Insurance Renewal Fuckery
Posted: Thu 14 September, 2023 Filed under: 1BEM, Advertising, Domestic, Driving, Finances, Legal Leave a comment »This being the time I bought the current car, it’s also time for that annual festival of fuckery – Insurance Renewal.
I knew that this year was likely to be a pain in the arse – there’s been plenty of coverage about how insurance premiums have gone up massively as part of “the cost of living” (which in the case of insurance etc. seems to me to be just rabid profiteering – I don’t see how inflation and food costs have a knock-on effect to the car insurance industry!) so I was expecting it to be stupid. I just wasn’t expecting quite how stupid.
So – I got my renewal letter through from my current insurers, and they’d managed to double my insurance. For no changes – the address change happened before last renewal and the car hasn’t changed (other than in losing value for having been driven another 25,000 miles) But no, somehow they feel they can justify doubling the price.
Well, frankly they can fuck off.
So off I went to that site with the meerkats (because it annoys me less than the one with the opera ‘singer’, or the one with the weirdly confusing existential ads that make no sense) and looked at what was available.
As it turns out, I got a deal with a different insurer for all the things I wanted, and paying the same as I have been this year. Which I reckon is a total win, all told. So far it’s been painless – I’ve cancelled the renewal on the current one (while laughing on the phone at them, because doubling the quote is just fucking ridiculous) and the new one is in place to start in early October.
But it does make me wonder about what the business model is for so many of these insurance places. I have to assume that there’s a huge number of people who just blindly accept the renewal cost without looking elsewhere (and if that’s the case then they bloody well deserve to be ripped off, in my opinion) but that’s pretty mind-boggling, given the prevalence of these comparison sites and so on now.
Subscriptions and Stupidity
Posted: Mon 26 June, 2023 Filed under: 1BEM, Advertising, Cynicism, Domestic, Finances, I Don't Understand, People, Stupidity 3 Comments »Interesting to see that subscription things are now the latest target in the Government’s “How can we protect stupid people from being stupid?” process.
Now OK, some of the tactics used by subscription-model companies can be a pain – particularly the “sign up for a free trial and we’ll charge you after that” thing – but also (as that summary hints) they bloody well tell you what they’re going to do! I assume that people just get as far as “sign up for a free trial” and then stop reading/comprehending, but it really isn’t rocket science.
If you’re wanting to try it, then sign up for the free trial. But at the same time put a reminder in your phone for 25-ish days away that says “Cancel [x]”. Then when the phone says “Cancel [x]”, do so. Voila, no charge.
Yes, the model absolutely relies on people being stupid and not bothering to cancel the subscription. Similarly, most gym memberships expect/hope that the majority of people will sign up for the year and only use the place for two or three months. (although that one is a contract, so they can’t easily get out of it) But a subscription model paid month-to-month is an easy one to cancel – assuming even a vague level of competence, of course. The first time the payment comes out, if you don’t want it, it’s easy to go “Oh, fuck it. Forgot that – let’s cancel that now so I don’t have to pay again next month!” and just log in and get it cancelled.
Now OK, I accept that I’m probably not “normal” on this, but I keep a close eye on my money – I know when payments come out, I know what I’m expecting to pay, and I check my bank account every couple of days, minimum. I know where I stand on all of it on any given day. So it absolutely gobsmacks me to see things like this (from the story linked above) :
John, for example, told the BBC he had signed up to Amazon Prime video for a 30-day free period and forgot to cancel it when he had to start paying for it.
“I’m just gutted I spent £6.99 a month for 18 months for no reason”.
Now, I’d like to see Amazon’s side of that story, and see whether “John” actually watched Amazon video in that time, and/or whether he got Amazon deliveries in that time. It’s worth noting that Amazon is actually an oddity in this case, in that you pay for Prime delivery and get the video stuff as well – so if he’s paid for Prime to get things delivered next-day and made use of that then it’s not been a waste of money in the first place!
As for cancelling, John comes up with this gem…
“It was such a stressful ordeal and left me with a lot of anxiety. It ridiculous, these companies only care about the money not the person”.
