Driving Change – Better Services
Posted: Thu 30 November, 2023 Filed under: Business, Cazoo, Customer Services, Domestic, Getting Organised, Insurance, Thoughts 1 Comment »Following on from the utter farce with Cazoo being shockingly shit at customer services, it’s only fair to mention that there have been other companies who have made things a lot easier than they could have been.
First among those has been Enterprise, who have always been a stand-out for me when it comes to car-hire firms. They have one simple thing that makes them stand out (and I don’t understand why other hire firms don’t mimic it) in that quite simply, they come to collect you rather than insisting on getting to them. Alongside that, there’s been no hassle when I’ve needed to extend the hire period and so on. I know that really it’s “just” a case of doing the jobs they’re paid to do, but sometimes even that feels like a rarity.
Honourable mention also goes to We Buy Any Car, who again just did what they said they would – I got the old Kia to them, they checked it out (and explained the entire process really clearly) and paid what they’d agreed within the day. All the paperwork came through fine, the V5C change of ownership and so on, and it was all smooth and easy. (Cazoo wouldn’t do a trade-in on the Kia, as it was over their mileage limit, which is fair enough)
Alongside that, even my car insurers (Darwin Insurance) made life easy. Once I’d taken delivery of the car, I checked other insurance providers so I’d got a good idea of costs, and then called my current insurer to see what the charges would be with them. It turned out that sticking with Darwin would mean a premium that was about 50% higher than a different provider, so it made sense to cancel the current policy and start a new one for the new car. Darwin made that cancellation process easy and smooth – and it turned out that I’d paid enough that I got a refund rather than having to pay the cancellation fee. (Which has just *got* to be a win!) The new policy has also all come through fine and been easy to sort.
So, despite Cazoo being a monumental pain in the arse, there’ve been others who’ve made the entire thing a lot easier than it could have been. And that’s something I’m deeply thankful for.
Misunderstanding
Posted: Mon 13 November, 2023 Filed under: Bankruptcy, Business, Customer Services, Domestic, Stupidity 3 Comments »Back in February, I got a specific credit card with two years of 0% interest on balance transfers. It’s all been good so far, and I”m down to about a third of the original balance, which is how I wanted things to be.
But today I got an email from them saying “Your promotional rate is expiring at the end of the month“, and talking about the money transfer rate. Which seemed a bit odd – and very early.
So anyway, I called them up to find out what was going on, and it turns out that (unsurprisingly) I’m a bloody idiot.
Turns out that the card also had a zero interest deal for money transfers – which aren’t, as I thought, the same as balance transfers. And that’s the rate that was expiring. I’m sure I should’ve known the difference between money and balance transfers, but in that general “What the fuck?” phase of things, I conflated the two things into one.
So anyway, all’s fine. And my acknowledgement of my own idiocy at least made the call handler laugh, so there’s that.
Slooooooow Processing
Posted: Mon 20 March, 2023 Filed under: BT, Business, Customer Services, Domestic Leave a comment »When I moved house back in October, one of the changes I made was to get rid of BT entirely. (That one decision has saved me about £50 a month!)
As part of that, they wanted me to send back the bits of BT kit that I had, which is fair enough. That was all sent mid-October using their own pre-paid envelopes, and I got a confirmation on 3rd November that everything had been received. So that was all fine.
However, on Friday I then got another message, this one confirming that I’d actually returned the stuff I’d been allocated – rather than, apparently, any other old random crap – and that they’d *now* recycle or dispose of it all.
So, five months to process the returns. That really does tell you everything you need to know about the efficiency of BT, doesn’t it?
Bureaucratised
Posted: Mon 2 January, 2023 Filed under: Accounting, Business, Customer Services, Domestic, Getting Organised 4 Comments »One of the things that always surprises me when it comes to dealing with my accountants is how gob-smackingly disorganised a lot of their clients must be. They send out reminders through the year for people to get their receipts in order, to make sure they match what’s in the online portal, and keep on saying about when the deadlines are, when everything has to be ready by.
Personally, I hate being like that – all the stuff I can do for my accounts for last year is already done. My receipts are scanned and linked, my bank statements and transactions files are all completed, all the expenses and so on are logged, it’s basically done. When my accountant sends out their request for everything, I can supply it all by return of email.
It’s still a frustrating experience, though. They’re really geared towards the late submitters, the last minute merchants – so even though I submit rapidly, I still have to wait ’til the processes are done and so on, and that seems to be reliant on the disorganised ones.
I’ve said repeatedly to the accountants that they should have a team that specifically deals with “easy” clients, the ones who are organised and who just get stuff done. Nothing in my accounts is complex – I already know what my 2022 Corporation Tax will be, because the prediction on the online portal is (for me) rarely out by more than a couple of quid. So sorting out clients like me should be at most a week’s work, just get the files in, agree them with what’s been submitted, calculate the figures, and job done. It really can’t be difficult.
But while they always say “Oh yeah, we could do that“, they never do. So I’ve done what I can, and I’ll just wait for the accountants to catch up. It’s deeply fucking annoying, but at least I know I’m on top of things and have done what I can.
Offline (Kinda Sorta Ish)
Posted: Fri 16 September, 2022 Filed under: Business, Domestic, Getting Organised 2 Comments »So – I knew everything had gone too smoothly. Turns out my Sky internet connection won’t be activated for three [insert snarly sweary words here] weeks.
Now, before I go on, I have to emphasise – at least half of this is my fault. I didn’t read the “What’s Next” email completely, just looked at when the engineer would be out to fit the Sky stuff. I absolutely accept that I should’ve read it all through properly. But I didn’t.
On the other side of that, even the engineer didn’t see the information until I showed him where it was in the email – it is not evident that This Is Important – and also they didn’t send through any confirmation text messages which would’ve also made things clear.
Anyway, despite the new place already having in all the infrastructure necessary (access point, cabling etc.) it turns out that OpenReach “need to check everything” before they can allow the connection to be made. And that takes time, because OpenReach are a) a monopoly and b) fucking useless. I have to stay in on the day of the ‘installation’, even though they admit themselves that it is usually done remotely, and they won’t even book an appointment slot – I have to be inconvenienced all fucking day just in case there’s a problem. You can imagine exactly how impressed I am about that one!
As it is, I’m lucky. I’ve got a mobile-internet device (which is what I’m using now) so I’m not completely offline. I’ve also managed to sort out a desk at a local new co-working space for the month, so that I can carry things on without being too inconvenienced. It’s an absolute pain in the arse, and I’m really annoyed by it all (at least partly because I didn’t read that sodding email and try to push for an earlier connection) But it could’ve been so much worse.
As it is, I’ve got the SkyTV installed, set up, and pretty much sorted, I’ll have three or four weeks in which to learn more about the town’s facilities and centre, and… yeah, it could be worse. Plan C would’ve involved continuing to use my current office in Milton Keynes, and just swallowing that mileage for the month. Which would’ve been even more annoying!
Car Costs
Posted: Mon 12 October, 2020 Filed under: Business, Car Repairs, Customer Services, Domestic, Driving, Getting Organised, MK Kia 2 Comments »Last week was an expensive one (and disappointing in some ways) with regards to the car.
Firstly, on Wednesday morning it failed the MoT test – three of the four linkages on the anti-roll bars were “excessively worn” (read “fucked”) and needed replacing. Slightly annoying/disappointing, but not unexpected at 160,000 miles. (And one of the linkages had a warning last year)
What was more annoying/disappointing was the attitude of the garage about it all, who told me they had no availability until a week on Friday (i.e. October 16th) in order to do the work. And that’s just shit.
The problem is that with the “new” MoT (it’s been around for a couple of years now, so ‘new’ is a bit of a misnomer) if the car fails, it’s not really supposed to be driven at all. With the time duration, I was OK to drive it home but then wasn’t supposed to use it again ’til it’s time to be repaired. And being stuck at home like that for ten days is not my idea of fun.
Fortunately, I had a way round it – albeit a potentially expensive one. Hire a car to use while mine was unavailable – and then it occurred to me that there’s a KwikFit on the same site, so I gave them a call as well, and organised it for them to look at my car and do whatever was necessary. Because it was later in the day, they said it might take time to order the parts, so it might not be done ’til Saturday (still a week earlier than the original garage could do) but that was fine. And of course it also meant I could legally get to the car-hire place!
So that’s what happened. Over to KwikFit, drop off the car and paperwork, collect the hire car, and home. All fairly easy, and a better alternative than being stuck at home, or facing any legal issues.
The next day, KwikFit gave me a call, confirmed the work, told me what it would cost, and it was all fine. So they said I could collect it Friday morning, including having re-taken the MoT test.
So all told, it could’ve been a lot worse.
The original garage have pissed me off though – I’ve had this issue before with their other dealership, and it’s frustrating. I’m happy that they’re busy, and I know there’s less availability because of social distancing and so on. All the same, if it were my business, I’d keep at least one workshop slot per day open for same-day and urgent repairs. That way these sort of things wouldn’t be a problem – and they’d show some customer service by being able to go “Oh, yeah, we can juggle this, we’ll do it today (or tomorrow at a push)“. Which would also mean the money from said work went into their account, not that of one of their competitors.
I get that they want to keep busy and maximise things, but the simple fact is that it’s cost them money – both in not having the money for the work and replacements I needed, but also in the likelihood of me going back there for any future work. Which is what makes it so sad and short-sighted.
Anyway, from my side it’s all fine, and the car’s taxed, MoTed and fully insured again.
Silver Linings
Posted: Wed 8 April, 2020 Filed under: Business, Domestic, Lockdown, Looking Back, Thoughts 1 Comment »I don’t really need to update anyone about the current Coronavirus Lockdown and all the fun and games that entails. (Suffice to say for now, I’m doing fine, but there’ll probably be a separate post about that some other time) It’s generally a bit shitey, and a bit dull, but it’s OK.
