N-Power
are a load of muppets too

No matter how many times we told them the previous occupiers had run up the bill of over £400 odd quid, they still sent threatening letters but this time to "The Occupier". Not wanting a load of bailiffs on our doorstep who where only looking for an occupier not a specified person, we faxed out tenancy agreement to prove we hadnt lived there.

Anyways letters still come, we phone, they say they never received the fax, we threaten them with legal action over breaking the Data Protection Act.

They backed off!

Whoot.
(Mogg Questioned her own sanity on, Fri 16 Feb 2007, 17:23, Reply)

I WORK PART-TIME FOR BRITISH GAS!
Bring it!!

Edit-why do people get so arsy about bills that are clearly incorrect? Take a meter reading and just talk to someone for gawd's sake!

Don't get me wrong, the company can be crap (to customers and employees alike) but most of the whinges we get are not proper complaints but slight niggles that people blow up because they want a bit of compo and because the media encourages everyone to hate the Gas.

Hate 'em for the sickness policy if you wanna hate them for anything!

What I find laughable is that poeple don't seem to mind Powergen being more expensive or shocking billing record!


Jeccy is right however. The tow new trillion pound systems are very good-but they don't work very well together :D
(Medibot, Fri 16 Feb 2007, 17:21, Reply)

Stand back, for I will now regale you with a tale of rape (supposedly)
I was out last night, went to the local punk night which seemed to packed with 15 year olds. So me and my mate went downstairs to the other bar in the place, where we happened upon 2 ladies we assumed were a bit, for want of a better word, loose. We were right. My one left after a short while, because I'm shit with women, but the other stayed and was a bit touchy with us both. We thought a double teaming may have been on the cards.

Anyways, we leave the club and, after failing to find another club, we bought a crate of booze from the 24 hour off licence and hopped in a taxi to get home. Unfortunately, the taxi driver was a complete twunt and drove us out to somewhere we had never been before. After wandering around for a bit to try and figure out where the hell we were, our lady friend must have thought we were rapists searching for a suitable alley or something, as she quickly got into the next taxi to come past and scarpered. So now, having been denied sexy time by a pikey taxi driver and being in the middle of nowhere, my friend and I did what anybody else would have done in that situation.

We stooped so low as to ring one of his exes and ask for a threesome.
(Keiths Dad, Fri 16 Feb 2007, 17:10, Reply)

HP
Hewlett Packard Printer: £90
Hewlett Packard Printer Cartridge: £45
(frankspencer, Fri 16 Feb 2007, 17:05, Reply)

Harvest
Every year my middle school would make us bring in fruit, veg, tins of food, then force us to take them round the local neighbourhood giving them to old people.

I gave away 2 tins of fruit salad to some old codger that day. I suppose I did kind of rip him off, I never told him that those tins were 3 weeks out of date.

It still makes me giggle like a little girl when I think about it now, tee hee hee.
(Fatima Whitbread's hardon drugs and the causes of drugs, Fri 16 Feb 2007, 17:02, Reply)

Another British Gas Fun Show
Final year of uni and the gas bill comes in.

600 quid. For the last quarter.

Now, that quarter was the months July-September, where:

- Nobody was in the house
- The central heating was being re-furbished
- We had an electric cooker and fire.

How could this be? Me being a bit wise, realised something.

On the 5 digit meter reading, the goons living in the house previously appeared to have misread the meter, and put a 5 in the first digit, instead of a 6, hence the massive cost.

Now, I've also got an Engineering degree with a specialism in Thermodynamics, so when it comes to burning fuels, I know my stuff.

All of this was of no use to British Gas, who flatly refused to accept that there was no way we could not have used 600 quid's worth of gas simply because...

'Our meter readings suggest otherwise'.

I even faxed over energy calculations to prove them wrong. And yet again...

'Our meter readings suggest otherwise'.

Even when I suggested doing a week's worth of readings to show I was being legit I got the response...

'Our meter readings suggest otherwise'.

So, we didn't pay. British Gas threatened all sorts (one call from them suggested they were in the process of 'sending the heavies round'), but nothing happened.

Nothing apart from from our landlord getting saddled with a court appearance, as the bill was in the name of 'The Occupier' and we'd moved out.

