WTF Bites
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Universal law of nature: all utility companies will find a way to fuck up every part of anything they do. The simpler it is, the more ridiculous the fuck up will be
Not universally true. My energy supplier is owned by Nottingham Council, over here in the UK. I've been with them several years now. There have been 2 fuck-ups involving them, neither of which were their fault. Both of those fuck-ups were linked, and constitute a minor WTF so I'll go ahead and describe it here.
When I first moved into this flat 10 years ago gas and electricity was supplied through pre-payment meters. This was provided by Scottish Power at the time. Anyone who has come into contact with them will be aware of their propensity for fucking things up. When I first got the power switched on, they had left a £270 debt from the previous occupant on the meter. This meant that £6.50 of every £10 I topped up with went toward that debt instead of my account. I argued with them for several weeks over this and they flat out denied that any such thing was going on. After arguing for a few weeks, I just switched supplier.
I informed my new supplier (nPower) of what was occurring, and they arranged for an engineer to come out and reset the meter. This was not before a further £20 or so had gone toward this fictitious debt rather than my gas supply and the first bill they sent me reflected this, showing a £23 discrepancy between my payments and the amount of gas used. I was £23 in credit on this account. I requested that this be given to me as a refund, as there is no other way to recover it on a pre-payment account. nPower suddenly mysteriously lost all records of the problems with my meter, and refused to give a refund. Cue changing supplier again, but not before writing to the CEO of nPower directly and rasing my complaint. This lead to me getting the £23 refunded, and £15 extra as an apology. I still changed supplier again.
Third time lucky. I changed to RobinHood Energy. Not only were they significantly cheaper than other options (state owned and not for profit, so less overheads) they show competence as well. The new gas and electric cards arrived 3 days before the switch was due with instructions on how to set activate them for the new supplier. The switch went fine, and a couple years passed without incident. I check now and then if they are still the cheapest, and they still are by a considerable margin.
So, toward the beginning of last summer I decided that it was time to change away from pre-payment meters. Using these cost me just under £1 per week in higher standing charges so switching made sense. The only reason I hadn't done it earlier was because I expected to have to pay for the new meter, or at least it's installation. So I contacted RobinHood and asked if they would make this change, and if so how much it would cost me. Turns out they would make the switch and it wouldn't cost me a penny. Great. Lets get this done then.
A couple weeks later the day arrives for the meters to be swapped over. I work mid-afternoon to evening so a morning appointment was arranged. Engineer turns up at 9am. So far so good. Engineer removes the old electric meter and starts to install the new smart meter.
First problem arises. The electric meter is contained in a small metal cupboard, just large enough to fix the meter. The new smart meter is bigger and is not going to fit in this cupboard. Engineer replaces the original meter and says I need to discuss it with my supplier and rearrange the appointment. I discuss it with RobinHood, and we establish that the actual meter belongs to the electric grid people, who are the actual people who sent out the engineer to replace it (paid by RobinHood), while the cupboard it sits in belongs to my landlord, a large housing association.
So I contact my landlord, inform them of the problem, and ask for a discussion on how to resolve this problem. They initially don't want to now. Not their problem. I then suggest that I just rip out the cupboard while there's no meter in it, then the smart meter can just be connected to the wall. Nope, they won't allow this but they also won't get involved in removing or replacing the cupboard. After trying to argue reasonably for a while, I give up and take the nuclear option.
I inform them that their intransigence is costing me money (the just under £1 per week mentioned earlier) and that I will be deducting it from my rent payments until this problem is resolved. I also point out that there is a UK law requiring all landlords to provide smart meters by 2020, so they are going to have to deal with this problem sooner or later anyway. Why not now? It took several weeks, but they finally agreed that it was their responsibility to fix this. Great. I then suggest that they liaise with my energy supplier, because their maintenance guy has to be on site at the same time as the meter engineer. Process is: turn off power. Remove current Electricity meter from cupboard. Remove and replace the offending cupboard with one that will fit a smart meter. Then, fit new smart meter into the new cupboard and switch the power back on.
They flat out refuse to deal with the energy supplier, citing data protection legislation. No amount of pointing out that I will provide them with all necessary information will change their minds. I have to arrange the appointment then inform them of it's time so they can attend. They also demand an exact time, not the 4 hour slots the Grid people provide. I point out to them that their scheduled repairs are in 10 hour slots not exact times, so complaining about a 4 hour slot is rather hypocritical. They object to their maintenance guy having to wait around. I object to the times I've had to wait around for their maintenance guy. I remind them that I'm deducting £1 per week from the rent until this is resolved.
Finally they come up with a 'solution'. It's one hell of an unnecessary bodge, designed to work around problems entirely caused by themselves, but it is what it is. Basically, I'm supposed to wait until the meter engineer turns up, then immediately phone them and they will send the maintenance guy out within 15 minutes. (Yeah. I didn't think this would work either).
