'm looking at £2000 - £3000 for a new system including labour.

£3000 is cheaper than not having hot running water, or worse being dead because of CO1 poisoning

[SV650rules]

Originally Posted by Heorot

Central heating boiler stopped working yesterday so I called in a heating engineer who has condemned it and shut off the gas supply. Due to corrosion, it has been leaking Co1 into the house, specifically into the roof space above my bedroom.

I'm looking at £2000 - £3000 for a new system including labour.

Is it a system boiler or Combi ?

You can get a new top of the range Worcester Bosh or Vaillant boiler retail for Just over a grand ( and fitters get trade rates or at least 40% discount ) and they normally fit pretty much straight in where the old one was ( new ones probably smaller package ) - heating engineers really take the p155 with prices, works out at about £200 and hour +.

If you go on heating engineer forums they are a real bolshie lot, apparently people who are not members of their club should be hung drawn and quartered for even fitting a new room thermostat or replacing a blown fuse in supply to boiler, and they always insist a power flush is needed even if the water in your system has had regular doses of Fernox, then when the powerflush damages your system they charge you to fix it.

[daktulos]

I had to replace mine recently - it was a Combi which makes things simpler, but I ended up getting it through https://www.boxt.co.uk as it was an emergency. Delivered next morning direct from Worcester Bosch along with an engineer to install it. They give you a guaranteed price (I think) through the website.

The engineer wasn't the best, and I'm sure I would have had a better experience from a good local installer, but for speed and for a fixed cost, it worked for me. They'll also put it on the never-never for you.

[Heorot]

We will be going for a Viessman boiler, not combi which is considered to be slightly better than a Worcester for around the same price (should be around £1000). To which must be added 2 days labour for fitting and a power flush of 15 radiators. The system probably needs a flush as it is 16 years since it was installed. No point in connecting a brand new boiler to a system that has never been flushed.

[yokohama]

Can recommend Veissman. We had one installed 10 years ago and it's not missed a beat yet