Random thing you loathe right now.

JLS wrote:
hbi2k wrote:

I really need to move my banking over to USAA from Wells Fargo. I'm only still with WF out of inertia. I already use USAA for my car insurance and they've always been great.

We've been with USAA since 2007 and generally been happy. Home insurance costs have gone up a lot, but I think that's the same for everyone.

That said, we, particularly my wife, had a terrible experience last week. She hit a pothole that blew out a tire. She didn't feel comfortable changing to the temporary spare herself so I encouraged her to use USAA's roadside assistance, which is a feature in their mobile app. 2.5 hour wait. Not great. But the app tracks and tells you when the tow truck will arrive so she was content to wait, in a safe location with plenty of fuel.

But the tow truck never arrived. And here's where things went off the rails. USAA, through the chat feature in the app, told my wife they couldn't reach the tow company they'd assigned, so would start over with a new tow company. My wife was understandably upset and wanted to talk to someone. Between their app and the phone system she was hung up on and met with either indifference or rudeness when she expressed her frustration.

After an hour of trying to get help from USAA, they assigned her back to the original tow company and told her that it would be another few hours. Once I heard that, I jumped in my car and traveled to her, changed the tire, and got her to a tire repair place. Roadside assistance had proven to be more harm than good, costing her 4 hours of wasted time. She could have called a garage directly.

The kicker: we finally got a call from the assigned tow company... more than 8 hours after the original call. I won't share what my wife told them.

That's unfortunate. I've got AAA for roadside assistance, no complaints with them. Wait times aren't, like, great, but they're not unreasonable either. And they're not magic; they can't make there be a tow truck any closer than the closest tow truck.

hbi2k wrote:

That's unfortunate. I've got AAA for roadside assistance, no complaints with them. Wait times aren't, like, great, but they're not unreasonable either. And they're not magic; they can't make there be a tow truck any closer than the closest tow truck.

Absolutely. Our problem wasn't with the delay, or even with the failure of the tow to arrive the first time. It was entirely with USAA's terrible customer service once there was a problem. Someone stuck on the road needs reassurance that they're being taken care of.

We used to have AAA. May look at them again. I loved them for their physical maps.

I've had USAA for car and rental insurance since the early 2000's, and have done our banking through them for nearly as long. We had a flat tire and their roadside assistance got a guy out to swap the spare in under an hour. However it still involved one tow company, then mysteriously switched to a second before someone showed up. Took him 5 minutes to do it once he showed up though.

I've also had a good experience with USAA's service. I used it once for a breakdown and the truck was there within an hour.

Some credit unions, like Navy Federal, offer better rates than USAA, as well as better service (like fast loan approvals and credit limit changes, fraud protection on cards, etc.). Might be worth looking into.

Government bureaucrats. Our name got pulled for a routine audit by one of my favoritest of state agencies. Not a big deal, I've got all the information they need. So I put together a comprehensive packet in response to their initial inquiry answering every question they had and fire it off to them. Wait a few weeks for the actual auditor to be assigned and schedule a call to go over the materials. Today I get an email (the call is next week) from the auditor who has "just a few questions" to ask before the call. What proceeds is a list of a dozen questions, every single one of which was answered in at least one, and in some cases three, separate places in the packet of information I'd already submitted...

I've got a feeling I'm going to be doing a loooot of tongue biting in the call next week.

Getting inundated with ads for online sports betting, which is soon to go legal here. I'm conflicted about it being legal in the first place, and having to see non stop ads for it is not swaying me towards the pro column.

"That's addressed in the packet we sent you on 2/11/2023, section 3, paragraph 2. Here's what it says: ...". Just prepend that format to every answer. They'll get the message.

Per my previous e-mail...

I assumed a Zoom call lol but that works too.

My son got a seat belt ticket.

Seat belt fine = $27(!)
Admin fee = $55
Surcharge = $88

Total = $170

Fracking criminals. I would fight this if it were worth my time.

PaladinTom wrote:

My son got a seat belt ticket.

Seat belt fine = $27(!)
Admin fee = $55
Surcharge = $88

Total = $170

Fracking criminals. I would fight this if it were worth my time.

I dunno man, that's a pretty great deal if it makes your son start belting up every time he gets in the car.

Depends PT, are you paying the fine or is your son?

