Life

[Ben X]

I just googled "QED gif" and used the first one that came up (even though it isn't the correct QED abbreviation)!

[dibs]

Ooooh. That is pretty cool!

[Merus]

quantum electro dynamics

[Ben X]

quod erat demonstrandum

[tegan]

Got my cheque and paid off all my shit. I am MORE OR LESS DEBT-FREE with plenty to spare! Woooo!

 

Still have a few financial things to sort out, but hopefully not much. After that I gotta get me a job.

[dibs]

congrat$ tegan!

[aprettycooldude]

Tegan! As someone with hella college debt, that is the most rad and if I had not already used the Jim Jones ballin .gif I would use it here.

 

FORTUNATELY MY WELL OF CONGRATULATORY GIFS REGARDING MONEY RUNS DEEP

[Justin Leego]

That is excellent news Teg

[Erkki]

Great to hear, tegan

[Apelsin]

Some big Thumbs up right here! 

 

                       

 

 

(Had to reduce number of Thumbs. Apparently there's a cap on emoticon usage?!)

[JonCole]

My car window is messed up and it costs $350 to fix. YAAAAAY MONDAYS YEAAAAAAH

[tegan]

I tried to order take-out. The guy never showed up after half an hour of waiting and when I went back upstairs I found angry messages on my phone saying that he was there when he clearly wasn't. I don't know whether he was at the wrong building or what, but to make a long story short I never got my food and I'm apparently banned now. Ugh.

 

I feel terrible.

[aprettycooldude]

I have blessedly never had take out problems, and I am sorry for your loss.

[namman siggins]

Life has been more and less good for me:

I've had to stop hanging out with a friend for a while for the shitty things he's done to a couple of my other friends. That's been painful because I see him as a family, but I fucking angry at him and need to some space to think about things.

 

Though I "dropped" him, I've gained a new friend and deepen my bonds with my some of my other friends. I no longer feel somewhat alone now in Sacramento and I've recovered well from my long-term relationship. 

 

I've found more time to read my books and money to buy more. 

School is going fucking great and I'm almost done with it; thank god, I fucking hate college. I was never a big fan of school, but it's needed in this society to live somewhat well.

 

Also, I'm amazed by how open-minded the people in Sacramento are: I can walk around in my dress or skirt and not worry about being called a faggot or ready myself to get into a fight. So I've been living more and more open with my attire.

[Gormongous]

I'm probably going to lose interest in writing this post before I even finish it, but something of a crisis has been building vis-à-vis my dating life. It's not that I'm having issues getting involved with people. I'm just having issues getting involved with people I like. It seems like every girl I want to date has one thing or another keeping her from dating me, but I have plenty of other girls who want to date me for whom I feel nothing. It feels so entitled to complain about it, but it is grinding me down something fierce. In all seriousness, it would be easier for me if no one were interested in me, because that would mean something external and concrete that might respond to direct action. But if I'm just attracting the wrong kind of person, I don't really know what to do about that.

 

For people who care about specific details:

  Reveal hidden contents

Yes, this has to do with that one girl with whom I went on a date a month ago. I asked a mutual friend, who advised me to give her lots of space, and while I was doing that, she basically burned down our friendship with everyone we know out of fear that we'd ruin it with romantic feelings. I am less than happy about the whole thing, if only because I feel ten years too old for this to be something that happens to me, but whatever. Nothing to be done.

[Ben X]

  On 9/19/2014 at 12:19 PM, Ben X said:

My (very long) complaint letter to Plusnet after they took over 6 weeks to install my internet:

 

  Reveal hidden contents

Dear Sir or Madam,

I am writing to complain about the extremely poor customer experience I have had with your company since joining.

I joined PlusNet on the 1st August 2013. There was immediately a minor issue where the customer advisor who opened the account for me, despite my having specified not wanting to spend money on my landline, put me on a specific landline tariff for a week in order to allow my £10 discount for the first three months as advertised online. This was mentioned in passing at the end of the phone call, so I did not pick up on it immediately. I called back soon after and was told that this was not necessary at all and that as long as I had a phone line I would get the discount, so I had the tariff taken off again. This, however, is not the crux of my complaint.

