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Post by banjo on Mar 31, 2021 15:56:42 GMT
Got my renewal for my 2007 VW 2.5 Tdi Transporter wallet drainer today funnily enough. Fully comp, protected NCD, one ton voluntary excess. Last year it was £299 this year £312. This is a hike of just over 4%. I didn't think it was worth wasting half a day going over and over the same information with other sharks because I didn't think I'd end up saving a great deal at all. But that's what they're banking on ... My last insurer whacked me 60% extra despite having had no claims in over 13 years. Later I discovered they'd dropped out of the commercial vehicle business ... I think they've been on the same course as that shower at Amazon!
It always gives me a touch of 'em with The Bus because we only "do" around 8,000 a year- half of it between here, Cornwall and Cumbria, yet we get rogered as though we're caning 50,000+ miles each year, regarded as a business and so on. Same with the road fund licence- it's based on pollution, yet at such a low mileage we generate less fug than the eco miracles thundering up those 50,000+ miles every year. Electric vehicles transfer their pollution to the place of energy generation. Moreover, the civic dump won't even let us in through the gates. I've tried three times to get a response from my tory borough council for the required commercial vehicle 4 digit code, but no fecker ever answers the 'phone nor replies to eMails. I'm going back to the days before the lurgey here! We had a code for the last bus but sod trying to get it updated with them. I did nabage to speak to obe oik and he assured me it was sorted. (not!) I know the hippy always looks for and finds an angle to gripe about, but it does feel as though everyone is suckin' at 'em.
Still 'n' all- £312's not bad eh? Wagons roll.
e&oe ...
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Post by nob on Mar 31, 2021 16:52:44 GMT
I have used them in the past,Nob.I did GoCompare too this time and it came up with £407 As I had already signed up with the Moneysupermaaaaarkrt,when GoCompare sent me an email with that quote--from the firm I signed up to ! all sorted good saving.
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Post by jal on Mar 31, 2021 21:34:39 GMT
Last year March 2020 I signed up with SAGA for 3 years car insurance for my Peugeot 508 & my wifes Toyota Yaris £537 for the two of them both Fully Comp. Paid the same this year & will be paying the same next year Mileage on Peugeot 5000 & Yaris 6000 per yr, NCB, & Legal cover all included. That works out at £268.50 for each car. I thought that was pretty good.
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Post by nob on Apr 1, 2021 7:41:43 GMT
It is good JJ. well done. At the end of the day they will get out of paying if they can.
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Post by jal on Apr 1, 2021 21:00:27 GMT
Also if you buy your insurance 3 weeks or more before it's due they will knock the £25 admin fees off.
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Post by banjo on Apr 1, 2021 21:53:01 GMT
Good heads-up John. My renewal quoted £40 admin fee included in the price. And there's me thinking they were just being up-front and honest with the fees. I'll remember that for next year, although the cynic in me feels that sooner or later it'll be unavoidable.
e&oe ...
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Post by jal on Apr 1, 2021 22:07:14 GMT
My admin fee they quoted Steve was £25 & that's the amount they knocked off.
The young lady that set it up initially was called Nicky Divine what a nice name very chatty & a good sense of humour.
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Post by nob on Apr 25, 2021 6:50:54 GMT
The new PC is up and running the way I like so I've ordered a new Epson printer as the old ones paper feed was playing up. No hols so the money is going on other things.
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Post by banjo on Apr 25, 2021 7:35:03 GMT
Back in the day I had an Epson printer (there was a "700" in the model name but I forget the rest.) It was so long ago that multi-functions were only just coming onto the market and they were way too spendy for the penniless hippie. The press pundits were talking up Epson printers so I went with that advice. After a couple of years (like most of the printers I've had) It started to act up and then went on permanent strike. I read in MicroMart that a Rooskie had cottoned on to the fact that Epson had built in "Return to base" time triggered false faults that caused this in most instances. I tracked down the firmware patch he had written and invoked it. Job done.
The trouble with Epsons back then (dependent on your viewpoint) was that the printer heads were in the cartridges making replacements more expensive than the competition. The theory was that it's generally the print head that bungs up, so spring for a new cartridge and you're back in the saddle. All well and good until their crippled firmware kicked in. As the Volkswagen of their day, I have never considered an Epson product again.
e&oe ...
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Post by nob on Apr 25, 2021 11:24:16 GMT
I've had this one an R300 for a while back when XP was the system and its never let me down using compatible inks as well. The new one prints on both sides.
