Today she received a cheque for £90 from Banana Green and the accompanying letter stated “Upon inspecting your device, unfortunately it does not qualify for 100% of the payment as quoted during the online submission process due to the follow reason(s):” and then fails to specify any reason.  I have uploaded a copy of the Banana Green letter so you can see exactly what I mean.

To me this looks like Banana Green just did not want to pay the full price which makes both my friend and I really annoyed that they have deducted 10% of the quoted price for a perfectly good iPod touch for no reason.

As you can imagine this is something we will be taking up with Banana Greena and we will keep you updated as to how we get on.

Additional Information

The Banana Green letter – The letter received informing us that 10% has been deducted from the quoted price for no reason

Money Saving Expert – A forum thread detailing several other people who have had problems (and others who have had no problems) with Banana Green.

Full Story

Newsarse – BMW to recall 3 series amid reports of faults causing owners to drive like dicks

And yes, before anyone brings me up on this, I realise this is a spoof!

Online divorce services like Divorce UK want you to part with your hard earned cash (in this case £35) to be provided with nothing more than the divorce application form and guidance sheets which are available free of charge from the Scottish Courts Website.  They do not provide any support or assistance with filling out these forms, do not take responsibility to ensure you are ordering the right forms and do not inform you that you still have to pay the court fees (at the time of writing this the court fees for a DIY Divorce is £90).  Online divorce services such as these are more than happy to put the low £35 value in big letters and highlighted to play on the fact that you will think this is cheap and not realise that this does not include the court costs.

My recommendation to anyone looking to do a DIY divorce would to be contact someone at your local Citizens Advice Bureau as they can provide you with all the necessary forms, advice and guidance for free.  You will still have to pay the court fees but at least this way you are not being conned out of your money for something that is free in the first place, and you can feel more confortable as you can ask questions and ensure everything is done right.

Related Information about DIY Divorce Applications

Citizens Advice Bureau – Free advice on a range of topics including divorce.

Divorce UK – Order DIY Divorce Forms Online.

Scottish Courts Website – Free Download of DIY Divorce Forms and Guidance sheets.

My colleague was using Parallels to run a virtual installation of Windows XP on his Mac so he could use it for browser testing and it successfully managed to crash his machine twice in succession when trying to launch it to continue with his testing forcing him to reboot his Mac.  Is it wrong that I felt a little smug about that?

I think this must the be the first time we’ve actually agreed on any of the Windows vs Mac debates we’ve had!

References

Parallels – Virtualisation & Automation Solutions

This morning I found myself driving at the usual 5 mph down the M8, keeping my eyes peeled for the lane hoppers, dodgers and divers and I found myself thinking about all the habits of other drivers that I find really annoying and which can really wind me up so I thought I’d give you a run down of my top 5 annoying driver habits.

1. BMW Drivers

This is not a habit as such but it seems like all BMW drivers annoy me.  I like the cars but no-one who owns one can actually drive and although I frequently jest about working indicators being an optional extra on BMW’s they do in fact come as standard, fully working and ready to use.  Just look around the steering wheel and you’ll find a lever… push it and an orange light on the outside of the car will go on… do not be alarmed though… it’s supposed to happen!

2. Lane Hoppers

Every one has seen these people and you have probably been on yourself (I have on occasion).  The traffic in the right hand lane slows down so they jump to the left hand lane until the traffic in the left lane slows down  and then jump back to the right hand lane often ending up 2 cars behind where they would have been if they had staying in the lane they started in from the beginning.  Pick and lane and stick with it people!

3.  Divers

I really can not stand these people.  I’m driving along at a nice pace with about enough space between me and the car in front should I need to break hard and then the driver from the slow lane dives into the gap forcing me to slow down or run into the back of them.  More often than not they do not use their indicators or if they do they are half way over before they even switch them on.  Sorry guys… my ESP isn’t quite what it used to be!

4.  Tailgaters

I had one of these tonight whilst coming home.  It was snowing quite heavily and only one lane is useable so the driver behind me had his car so close to me I can not see his headlights, tries to overtake on the un-useable lane, decides against it and pulls back behind me whilst trying to take off my bumper.  No offence but I really do not fancy being in a car accident and finding I’m using your Range Rover as a suppository.

5. Speeding/Not Speeding

I do not really know how to best to title this one but essentially what I mean is where you end up following a driver down a stretch of road which has a speed limit of 50 mph and they insist at going no faster than 40 mph.  This same driver will then enter a build up area with a speed limit of 30 mph and will insist on going no slower than 40 mph.  I really do not understand that one.

