Grr! Bloody public transport in England!

As in the first post thread, first train to London cancelled yesterday, then no tube service, so we walked from Monument to Liverpool St. and saw the first bus after we had seen Liverpool Street and we didn't see a single taxi on-route with a light on. Then the Stanstead Express service was also cancelled!

When we left Brighton in the morning, there was nothing on BBC news that there were train and tube disruptions.

Ruined an otherwise fairly enjoyable holiday.

Rave: The Indigo Hotel at Tower Hill (Minories). Excellent service and very nice rooms. We had a couple of minor annoyancies with the rooms, but they were quickly rectified.

Not that it's a busy line, but we closed the Cambrian line down to install the new signalling equipment on the Saturday, on the Friday there was no talk about the closure on the BBC or local radio stations...

God I hate Domestic & General.

I had an extended warranty with them on my washing machine. It's about the only domestic appliance I think it's worth having a longer warranty on because they can be a real pain (and expensive) to get fixed.
Anywho, it was 5 year warranty and it slipped my mind to tell them I moved a couple of years ago. Fair enough, that was my fault.
However, their default possition when the warranty expired and they hadn't had any response (either way) from the renewal notice they say they sent out in April was to start charging me money to carry it on. It's just as well I keep a close eye on my bank account. Suffice to say the policy has been canceled.

They overcharge my parents as well a while ago and refused to refund more than a years worth of premiums because they'd been scamming for more than a year but that was the limitation on refunds.

^^^I saw their ads online and in the local directory when I was looking for washing machine repairers this weekend. Wondered what they were like. How much did they want to charge?

So we got one of the local washing machine repairmen to come round. He turns up about two hours late (had to ring a second time; turns out the person I've been speaking to was the guy's "apprentice"). He reckon's it's the door lock mechanism. Will come back to me with a price and hopefully a spare part (he's checking whether he has a replacement mechanism in stock).

Potentially could save the price of a new washing machine. We were looking at a Zanussi model as a replacement for around £250-300 mark.

D&G were looking for £9/month. Thing is, Warranty Direct will cover (well, according to their advert) 2/3 appliances for under £10 a month.
I haven't had to claim on the D&G warranty so I can't say either way whether it's any good if you actually need to claim although the tosser on the other end of the phone was very accusatory when telling me they'd sent out the renewal notice (i.e. it's my fault I hadn't seen it, which in fairness it was, but there was no need to be suck a knob about it).

£9 per month
£108 per year
£504 per 5 yrs

That's more than the price of a new machine! It'd have to be something like Miele for me to pay out that much.

I do not think that they are worth it for common every day items. Over the life of the product it can turn out to be cheaper to pay for a repair or buy a new machine rather than pay such high premiums. Plus a decent washing machine should last years.

Oh, not to worry Dave, it's all going to be magically sorted for the influx of people for the 2012 Olympics. Just you wait and see, it'll be like clockwork all across London, oh yes.

I hate family sometimes. It feels like we're stuffed no matter what we do and I really just want to wash my hands of the whole deal. I can't though because they're not my family. Mind you, for all the contact we've had they're not really Reds family either!

Why is it so much harder to say how you feel when it's family.. real or imagined?

I know exactly how you feel. I want to throttle a few of my immediate family and knock some sense into them. Except that I know that it won't work!

There's no nice way to say "we don't like you, we don't want to spend any time with you, you are an energy and personality drain and if you can't be bothered to get in touch then you don't get to try guilting us for not making the effort all the d@mn time"

I'd quite happily cut them out completely but I don't know how Red feels about that.

We bought the 5 year cover for our washer dryer when we bought it. Added about £300 to the price of the machine.
Since we've had it we've had about 5 faults so it's more than paid for itself.

We bought our washing machine about 10 years ago. Never had a problem with it at all. Then again it's a turn dial and push button, not really anything non-mechanical that can go wrong with it really.

The warranty seems extortionate IMO. We got a few years added on our fridge at the end of the basic warranty, luckily just before it packed up, which cost less than £100. Handy, we got a replacement about 6 months after taking it out and only had to pay for delivery.

If I'd bought a washing machine and it developed 5 faults within the first 5 years I'd expect a replacement or a refund regardless of insurance or not. We're talking about 'not of merchantable quality' in that case.

IMO buying extra cover is pointless because if a 'white good' breaks inside the period in the insurance would apply it is covered by the standard, legally mandated warranty terms anyway. Bollocks to what they say, the law says different.

Jon