I mean…. A) Welcome to Capitalism. And B) it’s a simple process. Yes, they’ll say “Are you sure? Here’s what you’ll lose out on” and so on, because they do want to keep your custom/money. Of course they do. But it’s not a challenging thing to just say “Yep, cancel it”. Certainly most (if not all) of the online companies make it easy – a couple of clicks and it’s done. Even the dating sites don’t make a big thing of the people leaving – they know they’ll have plenty of other people signing up or staying on.
All told, if someone says they’re short of money (“Cost of living crisis” etc. etc.) and yet still ‘not knowing’ that they’re paying out for subscriptions, then they’re not actually that short of money. (Or are congenitally and irredeemably stupid)
On the other hand, I can absolutely see that it would be good/ethical for a subscription service to send a check-up message if the person using it hasn’t accessed that service at all in (for example) six months, and have them opt back in (or at least say “Yes, I want to keep going with this”) at that point. And if they don’t respond, then their account gets deactivated. Among other things, that would be useful in scenarios where the person has died or become incapacitated, and reduces the whole nightmare of trying to unsubscribe someone from something where you don’t even know their username/password.
Memory Failings
Posted: Fri 28 August, 2020 Filed under: 1BEM, I Don't Understand, People, Thoughts, Weirdness Leave a comment »Do you suffer from long-term memory loss?
I don’t remember, I don’t remember(Chumbawumba’s “Amnesia”)
Within my office block, I’m regularly gobsmacked by how people seem incapable of seemingly simple tasks, like remembering to turn things off that they’ve just turned on. For example, walking in to the toilets, turning on the lights, and failing to turn them off again when leaving. (And sometimes also somehow forgetting to turn off taps that they’ve just used)
I honestly don’t understand this – and I’m potentially being charitable by attributing it to forgetfulness, rather than just being unthinking asshats – but it does seem to be ever more prevalent. Maybe it’s related to the office rentals being all-inclusive, meaning people give less of a sod about utilities and so on.
But even then, I wonder, is that also how they are at home? Do they keep leaving things on there as well? Do their partners/parents just keep on tidying up after them, turning things off again?
(And just because I’m not perfect – I’ve been meaning to write this post for the last two weeks, and I’ve kept on forgetting to do so)
One Speed Fits All
Posted: Fri 17 July, 2020 Filed under: 1BEM, Commuting, Domestic, Driving, People, Weirdness Leave a comment »Recently I’ve noticed something odd on my journeys to/from the office that really annoys me. And it’s to do with speeding (as the title may have suggested)
Particularly on my way home, the drive contains a variety of country roads and towns/villages, so we fairly regularly swap between speed limits of 60 and 30mph, with one small stretch at 20mph. Which is easy, so long as you’ve got a brain, and some awareness. (And you’d pretty much hope that a driver has both)
But no. On a regular basis, I see drivers who decide to drive at about 40mph the whole way, regardless of what the limit actually is. It means they’re either going ridiculously slowly, or stupidly fast.
It’s not really a problem as such – it’s just annoying, and I truly don’t understand the thinking that leads to this behaviour. It’s all just bizarre, really.
Ambivalent
Posted: Wed 12 December, 2018 Filed under: 1BEM, Cynicism, Domestic, Festering Season, People, Thoughts, Weirdness Leave a comment »
This year is currently a weird one for me with regards to the Festering Season.
Usually by now I’m totally done with it, had enough, and generally pretty fucked off with the entire thing.
This year, though, I’m just ambivalent about it. And I don’t actually know why.
We’re still being faced with the same inanity and vapid bullshit on TV adverts and the like. We’ve had Christmas Shit™ (cards, confectionary, blah blah) in the shops since September. Now we’re in December they’re playing sodding christmas carols and tunes in the shops and on the radio, and various fuckwits are already blithering about “It’s christmas”. (No it’s fucking not, it’s just December)
And on the face of that paragraph, you’d think I am hating it. But I’m not. I still feel the same, that it is all crap and bollocks, but it’s not enraging me this year the same way it has in the past.
