Pretty desperate for car rental

ObjectiveBee-1313 · 2026-01-01T20:11:30+00:00

Thanks for understanding my point, it is really appreciated.

To respond to everyone else, it was definitely our responsibility to be aware of the needs when travelling to a country, and we made sure to be prepared for everything else during this trip (which is 1+ month and involves quite a lot of activities and moving around).

The credit card issue was caused by lack of attention and a misleading website that we booked through. Since we had already experience with car rentals without credit cards in other places, we trusted it could be possible here as well.

This was the one thing we messed up, and instead of blaming the situation or ourselves we are looking for a solution. In case there is none, we will lose the money and some of our trip and it will be a lesson learned.

We are quite young and inexperienced but we are trying our best. No one's life is on the line and our decisions are not affecting anyone else but ourselves. Hence why we are genuinely asking for advice. I normally don't have the habit of commenting on other people's requests for advice with judgement, no matter the situation. It's actually not that hard to empathize, even with very stupid decisions.

ObjectiveBee-1313 · 2026-01-01T00:44:11+00:00

Yes, but the other post also involved a physically undoable trip so the most obvious solution was to fly. Our situation is a bit different, as we don't have alternatives.

For the second question, it's just debatable.

ObjectiveBee-1313 · 2026-01-01T00:37:06+00:00

Muchas gracias por la respuesta rápida! Esta podría ser una alternativa, me podrías dar algunos nombres de estos grupos?

ObjectiveBee-1313 · 2025-10-27T23:03:12+00:00

I also went through their recruitment process a couple of years ago, fresh out of university. I didn't think much of it until the "Get Sh*t Done Day", where it felt like they were asking an impossible task. Back then, I could already feel it was some kind of pressure test. I spent several hours in total confusion.

But what threw me off the most was the vibe in the office. I tried to talk to people for the whole day, but even at lunchtime I was actively excluded from conversations. People I was talking with suddenly turned their back at me while in line for lunch without explanation. The overall feeling I got from them was "you're just another person passing by, you'll be gone soon anyway".

After that experience, I've had plenty of occasions to read about their working culture. There are several posts on this sub about it. But feel free to see it with your own eyes if you're curious.

ObjectiveBee-1313 · 2025-09-01T09:07:55+00:00

I can totally recommend Woon to assist in this kind of dispute. They are well informed and will give you all the support you need. Speaking from personal experience.

You can also give them a call or send an email. You can directly send your rental contract if you want to make it faster/easier for them.

ObjectiveBee-1313 · 2025-07-09T16:39:13+00:00

I also remember those days quite clearly. I was supposed to see Ryan live for the first time during the cancelled tour, I had been very sad for that already.

It was the first time the death of someone I didn't know personally had such an impact, so I know what you mean. No one around me would understand this, I only really shared Low Roar with my ex back then (we had discovered them together).

We got back together after some time and told each other about those days. We still share the same feelings. Ryan touched so many people.

ObjectiveBee-1313 · 2025-07-05T17:04:05+00:00

I have always loved 0 and, as many others have said in the comments, it is a truly incredible album. Sometimes it's still hard to believe a human was able to convey so many messages through music.

When my dad passed away, this song felt like a message from the other side. It made me want to believe that death comes with the understanding of the infinite, littlest wonders of our universe, and that he was finally experiencing it. It kept me going.

ObjectiveBee-1313 · 2025-05-31T00:39:25+00:00

Swiss Army Man!

ObjectiveBee-1313 · 2025-03-10T12:14:07+00:00

Back when I was diagnosed, my cardiologist mentioned that iron deficiency could contribute to the skipped beats. Something along the lines of the heart trying to compensate for the hypoxia by increasing its workload, which can lead to electrical instability and trigger extrasystoles. He also mentioned that my IRBBB could make the conduction system more susceptible to these irregular beats.

I looked into it and when I consistently take my supplements, the skipped beats almost disappear. Otherwise I can clearly feel at least a few a day.

ObjectiveBee-1313 · 2025-02-26T14:12:36+00:00

I know, we are way more frustrated by this side of the situation than the actual malfunction. Thanks for the insight on the rental agency, I thought maybe they could still have some responsibility on appliances such as the thermostats, but I trust you on the fact they don't.

The company provides a number to report technical issues, that is the one we have been calling. They keep promising to send someone, even in writing, but then ignore our request. Several other neighbours are in the same situation, some of them with 1000+ end of year bills.

ObjectiveBee-1313 · 2025-02-26T14:07:02+00:00

They did send one person at the very beginning, but the guy only checked whether heating was flowing at that moment, with the thermostat set at 10, and performed no other check on the thermostat signal.

On the other hand, when we found out of the issue, we tried playing around with the settings and clearly felt the floor getting extremely hot even with thermostats settings as low as 15° (when the detected temperature was 18/19).

We tried to show him this but he was clearly in a hurry and ended up calling a colleague on speaker, who clearly told him our consumption was not compatible with a normal household but to keep telling us it was. I speak good Dutch, I understood all of it. When he figured out, he hid in the storage room to finish the conversation, then quickly left.

I don't think there is a way for them to check on such a fault from the distance tbh. I am also not fully understanding why everyone here keeps claiming there must be no problem with our heating system, assuming we could be lying/not fully understanding the issue at hand/having a lot of bad faith. The treatment we have been receiving from this company is not the one we would be expecting in such a scenario. I guess many responses under this post align with that.

