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Things that frustrate us all

My heartfelt commiserations, @Mrs. Silvercrest . It appears you got caught in the same Murphy-onic field as I have. There's only none chance: take it with humour and hang in there. Sooner or later Murph's Law will run out of fuel.
As for the washing machine: my ancient one had the same prob a few years ago and it turned out that the graphite contacts of the electrical motor were used up to tiny stumps. If yours, too, is an elderly machine it might suffer from the same problem. It's easily and quickly repaired.

Argh of the day here in Bavaria: DHL. I sent my parents a parcel. Instead of delivering it, the DHL guy left a note saying my folks could fetch it themselves at a parcel station at the other end of town. They are in their 80s and can't walk that far. I filed a complaint with DHL and asked them to make a second attempt at delivering it. They told me, only the addressee may make such a request. However, the writing on the notification card was too faint for my parents to decipher. Dad scanned it and sent it to me and with that data I filed the request online, pretending to be the addressee. Such a to do only because the delivery guy was too lazy to do his work properly!
 
rhubarbodendron said:
My heartfelt commiserations, @Mrs. Silvercrest . It appears you got caught in the same Murphy-onic field as I have. There's only none chance: take it with humour and hang in there. Sooner or later Murph's Law will run out of fuel.
As for the washing machine: my ancient one had the same prob a few years ago and it turned out that the graphite contacts of the electrical motor were used up to tiny stumps. If yours, too, is an elderly machine it might suffer from the same problem. It's easily and quickly repaired.

Argh of the day here in Bavaria: DHL. I sent my parents a parcel. Instead of delivering it, the DHL guy left a note saying my folks could fetch it themselves at a parcel station at the other end of town. They are in their 80s and can't walk that far. I filed a complaint with DHL and asked them to make a second attempt at delivering it. They told me, only the addressee may make such a request. However, the writing on the notification card was too faint for my parents to decipher. Dad scanned it and sent it to me and with that data I filed the request online, pretending to be the addressee. Such a to do only because the delivery guy was too lazy to do his work properly!
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Be thankful they didn't just throw the parcel onto the doorstep...

No doubt you have seen those videos of delivery drivers throwing items over fences and such.
 
Mrs. Silvercrest said:
It seems like one thing after another is giving out or breaking. In our bathroom both "plugs" rusted out and now can't fill the sink or tub. My washer does not want to spin the clothes so I have to hand twist the water out (not every time), Now our disc player in the TV gave out. We got a cheap DVD player the other day, It plays okay. But no remote and no way to change from one show to the other. So have to pretty much start the disc from the first show each time. I can play things on the computer, but not in the comfy chairs! There are a few other things but you get the point. It is the little things like this when there are so many that really BUG ME! Ahhh....
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Can you get a new dryer? Appliances have been getting cheaper, and there's lots of sales going on these days. It might be easier and cheaper to just get a new one than trying to get the old one repaired.
 
Words With Friends never seems to match me with people who can beat me. I think because it does it strictly based on average word score and doesn't take into account people who will take a lower scoring play in order to not let the opponent get special tiles.
 
antichristhill said:
Can you get a new dryer? Appliances have been getting cheaper, and there's lots of sales going on these days. It might be easier and cheaper to just get a new one than trying to get the old one repaired.
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You can sometimes get really good deals on "dent & scratch" models from Home Depot or Lowes. If the dent is on the side where it's going to be invisible after installation, the discount can be well worth it. Also, some newer models benefit from improved efficiency & decreased noise. Plus extra features that can be handy, like "sanitize" and delayed start.
 
I really love my old washer and dryer. It is the washer that is having the fits. The dryer is fine. My husband fixed it once and it seemed to do the trick. He has to get another part. But if it is fixable, I want to keep it. Old stuff lasts way longer than the new models. Like our fridge. Warranty for 5 years, and yes it was done! I recall when things lasted longer than five years. So I am holding on to these old washer/dryer that came with our house 15 years ago, and who knows how long before that! As for the remote, we are talking a very cheap DVD player very basic. On and off, play and pause. That is it. It was $6, at a second hand shop, just glad it works.
 
mails can be utterly frustrating. I get drowned in mails, forgot-attachment-mails, correction-to-previous-mail-mails and the like. It's getting increasingly difficult to keep my overview.
 
My mail carrier is very haphazard. At least once or twice a week (REALLY), we get someone else's mail. I always try to deliver it to the correct recipient, but today I don't recognize the address and will have to take it to the post office tomorrow. I even got someone else's medicine by mail once. This is becoming ridiculous.
 
