Get a grip woman!

Cheery_Daff

I remember signing up for our new gas supply when we moved house. The rep was here, I wrote my name as the main customer on the form, and Mr Cheery as second - and when we got the paperwork they'd swapped them round, and wouldn't talk to me without permission!! Grrr. Soon sorted that out, but he's still first on the bills. I also signed up online, and for some baffling reason you couldn't select titles independently - you had to select 'Mr & Mrs' or Mr & Miss, or even Lord & Lady! Technically I'm Dr Cheery - but of course there was no Dr & Mr option, only Dr & Mrs 🙄

Come on people - you don't even have to provide all combinations, just let people choose titles individually - it's not difficult! 🙄😂

Fortunately we've never had issues with builders - good job really as Mr Cheery is NOT one for dealing with tradespeople (or admin etc) 🙄

Karmacat

greent said:

One holiday week we actually got one of them here and he was standing in the kitchen and I said to him that we'd tried to get them to visit before but they refused - and he openly admitted they like both parties there so they can get it signed up after phoning head office for the 'best deal' - I stopped making him a drink and told him he could leave my house and walked him straight to and out of the front door.... 🤦🏻‍♀️🙄

I've done that too!  It was me on my own, but when I asked for the final negotiated price, and he broke it about ten minutes later, I told him he'd lost the deal because of that, and showed him out.  Great minds  

Sayschezza

PandO cruises always put OH as lead customer even though it was me that booked and paid. I had to insist they changed this as I was due a bigger discount because I had cruised more often. Now they get it right because I cruise with a friend and I am older than her.

Suffolk_lass

When DH went into MY bank and asked to be added to my account, they did it without me being there or giving permission. Not only did they add him, they added him to the account as the first named account holder.

Unbelievable until you remember that women could not take out a bank account in their own name without a man such as their father acting as guarantor until 1975 (later for many organisations but that was the legality of it). Also there was no such thing as sexual assault between man and his wife was not illegal until 1992

Staffordia

In the early 1960s my aunt discovered that unlike her brothers, she was unable to get a mortgage without her father co-signing the loan. She lived frugally bought a house outright and retired aged 47. I have always admired her tenacity. 

Thankfully we moved on from the institutional sexism, only wish the casual sexism was past history as well.

badmemory

My aunt had to get my father to guarantee her mortgage.  She was single & earning more than him & he had a wife & 2 kids to support.  We may not be there yet but we have come a long way.  When I was self employed my then husband had to pay my tax which did not make him happy because it put him in the 40% bracket.  So he knocked it off the divorce settlement.

Karmacat

Isn't it astonishing what we, and the women who came before us, had to put up with?  Kudos to everyone who ploughed on through and got to live their life to the full in spite of it all.

foxgloves

Several organisations seem unable to cope with the fact that Mr F & I are married, but have different surnames.

Another one which annoys me is DVLA log book document. Mr F & I share our car equally. It is 'our car'. We both paid for it & we both drive it.......yet only one name can go on the logbook.
....& yes, it's his!
F

EssexHebridean

A few years back our energy supplier went out of business and we were SOLR’d to British Gas. The account which was SOLR’d was in my name, and solely my name, but when the paperwork arrived from British Gas they’d changed it to MrEH’s name instead (he had been a customer of theirs many years previously). I rang them to complain and they tried to claim it was “just a typo” and they’d simply left the “s” off of Mrs - so I asked how come their “typo” had also converted my first name to his rather different one, too… I got a formal apology and a promise that they would look into how it had occurred and ensure it didn’t happen again.

edinburgher

Oh my word, I've just finished reading through your entire diary and I'm utterly exhausted!      

I have loved reading about your accident prone brood, village life and your constant chat about cooking explains a lot about why I view you as a kindred spirit                                                   
If I may make one observation, it's that life in a beautiful English village sounds less idyllic than I had imagined and more precarious. Your diary tells a tale of a life run on fossil fuels (oil by the tanker full, the terrifying electric Aga, 65 trailer loads of garden waste driven to the tip each week)  

It genuinely makes me wonder whether rural life is now largely the preserve of the wealthy? I intend no criticism with this comment, it just makes me wonder whether it's a choice between efficiency or beauty? It's a very different way of life 

Take my home, which uses 10% of the electricity you use in a bad month, but which is a dull grey box on a street where there's more concrete than colour. I wonder if there's a happy medium?

Does your recent interest in solar power suggest an imbalance with the way things are now, or are you simply trying to make the life you already have more efficient? Not too late to build yourself a rural passivehaus

In terms of solar panels, your problem is that you will generate the least when you need it most (winter). Batteries and an off peak tariff of some sort may resolve part of the problem, but no realistic amount of battery storage will cope with up to 50kWh of electricity usage a day (figures you've shared in the past). Perhaps this is an Occam's razor scenario where the solution you're looking for doesn't address the right problem? Will you cope if there's another doubling in power bills?  I don't think there's a renewable "solution" that allows you to "buffer" your lifestyle as is.

If, however, you decide to go solar etc. I'm happy to share thoughts. FIL has gone full Columbus with renewable recently (6kw+ solar system, banks of battery storage, electric car), so plenty of chat in our neck of the woods

Sorry if those are some challenging thoughts - you never pull your punches when sharing your wisdom on my diary and I thought you deserved the same candour.

I continue to learn from you and love the way you routinely underestimate the emotional support you provide to your local community, your online community and your family. Thank you for sharing what is a very interesting life.

Ps. I totally guessed you were going to give DS your half of his house 

Pps. I will only have £4,999 of PB thanks to your intervention come the next draw