After a little confusion with installation dates where at one point I was told that I would get both my phone-line activation and broadband installation done on the 15th August, it transpired that only the phone-line would be done on the 15th and the broadband would be installed on the 20th. As I understand it, the aim is for installation to be done within 10 working days, so this was a little over but not a big issue.

On the 20th, the engineer came round at 12pm, but soon realised that she would not be able to perform the installation due to routing/labelling issues.

I contacted PlusNet and was told that the issue would need to be fixed, then an installation rebooked and expedited. An engineer was sent out to solve the issues not that day or the next, but on the 22nd. The engineer called my landline, directly from the cabinet I believe, on the 22nd at around 8:30am and told me that the issue was now resolved. I posted a response to my Help Assistant question (#72862882) regarding the ongoing issues, advising PlusNet that the issue was resolved and asking that BT therefore be contacted that day instead of the next. I also called to request this. This did not happen and I instead had to wait until the 23rd to be given a new appointment, which was not until the 27th. Despite that being 17 working days, almost an entire month, since I signed with PlusNet, and despite my having made myself available pointlessly once already, PlusNet did not get me a same-day appointment, or one for the Saturday, Sunday or Bank Holiday Monday.

On the 27th, my appointment was for between 8am and 1pm. I had heard nothing by 12:20 and so called PlusNet. I was told that at 10am BT had realised that yet more external work had to be done and so the installation could not be done that day. I had not been contacted by either BT or PlusNet to let me know this. I requested that the issues be solved and a later installation appointment be made for the same day. I later received a call from Lynn telling me that the earliest I could get was the afternoon of the next day, which I accepted. I was told by Lynn that she would monitor the booking to make sure everything went well.

On the 28th, my appointment was for between 1pm and 6pm. I had heard nothing by 3:30pm and so called PlusNet. I was told that around half an hour earlier, BT had realised that there were routing issues that meant the installation could not be completed that day. I had not been contacted by Lynn or indeed anyone at either company to inform me of this, and presumably would not have been until at least 6pm if at all. I was told I would be called back. Soon after, I received a call from Ryan, who told me that the issues would be resolved and a new appointment booked, but that the appointment would be the 30th August at the earliest, more likely the 2nd or 3rd of September. This would make it at least 21 working days and over a month for me from joining PlusNet to having broadband installed in my flat. I again asked for the issues to be solved and a later installation appointment to be made for the same day, but was told that aside from the amount of time needed for the routing system to set itself correctly (“for the robot to do its work”, as Ryan put it), there were also orders and communication that needed to go back and forth between PlusNet and BT. I refused to believe, as I still do, that it was impossible to speed this process up for me any further (in fact, Ryan told me that there is such a thing as a High Level Expedite which I would not receive), and so asked to speak to Ryan’s manager. I spoke to his manager, who also told me there was no way to speed up the process for me but that Ryan was personally looking after my installation now. I implored the manager to give Ryan authorisation to do whatever was needed.

Ryan phoned me on the 29th and told me that an appointment was booked for the 30th. I also received the usual text notification.

On the 30th, my appointment was for between 1pm and 6pm. I had heard nothing by 2pm and called PlusNet to check that BT had not given up yet. I was told that BT had my appointment marked as the 11th September and that I would receive a call back once it had been looked into. It was also mentioned that Lynn had been active on the account since Ryan had spoken to me. I received the call a short while after and was told that BT’s systems were down and that I would receive another call back shortly. An hour or so later, at around 4:30pm, I had not received another call, so I phoned PlusNet only to be told that PlusNet’s systems had gone down in the last ten minutes and that I would receive a call back. Another hour later, I had not received another call, so I phoned PlusNet back and was told their systems were working again. Robert spoke to Ryan and then informed me that someone called James at PlusNet had failed to escalate the appointment to a team manager and so it had not been expedited, and added a comment to my online ‘question’ reflecting this. I was told that Ryan would be calling me back, which he did soon after. Ryan asked me what I had been told by the previous advisors, and then told me that I had been misinformed and that James was at BT and had escalated it correctly, and that the issue was that the routing was still not correct. He told me that it was not even certain whether I could get fibre optic broadband, and that he would need to open another order just to ask BT whether the routing had been corrected. After my call, Ryan sent me a text and added a comment to my question saying that “it would seem the order was not booked as the routing has not yet been corrected on the new order”. I now understand this to mean that BT did not book the appointment as promised but did not make a point of informing anyone.