The landlord was a twat anyway.
(scentless_apprentice takes two bottles into the shower!, Fri 16 Feb 2007, 16:56, Reply)

VW
£95 quid to plug a speak and spell into a RS232 Port to get a fault code! So i asked a friend who has the same kit at work to get a printed out fault report. Told VW this and they said that they cant use it as its diffrent....... Right O!

Bunch of robbing tossers!
( caffeinefreak, Fri 16 Feb 2007, 16:48, Reply)

whilst Im here
I freelanced for years. Its the design equivalent of mechanics. I got really good at sucking my teeth and doing fuck all for an extortionate fee. My social conscience no longer allows me to do this, but I do sometimes yearn after those halcyon days - mostly when I can't afford any more drugs, women, motorbikes or any combination of the above. Its nearly beer o'clock!
(kaptinkurtz, Fri 16 Feb 2007, 16:44, Reply)

women
My wife pays £60 for a pot of cream that she smears on her face before going to bed. The pot is miniscule. In fact, she uses about five different kinds of cream before going to bed, spending more on it than we do on food. And they're all the same.

I've never used any kind of cream in my life and there's nothing wrong with my skin.
(frankspencer, Fri 16 Feb 2007, 16:44, Reply)

Burger King
The Bristol Airport Burger King is great fun, and much like the post by countryslicker below, is easy to mess around with when it comes to options. Take, for instance, a whopper meal with cheese, £5.49. or I could have a Whopper meal without cheese, £4.90. On the extras menu it states a slice of cheese is 15p. The difference is minimal, buy by god, I'll be shafted purple if I'm letting the buggers get away with that. One whopper meal, and a slice of cheese please.
(menashem, Fri 16 Feb 2007, 16:44, Reply)

Beers in Norway!
I knew that beer was expensive but sweet jesus!

Was on a skiing holiday in bergen, 1st night at the local bar! Get caught buy the offside trap and have to shout the first round, got 8 beers (just over half a pint each) total £45. Was one of the driest weeks of my adult life!
( caffeinefreak, Fri 16 Feb 2007, 16:39, Reply)

Silver Balls
It's Home Ec, we're making cakes and we're supposed to be decorating them too.

But nobody's brought any decorating stuff. Except me.

I'd robbed a carton of silver sugar balls from my mum's store cupboard, all prepared, it was only worth about 40p anyway.

So, imagine my delight when my fellow pupils were stupid enough to offer cash for a few of these sugary tit-bits.

My price? 50p for 5. Amazingly, people paid up.

My profit? About a tenner, approximately a 2500% profit margin.

I spent it all on sweets and a copy of Match, but hey, it was a piece of business that few entrepeneurs can beat.
(scentless_apprentice takes two bottles into the shower!, Fri 16 Feb 2007, 16:37, Reply)

Mechanics....
Please don't call and try to convince me that plugging a Fisher Price computer into a car to glean a fault code constitutes £80 of labour when you know full well it's taken 10 mins for the machine to think for you.

Bunch of NVQ 'qualified' grease monkeys.
(Danny Fishcharge Half arsed, smart arsed, on & off a lard arse sinc, Fri 16 Feb 2007, 16:34, Reply)

Tunisia, for that authentic 'Beirut' experience
2 years ago I spent £300 on a package holiday to Tunisia and a further £200 on food & excursions.

So thats £500 to learn that Tunisia is a dusty fly infested shithole and that it IS possible to shit through the eye of a needle.
( Colonel Dracula Two manky hookers and a racist dwarf, Fri 16 Feb 2007, 16:32, Reply)

oooh, porn
i just dredged through the darker recesses of my mind and remembered that as a randy teenager, i sent off a cheque for 30 quid to an ad in the sunday sport. they promised me hours of video porn, the likes of which i could only dream about (and frequently did). imagine, moving pictures, rather than static ones in grubby magazines! i never received me mucky flims, and was too embarrassed to pursue it. damn you, whoever you are.
(kaptinkurtz, Fri 16 Feb 2007, 16:26, Reply)

Rover
I used to drive a Rover. Ok, stop laughing at the back!

