What are you doing right now?

[Minty]

What a week! New washing machine meant to come Tuesday, but after I phone them wondering where the hell they are - time being 5pm - they say they weren't delivering on Tuesday, it was only the phonecall that was promised to confirm the date it would actually arrive (which of course I'd just had to prompt them to do!)

New date Thursday. Gets call, put back to Friday. Come Friday, washing machine delivered but "that can't be installed with your set up, those pipes are in the wrong place" (WTF?) and guy supposed to be fitting it walks out - leaving me with two useless washing machines. Wouldn't even help me to lift the old one outside to get it collected by the council so had to do that bit myself in true "crash bang wallop" fashion - one of the neighbours said "you can't leave it outside, it'll get nicked!" to which I said "would love to be a fly on the wall when they tried to use it!"

Phone company, they "apologise" but say if the deliverer/fitter says it can't be fitted there's nothing they can do - they've filled their side of the deal by giving me a new washing machine, & that it won't work with my antiquated plumbing is my tough sh*t - since I've made a "claim" my contract with them is now terminated (um, I didn't make a claim, it was a maintenance contract - not an insurance contract - or are you now telling me it was an insurance contract on via a third party broker which wasn't made clear in the small print). But they did "agree" to reimburse the "installation" part of the fee, "although delivery was included in that."

There now followed some naughty words.

Called to get a plumber, but despite the fact our area is overrun with plumbers (some even qualified), getting one to do a Saturday wasn't on because it wasn't really an "emergency".

On Saturday morning, I got so sick at the new machine looking at me mockingly I decided I'd have a go at doing it myself. That I'd spent part of Friday night reading up everything I could find on the net & watching YouTube vids on how to do it may also have had some bearing on the matter.

Fifteen minutes later, it was working. Yes, fifteen minutes. I didn't have to even run back over to the computer to check the instructions I'd downloaded.

For that pot of p*ss, I was originally being charged £68.

My guess is the space cadet couldn't hack that I had a hot tap and a cold tap - modern machines have a cold tap only. Closing off the hot tap and fitting only the cold tap & sump pipe was beyond his technical expertise.

(New washing machine takes twice as long to do but is double the drum size, so in effect no real change)

Moral of the story: if you want a job done, forget anyone else doing it in the current climate, especially if they're being paid to!