Less Massive
Posted: Sun 9 April, 2017 Filed under: Customer Services, Domestic, Gigs, London, Reviews(ish) Leave a comment »Well, that concert. It was good – it just wasn’t what was advertised.
As I said on Friday, it had been promoted as playing the whole of “No Protection”, with live dubbing. Which would’ve been fine, and was entirely what was expected.
Instead, while a fair amount of the album was played, there was also a lot of other new stuff, and really it was more of a normal/standard gig, rather than the presentation of a particular piece of work.
In fairness, if it had been promoted as “just” a Mad Professor gig, I’d have still got the ticket, and still gone to the gig. It’s just that it was promoted as one thing, and turned out to be something else.
I’ve got in touch with Archspace about it, and it’ll be interesting to see what their response is to the entire thing.
All told, I’m still glad I went. I just wish it had been what they’d said it would be.
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]
ReKindled (Again)
Posted: Wed 19 October, 2016 Filed under: Amazon, Bankruptcy, Customer Services, Cynicism, Domestic, Geeky, Kindle, Reading, Rebuilding, Technology Leave a comment »Just to top off a pretty expensive fortnight, while I was away over the weekend the Kindle broke. As with previous ones, the screen film cracked, so half of it is working and the other half isn’t. In short, fucked.
As it turns out though, I can’t be too annoyed (annoyed, sure, but not too annoyed) as it turns out I’ve had this one just short of three years. Considering that before that I had a spate of broken screens in less than a year, it could’ve lasted a lot less time.
Yes, I’d rather these things were more resilient, were designed to last longer than 18 months.
Anyway, it’ll be interesting to see how things have progressed with Kindles, and whether they’ve improved the ways to reload content onto a new device. It was horrific three years ago, so I’m hoping for improvements, it’s fair to say. (And if that doesn’t happen, I’ve got a backup from the old device – so maybe I’ll just be able to roll that onto the new one.)
We’ll see.
EE’s broken payments
Posted: Sun 16 October, 2016 Filed under: Customer Services, Domestic, Finances, Geeky, Technology, Thoughts Leave a comment »As I wrote yesterday, I ended up having some major issues with the cottage’s already-installed 3G Dongle through EE.
Basically, it’s either not been used for a while, or the previous people ran the account into the ground – there’s absolutely no credit or data available on it. That’s OK, you can connect to EE still and add a credit. Or at least you should be able to.
Basically, the device is set up so that it can still connect to ee.co.uk , and that doesn’t come out of the data allowance. All’s well and good. But. Ah, but.
The thing is, when it comes to processing payments, the processing isn’t all done on ee.co.uk. It also goes off to get the 3D secure (also known as “Verified by Visa” or “Mastercard [something]“) from the relevant bank. Only that’s from a different (and thus not-allowed) domain outside of EE, and because there’s no data allowance, the connection is refused, and the credit transaction fails.
All you get to see on screen is “An error occurred” with “Try again”. Which is… unhelpful.
What’s more unhelpful is that EE’s transaction system has pre-authorised the amount you’ve topped up by. So the funds are then locked by your bank. They’ll be released when the transaction doesn’t complete – but it can take two to three working weeks for that to happen, because banks are paranoid and slow and shit. And EE are just shit, because their failed transaction doesn’t release those funds.
Even better, you can’t then offer feedback or contact EE. Because – yes! – all the online feedback is done through a third party, and goes off to a different domain.
So you’re basically left with no data, no top-up, locked funds, and no way to contact EE to tell them so.
Even worse, I suspect it’s only because I’m a techie that I understand it this much – for Joe Public it’d just be “it’s broken, and EE are shit”. (Which isn’t something I could argue with either, but at least I can understand why it’s broken!) It’s a simple scenario, but one I’m willing to bet they’ve never tested, going on the assumption that people would top up before they ran out completely, etc. etc.
