Progress is...

rtandon27

@Cherryfudge - welcome and thanks muchly for subscribing!

@themadvix & @EssexHebridean & @Greying_Pilgrim & @Cheery_Daff - What are you lot like? 🤣🤣🤣 - I can reassure you that no slugs will be eaten in this house anytime soon!  I subject my dear OH to enough food adventures without throwing that one into the mix!  He thinks tofu is dubious, I don't want to give him any reason to leave me any time soon!

@badmemory - I could relocate some of mine to your place! They bred like triffids this wet and grey summer & are in every single part of the garden!  At least the hedgy interloper has eaten well!

Today I was thankful for having a savings pot that was fully funded when I had to spend  80% of it on a replacement vacuum!  OH had been claiming for months that our 6 year old GTECH was not sucking up correctly and I've been saying it's his imagination!  (Mostly because I didn't want to fork out for a new one!)  Yesterday I discovered that the floor attachment had indeed developed a massive crack straight through the flexible hose - so it was not doing what it should and sucking up the dirt.  That shows you just how often I actually do any of the housework these days!  Something came over me & I decided that 'man' cleaning was simply not good enough & there were a few things that needed a woman's touch!  I guess that includes figuring out why it wasn't working the way it should (rather than just moaning about it).  OH has been walking around all day like a Cheshire cat - saying repeatedly that for once he was right.  😉

I've ordered a Jaws which I'm hoping will last us another 6 years at the very least - it has all the bells and whistles & multiple attachments.  Unfortunately it made no sense to purchase replacement parts for our old one as they are so expensive.  The money for parts is better spent towards a new one.  I'm feeling rather irked about that as one of the reasons I had bought the other brand is that they it had replacement parts to order!  Obviously I didn't do a thorough enough cost vs. life cycle analysis at the time!

In the grand scheme of all things money related, I can emphatically say...
Progress is...
...being able to fund a replacement appliance using saved cash rather than the shiny plastic thing that magically adds 25% to every purchase.  Instead I used a shiny plastic thing to earn points (as the bill gets paid in full every month) which will in turn buy us food & decrease our grocery spends!

EssexHebridean

That is most definitely progress RT - and a lesson that I think the majority of us here have learned well over the years! 

If you are as impressed with your Jaws as I am with mine then it will be money well spent for sure. It still amazes me just how much it sucks up each time it gets used - and the one and only time we’ve had a “clogged up” issue I got to be impressed at how easy it is to clear as it comes almost entirely apart meaning that the offending matt of hair, dust etc could be poked out of where it was stuck using a garden cane! 😂 (the issue was caused by a piece of stick getting stuck crosswise across the hose, then other stuff getting caught on it) Not cheap for sure, but most definitely value for money IMO. 

foxgloves

We also love our Jaws. I have arthritis in my hands & it is so lightweight & zippy compared to our last one that I barely notice!
Good luck with your mortgage-free plans. It is a game changer for savings (& security) once the mortgage has been paid. 
F x

rtandon27

Grrrrr - have just had the WORST experience with our local 'Post Office' manager which is a result of the 'Royal Mail' messing up!  In total I've wasted 3 hours over the past two weeks of my life trying to get a parcel delivered.

Value for money has not been had - lesson learned is that 20% off does not nearly cover 3 hours of my time!  Next time I buy the product from the store at full price and be done with it!

EssexHebridean

Frustrating RT. I have to say a few years ago the postal service was sufficiently bad enough round our way that I simply stopped buying from organisations that used them for delivery. Since we've moved though things do seem to be better, which underlines my suspicion all along that they prioritised service to the houses in the town over the flats. (Friends in the flats are still having problems, while we now sometimes even get service on a weekend - something that hadn't been the case at the flat for years!)

rtandon27

@EssexHebridean & @foxgloves - I am well pleased to hear you are happy with your Jaws!  I am currently waiting for OH to wake up from his afternoon nap so that I can take a proper coffee break from working and we can go pick up Jaws and his little side-kick baby-Jaws.  I ended up ordering a hand held version as well, as most of what I use the big one for is along the edges of rooms and the baseboards, which OH does not do when he runs the big one around!  Smaller, lighter and easier to use, that way we can both easily contribute to the up-keep cleans around the house in a meaningful way.  I love a good division of labour 😁

