40 and Foolish!

fredandwilma

Eager_Elephant wrote: »

Take NewLeaf and THEM for instance - they have told her she is not allowed to pay by SO but what is there to stop her paying them by SO if she has the bank details.

Exactly.


What IS to stop her, if she has their banking details?


I don't know consumer rights, on this one.

Eager_Elephant wrote: »

It is very confusing for everyone!

You can say that again.

fredandwilma

Not forgetting this debate came about because NL wanted to change a DD to a SO


In one of my deleted posts, i stated one of the difficulties i was having myself, with regard to DD's.


I had a DD set up with a supplier. A fixed contract and a fixed monthly payment, (actually, it's more accurate to say a fixed amount.)


Over the course of more than a year, they never took the correct monthly payment. They took more than double, sometimes 3 times, the " fixed" payment, every month, ( which you can with DD.)


Which then resulted in numerous monthly phone calls, not to mention the time and grief, of reclaiming YOUR money, which then takes months for the company to reimburse.


Needless to say, i eventually cancelled said DD, which i refuse to reinstate.


Which now results in, what could be mildy called, monthly " blackmail."


Along the lines of, " if you don't have a DD set up on your account, we can / will, cancel your service at any time."


I make sure i pay my bill well in advance, ( two weeks in advance,) although, obviously, they now have my card on file, as i use it every month to pay, i haven't given them the authority to take monthly payments from my card.



As a consumer, i don't know what my rights are. CAN i refuse to set up a DD? ( which obviously, i have,) is the recipient justified in stating you can only pay by DD? You have to have a DD? No, you can't set up a SO?


The obvious. I don't want to change my supplier. I've had an account for more than 10 years, and i'm more than happy with the amount i should be paying. But as a company, they make so many unnecessary mistakes.


After some searching, i still can't find the answer to consumer rights in the CHOICE of SO v DD, debate.



I suspect that if the consumer had no rights, some banking bod, would have been along, by now. :rotfl:

Clever_Dog

NewLeaf wrote: »

So I took a diazepam and called THEM this morning. If I fall asleep while writing this post I will hit the reply button as soon as I wake up.. ha!

So I did get some sage advice that when calling THEM if a woman answers put the phone down and keep trying until you get a gent. Which I did.

Unsympathetic? tick!
Clueless? tick!
monotone? tick!
told me it was my fault for being a thicko and having a company car? TICK! (plus I already knew that)

His best offer for me was £190 a week (impossible) He asked me to but it on a credit card (NO!)
So I told him I would pay it on a budget plan I can set up through the website (which apparently isn't the "right" plan) and he wanted to know what assets I had, to which I replied (NONE OF YOUR BEESWAX) I asked him if they were still taking my £85 a week. he said yes they would continue to take it, so I said fantastic, and I hung up.

Then I had to repeat same scenario pretending to be OH (handy time to be a lesbian) and went through the same SH*t

So net-net I will pay what I can and they can still have their £85 a week from both of us and send me shouty letters. You can't[?] reason with these people it is impossible!

NewLeaf THEY are causing Mistress such grief as well; I thinks I'd like to go and find THEM and bite the fattest one on the bum! That would teach THEM to go and get a proper job doing something useful - not sitting down all the time upsetting peoples!
..I could bite one for you too? It would be a pleasure, honest!

ps. In return please can you settle an argument we Daft Dogs is having - what is "jelly" in English? On telly last night was a story from your home where someone ate a peanut-butter and jelly sandwich. Mistress did give us peanut butter in kong-thing (umm, before we chewed-up the toy oops) so I knows what that is, but can't imagine eating it with the kind of jelly Mistress makes.

please-let-me-be-lucky

Hi CD how kind of you to offer to bite bums for NL and Robin!

I'm pretty sure jelly in England is called Jam Xx

NewLeaf_2

Oh EE that list must be amazing. What a super MSE resource. X

NewLeaf_2

CD thanks for stopping by! As PLMBL says jelly in America is what the British call jam. The British jelly in America is called jello. What a CD you are for spotting such a silly turn of phrase. Is Mistress feeling any better today x

NewLeaf_2

F&W it sure sounds like blackmail to me

NewLeaf_2

I have 1 item selling at £3.99 on fleabay

dorothy52

Hi NL, I hope you had a good time at your party. When I first started to read your diary and looked at your SOA I noticed that you were a higher tax payer and that you had a company car which you told us that you seldom used. I remember wondering at the time why you didn't tell your company to take it back as you would have been paying a fortune in tax for a resource you neither used nor needed. I almost posted the question, then decided not to, as you see I was still a lurker in those days and assumed that as I was not in debt, thus did not have a diary on here that I wouldn't have anything useful to contribute. Now that I see what a stranglehold THEY have you in I am so angry with myself that I didn't type those few words and press submit. We could have been old friends by now instead of new aqaintances and it might have spurred you on to investigate ways of saving money on your tax bill.