I next received a call from Ryan not on the 31st or the 2nd, but on the 3rd September, telling me that the routing was now fixed and a new appointment was booked for the 5th September. I asked Ryan what would happen if yet again it turned out that the problem was not fixed after all, and he said he would push BT to fix it on the same day and give me an HLE.

On the 5th, my appointment was for between 8am and 1pm. I phoned PlusNet at 9am to ensure everything was going as planned, and received a call back from Ryan shortly after, telling me that BT had again not booked the appointment as they said they had because the routing was not fixed as they said it was. From Ryan’s description, it seemed to be the exact same issue as on the 20th August. Ryan said he had been dealing with it for the past 40 minutes and would continue to liase with BT and push for the issue to be fixed that day. He told me there was a chance of my installation also happening that day. I received a Question update from Ryan soon after, saying that “we have been advised that a new update will be available in 24 hours time”. This is not what was promised and, rather than me being informed via phone, this disappointing information was slipped in at the bottom of an update otherwise summing up what had already been discussed. Ryan stayed in contact with me via text on the 6th, while he chased BT for updates, and near the end of the day an appointment was made for the Monday. On Monday 9th September, the sixth attempt, my broadband was finally installed successfully.

Throughout this terrible customer experience, the PlusNet advisors I have spoken to have been professional and friendly. However, they have also made errors and generally been unable to react to the ongoing problems with any urgency or initiative. PlusNet as a company has treated me appallingly; there has been an unacceptably long waiting time, poor communication and an insultingly large amount of my and my partner’s time and money wasted.

PlusNet seems to have no systems in place to escalate problematic orders, nor the ability to fast-track any procedures outside of asking BT to expedite an order. As soon as my initial appointment was wasted, my case should have been marked as needing special attention. When my second appointment was missed, someone at a high enough level at PlusNet should have been communicating directly and constantly with someone at a high enough level at BT to make sure my installation happened as soon as physically possible. By the time the third appointment was missed, someone at least another level up should have been involved. By the time the fourth appointment was missed, PlusNet should have had a senior manager tracking my account minute-to-minute and doing whatever necessary to cut out all delays until I had my broadband installed.

I was told regularly that it is all BT’s fault and there is nothing PlusNet can do in these situations. This does not help me as a PlusNet customer and makes me feel as if I am dealing with the middle-man: with a company that cannot control whether it provides the services it promises. PlusNet needs at the very least a more flexible system of operations with BT so that, in situations such as this, a PlusNet employee is not bound to long waiting times and wading through red tape in order to make any inter-company communication and is able to speed things up beyond an appointment expedite. Indeed, BT seemed at times to be actively deceiving PlusNet, telling them that issues were fixed and appointments were booked only for it to be discovered too late that they were not; the person affected every time by this utter lack of inter-company communication was me, the PlusNet customer.

The lack of organisation that led to engineers needing at least eight different bookings (my four appointments plus the bookings in between them to ostensibly repair the system for those appointments) to resolve a single issue is staggering. On the second appointment, enough engineers should have been assigned to ensure that any and all problems arising on the day could be identified and dealt with immediately until installation was possible.

I have unnecessarily missed five days at work. As I am on a temporary contract, this is not annual leave I am losing, it is actual pay; it roughly amounts, in fact, to the five £50 penalties for missing an appointment that I was threatened with by PlusNet via text. My partner works in IT and she works from home, requiring a broadband connection; she has instead had to frequent cafes with WiFi for the past month, spending money on food and drinks to facilitate this. We have also had to buy a WiFi dongle for £30 to allow for some basic internet access at home. Counting our costs from the 15th August, which would have been ten working days from my joining PlusNet, this amounts to at least £300.

I think the very least PlusNet can do to make up for my dreadful experience is to compensate me for these costs, either by cheque or bank transfer, or by credit to my PlusNet account. I would also be glad as a PlusNet customer to receive some reassurance that all these issues will be investigated and solutions considered.