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Post by banjo on Apr 25, 2021 23:05:42 GMT
After that Epson debacle, two HPs (one wireless with a costly wifi upgrade that never worked), a Canon BJC80 portable, two Sony dye sublimations and a multi-function Samsung mono laser down the line, I reckon it must be me not the printers!
What irks is otherwise working printers that fall foul of Redmond "improvements" and what to do with them then. The loft can only take so much junk. The Canon portable had no support for XP, yet my B-I-L used one daily on the road in XP with the Co-Op as an "insurance sales executive". Their IT department would not let him have a copy of the driver for me. Nice guys. I limped along with a semi-working W2K driver but it was never really quite "right". The Samsung is still my working printer, but Bill's Bilge hosed its scanner facility several years ago (which I have recorded on here.) Samsung duck-shoved support onto HP and I was unable to track down the replacement driver at HP's sprawling bohemoth of a website. Frustratingly, the device photo copies very well so there's no mechanical fault- just Windoze mediocrity (it was a W10 update that caused it) Even using the installed Samsung driver's support facility didn't work throwing up 404s (a blessing in disguise because I later read that the "update" once installed hoses after market toners- if you can find it that is ...)
What a right royal mess. " Install updates for non-windows software" and "install updates for other hardware" all checked but not a whisper from Microsoft. Even the "auto restart upon installing updates" doesn't work an any of my three W10 PCs. Fact is, I call M$ out because of persistent wheel reinvention trying to stay one step ahead of crackers and scammers within marketing constraints, instead of heading for version perfection.
I can't bring myself to worship at the Redmond shrine without question. Whole religions have evolved because no one asks "why is that?"
Other than that, the Epson was a good printer!
e&oe ...
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Post by nob on Apr 29, 2021 16:19:45 GMT
I have a blackbird family nesting in a laurel bush in the side garden, I've been buying dried mealybugs and other dried lava and feeding the male, he was coming closer to me each day. This morning there was feathers all over the garden, put the CCTV on and it was the local Sparrow hawk that did the deed. Nature can be brutal.
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Post by banjo on Apr 29, 2021 18:57:04 GMT
I (we) know that feeling nob. Best Beloved gets through a sack of wild bird seed, fat balls and other sundries pretty much on a weekly basis. I have my hobbies so I wouldn't stop her other than to point out the potential for rats. We had a blackbird nest in the anti-burglar rambling rose draped over the drive gates several years ago. One day a raptor tucked its wings in and dive-bombed through the thorns and annihilated the clutch. I watched it after hearing the noise as it bombed down. Then last summer, just as we were off to The Lakes, next door decided to invade our drive with scaffolding to install uPVC soffits and barge boards, together with a lot of pointing. So much effin' mess and during all that heat too. We couldn't go anywhere near our vine and the grapes were toast. I have no suitable words. We had a blackbird nest in the rambling rose again. We tried to parry off her scaffolding contractors, but they just said they'd be quiet. You know what comes next, we return from a week away to find an abandoned nest. The neighbour was more concerned about the additional £500 for the scaffolders to return after the fledglings had gone. We reminded her and her contractors that it is against the law to disturb knowingly such a nesting bird, and they definitely couldn't claim that they weren't aware. Neither she nor they gave a phuck. Should we have reported them? Well apart from dogged determination to pursue an I'm alright Jack lifestyle, they're good neighbours and you can't choose neighbours. Also, yer man is a detective plod. "I am the law" ...
e&oe ...
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Post by nob on Apr 30, 2021 6:44:18 GMT
We had another blackbird eaten a while back but we saw it and just let nature take its course, when the panic sets in the blackbirds make one hell of a noise.
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Post by banjo on Apr 30, 2021 7:35:43 GMT
I've noticed more and more raptors over the last ten years or so. I live in a relatively built up area dotted with parks and Public Open Spaces, but the scallywags are regularly patrolling above the gardens. I think it started with the drive to encourage red kites back in Stonor Park near Henley and no doubt elsewhere, but they're everywhere now. Up at Windsor Great Park, there's always a handful circling over the Guards' Polo Field. It seems that as we gradually suppress pollution and clean up our act generally, all the species that were driven out are returning encouraged by food and opportunity. I feel sorry for the birds- as if cats weren't enough to deal with, and of course blackbirds are ground feeders so you can't leave food for them in hanging bird feeders. Don't get me started on pigeons, as gentle as they are, no other bird fills a vacuum like those flying rats. At least 95% of her blackbird food is hoovered up by the pigeons and of course the starlings. It's lovely sitting under the vine with a beer and crisps listening to the blackbird singing.
e&oe ...
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