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9 December 2016 (Friday) - Frustration

I was just about to go to kip last night when "er indoors TM" phoned. She was at the filling station up the road with a flat tyre. I walked up to see her and we phoned the insurance company to arrange to get the breakdown people out. We were rather shocked when they told us the policy hadn’t been renewed. So we came home and checked the details and found that the insurance policy *had* been renewed. We phoned them back and told them to get their arses in gear…
All was sorted eventually, but I was left with no confidence whatsoever with the insurance people.
It was 1am before I got to bed.

I slept like a log; over brekkie the dogs scrapped whilst I looked on-line. The astro club is still getting spamming emails. Petty squabbles abounded on-line. E-Pots were calling e-kettles black. They always have done, they always will. Karma and injustice abounded in equal amounts.
One of the major achievements of the Internet is that it has allowed more people to argue than ever before.

I popped the leads onto both dogs and we went out to meet up with "Daddy’s Little Angel TM" and "Stormageddon - Bringer of Destruction TM". We went for a rather curtailed walk; "Furry Shark TM" *really* doesn’t seem to get the idea of “walkies”. Mind you things did improve when we took her coat off. Maybe she’s like "Furry Face TM" – he hates wearing a coat too.

Once home again I settled both dogs then did some phoning of insurance companies. I got on to the people who had messed us about last night. As well as arranging the insurance of the "er indoors TM"-mobile they also did our house and contents policy. Bearing in mind last night’s debacle I was a little worried.

It took a while for them to find our details. They have “several systems” but we are only on one of them, and not all their staff have access to all the systems. And it took a lot longer to get the truth of our insurance arrangements from them. It turns out they don’t actually insure us for anything at all. They are just a middleman whose business is to sell someone else’s policies. We just pay them and if we have any problems we have to contact the insurance company directly.
Out of interest I phoned the company with whom they claimed to have arranged our house and contents insurance. The nice man at Midas was very polite, he acknowledged that his company did in fact provide our house buildings and contents insurance, but he couldn’t really discuss the matter. If I had any queries I should phone the broker. This would be the same broker who was only interested in taking the money and passing the responsibility and was worse than useless when we actually needed the service we were paying for at midnight last night.
It was crystal clear that if I needed to claim on my household building and contents policy there wasn’t actually anyone with whom I could speak.

I put the phone down feeling as though I would be better off on the discworld getting in-sewer-ants from Twoflower… Clearly the people we were with couldn’t do the job. I didn’t really want a better price for the insurance; I just wanted a company who weren’t worse than useless.
My car insurance is with Hastings Direct. I phoned them to talk about house buildings and contents insurance. In a few minutes I lined up a better deal than I already had for half the price and with the added bonus that in the event of disaster I could speak directly to them and not through some disinterested middleman.

Feeling rather pleased with myself I treated myself to a KFC festive burger and scoffed it whilst watching “Game of Thrones”, then cleared up puppy poo and took myself off to bed for the afternoon.
I slept for a couple of hours until "Furry Face TM" woke me with a woofing fit. Something had bothered him. I came down to find him on the back of the sofa intently staring up the street. The puppy was blissfully asleep but she woke as I walked into the room.

The two dogs played nicely for a while: I kept half an eye on them. We had a sudden emergency when the baby looked as though she was about to tiddle; I got her into the garden just in time. I’ve noticed that "Furry Face TM" goes and hides in the bathroom immediately after "Furry Shark TM" poops on the carpet. If only he could warn me *before* she unloads. This toilet training is hard. Back in the day we used to have free newspapers which were ideal for this sort of thing.

I’m off to the night shift now. "er indoors TM" can deal with her puppy…



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