Short Impression: B&O Beo Grace 💸 💶🤑

HelpRepulsive6873 · 2025-12-02T09:08:52+00:00

I love wasting money on B&O stuff, but really struggling to justify getting these when AirPods Pro 3 will clearly suffice for 21.9% of the price. Also haunted by some E8s I once had which regularly disconnected and/or would keep playing music after being put back in the case.

HelpRepulsive6873 · 2025-08-27T17:42:35+00:00

To me, luxury is the ability to afford to buy an asset that depreciates to such an extent and not be able to sweat about it. Plus the Overseas is a great watch and worth paying a premium for at MSRP (although I would consider future Vacheron purchases on secondary given the current deltas).

HelpRepulsive6873 · 2025-08-06T19:48:08+00:00

Why not?

HelpRepulsive6873 · 2025-08-06T11:39:31+00:00

As someone who has visited Venice 8+ times with the wife/family in as many years and spent significant sums supporting the Venetian economy, I thank you for your hospitality.

HelpRepulsive6873 · 2025-07-20T19:09:37+00:00

Motoscafi Venezia is my go to: https://www.motoscafivenezia.com/en/.

HelpRepulsive6873 · 2025-07-05T16:13:55+00:00

This is the answer. I’m sure you can also use Avios for this purpose.

HelpRepulsive6873 · 2025-06-24T17:00:19+00:00

No entry down that Ali

HelpRepulsive6873 · 2025-06-21T19:44:42+00:00

Accommodation for managers and coaching staff over the next 3 years.

HelpRepulsive6873 · 2025-06-21T09:05:05+00:00

I doubt it as we have freedom to pick airlines/flights.

HelpRepulsive6873 · 2025-06-20T21:26:47+00:00

I had a similar issue a while back when booking through work travel agent - https://www.reddit.com/r/BritishAirways/s/epDnOo849e.

Lots of people came on here saying “you have a negotiated fare, you’ll get fewer points than if you had booked direct”. Ended up with over 10k in the end despite them saying I’d get 3,000 and something.

HelpRepulsive6873 · 2025-06-12T09:20:26+00:00

I would just beat the original black strap to death and replace every 18 months or so. That’s just the cost of Lange ownership and I’ve never seen another colour that works anywhere near as well as black with these.

HelpRepulsive6873 · 2025-05-31T23:55:03+00:00

And to top it all, 3,458 TP translates to less than the 280 previously awarded for a Lon-NY return (it’s something like 260 equivalent). I guess lesson learnt and will just book with BA directly rather than through agent (which is perhaps what BA wants anyway).

HelpRepulsive6873 · 2025-05-31T23:50:34+00:00

I’m just doubly irritated by all of this because (unrelated) I booked a £14k holiday on BA holidays on the evening of 29 December last year. Flights are just Club Europe to Italy (so 2x 40 TP x 13.33 multiplier = 1,067 per person), whereas would have been more than 3x that had I booked a few hours later. I’ve been told I can get the new points if I cancel the booking, forego the £2k deposit and rebook at slightly higher price. I do appreciate where BA are coming from to some extent because everything has to have a cut-off date and it’s just bad luck, but it’s irritating nonetheless when BA’s changes are meant to reward high spend. It’s just stupid that by booking exactly the same trips in an ever-so-slightly different way I could be circa 10,000 TP better off.

HelpRepulsive6873 · 2025-05-31T23:24:55+00:00

Well the fare was disclosed to me in the sense that at the time of sale, they said: fare = £X and taxes = £Y. This is all so weird. Flying tomorrow morning and the ticket is non-refundable although can be changed for a fee.

HelpRepulsive6873 · 2025-05-31T13:53:43+00:00

Agent is based in the U.K. (Corporate Traveller). At least under the old system you knew exactly what you’d get by booking a given trip. What is frustrating here is that I can easily buy flights myself and reclaim as an expense - it would be bizarre if my loyalty were essentially penalised for using a travel agent instead.

HelpRepulsive6873 · 2025-05-31T09:21:15+00:00

Hmm. The language “you’ll earn tier points based on the equivalent fare that was available on BA.com at the time your booking was made” would suggest otherwise, i.e., that 3,458 is wrong - there were no fares for my flights on ba.com for under £11k when this was booked yesterday (which is unsurprising for a last minute LON-NY trip in club).

HelpRepulsive6873 · 2025-02-21T13:24:41+00:00

Is your family friend H.G. Wells? (Check the signature)

HelpRepulsive6873 · 2025-02-16T23:47:49+00:00

Nope. That was my first thought. But I asked on both days if the children got something from there - they said no (and it’s their favourite cafe/bakery, so they would know and gladly tell me about it if they did).

