Things that make you :-(

[KeithMacdonald]

😞A place for (and an overdue antidote to) all the things that shouldn't have been posted in The Things That Make You 😀

 

This is for The Things That Make You 😒

Especially for the RMWeb inmates are never happy unless they are miserable and moaning.

But please remember the Forum rules.

 

Starting with @Phil W 's contribution. 😉

 

https://www.mylondon.news/news/north-london-news/vintage-tube-train-set-make-29319796?ruid=a32cb9a3-ed92-4daf-845e-5ef2f6965bea

 

[PatB]

OK, I'll start. Maybe I'm a terrible person, but I'm becoming increasingly irritated that donating to pretty much any charity is no longer a case of dropping a few coins, or even a note or two, into a rattled tin, but now involves handing over most of your personal details and more or less open ended access to your bank account. No thank you, I would not like to sign up for a lifetime of spam and begging emails, interspersed with leaks of my data when, not if, your organisation cocks up their digital security.

[Dagworth]

Feedback requests. 
 

Every company that you have dealings with now seems to email you a couple of days later asking how they did and wanting you to rate their service etc. Just no! Grrrrrr

[Glencoe Model Railway]

I have a very long list….. maybe I have reached that age in life! 
 

unboxing videos

affiliate links on YT

Patreon requests

”Duplication” moans

politics and politicians

bad driving

HSTs

Armchair “experts” who think that they know better than those who work in an industry (see HSTs)

Influencers

and a whole host more…….

 

 

For the sake of balance, here is a pic of my pup, who certainly doesn’t fall into and bad category, and whom I love very much! 

[Hroth]

1 hour ago, Dagworth said:

Feedback requests. 
 

Every company that you have dealings with now seems to email you a couple of days later asking how they did and wanting you to rate their service etc. Just no! Grrrrrr

 

They should be glad there's no complaints and leave it at that!

 

[KeithMacdonald]

1 hour ago, PatB said:

OK, I'll start. Maybe I'm a terrible person, but I'm becoming increasingly irritated that donating to pretty much any charity is no longer a case of dropping a few coins, or even a note or two, into a rattled tin, but now involves handing over most of your personal details and more or less open ended access to your bank account. No thank you, I would not like to sign up for a lifetime of spam and begging emails, interspersed with leaks of my data when, not if, your organisation cocks up their digital security.

 

Having worked on the inside of one of the biggest UK charities, my eyes were opened to the appalling amount of waste and inefficiency that squanders people's donations. In a "normal" commercial business, you might have (say) four workers per manager. At one time, in this charity based in Oxford, I counted four managers per worker. Were these unpaid volunteers? Oh no they weren't. The charity openly boasted of paying "competitive salaries" to attract the "best" people.

 

IIRC, somewhere on t'interweb there's a league table of what percentage of donations actually ends-up with the intended recipients that the trusting and innocent public think they are donating towards. Last time I looked, the most fit-for-purpose was the medical charity Medecins Sans Frontieres, with the lowest percentage spend on admin and management.

[KeithMacdonald]

1 hour ago, Dagworth said:

Feedback requests. Every company that you have dealings with now seems to email you a couple of days later asking how they did and wanting you to rate their service etc. Just no! Grrrrrr

 

Oh yes!

I got one of those within a few minutes of paying Thames Water several thousand pounds for a new water connection.

Four months later we still had no new water connection. Not even a connection date. It took a few teeth-grinding phone calls ...

 

... we are experiencing a high volume of calls at the moment ... your business is very important to us ... please hold ...  you are caller number 13 in the queue ...

 

... to get through to a real live person.

Name.

Address.

Security questions.

Inside leg measurement.

Oh dear, we don't seem to have any paperwork for your connection. Can you tell me your details again, and we'll start a new application?

Grrrrrr!!!

[John Isherwood]

1 hour ago, Dagworth said:

Feedback requests. 
 

Every company that you have dealings with now seems to email you a couple of days later asking how they did and wanting you to rate their service etc. Just no! Grrrrrr

 

".... a couple of days.."?

 

I've had these performance emails arrive even before the confirmation of order email!

 

CJI.

[BoD]

3 hours ago, Dagworth said:

Feedback requests. 
 

Every company that you have dealings with now seems to email you a couple of days later asking how they did and wanting you to rate their service etc. Just no! Grrrrrr

And even more annoyingly, they don’t take the hint when you don’t reply and ask you again, several times, often weeks, sometimes months later.

[sjp23480]

Reading ANOTHER RMWeb post criticising the lamps on the new Hornby Black 5.   

[GrumpyPenguin]

7 hours ago, Dagworth said:

Feedback requests. 
 

Every company that you have dealings with now seems to email you a couple of days later asking how they did and wanting you to rate their service etc. Just no! Grrrrrr

They would not be quite so bad if anybody actually read & collated them for any meaningful purpose.

[PatB]

7 hours ago, KeithMacdonald said:

 

Having worked on the inside of one of the biggest UK charities, my eyes were opened to the appalling amount of waste and inefficiency that squanders people's donations. In a "normal" commercial business, you might have (say) four workers per manager. At one time, in this charity based in Oxford, I counted four managers per worker. Were these unpaid volunteers? Oh no they weren't. The charity openly boasted of paying "competitive salaries" to attract the "best" people.