EH - I am totally in agreement regarding postal service.  We were spoiled for six years on the farm with the most lovely postie on a rural route.  He'd always have time to say hello, and was kind, considerate and helpful.  He would happily take our pre-stamped post back to the sorting office to save us the trip for no reason other than kindness.  During pandemic he was one of the few people I saw daily, albeit from across the garden and both he and I were sad to part ways when OH & I moved.

Here in town, the postal delivery service is hap-hazard at best!  Our usual postie is lovely and sympathizes appropriately when we get upset about the contractors they utilize who can barely speak English and obviously have not understood the correct way to deliver letters and packages.  I have put so many complaints in over the past year, that I should have a 'red-phone' hot line in to customer service!  To be fair the courier of the winged sandals is just as bad and I've had several parcels 'go missing' and had to demand refunds from the companies in question.

I've now taken to having as much as possible from the Big River site routed to the locker boxes down the road from the train station, easy for OH to pick up on his way to pick me up after work.

So in MSE style, I'm going to attempt to draw a line under the two week fiasco of the missing parcel.  I've done the following...
1) Raised a complaint with Royal Mail about their inability to a) wait the extra time requested for OH to get to the door and b) leave a red card to let me know they were unable to deliver the parcel (twice) and c) omitted to send a text or e-mail to give me the option of re-directing the parcel and d) not having the parcel scanned correctly at all points in the delivery service and e) giving me incorrect information of what was required to have OH pick up my parcel once it was redirected to the post office - can I just say in all caps...FAIL
2) Raised a complaint with the Post Office about the manner in which the jobsworth post office manager exercised her pseudo-power to be exceptionally rude to OH last week and me this morning.
3)  Used Resolver to put in a formal complaint about the whole situation and asking them for compensation for both the package, which the manager had unilaterally decided to return to the sender, and financial compensation for 3 hours of my wasted time over the past two weeks trying to find the whereabouts of my package.
3) Used G00gle reviews to confirm that the other 50 or so reviews of our post office were correct and that I'd raised a formal complaint about her behavior and any-one else running into issues with the manager should inform her employer in the form of a formal written complaint.
4) Sent the seller a final e-mail (already sent 3) telling them the package had been returned to them and as they had ignored my request for a refund I would be contacting my bank.
5) Called my bank to ask for a chargeback as the seller had not responded to my multiple requests for a refund.

Progress is...
...knowing exactly what course of action to take after years spent on these boards reading about consumer rights!  It is such a shame that I had to waste so much time complaining about people who are unable to do their jobs correctly!
 

Cheery_Daff

Gosh, what a complete fiasco!

rtandon27

Cheery_Daff said:

Gosh, what a complete fiasco!

Yup - quite the saga!😂

...not to mention the emotional toll on both OH and myself with having to deal with and incredibly rude individual who thrives on the little power she has running the local post-office! 🤬

themadvix

What a nightmare RT! Can I ask where/how you raised a complaint about the PO? I have to pretend the one over the road from us doesn't exist anymore since Morrisons took over the running of it. It is never open (despite supposed hours of 7am to 7pm), and pretending it doesn't exist and walking to the next nearest one is the only way to hold onto my sanity and blood pressure. But it would be useful to be able to communicate this to the Post Office (and I think BIL would do the same - a parcel had been returned there and he's had similar, although less-severe, issues to you).

badmemory

Various carriers are definitely quite different in different areas.  I've seen loads of complaints about Evri on here & RM but some others I have taken to putting notes on the delivery instructions on lines of please make sure that you are delivering to the correct street.  When they take those photos of the doors I can now tell just which wrong one they are delivering to.  Funnily enough they always used to mistakenly deliver to one to the left but their satnav must have had an update a couple of months ago so they now deliver to one on the right.  They must recognise numbers but reading actual names seems to be a step too far for them.