The Room 101 thread - for things you hate or just having a bloody good moan

[Animalmother]

The cynic in me says that all that shit has a short operating life and you'll need to replace your car more often once it stops working. You'll also need to go to a specialist garage to get it repaired/maintained.

[Mantis]

It certainly ups maintenance costs when the stuff does pack in. Digital door handles seems like a really bad idea just from a safety point of view to me. Doesn't seem that unlikely that in the event of an accident the system would fail and you wouldn't be able to get out of the car.

I really hate that all the dash controls in some newer cars are all touch screen interactions now. It's so much more dangerous to make something like a quick air-con adjustment when you don't have the tactile response of a physical dial and have to actually look at the console to interact with the right part of the screen.

[Snowy]

Oh my word, I should really hang my head in shame that this discussion wasn't started by me. Never mind Snowy, get stuck in...

Haptic steering wheel buttons

So you no longer have indicators on a nice easy stalk, no, you have them on the steering wheel (anything from VW to Ferrari). On paper it seems OK, but then you try to indicate while the wheel is not centred and you have to look at the wheel to check which button to use. Or worse, you accidentally brush any part of your hand over the haptics while driving and on come the indicators. I drove my mate's Golf R with them a while back, with him following in my car, and every bit of spirited cornering resulted in random indicating. Fuck them.

Automatic stop-start

Save a tiny bit of fuel but put loads of extra wear on your starter motor, plus have to wait for the engine to fire back up before you can pull out of e.g. a busy junction. Fuck that (thankfully mine has been remapped, part of which was to default the start-stop of off rather than defaulted on).

Controls buried in touch-screen menus

What it says. Fine, stuff you don't need often can be on a menu, but volume controls, ventilation controls etc need a fucking knob on the fucking dash.

Automatic handbrakes

Every time you pull away, you graunch a little more off your brake pads and discs. Give me a proper wand any day.

Gesture control

It doesn't fucking work on any car ever. Plus, if you happen to be chatting with a passenger and gesticulate, only to have your volume blast all the way up, or other idiocy. No, fuck that.

Voice control

See gesture control.

Lane assist

Driving on narrow roads, and having your car try to stop you manoeuvring simply because there is a white line, is just fucking idiotic

Stupid fucking screens

Why do manufacturers thing we want a walloping great fucking iPad bolted to the dash? It looks absolutely shit, is much too bright when driving at night, and just encourages the twats to add more shite to screen controls.

The rest you have covered pretty much (and I agree with all points raised).

Thankfully my M140i only has stop-start, voice control and a screen - stop start has been neutered as mentioned above, and voice control is the least used button in the car. The screen is small and the BMW i-Drive system is brilliant for navigating it, so it gets a pass.

The lesson car manufacturers need to learn is, just because you can use technology for a purpose does not mean you should. Tech is fine when it comes to PCs, phones, tablets, but is nothing but a distraction when added to a car.

There are good applications of tech - head-up displays for example - but most of it is annoying shite.

[Rusty]

That's cool, I've literally just bought a new car (new to me it's still a 10 year old car) that has a reversing camera. How high tech is that. Oh and it has one of them handbrake buttons. oh and
I'll probably find that stop/start thing to turn that off too.

I have rescued my aftermarket camera though. Gotta film those other idiots on the road.

The most high tech my previous car had was AC and electric windows.

Can't be bothered with cars, I spends all my money on computers

[Alan]

All of the above and it just reminded me that in 2018ish merc did away with dpads on the wheel in lieu of a fucking touch pad you have to swipe directions on…. Instead of a DIRECTIONAL PAD! It’s not even a good touch pad, it only registers maybe 70% of the time.

I hate non physical controls on anything. Modern headphones drive me nuts.

[Animalmother]

I never knew gesture control was a thing in cars and it's the dumbest fucking thing I've ever heard of!