However, I was also thinking this week that for me things could’ve been so much worse – and very nearly were. So as well as the shitey-and-dull bits, it’s time to look a bit at silver linings, the things that – if they’d happened – would have made things shitey-er. (That’s not a word, but in context it’ll be fine)
At the start of this year, I was looking at renting a different office – still in Milton Keynes, but with a nicer specification, some more facilities and so on. And, of course, significantly more expensive. They were still fitting it out when I went for a look – which was perhaps a short-sighted move on the part of the company, as I’d have far rather seen things when they were a bit further along, rather than saying “This is where the walls will be” – but all the same, it looked nice, and suitable for most of my needs, along with some interesting extras for being “one of the first in”. But for a number of reasons (primarily the cost, and that I don’t like being hassled by sales people afterwards – particularly when they then can’t even follow their script efficiently) I decided to wait and see. And if I’d taken it, I’d have moved in a month ago, and then been effectively locked out a week later, while still paying that contracted rent for a locked-in 12-month minimum. (At my current one, if all else fails, I can now give them a month’s notice and be done and dusted)
In a similar vein, back in November I was looking at a couple of other houses I could move to instead of the current one. My tenancy was expiring on the current one, I’ve been here a scarily long time, and in many ways I’d like somewhere with more room. (That would’ve been nice in the current situation, I’d have had space to set aside a room as a home-office, which simply isn’t possible where I am now) But again, the ones I liked were a lot more expensive, and not quite right enough to make the decision. So again, if things had worked out differently, I’d be in a bigger house and so on, but also be paying considerably more for doing so.
There have been (and even are) some other silver linings to this whole thing, but for now, I think these two will do, to remind me that things really could be a lot worse…
Organising
Posted: Sat 18 January, 2020 Filed under: 2019/20, Business, Change, Domestic, Finances, Five Year Plan (now Ten), Getting Organised Leave a comment »Among all the usual stuff, I’ve spent some time this month getting things a bit more organised, and kicking off things that had slipped last year.
So in the last two weeks, I’ve…
- Moved/merged my credit-card crap onto one interest-free balance-transfer card.
It’s not a huge amount, and not something I’m worried about, but it’s good to have it in one place and no interest for the next two years. - Started playing hunt-the-pensions, seeing if I can find them and merge them into one fund, so I know where the hell things stand.
I’m not expecting much, but again, it’ll be good to know - Started sorting a new will, as the last one was done while I was still with Herself. So yeah, that *really* needs to be sorted
- Booked in cat-sitting people for all the stuff I’ve currently got lined up (which is more than it should be, but less than it could’ve been)
- Actually also done less – in each of the three weekends so far, I’ve had a day of doing very very little, as per the plan for this year. I don’t know if that’ll keep on happening (in some ways I’m finding it more exhausting than being busy, but I’ll write about that another time) but so far it’s worked out
- Completed another project outside of my usual work, which has already made me more productive than last year
- Oh, and visited my first Michelin-starred restaurant of the year as well (and it was bloody excellent)
It’s been interesting, and eventful – and it’s good to have some of that stuff checked off the list already
Worst Retailer
Posted: Wed 29 May, 2019 Filed under: Business, Domestic, News, Shopping, Thoughts Leave a comment »In the news today, a survey (admittedly, of only 8,000-ish people) lists WHSmith as the worst retailer, for the second year running.
Which doesn’t surprise me – to be honest, the only thing that ever surprises me about WHSmith is that they continue to keep trading. They’ve been in my retail dead pool for about a decade now, and they keep stumbling on.
Personally, I rarely (if ever) darken the doors of a WHSmith. They simply don’t do what I want to buy, there are plenty of places that are cheaper/better, and (to me) most of the stores look dull and dirty. I’m not saying they are dull and dirty, but they look it – again, to me.
The most recent example of this was a couple of weekends ago, I was in a place I’d not been before, and they had a big WHSmith store. But from the outside, the lighting inside was so dull that it looked as though the store wasn’t actually open. Just grim.
Anyway.
The thing that interested me in the story was this :
Every week we serve three million customers in our 600 UK High Street stores
That doesn’t seem like a very big figure, to be honest. So I worked it out.
3,000,000 divided between 600 stores is 5,000 customers per store. Per week. Which isn’t much.
And then you average it out over the seven days of the week – I’ll round it up to the nearest whole, as .25 of a person is ridiculous – and you get 715 people per store per day. Which really isn’t a lot. I can’t see how those numbers all the stores to break even, let alone make a profit.
I truly don’t understand how they stay in business
Small Wins – Backup
Posted: Fri 26 April, 2019 Filed under: Business, Change, Cynicism, Domestic, Getting Organised, Photography, Technology, Thoughts, Time Leave a comment »Way, way back in the day – Nov 2006, to be precise – I bought a backup drive for all my music, photos and work. It wasn’t anything hugely special – a now laughable 320Gb drive – but it did what I wanted, and made sure I’d got everything preserved. (Amusingly, I just took a look, and the roughly-similar drives now done by WD start at 3Tb!)
And then I moved a few times, and the drive got separated from its power brick, and I sort of gave up on it a bit. Over the last few years I’ve mainly been using online backups instead (which mean that as soon as I save a file, it’s backed up, and synchronises to my other machines) and the drive became even less of an issue.
I always knew where the drive itself was, even though I was fairly sure I’d lost (or thrown away) the power lead/brick. The drive has been on one of my bookcases, doing nothing except attracting dust.
Last weekend, though, I found a random power cable that looked like it might fit the drive. So I took them both into my office this week, and gave it a go.
At the end of the day, I’d pretty much given up on it – it’s been sat there doing sod-all for a number of years, and has been carelessly moved, shoved in boxes and so on. So I expected nothing.
And yet, when I plugged the cables in and connected it to the laptop, it all worked. Straight away, with no issues, clanks, grinds, or other Warning Noises Of Doom. Needless to say, I’m actually pretty impressed.
Of course, I’ll also now be working to ensure that a lot of it is backed up somewhere else as well, as that drive is distinctly venerable, but all the same, it’s a bit of a win for it all to have come back in the way it has.
Starting The Year
Posted: Tue 1 January, 2019 Filed under: 2018/19, Business, Change, Domestic, Five Year Plan (now Ten), Getting Organised, Resolutions, Thoughts Leave a comment »And so, Happy New Year. Another orbit round the sun, and as is the tradition, some thoughts about what’s coming.
As usual, I don’t really do resolutions – particularly not New Year’s ones. I do a list around my birthday, which can be found here, but I’m thinking about some changes this year as part of that as well.
One of the things that will change a bit is that I’m going to put more into sorting out routines for things, rather than necessarily just looking at the goals themselves. There are a couple of bits on my list where it’s about “I want to have done [x]”, and that’s fine. But more of them are about “I want to achieve [y]”, and while I’ve always had the intention, the actuality has evaded me.
Last year I got pointed at this article about creating systems rather than setting goals, and it rang a major bell with me.
All told, I’m in a good place to get started on this stuff.
I’ve just completed version one of a project for another contact, and I’ve done pretty much all I can on it until they get back to me with final information. It’s a working version, although I’ve had to replace some of the functionality/information I’m waiting for with automated processes for the minute. But I’m happy with where it is, and it’s now out of my brain, which is A Good Thing.
Of course, it’s immediately been replaced with another project – this one something that’s important to me as well – which I want to work on sooner rather than later.
So, Happy New Year. Onwards and upwards, etc. etc.
And as one of the Doctors would say, “Allons-y!”
2018/19 – What’s the Plan?
Posted: Tue 6 November, 2018 Filed under: 2018/19, Business, Domestic, Five Year Plan (now Ten), Getting Organised, Getting Out More, Health, Single Life, Thoughts Leave a comment »As has become traditional round here, it’s time for a list of what I’m aiming for and hoping to do in the coming year. Some will be familiar (because I keep starting and not finishing) but I’m also hoping to get rid of a couple that never really happen, and maybe add a couple to replace them.
- Keep on working on losing weight.
This one is a long-term thing, and one I’ve written about before. For me, it’s a struggle – I’ve worked with a number of resources this year so far, and feel better-informed than I was, but there’s still a long way to go. If nothing else, this year so far has eliminated a lot of options and bullshit. - Keep on improving fitness/health
Linked to losing weight, I’ve had more success with this one over the last 12 months, but there’s still stuff to do and improve. - Continue doing the stuff I enjoy
Various bits here – but basically, do stuff I want to. Not as a “fear of missing out” (“FOMO”) thing, but just as in “I really want to see/do [x]” and doing so. (This is, of course, in direct contrast to ‘doing less’ in the list below, so it’s a bit of a balancing act!) - Be more sociable
I’ve realised this year that I’ve been utterly crap with seeing friends – I’ve been doing a lot of stuff, but at the same time it hasn’t been overly sociable, hasn’t involved going to see friends at all. And that needs sorting.
I’m getting rid of some of the longer-running goals. They’re still things I want to work on – I’m not giving up on the plans, just on the having them as goals – but it affects me more when I see my ongoing failure to complete/do/start them year on year.
So I’ll note them here as reminders, but they’re not part of the main “What I’m aiming for” list. See if it works better for me as advisories, rather than as targets/goals. And those reminders are…
- Writing
I want to do more writing – I’ve got the ideas, but it’s finding the time, inclination and drive to get them actually going. I hope to schedule more in – I’ve also invested in some tools that should allow me to do so – but we’ll see. - Business plans
As with the writing, I’ve got the ideas, but need to allocate time and energy to getting them to work. In some cases I’m frustrated by time, in others by funding for getting them how I want them. We’ll just have to see how things go. - Doing Less
This is kind-of related to the above two – if I could sort my brain out so that ‘doing less’ was better, then I’d hopefully have more time to spend on the writing and business ideas. - Plan Better
And the final one, which controls all of the others – make better plans, notes, and be better organised.
Non-Stop
Posted: Fri 27 April, 2018 Filed under: 2017/18, Business, Do More, Domestic, Five Year Plan (now Ten), Getting Organised, Single Life, Thoughts Leave a comment »This last week has been (and continues to be) pretty non-stop, even by my standards. It’s been a weird mix of work, social, and work-related social.
I’m still trying to calm things down – and weirdly, at the moment my weekends seem to be freer than my weekdays, so I suppose that’s some kind of progress? But as usual, something has to give – and this time it’s been writing on D4D™.
I’m aiming to find a better balance of things, but right now it’s all on some kind of weird mutant seesaw/roundabout combination, and figuring out the physics of that is pretty tiring in and of itself.
I’ll get there, though.
Technical Dipshittery
Posted: Fri 20 October, 2017 Filed under: Business, Customer Services, Domestic, Geeky, Stupidity, Technology, Weirdness Leave a comment »Yesterday, I got a text message from O2, telling me that they were going to be closing their TuGo app (an app that allows phone calls to be made/received through my wifi connection, when the mobile phone signal is bobbins) at the end of November. It gave some options for enabling better alternatives, including their ‘4G & WiFi Calling’ through a range of phones, so it will no longer need a separate app.