 

IIRC, somewhere on t'interweb there's a league table of what percentage of donations actually ends-up with the intended recipients that the trusting and innocent public think they are donating towards. Last time I looked, the most fit-for-purpose was the medical charity Medecins Sans Frontieres, with the lowest percentage spend on admin and management.

Yup. I've seen the workings of a number of not-for-profit and charitable organisations here in Australia. Many seem to be, in reality, a means of providing comfortable sinecures for the otherwise unemployable scions of the upper middle classes. Actually doing any charitable work is often a very low priority.

[Flying Pig]

2 hours ago, GrumpyPenguin said:

They would not be quite so bad if anybody actually read & collated them for any meaningful purpose.

 

One of the tenets of the Shining Path or whatever other cult the company is signed up to is that it should seek feedback from its unfortunate victims.  If it does not, then should it be examined by the Holy Inquisitors and found to have fallen into error, it may be severely disciplined by having the small plaque hanging in reception taken from the wall and deemed unorthodox.

[kevinlms]

9 hours ago, Dagworth said:

Feedback requests. 
 

Every company that you have dealings with now seems to email you a couple of days later asking how they did and wanting you to rate their service etc. Just no! Grrrrrr

Especially, when all they have done is taken an already prepacked item and stuck a label on it and posted the thing.

What do they want - a knighthood?

[kevinlms]

9 hours ago, PatB said:

OK, I'll start. Maybe I'm a terrible person, but I'm becoming increasingly irritated that donating to pretty much any charity is no longer a case of dropping a few coins, or even a note or two, into a rattled tin, but now involves handing over most of your personal details and more or less open ended access to your bank account. No thank you, I would not like to sign up for a lifetime of spam and begging emails, interspersed with leaks of my data when, not if, your organisation cocks up their digital security.

Worse, is when they share your details with their 'sister' charities. Then you get inundated with requests from each individual charity within their group.

The only practical response, before you go broke, is to deny them all in the future - not exactly the outcome either they or YOU wanted.

[Stray]

Driving thousands of miles 

 

[eastglosmog]

A thing that really gets me mad is the utility companies sending round their pipe finders, marking my pipes in the road and then coming and cutting through them.  Even after you go out and tell them where the pipe is.

[didcot]

Monday mornings at work!

[Reorte]

How long have we got?

 

A lot of mine would really get a lot of people here worked up; I've probably mentioned them in passing at some point or another anyway, but let's just leave it at saying that I really, really don't like the way modern Britain has gone and all the signs are of the future moving in that direction; I find it heartbreaking. The end result is that I suffer from depression.

 

If you want a rather less serious one several "we need to come and cut some trees back" from the electricity lot over the last few years, who then never actually show up and do anything.

[kevinlms]

1 hour ago, Reorte said:

If you want a rather less serious one several "we need to come and cut some trees back" from the electricity lot over the last few years, who then never actually show up and do anything.

No shortage of the electricity suppliers coming around and hacking back trees in much of Australia. The risk of fires caused by power lines coming down is too great. There have been proven cases, where power poles snapped, causing major fires that killed many people.

 

Here's an example of overkill? It occurs across the country.

 

https://www.abc.net.au/news/2022-10-18/pruning-street-trees-around-powerlines-ausgrid-compromise/101538168

Edited June 10 by kevinlms
Typo

[MJI]

Windows constatntly changing for the worse.

 

Buy X, get recommended to buy similar to X from same store, (eg a camera).

 

Logos on TV channels

[Alex TM]

21 hours ago, Dagworth said:

Feedback requests

Absolutely with you on this one.

 

My particular dislike are the ones from the coffee chains who want to know how their brakish tepid brown fluid has made an existential improvement to your day and life ...

 

Regards,

 

Alex.

[kevinlms]

11 minutes ago, MJI said:

 

Buy X, get recommended to buy similar to X from same store, (eg a camera).

 

Since you mention 'X', how much longer are we going to be told 'formerly known as Twitter'? Was it really such a bad choice?

 

Never before have I heard of a business, that changed it's name, continue to remind us of it's former name.

[Reorte]

5 minutes ago, kevinlms said:

Since you mention 'X', how much longer are we going to be told 'formerly known as Twitter'? Was it really such a bad choice?

 

Never before have I heard of a business, that changed it's name, continue to remind us of it's former name.

 

Name changes are rarely a good idea (remember Consignia?) Especially when you've got good brand recognition. It's only worth doing if the name carries significant negative baggage, and even that can be turned around, e.g. Skoda.

[Reorte]

21 minutes ago, MJI said:

Windows constatntly changing for the worse.

It did improve for a while, but hit a peak with XP, least on the user-facing side (although I'll guiltily confess to actually liking the look of Vista). There have been under the bonnet improvements that are worth having, such as support for newer hardware, and security being less non-existent is a necessity when so many machines are connected to the internet.