I hate non physical controls on anything. Modern headphones drive me nuts

Jesus this! You scratch your ear and next thing you've either skipped ahead 20 minutes or you're now ringing a random number in Uzbekistan!

[Wrathbone]

This morning I have a customer who is concerned that the results on a report I wrote are too accurate.

Time to quietly lay face down on the floor for a while.

[Snowy]

This morning I have a customer who is concerned that the results on a report I wrote are too accurate.

Time to quietly lay face down on the floor for a while.

Seriously? "Can you model a little more inaccuracy please?"

Who do you work for, Southern Water?

On cars, my BMW has one thing I really like - the top of the iDrive system is a touchpad. Really useful for quickly writing in details to satnav for example. Needless to say, the first thing I did was do draw a comedy cock and balls with it - which has to have been the intention when they designed it.

[Wrathbone]

This morning I have a customer who is concerned that the results on a report I wrote are too accurate.

Time to quietly lay face down on the floor for a while.

Seriously? "Can you model a little more inaccuracy please?"

Who do you work for, Southern Water?

Education sector. They think that their results should have changed in the last month (with no rationale provided as to why), but it matches the government's published results for them to 0.1% so they're confused.

I think perhaps they're in disbelief that we've managed to reproduce the gov's methodology based on the horrendous specifications, which to be fair I can appreciate.

[Hatredsheart]

All of the above and it just reminded me that in 2018ish merc did away with dpads on the wheel in lieu of a fucking touch pad you have to swipe directions on…. Instead of a DIRECTIONAL PAD! It’s not even a good touch pad, it only registers maybe 70% of the time.

I hate non physical controls on anything. Modern headphones drive me nuts.

My last 3 mobility vehicles have all had voice command options and I haven't used them once. Honestly the amount of hoops you have to jump through now just to perform a simple task in a car is ridiculous. Wasn't technology meant to make things easier?

[Wrathbone]

Home insurance. After 13 years of being with them, AA cocked up my renewal which finally gave me the impetus to go and find a better deal. Why is it that no matter how carefully you read a policy and check what's covered and what isn't, it always feels like you're going to get shafted in the event you actually need to claim something? I'm about to turn 40 and I still feel like I need a real grown up in the room to check I've not selected a policy which doesn't recognise situations like 'burglary' or 'fire'.

I went with Churchill in the end. If I can't trust a nodding Yorkshire dog, I may as well not bother insuring anything.

[Sly Boots]

Our mortgage broker has taken care of our last couple of home insurance renewals Doesn't charge us anything to do so, but I assume he gets something from it at their end.

One thing I learned by him doing so is that you should never stick with one provider (like you, for simplicity's sake I'd just been insured by Barclays for over a decade), as they continually jack up the prices each year you stay with them, but switching to a new provider should give you a much cheaper introductory rate. I was a bit shocked when he showed us how much we'd pay monthly by switching compared to what we already were with Barclays, it pretty much halved the monthly cost.

[Wrathbone]

One thing I learned by him doing so is that you should never stick with one provider (like you, for simplicity's sake I'd just been insured by Barclays for over a decade), as they continually jack up the prices each year you stay with them, but switching to a new provider should give you a much cheaper introductory rate.

To be honest, that was the big reason I stayed with AA for so long, as their prices only went up by maybe £1 a year. The new policy should (should ) be more comprehensive and is about a tenner cheaper per month, though, so it was worth doing.

[Drarok]

I use comparison sites for every kind of insurance we have, for every renewal. I have no loyalty, and pretty much always find a cheaper deal, even if only a little. Seems like it would make more sense for insurance co's to prioritise repeat custom, but since they don't this is the dance we have to perform. Every now and then I check the places that refuse to join the comparison places, they've only ever been cheaper once. Not worth the extra hassle to re-fill all my details.

Only exception is pet insurance, 'cause we won't be able to get a policy that covers our cat's existing conditions. They're ratcheting up the renewal every year, but I think we're still getting value for money overall since he's on monthly vet visits these days.