That's much cheaper than a hospital bill (or a funeral).
I'd consider some additional consequences, in addition to just making them pay all the costs if that ever happened to one of my kids.
Not wearing a seat belt seems like some deeply stupid sh*t to me.

Yeah, in my part of the world, driving without a seatbelt is a $550 AUD (approx $370 USD) fine.

Where I'm from, you get a fine of roughly $100 USD on first offense for riding in the cab of a pickup truck without a seatbelt, but you can ride in the bed with no restraint whatsoever on the highway and it's perfect legal.

No one ever said the law made sense.

If the punishment for a crime is a fine, it is legal if you’re rich.

Cute, but its not a crime, it's reasonably enforced self-preservation

Jonman wrote:
PaladinTom wrote:

My son got a seat belt ticket.

Seat belt fine = $27(!)
Admin fee = $55
Surcharge = $88

Total = $170

Fracking criminals. I would fight this if it were worth my time.

I dunno man, that's a pretty great deal if it makes your son start belting up every time he gets in the car.

It’s not the total I have an issue with, it’s the breakdown.

And yes, of course he is paying it himself and he did get a mouthful from me.

Pretty sure those "admin fees" and "surcharges" are illegal in some states, now.

Baby’s sick. Just running a low grade fever, but it’s the first time she’s ever been sick (and the first time we’ve ever had to care for a sick kid; she’s our first). Feels awful.

Yeah, that first time... That's hard. But you'll get them through it.

Wells Fargo and their early paycheck access. Money was in my account a day early and has been for the last 3 or 4 checks? Anyways, normally I wait to pay my bills till Friday to make sure as I don't trust them, but was adulting yesterday, so just paid a couple bills. Well then this morning I got an overdraft alert, they had drained my savings to cover bills that were only a quarter of my paycheck. Look in my checking, surprise, they no longer show the paycheck being deposited yesterday, but today. In fact, no record of it being in my account yesterday now. Moved the money back into savings, but still, what happens to people without savings to fall back on for things like that?

Learned my lesson, I hate banks.

Rainsmercy wrote:

Wells Fargo and their early paycheck access. Money was in my account a day early and has been for the last 3 or 4 checks? Anyways, normally I wait to pay my bills till Friday to make sure as I don't trust them, but was adulting yesterday, so just paid a couple bills. Well then this morning I got an overdraft alert, they had drained my savings to cover bills that were only a quarter of my paycheck. Look in my checking, surprise, they no longer show the paycheck being deposited yesterday, but today. In fact, no record of it being in my account yesterday now. Moved the money back into savings, but still, what happens to people without savings to fall back on for things like that?

Learned my lesson, I hate banks.

Interestingly enough, the loathe at the top of the page is also WF (well, a WF loathe quoted). A part of me wants to run an analsysis and come up with one of those word cloud thingies to see how big a loathe Wells Fargo is. The far larger part of me is happy sipping on my cup of English Breakfast and hoping some one else does it.

Find a good Federal Credit Union (NASA, Navy, etc) and switch. WF is a terrible, terrible company to work with.

If you wanna hate Wells Fargo a little more, check this out:

https://omny.fm/shows/the-dollop-wit...

I switched to Schwab ages ago and have been nothing but happy with them.

Wells Fargo has a glitch in their system that caused it. Have accounts at 2 separate credit unions. I keep WF for the convenience of other stuff. In the 15 years I have had an account with them, this is the first time I have ever had an issue with them.

They held our mortgage for a while, as well as car loans, and we did not get 15 problem-free years. Predatory is the word I usually use.

Finding out an old game is quite dead. Got the urge for tribes ascend. Something in my head triggered memories of skiing and flag caps. Turns out the normal servers are dead and even the community ones are empty. I thought there was bot matches but turns out I was wrong. Surfed around that one map and just quit after a bit. It's normal that it happens but sorta sad?

master0 wrote:

Finding out an old game is quite dead. Got the urge for tribes ascend. Something in my head triggered memories of skiing and flag caps. Turns out the normal servers are dead and even the community ones are empty. I thought there was bot matches but turns out I was wrong. Surfed around that one map and just quit after a bit. It's normal that it happens but sorta sad?

Yeah, feel the same way about Jumpgate. Officially shut down a decade ago, someone was able to resurrect it, and it's still amazing, but the population is next to nothing, and it's a game that desperately needs a population.