That’s all well and good – and TuGo has always been a bag of shite anyway. So I started to go through the process, as ‘detailed’ by O2 of how to get it all set up on my phone.
Except that once I’d enabled it on my phone (or tried to) it told me I needed to do it via the O2 website, to activate it on my account. Bit of a pain in the arse, but OK, let’s get it done.
Oh.
The page detailed in the message doesn’t actually contain the information necessary. I can see a link explaining how great the 4G and Wifi Calling is, but nothing to activate it.
So, I start up a LiveChat with one of their Tech Gurus, who tell me that it’s still showing I’ve got Tu connected to my account, and that needs to be removed before I can do anything. No worries though, they’ll sort it out. Give it about half an hour, reboot the phone, it’ll be done.
Except it wasn’t.
So I got back in touch with O2, this time by phone instead of LiveChat. Oh dear, oh dear.
I (eventually) got through to another of their Tech Gurus, who again says that Tu is still connected to my account, and that I have to uninstall the TuGo app on my phone in order to get rid of the connection. No idea why the previous tech person said they could do it, that’s not possible, it can only be done from your phone, sir.
So I uninstall the app, in the usual way. Oh no, sir, you haven’t uninstalled it. You’ll need to go back to the app store, reinstall the app so you can uninstall it. (Eh? What?) Yes, you’ll need to reinstall the app – you didn’t uninstall it, “you just deleted the little picture on your phone”. That’s a direct quote. From a Tech “Guru”. Who doesn’t appear to even know the word “icon”.
So. Let’s see how this goes. Phone call goes to speakerphone, so I can go through the process while the “Guru” is still on the call, and telling me what I need to do. I reinstall the app – and in order to get in to it, I have to rebuild the connection and association with my number – because uninstalling the app has got rid of all that information . Which is exactly as it should be.
I rebuild the connection, then go into the app’s Settings and Delete the Account. The Guru says “Oh there we go, I can see you’ve now uninstalled the app”. No, I haven’t, I’ve deleted the account. The app is still installed, I can see it. “No, it’s uninstalled”
All the way through the call, that “Guru” couldn’t tell the difference between “Delete the Account/Connection” and “Uninstall the App”.
It’s resulted in two further interactions with layers of O2 management, telling them the problems, fixing the issues, and generally getting it more sorted.
And all the way through this, all it would have taken was for that “My Device” webpage saying “You’ve still got an active connection to TuGo – you need to remove that before we can progress. Here’s how.” That would’ve fixed everything, and I wouldn’t have needed to speak to O2 at all, let alone a total of four times.
Sometimes I just despair of people, and companies.
King of the Air
Posted: Mon 2 October, 2017 Filed under: Business, Cynicism, Domestic, Thoughts, Travel Leave a comment »Today, the news is full of the ‘shocking’ news of Monarch Airlines ceasing to trade. I’m more surprised that anyone’s surprised, to be honest.
Now OK, Monarch are (semi) local to me, I know people who work(ed) there – but no-one who was in key positions, finance etc. However, it’s no shock to me at all that they’ve gone under – in many ways I’ve been more surprised that they’ve gone on as long as they have.
The Wikipedia page contains a summary of it – but it’s stuff I was aware of anyway, having watched the news and so on.
Three years ago, they were nearly bankrupt. They got a last-minute bailout/buyout by Greybull Capital, which was all that allowed them to keep trading. Three years ago.
This time last year, rumours came up about their potential bankruptcy. They got a last-minute extension to their ATOL licence (similar to the activities of last weekend) after another £160-odd million fund injection from Greybull and other investors.
Between those warnings, the drop in customers in markets that were key to them (tourism to Tunisia and Egypt, primarily) and other competition, and the general atmosphere post-Brexit, it was no surprise at all. I fully expect a couple of others to collapse as well.
Don’t get me wrong, it’s a shitty situation – for the people who work there, and for the passengers and customers who are currently wondering what’s going to happen. But it still shouldn’t have come as a surprise. Personally, I know that I wouldn’t have booked anything with them, regardless.
Of course, every cloud has a silver lining – I suspect RyanAir are ecstatic about all those extra Monarch pilots and crew suddenly becoming available (and without even needing expensive relocation packages) that can fill the gaps in their current schedule. Indeed, I wouldn’t be surprised if RyanAir didn’t aim to buy up a lot of the Monarch stuff – planes, staff, routes etc., and make money off the misfortune of Monarch.
Fixing Things
Posted: Wed 5 July, 2017 Filed under: Bankruptcy, BT, Business, Customer Services, Cynicism, Domestic, Five Year Plan (now Ten), Getting Organised, Rebuilding, Thoughts, Travel Leave a comment »So far, this year has involved a number of customer service clusterfucks, some of which I’ve mentioned on here, and it looks like a number of those issues are now on the way to being sorted, thankfully.
That list includes
- The Cat boots – successfully returned to manufacturer, and a replacement pair are (apparently) on the way
- The Credit Card company – seems to be sorted, with outstanding issues rectified.
- My Accountants – this has been something that’s been ongoing for a year or more, where they’re just ridiculously slack and uncommunicative. If it weren’t for the fact that they’ve been free (for the last 18 months!) then I’d have moved on well before now.
The free stuff is a story of its own, but basically when I complained to director level at the end of 2015, they told me I wouldn’t be charged until they’d fixed the issues. Eighteen months later, the issues are still there, although having had some productive conversations with the Operations Director, I think they’re turning the corner at last! - BT – Hopefully, that’ll be sorted today. The engineer is due between 8am and 1pm, and fingers crossed things will be sorted.
There’s a couple of other things coming up that so far seem positive, but I’m waiting for them to come through properly before I write about them.
All told though, yeah, it’s all feeling a bit more fixed and positive.
Connectivity
Posted: Mon 3 July, 2017 Filed under: BT, Business, Customer Services, Domestic, Technology, Thoughts, Utilities, Weather Leave a comment »Yet again, my home broadband connection has gone to pot over the weekend.
It’s an ongoing problem – basically, there’s a leak in the outdoors part of my connection, so when it rains heavily, water gets in, and corrodes the connections in the master socket. I start to know it’s going to be bad when any phone call I make (not that I make many on the landline, but still) starts to get crackly. After a while, it then gets bad enough that the next ingress of water breaks things properly, and leaves my modem/router dropping the connection and reconnecting on an all-too-frequent basis.
In the five-and-a-bit years I’ve been in this house, I’ve had four master sockets. Now soon to be a fifth.
BT refuse to believe that this is the problem – this has been going on for ages, and they’ve done line checks etc., but won’t replace the outside part of the connection, for some reason.
So we go through the farce of doing fault-tracking, “We can’t find anything” and then booking an engineer to come out. Every time, I get told “If it’s a problem past the master socket (i.e. with my own wiring) then it’ll cost £129.99 on your next bill”. It won’t be with my wiring, because I’ve got precisely one socket, and one connector/splitter (also supplied by BT) on it.
Everything else will be fine, it’ll just be corroded connections in the master socket. Again.
This time, I’m going to aim to get the engineer to reinstall the master socket, but do so higher up the wall (so water doesn’t get in, as it can’t climb cables) or on a longer cable inside the house, so I can put it on a shelf or whatever, and again, let gravity deal with the problem.
The engineer’s coming out on Wednesday morning, so we’ll see what happens from there. It’d be nice (and really quite novel!) to have it sorted properly this time. But only time will tell whether that’ll happen or not.
Slow Roads
Posted: Wed 21 June, 2017 Filed under: Business, Domestic, Driving, Getting Organised, M1, People, Thoughts, Travel Leave a comment »Every so often I have a day where I just want it to be over – not in any kind of self-harm way, just when a lot of things have turned to shit, and all I want is to go home.
Unsurprisingly, today has been one of those days.
It started OK – it was cooler last night, so I actually got some sleep. I’d got a meeting down near Reading, so once I was awake at 6am, I left to get down there while avoiding the worst of the rush-hour traffic, and aiming to be down in Reading before it even really started. That mission was kind-of successful, in that I was down there by 8.30 – but still, it took two and a half hours to do a journey that I can do on a weekend in an hour, or just over.
The meeting itself went OK, and I’ve got a bundle of work to do, which will make life entertaining.
Afterwards, fortunately I checked routes home on my phone, and found that the M1 had been completely closed due to a fatal accident. It’s an area I know pretty well, so I knew I’d got a bundle of cross-country routes I could take, and that’s what I did.
However, it seemed like every single part of that route, I was preceded by slow-moving drivers who had nowhere to go, or no desire to get there. The entire way back was spent going at 30 or 40mph on roads where the limit was 60, and all on what turned out to be the hottest June day in more than forty years – warm to the point where even the car’s air-conditioning wasn’t really managing anything. (I may need to look at re-gassing it, but we’ll see)
All told, the journey home took two and a half hours – most of which was just due to being so much slower than I would’ve been on quiet/non-busy roads.
So, by the end of it, I was just wanting to be home, for it all to be over and done with.
It’s going to be the first day in several months where I haven’t achieved my steps-per-day walking target – I could still have done it, but frankly, with the temperature and everything else, I just couldn’t be arsed. In fairness, I’m already well up on the week’s target anyway, so a day off is perfectly doable (and I’m doing a bigger walk at the weekend too) but still, it’s also the first time in ages where I’ve had a day with such levels of failure to be arsed.
What’s The Plan?
Posted: Sun 1 January, 2017 Filed under: 2016/17, Business, Do More, Domestic, Finances, Five Year Plan (now Ten), Getting Organised, Health, Resolutions, Thoughts, Weigh Less, Write More Leave a comment »And here we are, at the start of 2017. Didn’t that come round quickly?
As with previous years, I don’t really make resolutions. It’s all pretty arbitrary, the whole resolutions thing, so I usually choose to make plans from one birthday to the next, rather than the whole “January 1st is for new starts” cobblers.
This year, I’ve got some plans for 2017 as a whole though – although they’re not much different to what I’d laid out back in November. However, in my head, I’ve laid some of these down as being “this year” instead. I don’t quite know why, but it’ll work for me.