So, rearranged appointment. Morning again because of my schedule. I'm waiting around from 8am until 12pm. No engineer. Brilliant. All that strife and hassle completely wasted. So I contact the energy company and my landlord to inform them of the new problem. Turns out the engineer was stuck on another, unexpectedly tricky, job and so I got missed out. Energy supplier, even though it wasn't their fault, gave me £25 credit as an apology and another appointment is arranged.
The day before this new appointment I make doubly sure everything is organised. The housing trust know there's an appointment the next day and their repair team will be waiting for my call. I make a point of telling them that, since the last appointment was missed I will probably be first on the list this time so they need to be ready for the call at 8am. I'm assured this isn't a problem.
Next day arrives. 8am (8:02am to be precise) the meter engineer rings my doorbell. I let him in, and while he's on his way up in the lift I phone the number the housing association gave me. I get an answerphone with a message telling me they don't open until 9am and I should phone back later. How wonderfully fucking useful. When the engineer arrives I explain what's happening. He has a look at the cupboard and establishes that the smart meter is definitely not going to fit. Meanwhile I'm frantically trying to get in tough with the housing association. I manage to get through to their head office, which is open at that time, but they have no idea what I'm talking about, there's nothing on my account details about it, and until the local office wakes up at 9am there is nothing they can (or will) do about it.
I'm having a chat with the engineer at this point, the two of us agreeing that these people are fucking useless. Then he has a brain wave. He actually has a set of non-smart meters in his van that may fit and may do the job, as long as I'm not bothered by the lack of smart capability. I'm not, as all I care about is the lower standing charge for the supply. Switching from pre-payment to credit fixes that, the smart meter bit was irrelevant. So the job gets done, I get my new credit meters saving me £1 a week and most everybody is happy. The housing trust eventually paid me £25 as an apology for messing me around.
The power supplier wasn't entirely happy, they wanted the smart-meter bits, but they are happy as long as they still get paid for the energy I use. Once a month they send me an email reminding me to send them meter readings and I do so. They produce a bill based on those readings and I pay it. All good. Today is actually the first time I forgot to send them a reading. It was due yesterday but I forgot to do it. I was going to do it first thing today, but when I turned on my computer the bill had already been made based on an estimation. This estimation sets it at £2 cheaper than last month, because it's getting into summer so my gas usage is decreasing. The estimated values they've used is almost precisely the actual readings, taken by me right after I saw the bill.
I guess the real WTF here is an energy supplier who are competent, reasonable and helpful, and don't try to gouge their customers.
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Universal law of nature: all utility companies will find a way to fuck up every part of anything they do. The simpler it is, the more ridiculous the fuck up will be
Not universally true.
Yes, universally true.
All utilities companies are incompetent and/or WTF-ridddled - the ones that seem otherwise are better at hiding it.
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@boomzilla said in WTF Bites:
@HardwareGeek said in WTF Bites:
@Applied-Mediocrity The blockchain preserves the list of your
misspellings, immutably, forever.
Immutable like a hurricane.Where did that meme come from? I never had time to read through the thousands of posts of fox arguing with everyone
It was somewhere in
discussing gender fluidity. I believe he said that gender was immutable. Like a hurricane is immutable.Ehr... "it causes quite the storm but it'll blow over"?
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@boomzilla said in WTF Bites:
Like a hurricane is immutable.
I've never seen a hurricane with exposed setters.
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@TimeBandit said in WTF Bites:
@mott555 I can get a radiator for my RX-8 shipped from Texas (I believe) for $55
Is it the RX-8 of Theseus by now?
Like all RX-8s
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The whole window is an empty frame. Resizing, minimising, etc. doesn't fix it.
I hope I saved before putting the computer to sleep.
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No. There isn't. It's a three letter typo. Why should I change other things that don't need changing
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@Cursorkeys said in WTF Bites:
Why should I change other things that don't need changing
Because excavator!
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I am contemplating writing an essay titled “Iostreams, fractal of bad design”.
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@Cursorkeys Stack Overflow? You can put in
<!-- HTML comments -->to work around that sort of thing.
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I am contemplating writing an essay titled “Iostreams, fractal of bad design”.
I'm almost sure that's been done multiple times, just not with that title
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What's Microsoft's problem with opening images? Every browser lets you right click an image in a website and open it in a new tab, but not IE or Edge.
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it doesn't take 3+ days to deliver two fucking envelopes
Sure it can. A friend who runs dog shows once got an entry one year after it was mailed...
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@TimeBandit welcome to international shipping.
Yeah, have them send it to China first and then from China to Canada. Will take longer, but cost $3 total.
Only if you want the Chinese version.
:chinese_worker: Yeah! We got another authentic one!
