alexist

$1500!!! FFS. It included 6.5 hours of labor, which is silly, but hey.

Submitted a claim. Oddly, it's a relief, mostly because it's so far over the deductible.

Stupid online banking doesn't let me do a transfer/e-check to someone else. I can only do bank to bank transfers to accounts I hold.

grumble grumble.

I went to the EZPass website a few days ago. I manually topped it up by $25, then switched the card it was using for automatic top-ups because I don't regularly keep money in my personal checking account. Fine, right?

Nope. Somehow, I managed to trigger the auto-top-up anyway (when your balance goes below $10, it automatically triggers a top-up) and it used my old card and sent it into overdraft. I only noticed it today when I checked my bank--I WENT to check my EZ-Pass balance Friday but the system was down for scheduled maintenance for 3 days. I finally got in, and the primary card is correct. I have no idea why it charged my old one, and how I triggered the top-up (we did use the pass the day after, maybe it took time to update...)

So, I now have $54 on E-ZPass and a $35 bounced transaction fee. Grr.

Shortly after I got here, I had my grandmother put me on her insurance just in case (since I was driving her car).

Well, GEICO just called me and thanks to being on her policy, my premium just went down by $289! (six month premium). That's nearly half the cost down. Woot! I'm paying $700 a year with comprehensive and collision which is unbelievable.

(And they did put Neil on--I listed him as a non-driver when I did the quote but I guess they did a DMV search on him. Still, the primary insured is me and I'm in the safest insurance category. Woman, 30-50, 5 year good driver bonus.)

Of course, our insurance will skyrocket after 1) Neil gets a job (current premium is based on not driving to work) and 2) we move into NYC (our theft premium will skyrocket: the Honda Accord is the second-most-stolen car in New York state and NYC has much higher theft rates than Suffolk).

Following on from a discussion elsewhere, I did some comparison shopping.

1 large can Enfamil Lipil powder - $27.
1 pack Aptamil First powder - £8. ($13)

Both packs make 196 oz of formula.

So much for all the formula giveaways making things cheaper--everyone else is paying for them. (Plus the advertising.)

£1 = $1.64

(all our savings are still in the UK, so every drop in the exchange rate is like us losing money. At the beginning of the year it was $2.)

Neil's new accounts have popped up in my online banking, so I guess I am on them!

Driving down Route 110 today, prices were anywhere from $3.25 to $3.75. Prices have dropped a lot this week and some stations don't seem to be with it. One station was 20¢ higher than the one next to it!

That would be Social Security. "Your card will be there within a week". LIE. It's not. (I got a replacement with my new name; Neil got an initial one and neither one of us has it. His is more important since at least I have the number.)

Without the SS#, you can't get a bank account, driver's license, or job. Grrr.

(Language off note: The official Spanish name of Social Security is Seguro Social, which really means "social insurance". I wonder why they didn't use Seguridad Social, the literal translation and the name used in several Spanish speaking countries.)

Oh, and First Direct have fraud-blocked me again. Sigh. I need to write a check for Aliza's Child Health Plus, and for this amount the easiest method was to take out cash and deposit it. Now I can't do it till Tuesday as it's a bank holiday on Monday (Columbus Day). They're

Speaking of checks, HSBC made a slight error. My ZIP+4 is xxxxx-x282. They put it down (and I didn't give it to them, so it's not a question of me failing to notice the error when I checked the account details, though if their software generated the +4 I might not have noticed anyway) as x285. I'm not sure I can be bothered to have them fix the error. I don't think anyone ever checks the +4. Plus i checked (Google maps doesn't have the +4 database! Mapquest does, though) and that's basically across the street.

I am seriously pissed off. The NEW LCD on my laptop is screwed. The Apple Store say a point of impact is visible. (Despite the fact that it was working fine, I put it down, I opened it up and the screen was screwed. No warranty. They further insulted me by saying "we'll do something for you... say, a 10% discount on the repair".

I can't afford to repair or replace it. (Or, before you ask, justify the purchase of a cheaper laptop.) So I'm screwed (and using my parents' PC).

I really, really do not want to hear snarky comments of any stripe (and, in fact, will delete them, so really, STFU.) Between this and my watch, this has been a very bad week on the repair front.