So – what are they? Well, in no particular order…
- Finances
- Add a significant amount into the savings
- Work
- Figure out what comes next after the current contract (I’m sure that’ll happen at some point in the coming year)
- Learn some new stuff, because why not?
- Launch at least one of the projects that’ve been in my head for way too long
- Writing
- Complete at least one of the screenplay ideas I’ve started in 2016
- and then figure out what the hell to do with it/them
- Complete a book idea I’ve got, and publish it (for Kindle)
- Health
- Lose weight (I’ve put some on over the Festering Season, and want to lose that, plus a bit more)
- Do some training/practice walks for that walking marathon in September
- and then complete it on the day
And really that’s it. There might be a couple of other projects along the way, but that’s the main objectives, all in one place.
Whether or not they happen, I don’t know. (Obviously, as we’re only on Day One) But I’m going to give it a damn good go.
First Impressions
Posted: Sat 17 December, 2016 Filed under: Advertising, Bad Ads, Business, Catering, Cynicism, Literacy, Thoughts Leave a comment »It’s funny, sometimes, how a first impression – and sometimes even just a single word – can colour one’s judgement and feelings about something.
While geeking about yesterday, I did a google search for ‘Zucchini’ – a programme on TV was showing zucchini (courgettes) that were very different to the ones I recognise as courgettes, so I had a look.
And there on that results page, the second result was for Zucchini Restaurant in Batley, Yorkshire. It looks like this…
Yep – the first word of text on the site contains a spelling mistake. On an Italian word. For an Italian restaurant.
And just like that, I know I don’t want to go. If that’s their attention to detail, I’m out. Simple as that.
Replacement Card
Posted: Tue 1 November, 2016 Filed under: Bankruptcy, Business, Customer Services, Cynicism, Domestic, Finances, Getting Organised, Rebuilding 2 Comments »On Friday evening, while I was out for a meal, I paid using the card for one of my Barclays accounts. That transaction, while all went OK, had traits that felt… odd. Wrong. Or at least just Not Quite Right.
So I called the bank straight after, and cancelled the card with immediate effect. That took a bit of explanation, as “I want to cancel the card from right now, no more transactions” apparently still needs discussion, and a whole bit of scripted text from the bank about “With the card cancelled, you won’t be able to use it”. (Well yeah, that’s why I’ve cancelled the cocking thing.) But I assume they’ve had to deal with morons in the past who’ve cancelled the card and then complained they couldn’t use it for something.
Anyway, they told me my replacement card would be sent out as soon as possible, and all that jazz – all fine, I’m just happier knowing that I’ve handled it to the best of my abilities, should that transaction have turned out to be as dodgy as it felt like it could’ve been.
When I got home last night, there was the new card.
And I can’t deny, I’m impressed with that – a card that’s been requested in the late evening (10pm-ish) on a Friday, and is delivered on the Monday? Not bad going at all.
While Barclays have their moments of driving me absolutely crackers – and that’s still going through the Financial Ombudsman, so I assume Barclays are being dicks with the Ombudsman as well – I can’t deny that some of their systems are also pretty bloody good.
[Updated to mention : Having looked back, it turns out it’s not the first time I’ve been impressed by this replacement card system]
Apprentice Thoughts
Posted: Fri 14 October, 2016 Filed under: 1BEM, Business, Cynicism, Domestic, People, Television, Thoughts 2 Comments »Once again, the BBC has a series of the Apprentice running. And yet again, every single contestant currently appears to be an inveterate fuckknuckle with all the business skills of a bundle of second-hand scrotum skin.
What I don’t understand about the competitors (more even than being so massively underprepared and underqualified) is what think will happen afterwards. This year, there’s 18 competitors, and that means that 17 are going to lose, and go back to reality.
But anyone who has seen the programme will know that they’re insufferable, incompetent, and in most cases utterly vile human beings who couldn’t truly run a business if their lives depended on it.
So – what happens when they look for new work? Or even just return to the job where they’ve managed to negotiate a break or sabbatical? (Come to think of it, that situation might be even worse, with the added weight of expectations etc.)
I know that if, regardless of whether I were interviewing or being interviewed, any single one of them were in the room, I’d know they’re (at best) useless, gobby, opinionated, and shit at their supposed job; and wouldn’t work with them. I’m sure I’m not the only one who’d do the same.
All told, pretty mind-boggling.
Reduced Insomnia
Posted: Mon 3 October, 2016 Filed under: Bankruptcy, Business, Change, Domestic, Five Year Plan (now Ten), Getting Old(er), Getting Organised, Insomnia, Rebuilding, The Future, Thoughts, Travel 2 Comments »During the week in Cornwall, I slept better than I have in absolutely years – to the tune of about 2 hours more sleep per night. It’s the first time since I started recording my sleep times with the Fitbit that I’ve had more than four hours in a night – and it happened all week.
So, it looks like the possible cure (or at least improvement) in my insomnia is :
- Move to Cornwall (or somewhere with equally remote areas)
- Walk at least six miles a day
- Sleep in a house miles from anywhere, in absolute pitch-black darkness and silence.
At the moment, none of that is massively feasible. But in the future, it may well be. I need to look at how things work, what I do and what I want to do, and how to get to where that kind of plan might be possible.
So, that’ll be fun.
Descriptions vs. Reality
Posted: Wed 3 August, 2016 Filed under: Business, Customer Services, Cynicism, Domestic, Food, Getting Organised, Solo Dining Leave a comment »I’ve written several times about some of the restaurant stuff I’ve been doing this year – and I now have my bookings sorted through to October – but there’s been one thing that’s bugging me, which I addressed a bit yesterday.
Some of the restaurants use OpenTable for their booking system – which is understandable, it must make life a lot easier to have all that side handled by someone else.
OpenTable offer a “points” system, so that after a certain number of meals booked through themselves, one can get a discount card/voucher etc. They specify it as “points with every booking made through Open Table”…
They say the same in two different places on the site
Only that’s not actually how it works. I’ve made several bookings – and honoured them by going to the restaurants and having the meals – and earned a grand total of sod-all from them.
So yesterday – having made yet another zero points booking – I got in touch with them, asking how they justified saying “Every booking gets points” when it was so blatantly untrue.
Initially they came back saying “Oh, that’s only for bookings directly through OpenTable, not for when you’ve come through from another site”. So I tried another booking for the same restaurant, but direct through the site. Lo and behold, still zero points. So I got back in touch, and basically said “Bullshit“, with added screenshots and history to show the progress.
I’ve now had a further reply that can be summed up as “Oh shit. Yeah, there’s been a problem. We’re looking into it“.
It’ll be interesting to see if things do get fixed. For now, my account has been credited with the missing points, and we’ll see what happens with the upcoming bookings as well (the next one is happening this weekend) but at least they’re now aware of the problem.
2016 Q1
Posted: Fri 1 April, 2016 Filed under: 2015/16, Business, Car Repairs, Do More, Domestic, Five Year Plan (now Ten), Getting Organised, Health, London, Stupidity, Thoughts, Travel, Weigh Less, Weight Loss, Write More Leave a comment »So here we are, in April already. A quarter of the year gone.
The first three months have been fairly awkward and problematic in some ways, but all told it’s still been a success – although in some ways it’s been a case of looking at grey clouds and finding a silver lining. Work and so on have stayed stable, it’s just other non-work stuff that hasn’t gone as well.
The worst (or at least most frustrating) part has been the car – thankfully that now appears to be sorted, but it’s been an expensive quarter, with repeated re-visits to the garage, along with replacement parts and so on.
I did have plans for writing more and so on, but they haven’t materialised. I’ve done a couple of things and started with some ideas and the like, but the intended plan hasn’t happened. Hopefully the next three months will let me write more, if I’ve got the time and inspiration.
Health-wise, I’ve slacked off a lot on going to the gym and so on. I’ve had a bundle of colds and coughs throughout the last few months, and every time I’ve thought “Ok, that’s finally gone”, I’ve picked up another one. That’s not been fun, but there we go. Admittedly, a lack of gymmage hasn’t resulted in any weight gains – everything has stayed in exactly the same place it was while I was going to the gym regularly. That’s been another thing that’s not helped on the motivational front – if it’s not making any difference one way or t’other, it becomes less important to go.
I do need to get back to it, and doing other stuff as well – because I’m a loon, and have just signed up to the NSPCC’s challenge to walk/run (OK, walk) up the 38 floors of the Gherkin on Sunday 19th June. I must be fucking barmy. This is the kind of thing that happens when Marie Curie aren’t doing their 10km walks. I blame them. 🙂 That’s in ten weeks time, so I need to do some stuff pretty quickly…
Anyway, it’s been an interesting first three months of the year. There’s some interesting challenges coming up – not least that bloody Gherkin challenge – in the next three months, and I just hope it’s a bit more positively motivated than the first three have been.
Time will tell…
A Bag For Life
Posted: Wed 2 December, 2015 Filed under: Business, Customer Services, Cynicism, Domestic, People, Shopping, Shopping, Thoughts, Weirdness Leave a comment »Over the weekend, while I was out shopping, the person in front of me’s “bag for life” split open.
What really surprised me though, was the attitude of the person on the till, and (by inference) that of the store.
You see, the ‘bag for life’ was from a different store – so the till person (quoting store/company rules) wouldn’t change it for one from that store.
“Oh, you can only change that at those shops, we won’t take them”
Which begs the question – why? If it were me in charge of doing that, then I’d be happy to take a competitor’s bag and give my customer a branded bag advertising my own store/company instead. But no, it seems that each supermarket/store brand will only exchange bags of their own brand, rather than taking those from other stores.
Seems bizarre to me.
Trying To Be Sensible
Posted: Fri 30 October, 2015 Filed under: Business, Domestic, Driving, Thoughts, Travel Leave a comment »The last couple of months here have been pretty busy, with very little time spent at home. In fact, I haven’t spent a full weekend at home since the end of August. November and December aren’t currently looking much different on that score.
So, in the name of sanity, I’ve made a couple of other decisions.
I was supposed to be going to a conference next week in Manchester – for something that’s not super-relevant *right now* but will be for some plans/ideas over the next six to twelve months.
However, it would take me away for three days, and to be honest, that doesn’t appeal all that much right now. I’d rather have the chance of some downtime somewhere along the line.
So I’ve sacked it off, cancelled everything around it, and will instead ‘just’ do my normal work instead. Which seems like a good plan.
