No more Credit Card

Almost 2 years ago, my credit card company took the decision to cancel my spread payment facility, in other words the ability to use my credit card as a credit card... Buy big items and play them off....

It wasn't just me, it was everyone, there was a government policy to reduce credit and the banks were instructed to remove spread payments. For me this was a problem as it had come at a point where I had just hit the card very heavily with payments for trips to Thailand and hotels and the balance was pretty high, close to the 10K limit I had. a limit I had as a result of being an excellent customer always paying off even high balances as quickly as possible.

But cancel it they did, my limit went from 10K to 500 no K , overnight and they kindly requested payment by the end of the month!!! They later reduced it further to 200, useless.

I was, needess to say, very upset by this and wrote, emailed, phoned them in the nicest diplomatic language, what the fuck did they think they were doing?

Anyway I made it clear there was no way I was going to manage to pay it in a month, or even 3 months as they suggested so I made a couple of big payments and simply told them I'd pay it off monthly but I'd never ever use their service agan.

And that's what I've been doing, sticking in some bonus money when it came, and paying extra each month.

But now, I have been selling a lot of stuff so there's a bit of spare cash to clear it off, I made the last 702.95 payment today.. The credit card is gone.

And I will NEVER use their services again.. not least becuase I am leaving NL but also it was a shocking betrayal of customer/provider trust.. They made the point several times that I was a very good reliable customer, always clearing the card despite yearly bumps... but sorry give us the money now...

Thats just not good business...I appreciate it was a government mandate, but a gradual reduction over a few years, would have been just as effective and less painful to my budget.. 

anyway, done... bye ICS, never again

Ahthankyew

Guitarectomy, no anesthetic

Sold two mid ticket guitars yesterday on marktplats, was very pleased with that, but when the chap came to  collect, he asked what else I had......

4 Gibsons, 1 PRS, 1 Ovation, 1 Danelectro and some pedals gone.

My prized Lucille and Libby my Blueshawk have gone.... god it hurts, I mean I got a good price for them, he got a good discount too, but ouch... I'm in mourning big time, I LOVED those guitars, really loved them.. and now they are gone.

Someone chopping onions in here?

on the plus side the retirement fund makes a big jump and we're over the visa threashold,  and there's still quite a few mid range guitars to sell, so there's more to come, not sure my heartstrings can take it though. But just focus on what that fund will let us do.

Ahthankyew

Almost over

Both the airline drama and the academic year.

We're in that final week of checking everthing has been graded and returned and no students are left out. It goes from being manic busy to... a kind of, don't look around, its too quiet..

But for sure thats the academic year pretty much done. I played my last 2 graduation gigs with Starrcase, and mighty gigs they were too. I love being partly responsible for a hundred or more people bouncing about, or as they called it. Dancing.

There's going to be at least 1 more Starrcase gig though ,we have at least 1 more farewell party for Marcel, which I will try to combine with mine, meaning that Starrcase will lose 3 members, Jelmer 2 isn't retiring but he is stepping back from the band, which will leave them looking for a new Bassist, Drummer and of course whatever it was I did.

I will be sad on that last gig, I really will, it kinda hit me just typing this how much I've enjoyed being part of this band for ohh I dunno.. 12years?? can't quite recall, its been a family to me and helped me so much in hard times.. That last gig will probably be a gusher.

No new tickets yet, a couple of update messages from eDreams confirming a cancellation.. which is a word I didn't use when discussing ticket changes but I'm not going to stress yet, it wouldn't surprise me if they messed up the name change, but it does seem that may just be the way SIA have arranged things with them, cancel and rebook. We've got time for the tickets to arrive.

I've got a lot of copyedited content from the publisher to look over so that book can be totally finalised, not currently too happy with the way this is being handled, due to some technical faults that are preventing me from actually approving/rejecting changes but we'll get it sorted.

And thats kinda it, a few more days next week to wrap things up at work, probably some drinks and then 5 weeks of staying in bed till 10... oh I am getting old, it used to be just staying in bed till whatever but I seldome sleep past 9 these days... old age suks

166 days to retirement... its getting closer.

Ahthankyew

is it??

It might finally be fixed, but I will hold my breath a little longer... SIA did contact Jirawan to confim the error, they in turn contacted eDreams with a solution but it required a fee to change the details.....eDreams blamed SIA for the error and told us to let them know if we'd pay the fee.