When I bought it (which is another tail in naivety and being ripped off) I only got one set of keys. The alarm blipper thing looked a bit dodgy and started to go wrong so I rang the local Rover garage. No problem, a new one was only about 30 quid. So I took the car down there as they needed it to reprogram something or other. Later in the day I got a call to say it was ready. I turned up to be presented with a bill for almost £200! It had taken them 2 HOURS at £70 to program the key fob!!!

Ok, I needed the car, and the keys so I didn't have a choice. So, a few weeks later my car needs a service. Like a complete spaz I went back to the SAME garage and got stiffed again - this time about £500 for a service, "though we won't charge you for the washer fluid". Thanks.

I no longer own a Rover. In fact, they went bust the day of my 30th birthday!
(FiatPanda, Fri 16 Feb 2007, 16:24, Reply)

message for mogg
www.moneysavingexpert.com/cgi-bin/viewnews.cgi?newsid1141050760,24632,

thats all i have to say on the matter
(kaptinkurtz, Fri 16 Feb 2007, 16:22, Reply)

Plus
How come diabeties medicine is free but asthma inhalers aren't?

Think about it, you can easily die from an asthma attack so HAVE to have an inhaler handy! I should know. I'm dead.
(Mogg Questioned her own sanity on, Fri 16 Feb 2007, 16:18, Reply)

And while I think of it...
The Halifax with it's £40 quid charges for just about anything and everything it can think of to charge you for.

I swear i'm going to get an email soon saying i've been charged for walking into the local branch and walking out again.
(Mogg Questioned her own sanity on, Fri 16 Feb 2007, 16:16, Reply)

The Reason I'm Single
My ex-boyfriend of some years back worked a few hundred miles from me when I was still living with my parents. Weekends he'd commute North via National Express, then go home again in time for Monday morning.

So one weekend he comes up: angry, miserable, and bad tempered. Spends all Saturday snapping at me, then f*cks off home a day early.

After three days, he phoned me up and apologised:

Victoria station, the Friday afternoon previous someone had offered to sell him some pot. He'd agreed and promptly handed over £50. Needless to say, this guy had the $$ appear in his eyes and scarpered.

I mean ... honestly? How dumb can you get?
(Lupetherabbit Went straight into smirk mode on, Fri 16 Feb 2007, 16:15, Reply)

Council Tax
Over a hundred squids per month for a studio flat? I dont even own a bath, washing machine or cooker! (have a shower so can keep skankification to a minimum)

All that for living in one room?? AND that includes my single persons discount so has taken 25% off!

Really pisses me off this one. Gah!
(Mogg Questioned her own sanity on, Fri 16 Feb 2007, 16:13, Reply)

two words
summing up the biggest rip off in the whole world ever.

LONDON.

UNDERGROUND.

that is all.
( rachelswipe with a fork, Fri 16 Feb 2007, 16:11, Reply)

Subway
A lot of people dont really think about it, neither do i really. but i jus got charged £4.29 for a sandwhich, made badly and by people i would nt trust as one of those toilet people, the ones that charge you £1 to pass you paper towels. the world is against me, it wants me to go bankrupt.


length.......etc
(Jack the sparrow dodger, Fri 16 Feb 2007, 16:10, Reply)

born to suffer

Mine is a long, tragic story and since I'm lacking a tiny violin orchestra I'll keep it short.

I flew 6,000 miles and willingly froze my sweet Southern California ass off for 4 hours on hard, frozen East Berlin concrete to find out that I had a counterfeit fucking Depeche Mode ticket.

There was begging and pleading and offering tour crew money to let me stay but my efforts were in vain. I had to do the long walk of shame back past the long line of people waiting to get in with a police receipt in one hand and my dignity left back in the security area.

There was no comfort in the knowledge that 1,999 other people were about to suffer the same fate (there were 2000 fake tickets circulating). Only rage and anguish remained for me.

At least we won the war. Twice.
(Girlmitzi, Fri 16 Feb 2007, 16:06, Reply)

Moroccan Hijinx
We rented this place a few years ago www.moroccovilla.co.uk/ : on screen it looked great, but within an hour of getting there (no electricity, "wet shouts" for showers (alt freezing cold (lots) then scalding (dribble)), warm beers, it was clear we'd been sized up.