I’m not good at the whole ‘cancelling stuff’ thing, but I do know it sometimes needs to happen, and this is one of those times.
I think the most telling thing was that having made the decision, my only real reaction has been “good, that makes sense”…
Privacy Breach
Posted: Wed 2 September, 2015 Filed under: 1BEM, Agency Idiocy, Business, Corbett, Customer Services, Geeky, Laziness, Marketing, People, Stupidity, Thoughts Leave a comment »Yet again, today there’s a story about another place revealing a confidential list of customers in emails – and as usual, in what’s known as a Corbett round here (courtesy of a certain Irish marketing person) it’s looking like the leaker sent the email using CC instead of BCC.
In this case, the information is even more sensitive than usual, as it’s people who’ve used a particular STI clinic in London, and may have also revealed their HIV status. Oh, bloody whoops.
It amazes me how often this seems to happen – and how easy it should be to fix.
The first answer is, obviously, train people.
But after that, it’s about defending against laziness and stupidity. But even that’s pretty easy.
All it really needs is a block on recipients in CC. If you’re sending an email and it’s got more than (say) 10 addresses in the CC field, it simply asks if you’re sure you want to send it with those people in CC rather than BCC. That’s an email-client thing – but is easy to do.
It can’t be that difficult – my own email clients all already ask if I want to send an email with no attachments if the message contains keywords like ‘attached’ or ‘CV’, after all.
A similar thing could be done on the mail-server as well – put in a rule that if there’s more than [defined limit] of addresses in the CC, it doesn’t send without an authorisation, an acknowledgement that this is OK.
There will still be the odd blithering fucktrumpet who manages to send out a whole mailing-list in CC (or even To) – but at least make it harder for them to do so.
Surely that’s not asking too much?
Getting Prepared
Posted: Mon 17 November, 2014 Filed under: 2014/15, Bankruptcy, Business, Domestic, Finances Leave a comment »Over the weekend, I was talking to a couple of people, one of whom had had a couple of serious illnesses/medical issues in a short period of time.
It made me think about my own situation, and I realised (OK, I kind-of knew, but hadn’t thought about it properly) how screwed I would be if I were to be hit by long-term illness, or anything serious that required me to not be working for a while.
So I’m adding a goal to the list for the coming 12 months – have a backup plan and finances.
Ideally, I’m going to aim at having the financial backup that would cover me for at least three months of not working. I was pretty much there earlier this year, but then events conspired, and it’s back to zero. But that’s the plan. I know how much I would need, and what I need to do.
Interestingly, once I’m past 2015 it should be easier. At the moment, and for the next year, a significant portion of salary goes to payments from the bankruptcy. They come to a close at the end of 2015, and my current plan is that I’ll continue to take that money from salary, but instead of going to the Receiver, it’ll go to an ISA or secondary bank-account. I know I can do without that money, so it shouldn’t be an issue to keep on not having it.
Anyway, that’s the goal. Three months of funds, just in case the shit hits the fan.
Tweetastic
Posted: Mon 24 March, 2014 Filed under: Business, Geeky, Twitter Leave a comment »Apparently, over the weekend Twitter had its eighth birthday. (On March 21st, to be exact)
It also turns out that I joined Twitter seven years ago yesterday. (And another friend joined a year after that, as we discussed over the weekend)
I hadn’t appreciated that Twitter gained over 2 million users in its first year (It must’ve done, because my user ID is just under 2,000,500)
However, in that next year, it gained another 26 million users – my friend’s user ID is just under 28,100,000.
And now the new user IDs are coming close to 2 and a half billion – a recent one I created (for another project) was just under 2,400,000,000!
That really is quite huge.
Cinematics Followup
Posted: Tue 31 December, 2013 Filed under: Business, Cinema, Customer Services, Domestic, Marketing, Seeing Films, Thoughts Leave a comment »Following on from yesterday’s post about this year’s Cinema viewings, a couple of things were explained to me outside of D4D™ about how Cineworld make their money on Unlimited Tickets.
The main profit-engine – and one I’d never even thought about – is based on attendance. As I understand it, Cineworld pay [whichever movie distributor] based on a percentage of gross ticket sales per week. However, Unlimited card-holders mean there are bums-on-seats that never show up as ticket sales. That £16 per month is pure gravy for Cineworld, and significantly reduces the amount they have to pay to movie distributors.
Apparently, a Cineworld cinema only needs to have 1,000 Unlimited card-holders to break even for the year. It’s that cost-effective.
Then there’s the secondary profit-engines…
- They get customer data – linked to specific customers – of viewing preferences, linked sales, attendance etc. That’s useful for many many reasons
- The extras (as I’d always suspected) – even with the discount from the ticket, you’re still paying much more than you would anywhere else for drinks etc.
There’s probably others as well, but they’re the main ones. It gives an interesting perspective on business etc.
Errant
Posted: Sat 28 December, 2013 Filed under: Business, Central Bedfordshire Council, Own Business, Pedantry, Work-related Leave a comment »Over Christmas, my local council provided a wonderful example of why you should always double-check things – preferably with someone literate.
Yep – errant apostrophes all over the Festering Season.
As always, it’s the result of letting their website be managed by individuals rather than a team who are actually capable of things like proof-reading, literacy and the like. But it’s not a good thing at all.
Recovering Time
Posted: Tue 3 December, 2013 Filed under: Business, Catering, Domestic, Television, Time, Writing 4 Comments »Over the last few weeks (I really don’t want to figure out how many weeks) I’ve been unreasonably addicted to Masterchef Australia, which – thankfully – finished last week. It’s been on five days a week, which really has made it quite a timesink, but it’s been fun. I’ve liked the programme in previous seasons – it’s very Australian, which is a very good thing in my book – so it’s been worth the time invested. Up to a point.
As with all TV stuff, I don’t just sit and watch, I’m usually doing other stuff at the same time – including cooking and eating meals that were a lot less technical and inspiring than the stuff on the programme, which I always find somewhat ironic. But all the same, it’s been a lot of time sunk into a TV programme, and while I’ve enjoyed the great majority of it, I’m also somewhat relieved that it’s finished.
Collect Plus
Posted: Thu 7 November, 2013 Filed under: Amazon, Business, Customer Services, Domestic, Kindle, Reading Leave a comment »
For returning the broken Kindle, this time Amazon made me use a new (to me) service called CollectPlus. (or Collect+, depending on whether you believe the URL or the logo)
Collect Plus have created a network of locations – usually corner-shops, garages/filling stations, newsagents and the like – where you can drop off a parcel for delivery. It is – I assume – a kind of private mail/courier company, the sort of thing that’s risen from the ashes of Royal Mail’s service (or lack thereof)
So far, from my side, it’s been a pretty positive experience. I went over to the local(ish) collection/drop-off point on Sunday – yes! getting a parcel sent on a Sunday! – and went through the necessary bits. I’d printed off the label from Amazon, stuck it to the box, and all was prepared. Then I simply gave it over to the person on the till, got my receipt, and job done.
I got the email today from Amazon to say that the parcel has been delivered to them – not the world’s fastest process, but it’s cost me nothing to do, and it’s all run pretty smoothly so far. It’s also been a lot quicker, easier, more effective and less painful than anything Royal Mail ever managed…
To The Ombudsman!
Posted: Mon 21 October, 2013 Filed under: 1BEM, Business, Customer Services, Cynicism, Domestic, Finances, nPower, Utilities 2 Comments »As nPower have today announced that the average joint-fuel bill will be going up by over 10% from December 1st, I’ve decided that I’m now definitely going to take my complaint to the Energy Ombudsman, and cost the fuckers some money.
Jesus christ, a 10% increase. Do they think people are made of money? Fucking hell.
I wouldn’t mind so much if there were any decent alternatives to change over to. Sadly though, they’re all as shitty as each other.
Odd Name Choice
Posted: Sun 14 October, 2012 Filed under: 1BEM, Advertising, Business, Commuting, Cynicism, Driving, Thoughts Leave a comment »Travelling on the M1 today, I saw a truck for a company called “Fly By Nite” (a courier company)
Now in my mind, “Fly by Night” (regardless of the spelling) is synonymous with something really dodgy – usually smuggling, and the like.
So it seems like an odd choice for a name, but maybe I’m wrong.
Would you use a company where the name was (in your perception) dodgy?
Savings
Posted: Mon 28 May, 2012 Filed under: 1BEM, Advertising, Business, Customer Services, Cynicism, Thoughts, Weirdness 5 Comments »Over the weekend, I was in Sainsbury’s, and saw a fine example of weird savings…
I’m sure I’ve waffed on about this before, but I can’t be chuffed to double-check. (Turns out, July 2009) Anyway, it’s hardly news.
In this case, a 4-pack of 2L Diet Coke bottles is retailing at £6.50. (And let’s not get onto the price-increase side of things – It’s not long ago that that 4-pack was £5) As a 2L bottle on its own is around the £2 mark – I think it was £1.98, but who’s counting? – then £6.50 for four isn’t a bad deal.
Except – except! – that if you pay a bit more attention, they’re also doing “3 for the price of two” on the individual 2L bottles.
So you can get six bottles for £8 ( or £1.33 a bottle) , instead of four for £6.50 ( £1.62 per bottle )
Supermarkets are very strange places when it comes to saving money…
Marketing, Data, and Predictions
Posted: Fri 17 February, 2012 Filed under: 1BEM, Advertising, Business, Cynicism, Marketing, People, Shopping 4 Comments »Over at Forbes.com, there’s a really interesting article about how companies can make predictions about your life and life-events, based purely on your buying habits.
In this case, the US store Target did analysis on its customers who signed up for their ‘pregnancy club’, and then data-mined their buying habits in the run-up to the birth. Of course, you need something to identify these people by – that’s what ‘loyalty’ cards are for. (Tesco’s Clubcard, Sainsbury’s’ Nectar etc. etc)
And of course it turns out that they could then send out marketing to those people – in one case, knowing a girl was pregnant before her own father did.
It’s always worth remembering, stores don’t give you loyalty cards and ‘rewards’ for nothing. They own all the data about you that the cards give – what you’re buying, why, when, where etc. – and they’re using that for their own profitability.
As David Mitchell said, (and I think I’ve posted it here before) :
When you’re getting something free, you’re not the customer, you’re the product.
