Name 1 bill you really really hate?

sazzledazzle

Has to be Council Tax, mine has gone up £20 a month and every fortnight the bin men dont give me back my recycling box and I have to go and find it.

And TV Licence as we have Virgin and I pay for that so why should I pay twice.

lauren_1

I would be quite interested to see which one covers the road maintainance.

Council tax or road tax?

robpw2

council tax

Numpty_Monkey

Another for the council tax hating club

TotallyBroke

I have a mortgage on a property that I lease from the council. I pay them ground rent every year, I pay for my buildings insurance through them and I pay a maintenance each month. £65.63 for nothing, I lie for the electric for the communal stairs & cleaning and general maintenance. I have since received 2 letters one telling me they underestimated last year so I owe them money but they'll include that in this years estimated bill. The second telling me that they have to repoint the brickwork and do some other stuff and they loosly estimate this to be £5000:eek: (it'll be more like £7000 by the time they've finished) my options to pay this are 1) interest free loan from them for 12months only = £416 p/m ontop of everything else or 2) I can ask mortgage lender to add this onto mortgage ! If I did the latter Woolwich/Barclays would laugh at me bad history with them.
My arguements are if I leased a car and things went wrong lease company would pay. If I rented property and work needed doing landlord would pay so why shouldn't council pay but it doesn't work like that. The 2nd is that council tenants are supposed to have this included in their rent so will their rent go up by £416 p/m I think not. Oh I hate them I can't wait to clear my credit file and get a good mortgage and buy a freehold property

jennywren1_2

Not a huge fan of council tax but then again I do like having restaurants that are safe to eat in, licensed pubs, street lighting, use of the library, fire brigade etc.

My big bill bugbear is DH's life assurance - £166 a month for absolutely nothing (I hope!!) = 50k over the life of the mortgage :eek:

Surfbabe

Council tax £175.00 PM -

wherediditallgo

Council tax for me too. I pay £100pm - I know it's supposed to cover a variety of local services, but it still feels too high for what I get. I wouldn't mind so much if local needs were being met, but in the last couple of months I've experienced the following:-

• I made several 'phone calls trying to get a recycling bin, rather than leave rubbish out that might get blown along the streets. I got a letter after 2 weeks telling me the recycling percentages for the borough, & advising me that they were aware I wasn't using a recycling bin. The letter said that they'd like me to recycle more, & that they're thinking about publicising details of the best & the worst streets for recycling in the borough. I wrote back tellling them they were free to publicise my details in any paper they chose, at which point I'd happily respond to the article with details of how many times I'd asked for a recycling bin. It took over a month for the bin to be provided.

• Dustbins not being emptied for two weeks because some of the trucks were off the road, & no-one thought to do the collection on another day.

• Me being unable to reach staff in a particular department for a whole day, only to find out days later that the staff had been attending leaving celebrations for one of the senior managers & no-one had manned the phones. :mad:

• A friend not being able to get a rent statement for 3 weeks, because the department was over its budget for the financial year, & was reserving its printing to essential documents only. Only when she insisted on speaking to a manager, & pointed out that it would be difficult to keep an eye on her rent balance, without the statement was it finally sent.

• That same friend requesting the list of registered childminders & childminding facilities in the borough - 4 phonecalls & over two months later, she's still waiting. She became a single parent a few months ago & she'd love to get a job, but she can't get the information about childminding for love nor money. It seems she'll have to take herself & the three children to the offices & refuse to leave until she gets it, otherwise she'll never see it.

I realise some of these are organisational issues, but to me some of it is also about paying the salaries of people who don't seem to have been born with a grain of common sense or organisational ability. I don't like to see my £100pm going towards that. If I want an item of furniture taken away, I'm expected to pay £25 for the collection, so what's my £100pm giving me when I really need it?

candygirl

Council tax :mad: :mad: :mad:

bertiebots

:mad: :mad: :mad: :mad: :mad: COUNCIL TAX :mad: :mad: :mad: :mad: :mad: Need I say more??:eek: