The Venting Thread

[apl68]

We learned today that our main wholesale book vendor did not receive our payment for last month's statement.  This month's statement billed us for both our recent orders and what we thought we'd paid for last month.  We contacted their office, and eventually determined that our check must have been lost in the mail.  The representative said that they've been getting a lot of complaints about lost payments from their customers lately.  Word is that there are problems at the regional mail office that serves their remittance center.

So I had to speak with our bank and get a stop-payment on that lost check, to keep the pen-and-ink pirates from possibly appropriating it.  We'll just have to eat the charge for that stop-payment.  Hope that the mail center can get their act together soon.

[mythbuster]

Well the visit from the plumber took 10 minutes and $175. No leaks as expected. At least he arrived on time. We have submitted the invoice that declares no leaks back to the insurance agent and get to wait for the underwriter to find another reason to yank our chain. Supposedly this all will be resolved by the end of the month?
   AmLitHist, to give you more background. All the insurance companies that advertise with characters on TV stopped writing home policies in Florida years ago. Even USAA limits themselves to only active duty military. So we are stuck here with a variety of obscure and Florida only companies, and of course the state government provided plan if no one else will touch you. Our old policy was with a company brokered via USAA. They were one of the few that was still multi-state, but they got bought by Progressive and dumped all the FL accounts. Even the USAA brokers had trouble finding us good options- hence our tour through four other brokers.

[apl68]

Even here, outside of annual hurricane/wildfire country, insurance rates are going up steeply.  We're in the process of renewing the library's policy, and our insurer is going up on us by something like a third over last year.  Even though we've had no national headline-grabbing catastrophes in our state, the amount of seasonal thunderstorm and tornado damage has caused insurers to lose money here in the last couple of years. 

Of course part of the problem is the huge nationwide increase in materials and labor to repair anything.  On my most recent visit to Nashville the year before last, I think I saw where most of the nation's building materials have been going.  Every other well-heeled homeowner in the city's historic neighborhoods is busily doubling the size of their house.

[fishbrains]

I've had the recent pleasure of traveling to a place where hotels had bidets--one of the most pleasant inventions ever created.

And then I had to come home and resume walking around the planet with the same old gritty bunghole I've always had.

Life just ain't fair.