Caz counts it down

cazmanian_minx

I'll be getting the dressage model - it's extremely rare for me to even consider jumping, let alone do it, though Finn will occasionally jump a puddle when we're out hacking

cazmanian_minx

Well that's the saddle on hold for a while - saw a headline on the BBC news website last night 'Holiday company goes into administration', clicked on it, and yes, it's the one that we've booked our Mauritius hotel through, so that's £1,067 down the drain. Their website says that our hotel reservation will be cancelled and we should claim our money back through our travel insurance or credit card. Two problems there, firstly the small print in my travel insurance says that financial failure of the holiday company is an optional extra and we don't have it, and secondly I paid for the whole thing on my debit card to avoid credit card charges.

I've raised a chargeback on the transactions for the deposit and the balance and registered myself with the administrators as a creditor of the company, but I'm not hopeful I'll get anything back from either of them. Looking on the bright side though, we're fortunate in that we can afford to go still, and on the even brighter side, I jumped straight on the internet and managed to bag the one room available at the same hotel for the dates we're going (which might well be the one I had booked before, just re-released for sale!).

In other news, I have been working my way through the world's largest transcription queue, and have nearly finished the big market research project - just three files left, which I hope to get done over the weekend, though we're off to the county show today and then it's lunch with mother-in-law tomorrow as one of Mr Minx's brothers is up for the weekend, so my typing time might be a little limited, but I'd like to clear the decks before next week. I've only got about 70 minutes of audio to get through.

hiddenshadow

I hope you can get something back on the holiday booking! At lease you still get to go on holiday.

Verbatim

Sorry to hear you've got a loss with Lowcost Travel. I read that the flights at least are still valid and paid for.
Am still addicted to reading househoarder. I really enjoy your dense, detailed updates.

cazmanian_minx

Not heard back on any front re: the holiday, I'm surprised I've heard nothing from the bank, to be honest. If nothing arrives by post or email today, I'll give them a ring.

I am enjoying a slight lull in work after finishing the big market research project, though they promptly came back and asked me if I could do six hours of focus groups for them next week! Yes, of course, and they're going to have them done on my summary and quotes service instead of full intelligent verbatim transcriptions. It's less money for me, but means fewer hours welded to my keyboard, which I think is worth it at this time of year.

I've been watching the weather forecast like a hawk for the past few weeks and since we seem to have a dry spell coming up, I bit the bullet on Tuesday and rang John to see if he could come and cut my hay fields after yesterday's storms. He's coming up this afternoon - annoyingly some light rain has just appeared on the radar, but we're looking mostly dry for the next week, so I hope we'll be able to get it turned, dried and baled before the next bands of rain sweep across. I'm off down the road to Ethel's house to try and clear enough space for it in the byres - you can't pack the bales in too tight to start with, because they heat up as they cure and can spontaneously combust. Not going to help the budget if I burn the house down....

Knit_Witch

I was reading on the news site about that low cost holiday thingy Caz, and apparently people should expect less than £10 back :eek: as they weren't ATOL or ABTA linked (left three years ago and lodged some cash on Majorca or some such - but not enough) :mad::(

cazmanian_minx

Just got off the phone with NatWest who reassured me they'd received my chargeback, but they took about 10 working days to process. While they can't guarantee I'll get my money back, they said it was definitely worth submitting it and to keep my fingers crossed (lovely lady from Northern Ireland said she'd spoken to a few people about it this week).

I'm not sure if there's something funny going on with my banking as a result though. I tried to pay my Barclaycard off with my debit card today (the one that's been in credit for 3 months now has a balance on it after buying all the insulation and flooring) and the bank wouldn't process the payment despite there being more than enough money in the account, so I had to set up a bank transfer instead.

Also mildly concerned that that particular card, which has had money transfer offers on it every single month for the past two years or so, currently doesn't. My other Barclaycard still does, but this is the one with the £12k limit that I really need to be able to still access.

milasavesmoney

I sure hope this works out.

cazmanian_minx

5 hours of wielding a hammer and a can of penetrating oil and we've managed to un-seize both chains on the baler, which I suspect has saved us a considerable amount of cash, as a replacement for the shorter pick-up drive chain would be £95. They're having another overnight soak in some penetrating oil and will go back on tomorrow.

The hay is on the ground and if it wasn't going to chuck it down overnight, I'd be turning it for the first time today and baling tomorrow, but apparently we're due a deluge and it'll be alright in the rain if I haven't turned it, so I'm letting it lie and hopefully will get it turned and baled mid-week when we're due a weather break. It's losing a few nutrients being washed through with the rain, but the horses both hold weight well over winter, so that's not going to be a problem.

I've had a really interesting file on dairy farming to type over the weekend - I actually finished it last night, but just need to go over the inaudibles now before sending it back. One on diabetes for next week and three two-hour focus groups coming in Wednesday, Thursday and Friday, which will be a nice month-end boost for the invoicing!

Verbatim

All sounding good. Glad Ethel's house is progressing well.