We said yes.

They said ok, call our helpline to set it up since it needs to be authorised.

We explain ermm we paid paypal we can't do that over the phone.

Its ok call us we'll sort it out.

I call. on hold 20 mins..finally

Hello thank you for calling edreams customer service how can I help you....

I give details.

So you want to change the ticket details,....I will have to escalate that to the appropriate team.

Wait... what.. no its already been escalated, I just have to get you to take a payment and reset the ticket.

Please hold

Please hold

Please hold

Thank you for waiting, we will send the details to the appropriate team and it will take....

NOOOO, I was told to call you to authorise payment, not to reset the request....

Im sorry sir we can't do that we can only inform the sales team and they have to open a case.

The case is already open, I have the emails from your Customer support.

Please hold I will try to find out.

please hold

please hold

Hello sir, yes we will escalate it here and you will get a callback withing 72 hours.

Jezus wept... you have no clue about this payment I have to make do you?

No sir our system shows your case is already closed to re-open it again I have to escalate it.

This is madness.. fine whatever, I'm done.

I send an email to Customer servies, and explain their man at the other end has no clue... please just call me on +31xxxx

And someone does....20mins later

and she takes my details

and sends me a payment link

I fill it in, 

and she process it

and she sends me confirmation of the change., they are all correct.

and she tells me she will now cancel the old ticket and arrange a new ticket as agreed with SIA, you will get the new ticket in a few days.

.......so its done?

we'll see...... but still a call fixed it, cost 55.88euros but they say they have fixed it.. 2 months of back and forward blaming other depts may be over at last.

never ever will I use a booking agent again unless its a package holiday, only direct to the airlines.

Ahthankyew

Sellers remorse.... it's real

One by one my guitars are being sold... starting with a few of the nicer ones, now some of the acoustics, and a lot of pedals and gear etc. A few might be harder to seel due to cost/tast... I mean who wants a Baritone??

I want to do those things 1st so I can aquire a good 5* seller rating on Marktplaats before I unleash the bigger items, like the Gibson 355 ad Darkfire which are higher end, also the bike and closer to Dec the car.

But every sale of guitar is....killing me.. just killing me, the careful collecting of these bits of wood and string have been something I've loved doing for 15+ years and to watch them go out the door with just mere money to show for these lovely things fills me with remorse. Its like watching your kids grow up and leave.

I am getting more or less their value, some things I've sold to friends at a slight discount, most things I've sold at just about what I paid and few at above. So I'm going to make a few of those mere monies to fill up the bank account.

But dammit, it really hurts. But yes, they are selling and aside from a few silly buyers on Marktplaats making silly offers, we're not in the firesale timeline yet so I can keep them on sale until a good or buy it now offer comes in.

Mind you this weekend I had an Oculus Quest 2 (256gb)for sale, and someone pings me saturday evenng to buy it, (Paraphrasing from memory here) 

"Do you have time?"
"for what"

"I want to buy can I come round"

"sure ok" says I.,

"when can I come round.."

"anytime" says I, "just hit the buy button and its yours"

....pause

"how much do you want, we're on a budget and we're poor."

"Its only been online for a day, the price is 200 and thats a very good price for it, I'm not haggling, you can find lots of them on MP  some are cheaper but a smaller memory and a bit beaten up"
"But they are not good, I want this one"
"Then the price is reasonable at 200"

"I will ask my parents...:" pause... "oh but we're very poor we can't afford it, what will you take"

"feel free to make an official bid, but I won't look at bids until the unit has gone unsold for a few weeks"

"But if I make a reasonable offer, why is it fair you said no?"

"umm do you know how this works, there's a buy it now price which is reasonable, if you want it you buy it, if you want to pay less take your chances and put in a bid, its been on line for 1 day, so Im not dropping my price yet"

"well thats too much, we can't afford,  cya"

"ok I hope you find one at a price you can afford"

strange, clearly a youngster

next day

"I begged my parents to buy it for me they said ok" he msg's

"sure... I will send you the offer with options to pickup" ..marktplaats has a send offer button which the buyer can then accept and pay, the money goes to a holding company in escrow, and when they pick it up if all is well they hit ok and I get paid... simple

"Do you take cash"

"no sorry, I need to keep track of my transactions".  This is true, when I leave NL I will have to report my current bank and cash assets for my tax status and so on, I don't need to pay taxes on sales of my own goods but I do need to show all my income and prove the bank savings came from savings or selling my assets.. but also, there's a good chance he'll come round with less than 200 and try to haggle which I don't want;.here's the final straw though.

