Sorry for what will be a major rant. My wonderful finance office has done it again. Obviously being in an engineering department the likelihood for things going tits up is great, but this takes the biscuit. I've spent the last two weeks manufacturing surfaces to be used on a TOFSIMS microscope at another university. Gave the samples to finance office with completed DHL form and dept requisition explaining that the samples had to be at the other university by today to be put under vacuum conditions for tomorrow. I gave them the samples on monday for next day delivery or same day depending on what they wanted to do. In the event neither event has happened mostly because the head of finance can only sign off the DHL forms and was "unavailable" and i've been lied to about whats been going on.
I've since had to phone the other university to explain the f*** up and re-arrange the work. On top of that the still haven't processed 3 order i put in back in june!Why are university finance offices just penny pinching idiots that can't manage to help the PhD students get their work done.
Add to that I won't see the money from demonstrating last week til the december paycheck.
grrrrrrrrrrrr
Rant over!

Sorry to hear your plight. My advice is to make friends with someone in finance and then they will push your stuff through first. The finance officers in my uni are all dreamy lol :-x

We usually just contact DHL or Fedex directly and pay them, then claim it back on expenses. Prevents time consuming foul ups :)

I suggest letting your super know - mine loves these details just so he can go to the finance office and "let off some steam" [- read explode] 8-)

Funny you say that about engineering: I'm in pharmacy and ours are great, but whenever we've had to deal with engineering, disaster has indeed struck. They don't know their proverbials from a hole in the ground, and are frequently "unavailable". Orders that take our office 24 hours can take 3 months for them Maybe they're conducting some form of time dilation experiment over there.

I can add to this! I'm a GTA and, apparently, I owe £3300 in fees for this year. Despite my protestations and attempts by myself to sort it, I've had 2 reminders and, apparently, I have a week before I'm de-registered. The funny thing is, I've been paid my wages as a GTA and everything. Hmmm...

Sounds like me; I was told: "pay your bench fees or begone" - I don't pay bench fees. Took two weeks to persuade them that the great, infallible computer was wrong