A person living in my street but half a mile away ordered tires and they were dropped off at my house. I carried them to the right address.
 
Gary Mitch-HELL said:
Thanks.
I just hope that someone else might do the same. It would be really bad if someone was waiting for medicine or something like that.
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Yeah that would be a big downside for sure. You can send medicine in the post I find that a bit interesting since I think over here we have restrictions on that kind of thing.
 
antichristhill said:
Can you get a new dryer? Appliances have been getting cheaper, and there's lots of sales going on these days. It might be easier and cheaper to just get a new one than trying to get the old one repaired.
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Mrs. Silvercrest said:
I really love my old washer and dryer. It is the washer that is having the fits. The dryer is fine. My husband fixed it once and it seemed to do the trick. He has to get another part. But if it is fixable, I want to keep it. Old stuff lasts way longer than the new models. Like our fridge. Warranty for 5 years, and yes it was done! I recall when things lasted longer than five years. So I am holding on to these old washer/dryer that came with our house 15 years ago, and who knows how long before that! As for the remote, we are talking a very cheap DVD player very basic. On and off, play and pause. That is it. It was $6, at a second hand shop, just glad it works.
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Gary Mitch-HELL said:
Can you get a universal remote that will work with the dvd player?
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Yeah, even if it worked, we'd probably pay more for that than we did for the player. We just bought it spur-of-the-moment to hold us over until we can buy a real one. Maybe a Blu-Ray as well; we're still deciding.

That washer's behavior is bizarre; sometimes it spins and sometimes (under heavy loads) it doesn't. The best advice I could find online was to replace the motor coupling. I found that the old coupling was worn but not broken ... and replaced it anyway. And now it spins. But not always, just more than before.

The next-best advice is to replace the clutch. I have no idea if that'll work any better. How do you troubleshoot a problem that comes and goes?

Auntiehill, regardless, I'd be leery about simply blindly replacing the item just because I can. "Appliances have been getting cheaper"? Yes, they have. And you get what you pay for.

Back in the VCR era, I made a point of getting my machines fixed instead of replacing them. Now that's no longer possible because the shops that did the work are all gone. Newer home electronics aren't designed to be repaired at all. But that's not true for everything. That coupler cost $4. If I buy the clutch, it'll cost $20, plus my own time and labor. That's a far better value, for ANYONE, than buying a whole new washing machine unless they're physically unable to do the repair. (Or if the repair doesn't work ... guess we'll have to see.)

I'd encourage people to check out that sort of thing where possible. My own personal frustration (to return to the topic) is the attitude that everything is disposable, without even looking at alternatives. "Planned obsolescence! Throw it away! Buy the new model! It has sparkles!" It's a big reason American culture is circling the drain.
 
Hubby made a mistake on the 2018 taxes--the year his mother died and her numerous IRA accounts were divided and transferred to us and his sister. He forgot or misunderstood about how one account was liquidated. Long short short: we got a letter from the IRS saying we owe them $4,000 dollars. Luckily, we have more than enough in our accounts and can pay right away without any inconvenience, but.....damn.
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@Silvercrest Doyou select the washload with the classic push/rotate/pull selector? If so, the electrical contacts inside the selector itself could be worn. This can be especially true if you've favored a wash selection over the years. My wife and I had that problem. We were able to use the spin cycle of other selections for awhile but one had to monitor the washer to do so. So we replaced our venerable old Kenmore washer in August for that very reason (we used its dysfunction as an opportunity to upgrade the drumsize since online prices for the replacement part was approx $200.)
 
I see what you mean. We certainly do use the same selection over and over. Except it doesn't seem to fit ... the machine enters the spin part of the cycle just fine, and hums and throbs like it's doing something, but it doesn't actually spin. Except only when it's heavily loaded. Except not every time. Except it behaves marginally better since I replaced the one part.

Don't all those exceptions suggest something (else) mechanical?

Thanks, though!
 
If it is being spastic in all the different wash modes* then it probably as you say. If it spins in the other modes consistently then it is possibly the worn contacts. We could wiggle the knob at first and the spin would engage. There might also be a relay switch that the knob contacts actually energize that could be sticky.
It goes without saying that troubleshooting long-distance and blind isn't the best way to go....but I hope that our experience helps you out.

*(the Kenmore had Hvy Duty, Perm Press, Pre-Soak, 2nd Rinse, for example and the timer knob "clocked" through the cycle. It can mean, depending on the internal setup of the selector, that the spin selection has a different set of contacts for each wash cycle. That certainly seemed to be the case on the Kenmore.)
 
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