Updated : A quick add – this was also something written about in the New York Times Magazine article ‘How Companies Learn Your Secrets‘
Yes / No
Posted: Mon 7 February, 2011 Filed under: 1BEM, Agency Idiocy, Business, Cynicism, Design, Geeky, People, Stupidity, Work-related Leave a comment »Via the linguistic/literacy genius known as Sevitz (or Svetzi) comes this gem…
Oh. My. God.
I’ve worked with some spectacular options for Yes/No, but this one is way up there.
Off-Licence
Posted: Mon 8 November, 2010 Filed under: Business, News 1 Comment »I had recently noticed a number of Thresher’s off-licences closed, but hadn’t actually appreciated that the entire company had gone into administration.
Turns out, that was a year ago. According to that story, only 400 of the 1,400 Threshers branches have been bought for use. The remaining thousand have now been returned to the landlords.
Synapse Phones
Posted: Tue 26 October, 2010 Filed under: Advertising, Business, Geeky, iPhone, Technology Leave a comment »If you’re tired of run-of-the-mill “standard” smartphones, it looks like this may be something that’s of interest.
Synapse Phones will take your order for a customised smartphone (running Android 2.2) and ship it in Q1 of 2011
Think about for what you use your smartphone and what you will do with it. For example if you are someone who loves to take thousands of pictures, you can choose the 12MP camera and a xenon flash for taking pictures at night or under bad lighting conditions or if you want to store your whole music collection on your smartphone just choose a high amount of memory.
Seems like a good idea – and the prices aren’t epically unreasonable either. I hope it works out as a good business.
Closed
Posted: Sun 17 October, 2010 Filed under: 1BEM, Advertising, Business 1 Comment »via Matt Verso on Twitter, I love this notice…
Closed due to administrative cockup - click to embiggenify
It’s worth clicking on the image to see the full glory of the notice.
Apprenticed
Posted: Wed 6 October, 2010 Filed under: 1BEM, Business, Television 4 Comments »Oh dear God, the Apprentice is back on.
What always gets me (other than the absolute bollocks that most of these cunts spout) is that all these high-flying business people who are ‘at the top of their game’ are all available for three months of filming.
Yep, that’s high-flying for sure – so essential to their companies, they can take three months out.
Cunts.
Xmarks is closing
Posted: Tue 28 September, 2010 Filed under: Business, Customer Services, Geeky, Technology, Thoughts 1 Comment »Over the last three years, I’ve been using the xMarks service (formerly FoxMarks) to synchronise all my bookmarks between Home PC, Laptop, Work PC, and iPhone. It’s always been a free service – allbeit one I’d have happily paid for – that made life *so* easy when it comes to keeping bookmarks in sync.
So it’s really sad news today that xMarks has 90 days to live. I don’t know of a better service for synchronising bookmarks (and passwords) in the way that xMarks does, and it’s been awesomely useful for a very long time.
For me- and it’s a point they raise in that blog post – I would’ve happily paid for the service. Not loads – but £10 – £25 a year, certainly.
A very sad day.
Renewing Prime
Posted: Tue 3 August, 2010 Filed under: Business, Customer Services 4 Comments »In general, when I buy books or other odds and sods, my first port of call is usually Amazon.
It’s not the cheapest – although I’m not always looking to save pence on these things anyway – but I find that in general if I want something, it’s going to be available through Amazon.
I also pay for the Amazon Prime – £50 a year, and next-day deliveries for the year. Looking back, I made 31 orders in the last twelve months, and didn’t pay postage and packing on any of them. That works out as £1.61 per order for next-day delivery. Amazon charge £4.95 for Express “get it tomorrow” delivery. On 31 orders, that would be near as dammit £155 just on delivery. (Admittedly if it weren’t for Prime I’d be using normal postage for the most part, but you know what I mean)
Needless to say, I’m renewing my Prime subscription. It’s paid for itself a couple of times over.
Missing Options
Posted: Sat 17 July, 2010 Filed under: Business, Catering, Customer Services, Thoughts, Travel 3 Comments »On Saturday, the Js and I went out to the Olive Branch in Marsden, which they’d been to before and highly recommended.
The place is/was lovely, and the food was really good. Well worth the visit if you’re in the area.
There was one aspect that was really disappointing, though – and that was the vegetarian options. Both of the Js are veggie, and they’d said that the Olive Branch usually had a good selection. On this occasion though, the option was pasta. Fair enough, it’s “Ribbons of pasta, sauteed with mushrooms, garlic & sundried tomato, goats cheese & pine nuts“, but all the same, it’s pasta.
I think it’s still tremendously disappointing to go out to a restaurant and only see one or two fairly desultory veggie options. It just shows a complete lack of imagination and/or interest in the veggie market – and there’s a lot of vegetarians out there.
Even more importantly, if Herself had come along as well, she’d not have been able to eat anything, as she’s a) veggie and b) wheat-intolerant. Now sure, the Olive Branch says that you can let them know about food allergies/issues when ordering, but by then it’s a bit sodding late in some cases.
Doing good vegetarian options doesn’t take much – even a vegetarian stir-fry with some nice spices and a sauce is easily doable – and there are plenty of options out there. I just don’t know why the options aren’t more imaginative. Sure, not everyone is going to run a business like Greens in Didsbury, Manchester which is entirely vegetarian, but any decent chef could get some inspiration from the ideas there, or in any other veggie cookbook.
Driving (Again)
Posted: Wed 7 July, 2010 Filed under: Business, Customer Services, Driving, Travel, Weirdness 1 Comment »Last night was the day I took Herself and Others down to London. I’d already worked all day (as usual) so it was always going to be a late one.
As it turned out, I got everyone down to central London (Kings Cross / St Pancras) in two hours flat, dropping them off at 9:50.
By that time I hadn’t eaten anything since lunch, but wasn’t massively hungry, so just headed back up, thinking that if I got hungry I could stop at the services near Stanstead airport. (Birchanger Green, not that it means much) It was 10:45 by the time I got there, and by that point I was hungry enough that I could’ve eaten a scabby donkey between two pieces of bread. (Which is, of course, why I was even considering something from Motorway Services)
Only it turns out that Birchanger Green pretty much shuts at 10:30.
- Burger King – closed, cleaned up, and one lowly person wiping the surfaces.
- KFC – closed, deserted
- Waitrose – closed, deserted, barriers in front of the doors
- “Eat In” – open, a poxy range of crap (and overpriced) sandwiches, with a queue of people that outnumbered the sandwiches available.
- Shop – closed, barriered off.
And that was it. Nothing else. I assume it stays open for people in dire need of a piss, and that’s about it.
Bear in mind, Birchanger Green is the only services on the entire M11. And it shuts at half-ten.
Call me naïve, but I always thought services were supposed to be open super-long hours – if not 24-hours. That impression appears to have been wrong.
But I wonder how much business Birchanger Green loses by closing at half-ten ? The car-park was at least a third full when I got there. You’d think that being open ’til half eleven or midnight would make sense – particularly when they’re the only one in god knows how many miles.
Very strange.
eTyres
Posted: Tue 20 April, 2010 Filed under: 1BEM, Advertising, Business, Customer Services, Domestic, Driving, Reviews(ish) 1 Comment »So following on from yesterday’s discovery of a flat tyre, I booked in (and paid in advance) through eTyres.co.uk to get it fixed at home. eTyres offer their service at home, which is ideal when you’ve got a flat.
However, the motto of this entire story is that if you’re going to have a puncture and use eTyres, don’t do it on a weekend. Despite being able to book and order online, for some fuckforsaken reason they can’t organise things ’til the Monday morning. And at that point they’ve also got to deal with all the people who’ve booked on the Saturday.
I did try to change the tyre myself so I could get down to the local tyre place, but the wheelnuts were on so tight I couldn’t even move the sodding things. Insurance-wise I was going to be lowest of the low priority calls, and they couldn’t even give me a time expectation. So all told that left me pretty much at the mercy of eTyres.
Having made the booking online yesterday evening, they finally arrived at 5.30. Yep, a whole day. So much for the speed of booking via the internet etc. etc.
In the end they’ve done a decent job, and for a fairly decent price. Not as great as they make out in their marketing, but not bad.
But if you need a swift service that’ll actually get the job done, I wouldn’t necessarily recommend eTyres to anyone.
Unbelievable 2
Posted: Fri 19 March, 2010 Filed under: 1BEM, Advertising, Business, News Leave a comment »Just a short filler, this – but YouTube’s chief counsel has written a post about YouTube’s current battle with Viacom about hosting ‘illegal’ videos.
The best bit is this :
For years, Viacom continuously and secretly uploaded its content to YouTube, even while publicly complaining about its presence there. It hired no fewer than 18 different marketing agencies to upload its content to the site. It deliberately “roughed up” the videos to make them look stolen or leaked. It opened YouTube accounts using phony email addresses. It even sent employees to Kinko’s to upload clips from computers that couldn’t be traced to Viacom. And in an effort to promote its own shows, as a matter of company policy Viacom routinely left up clips from shows that had been uploaded to YouTube by ordinary users. Executives as high up as the president of Comedy Central and the head of MTV Networks felt “very strongly” that clips from shows like The Daily Show and The Colbert Report should remain on YouTube.
That’s pretty stunning, however you look at it.
Abrupt
Posted: Tue 12 January, 2010 Filed under: Agency Idiocy, Business Leave a comment »If you were to get this from an agency, what would be your response?
2 urgent PHP contracts to strart in next 2 weeks
[Skillset list – I won’t add it all here]
1 Junior and 1 mid/senior level
Thanks
And that’s it.
My written response was probably more civil than it should’ve been, because my mental response was “Up yours, fuckbag. You can’t even be arsed to put the location or rate, so fuck you.“
Getting Rid
Posted: Mon 11 January, 2010 Filed under: Business, Customer Services, Cynicism, Domestic, Driving Leave a comment »At some point today, Enterprise Car Hire are supposed to be collecting the piece-of-shit hire car I’ve had since the accident on the 17th December.
I haven’t yet collected my own car, but according to the bodyshop that should be ready for collection today, or at latest tomorrow. Let’s hope.
So far, my experience with Enterprise has been unremittingly negative. It took them two days to even deliver the sodding car, and extending the hire for a third week was an exercise in stupidity, so I’m really not expecting them to arrive here today to collect the damn thing at all. Still, that’s not my problem – so long as they don’t try charging me for extra hire days due to their incompetence/idiocy. We’ll see.
