New category
Posted: Wed 23 February, 2005 Filed under: B&Q, Customer Services 6 Comments »In light of the fact they’re such utter, utter tossers, I’ve elected to give B&Q their own category.
I’m probably going to make up a seperate page on D4D™ for the posts as well. You know, just to make sure that Google and so on notice it too… *grin*
At the time of writing, D4D™ is #30 in Google for “B&Q Customer Services“. That’s only going to go up, if I’ve owt to do with it.
In the meantime, if you’ve come here looking for how to contact B&Q’s Customer Services, they can be reached on 0845 609 6688, or by emailing customerservicesdepartment@b-and-q.co.uk. Their address is listed here.
B&Q – You couldn’t make it up
Posted: Wed 23 February, 2005 Filed under: B&Q, Customer Services, Weirdness 36 Comments »Following yesterday’s successful uplift of the-stuff-we-didn’t-order, I got a call from B&Q’s customer services person this morning. (Yes, I did mean person. I reckon they’ve only got three or four people to deal with the entire country) She was ringing to confirm that the uplift had happened, and told me that the refund on our now-cancelled order would happen once they could confirm that the items had been received back in the warehouse. Supposedly this could take up to two weeks!
“Oh, well I don’t know how often the delivery people return to the warehouse”
Every fucking day or two, I’d hope. Twat.
I also asked if she’d seen the report on BBC’s “Watchdog” last night about the shyster fuckwit twunts. She hadn’t.
“Oh no, I was watching the Sci-Fi channel instead”
Well, thanks for that information, but I really would have to try very hard in order to give a shit. Anyway, this meant she conveniently hadn’t seen that the majority of complaints regarding B&Q were regarding the fact they can’t find their own arses with both hands, a team-building exercise, and a flashlight. Let alone find the correct items in the warehouse, and deliver them to the correct house at the correct time. Rocket Science this ain’t.
The suggestion that perhaps I should write in to Watchdog myself, as they at least seemed to get some results out of B&Q didn’t go down overly well. Nor did the reminder from me when she said “well, we have to make sure that all the items are in good condition” that she had actually said I could leave the worktops out in the front garden ’til they were collected, and that she would authorise me to do so and it wouldn’t affect our refund. (We ignored their directive to leave it out, and kept it all dry in the house instead)
“Oh yes, I did say that didn’t I? I do hope you haven’t done so, the weather’s been awful in that two weeks.”
MP3
Posted: Wed 23 February, 2005 Filed under: Geeky, Thoughts 3 Comments »Today, Diamond Geezer’s writing about his new iPod Shuffle. I do kind of like the idea of the Shuffle, but the two main ‘selling points’ are the ones that would irritate me the most. No display, and an enforced random play. I like having the option to go through tracks randomly, but sometimes I want to just listen to the album straight through. And no display annoys the tits off me, and would do so even more with added random play.
My first ‘stick’ MP3 player was a 128Mb Phillips ‘wearable’ MP3 player (hey, they called it that, I didn’t) which didn’t have a display, and also had the bloody annoying habit of resetting itself to the start of the list of tracks for no good reason. But the 128Mb was enough to suffice for what I wanted – two or three albums worth, and no joggling or blipping when on the move. But it also had no display, and that bugged me after a while – I wanted to know what was playing, or whether it’d decided to reset back to the start, or what would come next. This was obviously a regular complaint about the product, as I notice that the latest one has a display on it.
Unfortunately, that one had a kind of canine-related accident. In other words I’d left it in the USB port on the computer (it also charged up via USB, which was kind of handy on occasion) and the dog’s wagging tail knocked it out, slightly knacking the USB plug. Ooops. So I ended up buying an iRiver 256Mb stick. It’s got a display, which is nice. I can choose whether I want to play sequentially, or randomly through an album, a selection, or through the entire 256Mb. It can also record and encode MP3 on the fly through an onboard microphone, or from the built-in radio. Well, it would if the radio function weren’t utterly shit. But recording line-in or through the microphone isn’t bad at all. It also gets about 40 hours of playback from one AA battery.