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@HardwareGeek said in WTF Bites:
@mott555 I've ordered stuff internationally, too, and never paid even 1/10th of that. Of course, the shipping method made the proverbial "slow boat from China" look speedy.
Maybe their pricing is still based on putting it on the Concorde?
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Maybe their pricing is still based on putting it on the Concorde?
Sure, you can put it on Concorde. No point really other than to say that you've put it on Concorde though; the planes still aren't going to fly again…
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@dkf You could put it on a Concorde and then put the Concorde on a freighter.
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Maybe their pricing is still based on putting it on the Concorde?
Sure, you can put it on Concorde. No point really other than to say that you've put it on Concorde though; the planes still aren't going to fly again…
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Nothing on this site from this year is under copyright!
Filed under: I am absolutely convinced this would hold up in court.
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Start poking at the RichTextBox's spellchecker with Reflection.
Take this. You may need it on your quest. And its little
dogdirty/clean/error status table too.
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Filed under: I am absolutely convinced this would hold up in court.
I have even better strategy: I never read the footer
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You could put it on a Concorde and then put the Concorde on a freighter.
You just need to find a Concorde that people are happy to loan to you so you can put it on a freighter. I know exactly where the nearest one to me is, and they're not loaning it to anyone.
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I know exactly where the nearest one to me is, and they're not loaning it to anyone.
That's stopping you?
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That's stopping you?
My alignment does include Lawful…
Commandeering is lawful, isn't it?
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@r10pez10 No mechanism for copy-paste of text?
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@r10pez10 No mechanism for copy-paste of text?
They must have been using an Apple system.
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Some time ago I changed banks - I got a mortgage and the provider demanded I get a checking account with them, and I have no use for two of those. It's shitty but the law doesn't prohibit that so there was nothing I could do except get a worse mortgage. Fine.
So I went to my old bank and cancelled all my accounts. I thought everything was fine until I tried to set up allowed overdraft at my new bank and was told they won't do that because apparently I'm in the central debtor's registry (or whatever the English translation is). So I started investigating.
It turns out, when I cancelled my credit card at the old bank, they removed it from my ebanking immediately, so I couldn't see any information about the account, but they charged me a fee for the card. The fee was 30 CZK - about $1.30 or 1.17 EUR. Then the account was closed and I owed them those 30 crowns. They failed to notify me about this in any way, I didn't get an e-mail, text, phone call, physical mail, absolutely nothing.
After I (obviously) didn't pay for a few months they sent it to collections. Then the debt somehow disappeared, which I had nothing to do with because again I had no idea I owed them anything - but I still got an entry in the debtor's registry. The entry can't be removed for any reason, and it stays there for 4 years. The registry and the institutions using it don't give a shit whether I owed (or "owed") ten million or the cost of a McDicks cheeseburger - we don't have a credit score here but if we did, mine would be obliterated. Until October 2021 no reputable institution will lend me any money, if I ever need that all I can do is go to the fat gypsy who spends all day sitting in a Porsche Panamera on my street.
I have plenty of cash reserves so I should be fine, but I don't think I'm buying that new car I wanted anytime soon. God fucking dammit.
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@hungrier: whoever typed the text misspells "responsibility", but always the same way?
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@blek In Germany you could take them to court for that and demand recompensation. Even if there were no actual damages, at least they'd be forced to correct their data entries.
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@Rhywden I can do that here too. The problem is, the 4 year period will probably elapse before a court comes to a decision.
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@blek Don't your courts have the concept of "immediate injunction" exactly intended for this kind of stuff which by its very nature cannot wait?
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@Rhywden Sure, but I doubt this "cannot wait". I'll talk to a lawyer but I really don't have any high hopes.
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Restarted my computer today and got this...
...once for each of three google accounts. The only way I know it is Google Backup & Sync is because of the icon in the taskbar...
I didn't even close or react to the dialogs yet as I am still writing this post and already Backup & Sync has started up and started syncing files like nothing happened. The error dialogs are still present.
Closed one dialog...
And another...
And another...
Thanks for complaining about Windows XP stuff on my Windows 10 machine, Google.
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I listened to an industry podcast today where they said that one of the near future biggest growth areas for revenue is repatriation of data and services from cloud services, because in almost every case "the cloud" turns out to be a lot more expensive and has a higher TCO.
Whodathunkit? Next they will try telling me that leasing a car is more expensive and that (in the long run) it is better to buy a house than to rent an apartment.
Funny thing is, I saw this trend a while back. I even added a "repatriation" tag to our CRM.
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@Polygeekery said in WTF Bites:
repatriation of data and services from cloud services, because in almost every case "the cloud" turns out to be a lot more expensive and has a higher TCO.
Shocking.
Unfortunately the company I work for is several years off discovering this, despite having several of our own data centres.