Mind you, they also haven’t yet even charged me for the third weeks’ hire, so it’s not all a failure. But we’ll see whether they get that one right too.
In short though, I really wouldn’t recommend Enterprise Car Hire to anyone. While they might be a bit more expensive, I’ll stick with Avis in future, thanks.
Update : They actually came and collected the car by 10am. I suppose I shouldn’t be surprised that they’re a lot more efficient at getting the car back than they are at delivering the damn thing.
Christmas Done, Easter Coming
Posted: Mon 28 December, 2009 Filed under: Advertising, Business, Cynicism, Festering Season 3 Comments »Yet again, you can tell that the Festering Season is over and done with, the fucking Easter Eggs are in the shops!
Tesco, you utter utter bastards.
Bye, Borders
Posted: Wed 23 December, 2009 Filed under: Business, Norfolk, Thoughts Leave a comment »Apparently, today is the last day of trading for the Borders bookstores.
I went past the Norwich branch yesterday, and that’s already closed. It’s a sad sight, a bookshop filled with empty sets of shelving.
Scrapers
Posted: Wed 23 December, 2009 Filed under: Advertising, Business, Creativity 3 Comments »On occasion, I just wonder whether my brain works slightly differently to “most peoples”. Today has contained one of those occasions.
If you were running a car-hire company, would you put an ice-scraper in each car during the winter months?
I know I would – having today had to go and buy a new one. (I’ve got one in the normal car, of course – but not in the hire one. Fuckers)
I’m sure that the excuse for not doing so would be “because of the cost” when people take the scrapers for themselves afterwards. Me, I’d put some branding/advertising on them, and job done – I don’t know how much return business you’d get, but every winter those people would be seeing the name of the hire company, and be reminded of it.
Enterprise Car Hire, that’s yet another bloody trick you’re missing.
Brum Again
Posted: Sun 29 November, 2009 Filed under: Business, Charm School, Customer Services, Thoughts, Travel Leave a comment »Today we’re off to Birmingham and the NEC again, this time for the BBC Good Food Show. It’s just been one of those months where we’ve ended up there twice. Mind you, hopefully we won’t be going back again ’til it’s time for the International Spring Fair.
The Good Food Show (and most of the others held at the NEC) is usually good, except that the NEC – and probably most other show venues as well – does insist on trying to stuff in as many exhibitors as possible. I understand that up to a point – after all, it’s good business – but it gets annoying when each aisle is wide enough for three or four people at most. That’s fine when people are moving along, but when they’re stopped at a stall and trying to either a) get to it or b) get samples of whatever’s on offer it gets ridiculous. At that point those “4-people wide” aisles become half the size (at best) because there’s people either side of them stopped and not moving.
I’m going prepared this time. No, I’m not taking a stungun – although that would be a good alternative – but I’ll be prepared to go and sit somewhere else, either with the laptop or a book, and just not get involved. It’s not ideal, because I’d actually like to be going round the stalls – but if I do that, the odds are that someone’s going to get hurt. And people, it won’t be me.
Banks, Overdraft Charges, and Sanity
Posted: Fri 27 November, 2009 Filed under: Business, News, People, Thoughts 3 Comments »I’m sure I’m not the only person to actually be quite pleased that the banks won their case about overdraft charges this week – but it’s pretty hard to find anyone else who’s actually willing to say so. If the case had been lost by the banks, it would likely have ended up meaning that everyone had to pay a fee for having a bank account – and thus the people in credit subsidising those who weren’t.
I do, however, think that the banks take the piss on just how much they charge for going over the overdraft limit and so on. Fine, a fiscal penalty makes sense – but £30 per refused item? £15 for going over the limit? That’s a pisstake right there.
I can see the point of some of the people who were (rightly, in my opinion) furious with the banks for charging £30+ when they went 50p over their limit. That’s a punishment that’s out of proportion with the “crime”. As with many of these things, I would like to see some fuzzy limits in place, rather than rigid “10p over and you’re fined” limits. For example, if someone goes a couple of pounds past their limit – and these accidents can and do happen, it doesn’t take much for an unexpected item to drive you close to (or over) that limit on occasion – then they shouldn’t be charged. That policy shouldn’t be publicised as such, but would (again, in my opinion) help provide a far better response from customers.
Yes, you will always get the people who take the piss out of a system like that. But if you’re going to have that bit of fuzz round the edge of the limit, it’s more likely to benefit than hinder. If I’d gone (for example) £3 over my overdraft limit, I’d probably take far more note of not being charged than of being charged. It might make me think “Blimey, that’s reasonable” – or even just “Ah, they’ve fucked up and not noticed” – but at least I wouldn’t be getting pissed off with the bank and ranting about it to all and sundry.
If you go tens (or hundreds, or thousands) of pounds past your agreed overdraft though, then you should expect to pay. I don’t have an issue with the fact that people are charged extra when they’ve done that. That’s just business on the part of the banks. And if someone’s so stupid they don’t read the terms and conditions, or think they won’t get charged, then (as always, in my opinion) then they’re not really fit to have a bank account in the first place. Take some fucking responsibility for your actions.
This year, as I’ve said before, hasn’t been a great one for me, workwise. I did end up over my overdraft for a while, and I did get charged for it. Things are back to normal now, and I’m back in credit. But I didn’t object to the charges (other than their extortionate levels) because I’d got myself in that position – one could argue that fate and shit luck had a part to play, but that’s by the by – and I knew I’d get charged. The only part that rankled was that I’d tried hard to fix things and extend that overdraft limit well before the situation arose, but fell foul of long-standing problems with my bank that I keep on being assured have been fixed, only to be bitten on the arse by them again and again. So I’d tried to organise a fix, but hadn’t been able to do so. If I had been able to, I’d have been fine – I never went past the extra amount I tried to set up. Even so, I knew I’d get charged for going over that limit.
But never once have I been tempted to think “I’ll try and get a refund on all my bank charges over the last ten years” or whatever. When I’ve been charged (and it hasn’t happened often) it’s been because I’ve fucked up, or been in the shit. Or both. I’ve always known (roughly) what those charges would be, and they’ve been expected.
I don’t know why people think they can get their overdrafts “for free”, without being charged by a bank to borrow that money. Banks are in the business of lending money – they’re not (and never will) do it for free. And if you think they will, then I’m sorry, but you’re a fucking idiot.
So yes, I’m pleased that the banks won the case. I think that for once it’s actually the correct result.
Against The Odds
Posted: Thu 26 November, 2009 Filed under: Business, Cynicism, News 1 Comment »Way back in January, Diamond Geezer asked his readers to list the companies that they thought would go into administration in 2009. He called it “The High Street Death List“.
Being a cynical bastard, of course I had to have a go – and chose Borders, the bookshop. I see bookshops (or at least the big chains) dying out in the same way that music stores have done, high-street bricks-and-mortar business premises always costing infinitely more than a warehouse in the arse-end of nowhere.
And lo, today Borders have announced that they’ve gone into administration.
I haven’t had the confirmation from DG yet, but it’s currently looking like my choice is the first to fall on the Death List.
Catering for stupidity
Posted: Tue 24 November, 2009 Filed under: Business, Catering, Domestic, Five Year Plan (now Ten), Media, People, Thoughts 3 Comments »Many moons ago, I used to run pubs and hotels – as I’ve mentioned once or twice before. It’s still something that I’d go back to, depending on the right circumstances and so on. In fact, it’s something we’re both talking about as an idea – although not just ‘any old’ pub/restaurant. Although I’ll leave that for now.
Anyway, as a result of that, I do find myself interested by programmes like (among others) BBC’s “The Restaurant“, where nine couples compete to win the chance to run a restaurant in partnership with Raymond Blanc. It’s kind of like “The Apprentice”, but for the restaurant business. My initial plan was to watch it as research, making sure I wouldn’t make any really stupid mistakes.
However, it also leads me to be exceptionally rude and sweary. Sadly, ‘The Restaurant’ has fallen into the same kind of Reality TV trap as The Apprentice, in that the people they’ve got on there aren’t really interested in running a business, but are more interested in being on TV- and that’s also evident in the selection process, where the competitors have quite obviously been selected for their road-crash style fuckups rather than their ideas or restaurant skills.
I’m not saying I’m surprised by this, by the way – more like vaguely despairing, but not at all surprised.
In the current series we’ve already had the couple who (on camera at least) couldn’t find a proper can opener, and thus tried opening a can (and a coconut) with a razor-sharp chef’s knife, using a rolling-pin as a hammer to knock the knife in. I had to look away at that point, because I couldn’t help but wonder whether we were about to see the first on-screen amputation.
We’ve also (somehow still) got a pair where the chef doesn’t cook – and in fact appears to be actively terrified of cooking. How – and indeed why?!? – do you select a pair for a restaurant/catering-based show when the person doing the cooking side of things is (frankly) an utter bell-end whose previous ‘cooking’ experience has been – um – making cocktails in a bar?
I just think it’s a shame – and a waste – of a good idea to have ended up with it being so obviously made-for-TV. I know, it’s a TV programme – but there could’ve been so many opportunities for having something that promoted innovative food, ideas and menus, and instead it’s just another sad Reality TV staple.
Restaurant Owner’s Rant
Posted: Sun 22 November, 2009 Filed under: 1BEM, Business, Catering, Charm School Leave a comment »It’s probably done the rounds by now anyway, but I still find this rant email from the owner of the New York restaurant “Paradou” to be pretty amazing. And not in a good way.
Basically, he’s asked the waiters and bar hosts to get email addresses for their customers – one assumes so that they can be sent marketing shite – and is unhappy (to say the least) that people don’t seem to be doing what he wants. (Although I suppose I shouldn’t be surprised at the owners being tosspots, looking at how fucking horrible their website is!)
And I have to say, on the face of this email, I wouldn’t want to work for the fucker either.
Self-Assessment
Posted: Tue 27 October, 2009 Filed under: 1BEM, Business, Cynicism, Domestic, Getting Organised, Security, Thoughts 3 Comments »Over the weekend, I completed – and sent off – my Self-Assessment Tax Return to Your Friends And Mine at HMCE. The deadline for receiving them is October 31st (i.e. this Saturday) so I’ve only just scraped it this year, having been really really good with it last year.