I don’t need a huge memory on the stick – yeah, sure, I could have bought the one with 1Gb of memory, but I wouldn’t have really utilised it. 256Mb holds six or seven albums, which is fine for a couple of days of walking to work, working, going to the gym, etc. Then I just wipe what’s on it and start again. Suits me fine.
Having the display is – for me – far better. I can navigate easily through the file structure to find the album I want without it turning into a nightmare of guesswork. (How many tracks on that album? How many keypresses will it register for skipping through the tracks?) The iRiver suits my needs – particularly now I’ve got the sound equaliser sorted, and at decent volume the bass comes through beautifully. And Pressure Drop’s “Food for Love” and “Elusive” albums illustrate that perfectly. But more about those – and some of the other music going through it – at some other point.
Hallelujah
Posted: Wed 23 February, 2005 Filed under: B&Q, Customer Services Leave a comment »Well, blow me down. B&Q finally managed to get something right, and removed all the stuff yesterday. Wonders will never cease.
Of course, now we’ve still got to get the refund and compensation etc. out of the tightfisted pisswads, but well, at least we have a utility room that’s not doubling as stock storage for the arsehole tossers at B&Q.
Power
Posted: Tue 22 February, 2005 Filed under: Geeky, Thoughts, Weirdness 10 Comments »It’s hard to believe, but most people in this office leave their computers on (although ‘locked’ from unauthorised access) overnight here. Most of the time they leave work-in-progress open under the ‘locked’ screen, or programs open. I’m one of the few who prefers to power-down completely and thus keep data etc. saved and safe instead.
Last night the office had a power-cut for a while. It’s been panic today while people have tried to restore and/or recreate the work they’d been doing yesterday which they hadn’t saved. And of course because the files were open, they weren’t backed up on the nightly data back-up. So in short, they’re shafted.
I can’t deny, I do have a little feeling of smugness this morning. I bet it’s company policy by the end of the week that all PCs should be shut down properly at night…
Changing Times
Posted: Tue 22 February, 2005 Filed under: Resolutions Leave a comment »Back at the start of the year, I was thinking about whether the company I’ve had for the best part of seven years should fold. I’ve been self-employed for a lot of that, doing the IT contracting etc., but I’m wondering if that contracting era has come to an end – or is, at the very least, in need of a change.
So today I’ve started off the process of closing down my old company. It shouldn’t take too long, but the first step is to close the bank account, and the business insurance. No bad thing, the insurance was setting me back about £110 per month, but it’s a necessary business expense for a limited company. Once the bank has confirmed that the account’s closed I get to play with Companies House, the taxman, and VATman. VAT shouldn’t be an issue either, and tax has been taken care of through the year.
So – and I know I’m going to regret saying this – it should be a fairly painless process. But it’s definitely the right time to do it.
I’m currently undecided which way I’ll go next. I could form up a new limited company – and indeed would have to were I to start contracting again – or for the moment I could stick with simply “trading as”. I could even continue to use the same company name, it simply wouldn’t be a limited company any more. Or I could close the chapter entirely, and let some new idea rise, phoenix-like.
We’ll see – but for now I’m closing one door, and letting several others slide slightly open in its place. And that’s a good place to be.
Snowy 2
Posted: Tue 22 February, 2005 Filed under: B&Q, General Leave a comment »Actually, the walk to work wasn’t too bad at all. It felt warmer than it did last night (no blindingly obvious comments about it being daylight, please) so all in all it’s been an OK morning so far.
Herself is going to be dealing with the B&Q morons if/when they arrive. I’m still betting that they’ll have continued to screw it up, and won’t have the correct paperwork to remove all the items. Of course, I could be wrong. But I wouldn’t count on it, when it comes to that shower of shitheads.