The place slept 10 but we'd had last minute drop outs so we were only 4, myself and a 'hareem' of three women, one was my girlf now wife. Within thre hours, half the neighbouring Berber village (one of them was the 'caretaker') had moved into the spare rooms, complete with babies, cooking pots, grandparents and surly intimidating stares.
It was cold and the only entertainment we could muster was tortoise racing.
We had a knock on our door and another hapless fool who owned a villa 1k away, in the tundra, had invited us for New Years Eve celebrations -Great, you're on, things are looking up....

Got there.. £30 on the door. Eh? You invited us! Paid up as the area was mostly dry and they had booze, and prodigious amounts of food. That would have been fine except we'd just dropped, and were totally nil by mouth. Pushed moderately edible variations on a tagine theme (cold, sloppy, flavourless) around our plates, then, the finale - music and dancing!
Unfortunately, it was dreadful, more like shoe boxes with rubber bands across, pots and pans etc. On closer examination, the musicians looked familiar.. yep, they were the same Berber villagers who were sleeping in our spare rooms! To top it all, they asked for contributions for their musical prowess, cap in hand...
(Countryslicker, Fri 16 Feb 2007, 16:02, Reply)

st tropez, the place not the fake tan
many moons ago i went to st tropez with the parents. father wanders around in a state of awe over the unnessecarily colossal yachts along the harbour as several highly priced cars drive past at about 5mph full of rich old men and young attractive women. me and said father decided to go into the nearest bar for a drink before heading back to the appartment. orders 2 pints of sum draught lager ive never heard of and sits down. finishes up and he goes and collects the bill. no imagine as im sat waiting form him to come back as i hear sum enraged noises coming from the direction of the bar. my dads gotten the l'addition from the barman and nearly had a coronary. €9 for a pint and a €14 bar charge, this is a one off payment for using the bar in the first place so bar hopping in st tropez is not the cleverest idea. doesn't help either that my father happens to belive in the age old rule of the louder you shout the more english they understand. cue me trying to pay whilst pushing him away from the barman hes trying to decapitate.

/obligitory length joke
(xui probably in the pub on, Fri 16 Feb 2007, 16:01, Reply)

Old Ceefax Competition
Back when I was a nipper, and when my parents weren't at home, I called up one of the old ITV ceefax quizline thingies. This is pre-GMTV but just as TV-AM was about to end and GMTV begin.

Anyway I dutifully answered my ten football questions and got 9 correct, and was reliably informed that the highest score at the end of the week would win the grand-prize: A Sega MegaDrive. I know, exciting eh? I had an Amiga 500 but all the cool kids had MegaDrives...

So a couple of weeks go by and I hear nothing until one night I'm at badminton club (seriously) and my mum and sister burst in to tell me some guy phoned and I'd won the freaking MegaDrive! Oh how I dished out some pastings at badminton that night!

Anyway, some more weeks go by, and nothing. Nothing at all. No MegaDrive. Not even a hedghog who's a bit nippy. I went on ceefax to see if I could find the details of the comp I'd called, but since TV-AM had changed to GMTV they'd seemingly changed the ceefax service/provider as well. Shit.

Still nothing, until one day about a month or do later I get a letter. Well I say a letter, it was actually an envelope with a receipt in it. And what was the receipt for? A fucking Sega MegaDrive. From a Dixons in England somewhere (i'm in Scotland).

Ripoff? Well, I didn't have to pay the phone bill, so possibly not. Confusing? You betcha.
(Zutroy started without you, Fri 16 Feb 2007, 15:59, Reply)

1st class to York
Once, my boss had to take a client to York. To keep face, First Class train tickets were the order of the day (on expenses). So, in they walk to King's Cross station.

Boss: Two first class returns to York please.
Clerk: Certainly sir, that'll be £1,104 please.
Boss: But, but, I could walk up the Caledonian Road, buy a second had Mondeo, put fuel in it, insure it for a day, drive up to York, drive back and dump it for less.
Clerk: Well, quite sir, I wouldn't pay it. The train leaves in five minutes.
Boss: Amex OK?

And that was without food...
(Good old boy just like yer grandma!, Fri 16 Feb 2007, 15:57, Reply)