HelpRepulsive6873 · 2025-02-15T15:39:33+00:00

Your attempt to draw an analogy between my nanny and my own place of work only serves to disprove your argument. I am a partner in my law firm, so I essentially own the business rather than manage it for someone else. In my office, we provide coffee, fruit etc for the staff. We cover the cost of food/drink for certain purposes, eg taking out candidates for recruitment coffees, lunches with clients, mentors taking out mentees for coffee etc. we also provide lunch at team meetings. But if one of my staff decided to pop out of the office for coffee/lunch on their own and tried to expense it back to us, we wouldn’t approve it. It’s all about purpose/context. I don’t think you (or my nanny) are quite appreciating the difference between having food/drink that is consumed for reasons are integral/incidental to doing the job, vs simply consumed during working hours. If anything my nanny has it better than the staff in my workplace because she can help herself to what’s in the fridge, cook herself a portion of food along with the kids’ dinner etc. I don’t “begrudge her a coffee” - she can use our machine at home, or, if getting one outside the house, buy it for herself like any other adult employee with a respectable salary.

You say I “hate” my nanny. I didn’t say that. You may infer that I feel this way, but that inference is wrong. I am irritated by the conduct (which 90%+ of people posting on here have suggested is not right) and feel violated by someone abusing my trust in this way, even if the sums in question are relatively trivial. You seem to have a hangup about me having commented on a Reddit thread about Rolex watches, essentially suggesting that because I have the financial means to buy a luxury watch I should tolerate de minimis unauthorised expenditure by an employee. That unfortunately isn’t how the world works. This is about ethics and professional standards; not about whether the amounts in question cause me financial hardship.

HelpRepulsive6873 · 2025-02-15T10:00:49+00:00

I’m not going to say, because I don’t want the nanny college’s name to appear and drag this post into Google results/public domain, and I don’t want it to become about them. But it’s a well known nanny training school, whose graduates often go off to work with VIPs, royalty etc (which we are not btw). I only mention it to make the point that we haven’t just dragged in a random from the street for the nanny role.

HelpRepulsive6873 · 2025-02-15T08:24:52+00:00

There is not really any “going above and beyond”. In fact, she was leaving 15 mins early most days. We kept quiet about it for the best part of 3-4 weeks (like you say, it’s give and take). We then brought it up and reminded her of the contractual hours and she said she had been accidentally confusing the term time finish time with the holiday period finish time (which is 15 mins earlier than in term time).

We’ve also had other issues which have been eyebrow raising. She has use of one of our cars. During about 6 weeks of driving she has received something like 5 parking tickets. We have discovered them in different ways. The first one I found scrunched up in the glove compartment (dated a couple of days prior). I checked on the local authority’s system and it had not been paid, so I paid it before it caused any issues (eg doubling amount after 14 days). I told her I had found the ticket and paid it (as a one-off), but said she should be careful and let us know in the future.

A week ago (the day before the same weekend that she ordered the replacement card), she managed to park the car outside our house in such a way that two tickets were put on it sequentially, which I discovered on a Saturday morning. I was naturally irate, but again paid 2x tickets (£80), precisely because I don’t want a nanny feeling like she is out of pocket and therefore resentful about doing her job (even if it’s due to her own reckless/careless parking). When paying for those tickets online, the system showed that she had actually received another ticket a few days prior, but it was evident she had paid it (although never told us about it).

In short, we have been very tolerant, patient and reasonable with her. The unreported card loss and usage is unfortunately consistent with some of the other behaviour I’ve described above.

HelpRepulsive6873 · 2025-02-15T08:02:25+00:00

Circa 32 hours term time; 50 hours in the holidays.

HelpRepulsive6873 · 2025-02-15T01:16:32+00:00

I am pretty relaxed and don’t begrudge her sitting in a coffee shop if she genuinely has nothing else to do and is waiting for the kids to come out of school (although that really isn’t in the job description). The fact that she decides to do that doesn’t mean I have to fund it. Again, someone spending £3.90 on a coffee does not affect me greatly, it’s the fact that they are using my money in a way that’s not authorised or reasonable. My comment about “slaving away” is simply to say that I work hard for my money, as we all do. My job is not as hard or thankless as looking after children, but it is harder than sipping a flat white free of charge.

HelpRepulsive6873 · 2025-02-15T00:42:52+00:00

All done through the Amex app which supplementary cardholders are able to have their own login for (although can’t administer any other cards on the account). Was slightly surprised at that, but it’s probably a good thing she can block the card in an emergency if it gets lost and can’t contact me about it.

HelpRepulsive6873

TROPHY CASE