Clearly somewhere along the line you have discovered this for yourself, however I have learned a valuable lesson. In this lovely community we should all be able to ask each other what could be construed as quite personal questions, in the spirit of friendship and helping each other.

I don't know how I know so much about tax implications of perks like private healthcare and company cars, as I am and never will be a high earner, however I DO know that I know that these perks which are offered as attractive packages in some jobs can often cost you more than if you were given the salary instead and shopped around for them (especially if you are a member of mse!)

One thing I have noticed is that THEY seemed to have dominated your life and thus this thread for quite some time now, and I so hope that next week when you have liaised with your accountant you can relagate THEM to the back of your mind where they belong (actually THEY belong somewhere like in the bottom of a cesspit but I am much to polite to say so on a public forum.......Oh heck - I just did.)

Whilst I am in the mood for pontificating, I just want to put it on record that I am disgusted that THEY have had such a negative impact on your life, not only with their patent incompetence, but their obstructive and beligerent attitude to you when you have tried so hard to come to some sensible arrangement to pay back what you owe them (through no fault of your own I might add). What you must remember, is that you pay more in a month in tax than the pond life that have made your life a misery earn every month......probably two or three times more than if they work part time and are awarded generous tax credit payments subsidised of you (and all us tax payers of course). I accept that it is difficult to deliver bad news to a customer on the telephone, I should know, I did it for years. Said customers can be aggresive and angry, but as often as not they are also frightened. It takes a particular skill, patience, time and diplomacy to make these customers understand that you are listening to them and want to help, however there are certain rules in place which whilst you (the employee of the company/government body) might not agree with , you have constraints that you must work within. Having said that, if there was any wiggle room to be had I would wiggle like a wiggly thing to ensure that my angry/frightened customer was given the best service I could possibly give them. When the call was finished, I can honestly say that whilst they may not have been happy, they were satisfied that I empathised with their position and they were duly mollified. We are all customers, we all have call to complain at some point to the people from whom we buy products, use utilities etc., and I am frankly appalled at the level of customer service some companies seem to feel is acceptable.

The fact that you worked yourself into such a state that you had to take a tablet twice in one day before making that dreaded telephone call is a disgrace, and I feel very, very angry on your behalf.

There, rant over. Ooooooooh, I was a bit assertive there, wasn't I?!!

NewLeaf_2

Dot thank you so much for your post and I am so glad you decided to de-lurk. I can only imagine how it must have been to deal with the public for all those years.

Funny you should mention the company car. Prior to that I had a 10 year old Honda CRV, and I had been working for the same company for 4 years when my boss and my bosses boss came from America for a meeting. They asked me to pick them up from Heathrow. I did and spent the weeks driving them to customer meetings. After the week was out basically my boss (who has since retired) told me he was horrified that someone in my position in the company would drive a "wreck" and subject coworkers and customers to my CRV. (Which was paid off!) so I went and signed up the same day. What a mistake.

One positive thing I have realised this week that finally at age 43 I am starting to learn some lessons in life. Things have clicked this week like never before.

- I have to look out for myself better
- to be more mindful of what I am doing with my life, food, time
- to not let negative people or things rent too much headspace
- to be so grateful that people that cross my path by kismet like the folks on here who freely offer their time, experiences, knowledge and support just because they want to help, is an amazing gift

Besides paying off all this massive debt I hope this year to rediscover what my passions in life are. I know that being a high earner is a dream come true for loads of people but there is a high price for me that goes along with it. Stress, pressure, the constant expectation that I can do more, handle more, more accounts, more staff. For now I am blessed to have a job and to be able to have a roof over my head, food and all the things I do have, but I know working at this pace is not sustainable forever and I need to start working on a 10 year exit strategy. Ideally working for a charity that means something to me.

Life is a funny old thing, and we will see where it takes me.


But for tonight, thanks to all my supporters from beginning to today. I appreciate you I really do.