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@loopback0 The (client of the) company I work for sells cloud services, so they're pushing more and more internal stuff out there, too.
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@HardwareGeek I don't think we are too far off of the cloud bursting. A lot of the demand was driven by salesmen saying it is cheaper, that you don't have to do backups anymore, that there is no maintenance, etc.
The other big bunch of BS that sold these migrations was that the big boys could do it cheaper because they could amortize the compute resources over more hours in a day, etc. Uhmmmmm, no. You can break down data center regions roughly by hemisphere. And in that hemisphere there are five hours in the working day that the entire region will be accessing those resources, and 2-3 of those where everyone will be close to peak usage. Resource usage tracks roughly with the sun, so if it is noon in Denver then everyone within reasonable distance in the hemisphere to share resources will be using said resources.
Exceptions being Netflix and such. Their peak is probably closer to 8pm Denver time.
You can spread ingress and egress of data for distribution purposes, when possible, over the 24 hour day. But you will never beat the speed of light and the best you could ever hope for is ~280ms response time from the opposite side of the globe.
Bullshit driven demand. Now the opportunities for service providers like me are in selling backup services for their "cloud" email and collaboration tools, because idiots still delete shit and Google and Microsoft may guarantee you uptime but they will not guarantee that the data you need will be there. Not to mention that a 15-30 day retention policy doesn't cover that document that Sally the accountant only needs at tax time, but it got deleted in July and now it is February and everyone is proper fucked.
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@loopback0 said in WTF Bites:
All utilities companies are incompetent and/or WTF-ridddled - the ones that seem otherwise are better at hiding it.
Maybe. I pay my bills, I don't get surprises, they show me my usage trends over the past 13 months and the average temperature. They provide me with my electricity, gas, water pretty consistently. Only time there's outages is from storms, etc. About the only thing in my life that's not full of WTFs. Don't get me started on the medical establishment.
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@Polygeekery said in WTF Bites:
I listened to an industry podcast today where they said that one of the near future biggest growth areas for revenue is repatriation of data and services from cloud services, because in almost every case "the cloud" turns out to be a lot more expensive and has a higher TCO.
Shame. My employer (a multi-billion-dollar corporation) has recently finished a total transition from everything only being available as on-site installation to everything only being available in cloud. It did miracles to revenue; so it makes sense to assume the opposite migration will bring the opposite of miracles.
Whodathunkit? Next they will try telling me that leasing a car is more expensive and that (in the long run) it is better to buy a house than to rent an apartment.
Fun fact: in Poland (probably other places too, but I only know Polish laws), leasing a car as a company is indeed a financially better option in the long run than buying one - there are accounting laws that require you to spread the expenses on long-term assets over several years. So if you buy, you can only write off so much each year from your taxes - but have to pay the entire sum up front. Leasing is about 3-5% more expensive, but you're left with much more cash in hand so you can make other investments earlier.
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@HardwareGeek said in WTF Bites:
@loopback0 The (client of the) company I work for sells cloud services, so they're pushing more and more internal stuff out there, too.
That's silly. Do they think the president of McDonald's eats at McDonald's?
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@Zerosquare said in WTF Bites:
@HardwareGeek said in WTF Bites:
@loopback0 The (client of the) company I work for sells cloud services, so they're pushing more and more internal stuff out there, too.
That's silly. Do they think the president of McDonald's eats at McDonald's?
Of course not. Presidents eat at KFC!
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@Polygeekery said in WTF Bites:
I don't think we are too far off of the cloud bursting.
The big driving factor is that it has a few key advantages:
- Don't need to build and operate a datacenter. That's a lot of non-core business headaches gone right there. Particularly when you consider the complexity of operating in lots of places around the world. This also drives quite a lot of the small-scale stuff, except there it's about whether to hire a second part-time sysadmin to run an on-premise service or get a SaaS-provider to look after it.
- Don't need to (usually) provision for the peak of the peak of capacity. Short-term renting of resources is a business model that didn't exist before the Cloud. (You needed to hire months in a colo facility at least, which is a totally different class of outlay.)
Those features haven't gone away, despite salesweasels overselling things (and they'll go off and do that to something else next too; that's what they do, over and over).
(You are damn right about backups being critical. Businesses which don't take care of that aspect are on borrowed time…)
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backups being critical.
Oh yeah... speaking of... *checks* WTF where did the backup program go?
It's literally disappeared... 
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@Polygeekery said in WTF Bites:
@HardwareGeek I don't think we are too far off of the cloud bursting. A lot of the demand was driven by salesmen saying it is cheaper, that you don't have to do backups anymore, that there is no maintenance, etc.
I doubt it will be huge burst, because for many use-cases it does make sense. But I suppose some will be returning to running on premise, especially the internal systems of medium companies that need a bit more control over them and have enough admins anyway, because they need them to manage all the workstations.
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