"oh, but how can I trust this."

Now, I could have explained the concept of escrow to him and how its actually safer for him to have a record of the transction in case the goods are faulty or misrepresented, but it was Sunday morning and I hadn't had my coffee yet.

"you need to learn how to use Marktplaats, go buy from someone else".

And I ended the chat and blocked him... I have a low tolorance for stupidity at 10am on Suinday.

Lucky 99% of the other msgs I get are people just testing the water with low bids or asking reasonable questions on the goods. Sales are going well and my 5* rating is building and my savings account growing nicely. Still got a lot more things to sell too, so Im confident we can put a very nice sum in the account by December to fund our 1st year in Thailand.

Ahthankyew

Some good news

It takes a very long time for HMRC to do anything, but.... they do do it.. after paying almost all my NI arreers last year I have been waiting patiently for the website to update with a list of my complete years..

Only for it to show a couple of years I certainly paid marked a incomplete and not counting toward my pension.

gulp

But I have the bank records od the transfers and even though they sent me a bill for 20odd quid in March for a year I had paid, I paid it anyway to avod issues... 

I sent them a letter, since I have had no luck at all contacting them on the phone, my phone provider cuts me off after 30 mins on hold.

And waited...

and waited..

and... oh it updated last week... and all is good, my payments are recorded, my pension is on track

I still have not had a bill for last year, which I need to pay as well as the next 5 years, that will come soon. But at least I will get my full UK Pension when  I hit 67. This is an important point as its central to our retirement plans. Onc I hit 67, we should get the full uk pension as it will be in 2030, but since Thailand isn't part of the group of countries with agreements on pensions there will be no furhter rises on that UK pension ever.....

We can debate the fairness of that another time...but having the full amount is important. My dutch pension will increase over time, due to inflation and other factors, so I don't have to worry too much about having a decreasing pension as I get older.

So that was some good news this last week... lets see if we get more next week.

Ahthankyew

You can not be serious.... no really

I lost my appeal, on the grounds that goods/services were delivered....

It seems the fact those services didn't produce any valid result or resolve an easy (for them) fix to a simple problem does not mattter, not does the fact I have unusable tickets...they are still goods.

utter utter utter nonsense from Paypal Its now valid to do no work for services charged and to deliver faulty goods with no comeback...great work...not.

Of course  with no options I contacted eDreams and SIA and guess what..... nothing we can do contact SIA<-> eDreams...

But, there's a tiny glimmer of home, the SIA agent, who I think was human (it said it was) mentioned that the issue is probably due to the small local airline at the Singapore to Chiang Mai end, ,SIA can't change those tickets (only eDreams can)  so I contacted Scoot and got a "human" agent, who said.....

yes we can change that for you, we'll need to call you back about it so give us your number and wait for our call.

Can you also change our SIA details to to correct the gender and spelling? I asked .... and yes we can do that too.

wtf.....

ok well that sounds promsing, but so far... no call, but I do have a case number and a transcript of the conversation so If nothing happens by Tuesday I will try and ping them again.

you can't make this shit up can you...ai bots are just the worst things ever when you need a human to look into the harm this denial of service results in its nowhere to be seen.

Ahthankyew

You/re shitting me!

Despite a mountain of evidence of their lack of competancy or care, I lost the paypal claim, it seems they don't think that payment protection counts in cases of services not being up to scratch..

But I have appealled... we'll have to see.

if the appeal fails I am litterly stuck, as its impossible for either eDreams or SIA to move to a sensible arrangment, though SIA are willing to discuss with eDreams and even have a specialist sales team who will we happy to come to some kind of compromise.. eDreams just sticks to its, not my problem response.

One thing I did discover from SIA though is that the actual cause of all this is the flight from Singaport up to Chiang Mai on a short commuter flight, its an small local airline, and they won't allow the tickets to be changed...

If they can just change the ticket between Singapore and Amsterdam I will pay for a cancellation and rebook on the local flight, its a few hundred euros, but if it stops this crap I'll do it..

Still shocked that PayPal refused... hope my appeal wins.

Ahthankyew