Yours faithfully,

Ben Ward

 

I've just had another problem with Plusnet. I got an email from them a while back warning about a rise in line rental costs, advising me to renew before they come in. Sound advice, so I call up to do so and the guy told me to call back nearer the time in order to renew. Turns out he advised me to call back a day after I should have done and so there was a month in between our two annual payments that wasn't accounted for and therefore we got charged for at premium. Thankfully, when I called back to query this, the person I spoke to could see from the guy's notes that he'd made the mistake, and she refunded us. Plusnet is just a bloody nightmare. Apart from anything else, it really grinds my gears that we have to pay £15 line rental a month in order to have the privilege of paying £25 for internet a month (though as far as I can tell this is a pretty standard grift).

[Larsen B]

  On 9/22/2014 at 4:50 PM, tegan said:

I tried to order take-out. The guy never showed up after half an hour of waiting and when I went back upstairs I found angry messages on my phone saying that he was there when he clearly wasn't. I don't know whether he was at the wrong building or what, but to make a long story short I never got my food and I'm apparently banned now. Ugh.

 

I feel terrible.

 

You got me blacklisted from Hop Sing's?!

[brkl]

I have my first proper job interview in my field on Thursday, which is the same day I officially graduate. I suddenly feel a bit sick. Actually didn't really expect to be called into an interview yet.

[miffy495]

I got hired by a school board the day before my graduation ceremony. It is indeed terrifying. In my second year, it is not yet less terrifying. Don't know if there's advice to give though. Welcome to the world of feeling like a fraud forever!

[Badfinger]

The job that I interviewed for, which I am well (massively over) qualified for and would do a good job with got back to me today.

 

They thought I was well qualified and would do a good job, and went in a different direction because they were concerned I wouldn't be able to handle the stress (???).

 

Thanks, job. My friends with stable careers and houses let me know that everything happens for a reason. Those people can fuck right off.

[tegan]

I paid off my credit card in full.

 

When I got my last job and moved to a new city, my new employer pushed back my first day indefinitely at the last possible moment, forcing me to live off of my credit card for months until I had maxed it out. Since then, I've been struggling (and usually failing) to keep it below the limit for more than two years. Now it's finally at zero again, and I keep looking at all the stuff on amazon and Steam and the eshop that I couldn't get before and realize that I'm still incredibly hesitant to do so. I'm so used to not being able to spend money that I've become averse to doing so.

 

This is probably better for me in the long run, but I still don't like it.

[Golden Calf]

Beekeeping is supremely enjoyable.

[Gormongous]

  On 9/24/2014 at 2:06 AM, tegan said:

This is probably better for me in the long run, but I still don't like it.

 

Having trained yourself to live poor is a mixed bag. Yeah, being thrifty is good in most situations, but a hesitance surrounding money is becoming a bit of a disadvantage for me professionally, in addition to being a drag on my mental health. You can't get to be known as the person who's tight or cheap, even in some social situations.

[SuperBiasedMan]

  On 9/24/2014 at 8:01 AM, Gormongous said:

You can't get to be known as the person who's tight or cheap, even in some social situations.

 

This mentality always irritates me, me and most of my friends are art graduates with varying degrees of job success and economic standing but it's still seen as odd if you're at the pub and you aren't buying an expensive pint or two. Or if you don't want to eat out when everyone else is. I get that people just want these things to be social experiences but I've found that people take the excuse that you're just not drinking tonight better than the idea that you'd rather not spend the money or outright don't have much money.

 

Though I'm guilty of the exact opposite, kinda judging friends who say they're completely broke and can't afford food but then decide to buy a pint when we're at the pub.

 

  Reveal hidden contents

Yeah, this all centres around the pub. I am irish.

[dibs]

  On 9/24/2014 at 10:44 AM, SuperBiasedMan said:

This mentality always irritates me, me and most of my friends are art graduates with varying degrees of job success and economic standing but it's still seen as odd if you're at the pub and you aren't buying an expensive pint or two. Or if you don't want to eat out when everyone else is. I get that people just want these things to be social experiences but I've found that people take the excuse that you're just not drinking tonight better than the idea that you'd rather not spend the money or outright don't have much money.

 

Though I'm guilty of the exact opposite, kinda judging friends who say they're completely broke and can't afford food but then decide to buy a pint when we're at the pub.

 

  Reveal hidden contents

Yeah, this all centres around the pub. I am irish.

 

So broke they can barely afford to drink!

 

Honestly though, if your friends give out to you for trying to save money they are being dicks. That said, maybe i'm just lucky that all my friends are business types, and are more likely to ask my investment plan if i say that to them (my investment plan is the credit union).