Feel free to comment and let me know about any driver habits which annoy you.

A few weeks ago I was in Tesco (in Coatbridge) to buy some Christmas presents and I wanted to buy a box of chocolate biscuits as a gift for a friend and I saw their promotion of £4.99 for 1 or buy 2 for £6 so I opted for the £6 promotion so I could have a box for myself too and I thought this was a decent deal.

About 2 days later I wandered into a different Tesco store (Leith Walk, Edinburgh) only to find the exact same box of chocolate biscuits on the shelf for a mere £2.07 so as you can imagine I was pretty cheesed off as I could almost buy 3 boxes for the “promotional” price at the Coatbridge tesco store.  I was also surprised that they could have a 141% different in price between stores (with that being the case I am definately not buying a new TV from them!)

To add further insult to injury I went back into the Leith Walk Tesco store a week later to find the same box of chocolate biscuits on the shelf for a different price yet again.  This time it was for £1.99 which was supposedly “half price” with the original price being stated as £3.98.

This is the first time I have seen a clear case of a store doubling the base price just so they could show a half price sticker on it with very little reduction in the actual sale price they receive.  We all know it happens but normally it is something that we do not notice however, after this incident, I am definately going to be more vigilant with what I buy from now on… especially with Tesco and their so called “promotions”

This time of year really seems to bring out the idiots who constantly seem to get in your way as you are trying to get somewhere but they appear to be completely oblivous to the fact they are in the way.

This time I was trying to catch my train home and the wise station staff in Edinburgh Waverly train station decided it would be a good idea to update the departure board from “the train will be ready soon” to “now boarding at platform 13″ with all of 3 minutes left before the train was due to depart.  As soon at the departure board changed everyone made for the barriers, ended up bunched up like sardines, no-one was getting anywhere and those precious 180 seconds were ticking away quickly.

As people slowly managed to filter through I could see that the cause of the problem was the automatic barriers were rejecting tickets and people were having to get the station staff to let them through.  With the bags that these people were carrying it was relative easy to assume they had come into town to do some Christmas shopping and as they had not come during rush hour they had bought an “off peak” ticket which does not work on the automatic barrier until after rush hour.  It would probably be safe to assume that would be after around 6.30pm – 7pm so trying to use that at 6pm is obviously not going to work.

To make matters worse there was a group of 10 people who all seemed to be friends and who had appeared as if they all bought the same tickets.  Each and every one of them had the same problem but yet each and every one of them had to try for themselves… just to be sure!  You never know… that last ticket may decide to work!

In the end I managed to get my train but I hardly managed to get both feet in the door before the conductor started closing them.

In this case it was not that I had been using the computer for too long, it was simply a visual effect via a wordpress plugin called Let it Snow.  Now not only do I need to contend with spotty vision I also have to content with potentially a wide number of wordpress blogs having snow effects on them, distracting me (which is already a much too easy task) from what I’m trying to achieve.

I may sound like Scrooge in this festive time but I prefer to read my content without distractions… how many people would like to read their newspapers in the morning with white dots running all over the page?

The domain had been registered and appeared to be one of these spammy, nothing-but-adverts, “we do not have the information but click our links as they do” sites which clearly looks like someone who has registered domains en-mass, put up some commission paying links in the hope that either they bring in enough money from the people clicking on these worthless links or that someone who actually wants the domain is willing to part with a lot of cash.

I hate these type of people. I don’t mind someone buying a domain name to use but to buy it simply to try and force someone who actually wants it to pay through the nose really annoys me.

On one occasion I contacted the owner of a domain (they clearly were not using it for anything as it was another of these spammy, advert-ridden pages) regarding purchasing it from them. If the domain had not been registered then I could have bought it for about £10, when I contacted them I said I would be able to pay no more than £50 for the domain and that it was to be used for a voluntary community project. I almost fell off my chair when i got the response as they stated they wouldn’t be willing to part with it for less than £3,000.

As you can probably guess we decided to use another domain name for the project and paid less than £10 for it.

On this occasion though, it may have been a blessing in diguse as I do not think I would be able to manage an whinge a day and at least a whinge a week should be easy enough.

Whilst I think I will have several things to whinge about over the next while I do not see why I should have all the fun and I therefore encourage anyone who wants to have a whinge to send your whinge in to us via our “Have Your Whinge” section and you could see it posted on our site.

Your whinge can be about anything from your being ripped off by your phone supplier to the little old lady not watching where she is driving her shopping trolley. Why not get your whinges off your chest and send them into us via “Have Your Whinge“.