It annoys me that I don’t know why it’s not annoying me as much as usual. But I’m also not going to complain – in some ways it’s quite nice to be a wee bit more tolerant of the whole farce than usual.
I don’t like (let alone love) the season and what it does to people – and I honestly doubt I ever will. But at least this year I also don’t hate it the same way I usually do.
Current Scams
Posted: Wed 25 July, 2018 Filed under: 1BEM, Cynicism, Geeky, People, Security, Thoughts 1 Comment »At the moment, there are a couple of interesting (and fairly well-crafted) scams going around. I’ve seen/received all of these in the last week or so.
First – the ‘we know what you’ve been up to‘ scam email.
It says something along the lines of “I know what you’ve been up to – when you were on that porn site (it’s noticeably non-specific on details) I loaded a screen-grabber to your machine, so we could record your ‘activities’“. Some of them also have something like “We know your password for the site was [whatever]” – the password is usually an old one that they’ve taken from a record including your email address, and gambles on people using the same password across multiple sites. (In fairness, most people do exactly this) And then it asks for a ransom “or your shame will be available for all to see” It’s pretty basic, but is apparently enough to scare a certain sub-set of people (AKA gullible idiots) who so far have forked out around $250,000 to the scammers.
Second – and there are two types of this currently bonging around – are the HMRC scams.
These basically draw on the whole paranoia about HMRC losing payments, or trying to take the business owner to court.
I’ve had umpteen emails about “Your payment hasn’t gone through” along with attached links or forms to fill in – always a pretty damn good clue that it’s a scam. And again, they’re all ridiculously non-specific, don’t mention a company name/details, or what the payment is supposedly for – another warning sign
The second type, which is a bit nastier, is the phone message – I’ve had a couple now, with a message saying “We’re issuing a warrant in order to discuss this matter with you“, and sounding a lot more official. Still no details though, or anything about what they’re wanting to discuss. (I know, in theory GDPR would also stop them from discussing, but that’s a side point for now) However, they show the phone number – in my experience, calls from HMRC and the like come through a switchboard, and usually show as “Unknown Number” – and a quick search on that number provides more than enough evidence that it’s a scam.
Of course, there are plenty of other scam emails out there – it’s just that these are the ones I’ve noticed specifically this week, and particularly after having received a couple of the “HMRC” calls yesterday and today, so I thought I’d write a bit about them.
Calling 101
Posted: Thu 19 July, 2018 Filed under: 1BEM, Commuting, Customer Services, Cynicism, Domestic, Driving, Milton Keynes, Thoughts Leave a comment »Every so often, I decide to play the role of “responsible human being”. Today, it turned out, was one of those days.
When I got in to work, I could see that three cars in the vicinity had been broken into (or at least had their windows smashed) so opted to do the ‘responsible human’ thing, and called 101 – the UK Police’s non-emergency number. No point in doing an emergency 999, as no-one else was visible, and the damages could’ve happened any time overnight.
So 101 it was. And while I get that it’s for non-urgent stuff and so on, but man alive, what an absolute faff.
The call goes through, and starts off with “Which police force do you require?”. (Probably because I called on my mobile – calling from a landline would’ve localised things. I assume) That’s fine, if you know who you need to speak to. But if I hadn’t known that Milton Keynes is covered by Thames Valley Police, I’d have been knackered from stage one.
Then we go on to a recorded message from the chief of Thames Valley. Why? No idea. I assume it’s part of the script of 101 – I’ve heard similar on other calls to different forces – but it seems (to me) to be utterly pointless.
And then we get the voice-response asking what you want to do. If you know the name/number you want to speak to, type it now, or press [whatever] to report a crime.
And then we get some piece of crap recorded message about victim support.
And finally, finally, when all that’s done, I finally spoke to someone – who was helpful, and made sense. But what a horrific fucking faff in order to do something I didn’t even need to.
All told, it certainly makes it easy to see why people prefer to call 999, even for non-emergency stuff. At least the response to it is quicker, and gets rid of all that recorded bullshit.