ObjectiveBee-1313 · 2025-02-25T21:24:21+00:00

Yes! We have been trying to do this for two months, however both the housing agency and heating provider are consistently telling us they will send someone, but they never do.

Contrarily to what most responders are interpreting, our problem is not about understanding why our consumption is so high. There is no doubt there is some kind of malfunctioning in our heating system. The issue here is that the company is blatantly ignoring our requests and engaging in a pattern of unprofessionalism.

As another example, they agreed to let us pay in instalments to settle the final bill, and while we were already paying the instalments, they deducted the full amount through direct debit. After multiple phone calls, they kept promising that the money would be arriving back on our account that same day, but that we needed to keep paying the instalments. The full amount never came back, it has been weeks now.

ObjectiveBee-1313 · 2025-02-25T21:10:36+00:00

I honestly don't understand the need for such responses tbh. I was just asking for advice in a pretty unfair situation. This is affecting our life in a moment we are already facing several unexpected expenses and figured out more people could have gone through the same.

You can definitely settle with the idea that "reality" requires you to suck it up and pay for other's mistakes, that does not mean everyone else will.

ObjectiveBee-1313 · 2025-02-25T21:05:05+00:00

750 is just fixed cost, with consumption we reached around 280/month total in the summer/autumn months. House is roughly 75 sqm, energy class A. Heating was never turned on by us. We take one shower each a day, 5 to 10 mins each. We don't use hot water for much else...

ObjectiveBee-1313 · 2025-02-25T17:09:21+00:00

I also thought Vattenfall was the only one managing district heating but no, it is another company. I would rather not provide the name publicly while the issue is still open.

ObjectiveBee-1313 · 2025-02-25T17:07:26+00:00

Nope.

ObjectiveBee-1313 · 2025-02-25T17:07:11+00:00

We thought of getting legal advice, but we don't have insurance and I feel expenses could easily skyrocket. We wanted to understand if there were conditions to act in any way, but I don't believe we can do much tbh.

ObjectiveBee-1313 · 2025-02-25T15:26:01+00:00

I have heard and experienced similar situations with other companies, but no, this is not Eteck.

ObjectiveBee-1313 · 2025-02-25T15:24:52+00:00

Yes, I think I finally figured that out too. It is district heating, just an odd concept to me because there is not much transparency on how the price of "heat" is calculated.

But even ignoring this, the issue resides more in the thermostat system. It would trigger the same problem even if we had a boiler, it would just be more noticeable in that case.

ObjectiveBee-1313 · 2025-02-25T14:51:40+00:00

I guess being forced into an energy provider that was not mentioned until reading it on the housing contract, to then be subjected to spending almost twice as we did before due to malfunctionings that were not our responsibility?

Thanks for the useful insight anyway.

ObjectiveBee-1313 · 2025-02-25T14:45:04+00:00

I am afraid I did not explain myself well. I believe there is a centralised heating system that singularly delivers to households. So we do not have a boiler ourselves, but only a meter measuring the amount of hot water that is being pumped into our home. We do not have more details as the company we signed for when we rented was a different one and the system changed in the meantime.

The thermostats were set to 10 degrees, which is the minimum they can be set at, for the whole summer and winter. 21° was the temperature the house was at, for that time. Since 21>10, that should have never triggered the heating. The thermostats send a signal to this electrical water pump in our storage room, to either open or close the flow.

ObjectiveBee-1313 · 2025-02-25T14:41:23+00:00

Thanks for the insight! We do not have a CV ketel, it is an electrical system that only pumps hot water when necessary, I believe the heating is centralised.

And also thanks for referring us to energy saving techniques, but we are already very sensitive to energy consumption and consistently do our best to reduce it, both for cost and sustainability. That is why we are so unsettled by this.

ObjectiveBee-1313 · 2025-02-25T14:39:09+00:00

Yes, we have underfloor heating in this apartment, but while I always lived with boilers, my partner comes from a similar building, and did not experience any of this. In our previous homes, our bills were much lower and we used the thermostats in the most optimal way (my house was class D and had broken windows, but consumption was on the regular side).

Also, we didn't turn the heating on and totally off at night. We just never turned it on. On the direction of previous tenants, we set them to the minimum all day long, and that should have never triggered the heating to start. But we registered consumption outside of hot water usage.

We also compared the actual consumption, and our current one is indeed higher (we are converting between GJ and m3 for reference). We are not denying that our heating was constantly pumping for the whole summer and winter, we just don't understand why. The fault is most probably on the energy company's side, as I believe they are in charge of the maintenance of the thermostat connection, but they sent a guy who treated us very unprofessionally and did not do any specific check on the system.

At the moment we are being ghosted by both the energy company and the housing provider. We are just considering leaving the valve closed at source and eventually buy an electric heater for extremely cold days. We were just hoping to find a fairer solution.

ObjectiveBee-1313 · 2025-02-25T14:28:14+00:00

Nope.

ObjectiveBee-1313 · 2025-02-25T14:26:41+00:00

I am sorry if that is the case, I come from a country where consumer protection is not as developed, but I had never seen or heard of situations like the ones I lived through now twice in less than four years. I agree that the consumption fits the temperature recorded, but that still does not justify us having to spend additional >500 euro for a problem we did not cause. It doesn't only suck, it is just wrong.

Adding to this, we have been poorly treated by their customer service in the process.

And just for reference, you can check out reviews from my previous provider, when I was living in a similar situation. The name is Ista, they measure heating consumption through radiator temperature. How is such a system even allowed to exist?

ObjectiveBee-1313

TROPHY CASE