I know, I could do it all online, and have ’til January 31st to fill it in etc. – but I still don’t trust the online system. I wrote about this a couple of years back, and my feelings are still the same. Mainly, I’m happy to spend the money and use the Special Delivery stuff to get the tax return in – it just means I’ve got a signed confirmation that the Tax Return has been received where it’s been sent. I’ve been bitten by that before, the entire “Oh no, we haven’t received it” from HMCE. Of course, if you say you haven’t received something from them, it’s a case of “Well we sent it, so you must have received it”, but it’s not the same thing when it’s time to send stuff to them.
Basically, when it comes to sending documents to HMCE, it always pays to be paranoid. Always assume that they are either :
- Vindictive
- Inefficient beyond the dreams of man
- Both
and you’ll be OK.
It’s because of that – OK, it’s partly because of that – that I still don’t trust the online submission of tax returns. Yes, you can be pretty sure they’ve received it – but when it comes to HMRC, “pretty sure” simply isn’t sure enough. I feel the same way about HMCE’s online submission as I do about the people who store all their important data/files with Google, Amazon or some other internet cloud-based server – in other words, “Expect it to get lost. Expect it to get hacked.”
My tax return is on paper. Yes, I know it’ll end up being clocked in to the HMCE ‘System’. That’s fine. But letting their system be the only place it’s held? Sod that. I’ve got a photocopy of the tax return. I know where the figures came from, and I’ve got them recorded. I expect HMCE’s copy of the document to get lost, edited, hacked or mislaid. If/when it happens, I’ve got my own hard-copy backup. If you’ve done all the calculations on-line and not printed out the results (or even better, screenshots) and/or received confirmation from the system of those figures, what proof have you got of what you filled in?
Even if it’s simply that the electronic version gets corrupted, if HMCE also have it on paper then there’s some way they can recover the information without me even needing to be involved. If they only have an electronic version, then lots of people are going to be screwed if anything does happen.
So while I can, I’ll stick with doing my tax return on paper and sending it in to them. When they eventually go to “Online only”, I’ll still make sure I’ve got a printout of the entire thing, along with all the figures I’ve used to calculate it.
Call me paranoid, I don’t mind. Frankly, I’ve been kicked in the nuts by HMCE too many times to not be paranoid. And that’s not paranoia – that’s just common sense.
Strikebreaking
Posted: Sun 18 October, 2009 Filed under: Business, Stupidity, Thoughts 2 Comments »As I’ve said before, I don’t understand the point of strikes, as they do more to ruin the future of the business than anything else would. The current one, of course, is the upcoming Royal Mail strike which I’ve also written some thoughts about before.
It’s come out in the news today that Royal Mail plan to employ some 30,000 temps to work while the strike is going on, and thus keep the business going. And I’ve got to say, I think that’s the right message to send. The people who’ve been talking about going on strike say it’s “to keep their jobs” – when all it’s really going to do is drive more people away from using Royal Mail, and will thus screw their jobs in the long-term anyway.
In my opinion, this move by Royal Mail is a statement of “You’re not going to kill our business. We’ll keep going” and it shows that going on strike might just cost the union workers their jobs anyway.
Jobless
Posted: Wed 7 October, 2009 Filed under: Business, Stupidity, Thoughts, Work-related 2 Comments »
Sashinka's photo of job-seeking David
Even after having been crapped on last week by the jobs market (and one company in particular) I still find I have a problem with the kind of story and image posted by sashinka.
Now fair enough, I understand that David feels he can’t get a job. But really, is anyone going to stop him in the street to interview him? And offering to work for free for the first month – well that just smacks of desperation.
I understand, I’m not someone who wants to work “In The City” (ever noticed how City workers always capitalise it, even in spoken conversation?) so I don’t get some of it. But if you’re dedicated enough to want to work there that you’ll sack around in a Sandwich board for a while, you should be prepared to walk your arse into every single job agency going.
Equally, if you’re desperate to work, you’ll take on anything. I’ve been there and done that – worked in some of the shittiest jobs known to man in order to make ends meet. If I’m that hard-up, I’ll do it again. OK, I might aim to not work on the bins again (did that one summer in Oxford for a month. *shudder*) but if that’s all that’s going, I will.
I have a related problem with the people who whine that they’ve sent off “hundreds” or even “thousands” of CVs and never got a response from an agency or company. Now I’m sorry, but if I’ve sent off even twenty CVs and not had a single response, I know I’m doing something wrong. If I send out ten CVs, I’ll normally get at least five responses from agencies. It’s usually higher than that, but I’m trying to be equable here. (For once) My CV is good enough that it gets a response. It’s simple to read, lists my skills and experience, and that’s it. It breaks lots of the ‘rules’ that CV-advisors give out (I’ve never yet bothered with wasting space on a paragraph describing myself, for instance) and yet it gets responses – and, by extension, jobs.
Yesterday was a perfect example of that. I sent in my CV to an agency for a role they advertised, they called me back, and I’ve got an interview for it this morning. The company involved took less than an hour to come back from seeing the CV with an interview request. I’m in there today, and we’ll see how it goes.
The same happened with the one that fell through – CV to agency, from agency to company, and a phone interview on the same day. Two days later I had the interview, and had an answer by the end of that day. Sure it fell through, but that was a funding/project thing rather than a “me” thing. I can’t do anything about that.
But if I’d sent a hundred CVs and not got a response at all? You can bet that I’d be doing a few things including:
- Rewriting the damn CV – big-time
- Calling agencies, if only to use the “checking it got through to you as I hadn’t heard anything” line
- Asking those agencies for feedback, why the initial CV didn’t get a response
- Reconsidering how I was doing things.
Ah well, rant over with for now. There’s more I was thinking about, but I haven’t quite got it strung together in my head yet.
Postal Strikes
Posted: Sun 20 September, 2009 Filed under: 1BEM, Business, Customer Services, Thoughts 2 Comments »As I’ve mentioned a couple of times before, I really don’t understand how strikes are supposed to work.
The case of the (probably) upcoming national postal strike is a perfect example of this. As the BBC story says,
At the core of the dispute is the Royal Mail’s plans to trim its 121,000 frontline postal workers as part of the modernisation it says is needed to secure its future against a backdrop of falling mail levels.
But the strike itself, if called, will mean more people stop using the Royal Mail, and thus there’ll be a need for even more redundancies over time.
Because of previous strikes, for example, the last three agencies I’ve worked with have all done pretty much everything online. In the current one, only one thing goes through Royal Mail (because it’s a) more expensive to use, and b) not reliable) and that’s the payslip, which is fine to be delayed.
At the start, all my contract documents were sent as PDF files by email. My ‘timesheet’ is filled in online, and submitted electronically. My invoice for the week is created on the computer, and emailed across. Payment is done by BACS Faster Payments, and then the agency posts out the remittance advice. (And I’m sure they could automate that too)
However you look at it, that’s a significant bit of money that Royal Mail is losing out on – it would’ve been Special Delivery for the contract documents both ways (Recorded not being worth the paper it’s written on), first class post for invoices and timesheets, every week. When the agency deals with a couple of thousand contractors, that’s starting to add up even more. Bear in mind that there’s one hell of a lot of agencies out there doing this too, and that’s serious cash that Royal Mail isn’t receiving – and all because they can’t be relied upon to provide a good service.
Royal Mail spouting on about “needing to modernise” is all well and good – but they can’t modernise enough any more. People simply don’t rely on them, the service has steadily decreased over the years, and all those past ‘modernisations’ have left them with an organisation that can’t cope.
But the strikes don’t help either. If this new one happens, it’ll cause another wave of customer to go elsewhere – either online, sending things by email instead, or doing as companies like Amazon do, and using courier services for everything.
In my opinion, the best thing Royal Mail could do would be to go back to the service of twenty years ago – deliveries to the home first thing in the morning, a reliable service, and open to all. It would involve investment rather than modernisation and taking on more people instead of getting rid. It would be a massive PR win into the bargain – “We’re bringing back the service you want” – and would raise the public perception of their service in epic style.
However, I can’t help but suspect it would also be far too late to get back all the customers they’ve alienated over the last two decades. And that’s a great shame.
NHS Staffing
Posted: Thu 3 September, 2009 Filed under: Business, Charm School, Creativity, Cynicism, Health, News, Thoughts 2 Comments »Today there’s a lot of coverage about a suggestion to reduce the workforce of the NHS by 10% – and the resultant kerfuffle between Government, the NHS, and management consultants.
Currently the Government is saying that they have rejected this advice by McKinsey and Company, (Never heard of ’em? Me either.) which included closing 137,000 clinical and admin posts in order to save £20bn by 2014.
I’m pretty sure I could show how to save the NHS that much money by 2014, without losing a single clinical staff member.
Mind you, it would involve getting rid of shitloads of middle-managers, consultants, and fuckstick accountants. And of course that’s a plan that would never achieve approval – because it’s got to go through all those levels of shitbag middle-managers, consultants and fuckstick accountants before it can happen. And those self-serving fuckers are never going to do themselves out of a job. (Which is the same reason the “paperless office” will never happen)
I’m not suggesting getting rid of all the managers, as I think most people would agree that there need to be some of the buggers around, if only in order to make sure that the clinical professionals don’t drown in paperwork and procedures in the meantime. (Although of course if you get rid of enough of the middle-managers, you probably get to eliminate a whole host of the bullshit paperwork at the same time – sorry, it’s “streamlining” now isn’t it, not “getting rid of the shit”)
Still, wield a big enough axe, drop it from high enough, I’m pretty sure it’d still work…
Clouds and Silver Linings
Posted: Mon 31 August, 2009 Filed under: 1BEM, Advertising, Business, Cynicism, Thoughts Leave a comment »I don’t know if it’s just me, but the recession of the last year does seem to have had one (slightly) positive effect this weekend – the number of TV adverts for “Bank Holiday Weekend Sales” appear to have dropped through the floor.
After all, there’s now no :
- MFI
- Sofa Warehouse
- Allied Carpets
- [several others I can’t currently recall]
who always used to do that kind of sale.
Of course, there’s still bloody DFS, (Although they just seem to have one big year-long sale) and B&Q and Homebase are both doing “15% off everything” weekends, but still it seems like there’s nowhere near as many Bank Holiday Sales this year.
Mind you, it could also be because I’ve hardly seen any TV over the last week or so…