I’ve written to them to explain the same situation, so it’ll be interesting to see what they come back with (if anything)
Mobile and Connected
Posted: Sat 15 October, 2016 Filed under: Customer Services, Domestic, Technology, Thoughts, Travel Leave a comment »This weekend, I’m away in Dorset, hoping to spend some time relaxing and writing, getting some of the stuff out of my head that’s been resident for way too long.
I’ve been to the particular place I’m staying before, and knew they had a semblance of internet connection (albeit through a 3G Dongle thingy) but when I got here, I found it’s not working properly. (It’s on EE, and because they’re shitheads, there are mega-issues when there’s no remaining data on the device. That’s a post for another day)
So anyway, while I’m wanting quiet, I do still need connection for a range of things. As a result, I went into the nearest town, and bought a MiFi device of my own which turns out to be working pretty well. Considering the location (in a valley, with next-to-sod-all anywhere nearby) I’ve got enough of a 3G signal (blipping up and down to a single bar of 4G) to keep things connected and fine.
It’s meant that as well as doing some writing, I’ve also been able to do some outstanding work stuff that needed completing, and all that usual stuff.
Indeed, it’s doing well enough here that I’ll continue using it, and be interested to see how it works in other places I go to over the next few months. Ain’t progress/technology interesting?
An Expensive Week
Posted: Sun 9 October, 2016 Filed under: Car Repairs, Customer Services, Domestic, Finances, Getting Organised, Thoughts Leave a comment »As usual when things go quiet round here, it’s been a busy week – and an expensive one. If this is the aftermath of holidays, I’m going to have reservations about taking them again.
While I was away, the Saab was (again) in the garage, getting a winter service, as well as checking out a couple of weird issues that only occur when it’s been standing for a couple of days (and thus are hard to get to happen once you’ve driven the sodding thing to the garage) I’d hired a car to do the driving for the holiday, which was an expected expense.
On Tuesday, I dropped off the car at the hire company, collected the Saab from the garage, and drove into town to work for the rest of the day. All fine. When I drove it home afterwards though, the oil light came on, and the engine started sounding unwell. Bugger. With no back-up plan, it meant I had to sort out getting the car recovered back to the Saab garage, then collecting a new hire car, and doing it all in time to collect friends I was taking to a charity quiz night. So, no pressure.
As it happened, it all worked out – the recovery wagon turned up earlier than expected, we got to the garage, and the car-hire guys met me there, to take me to the hire place, so I could collect the car and then collect everyone. Pretty stressful all round, and a lot of juggling and keeping people informed of what was happening, but it all came together.
By the end of it, we even came second on the quiz!
It’s made for an expensive post-holiday week though. Paying for a new hire car, and whatever work the car needs etc. etc. Oh, and then of course my Fitbit decided to fall apart as well – because why not, when everything else is doing the same?
Just one of those weeks.
Advertising Standards
Posted: Sat 27 August, 2016 Filed under: Advertising, Bad Ads, Customer Services, Domestic, Food, Getting Organised, Loyalty Schemes, Marketing, OpenTable, Pedantry, Solo Dining, Stupidity, Thoughts Leave a comment »With the whole “Solo Dining” project I’ve been doing this year, one of my bugbears has become OpenTable (who provide a lot of the table-reservation services for restaurants) and – more particularly – their “Dining Points” loyalty plan.
As it says on that page about Dining Points,
OpenTable UK members can earn OpenTable Dining Points when they make and honor reservations made through opentable.com, or our related mobile sites and apps.
They say the same thing on another modal window to explain Dining Points.
“Earn points every time you dine”
Except that’s not true – not true at all. I queried why I’d received zero points for several reservations over the last year, and they then started to say (and this is a direct quote from one of the responses)
points are only given to diners who start their search on our website and not the restaurants website as you know. This is because as you came from the restaurant website, you are considered a customer of the restaurant and they use our services on the back end to take your reservation for them. If we started awarding points to the customers of our clients they would feel that we are trying to steal you as a customer.
So OpenTable are, frankly, liars. They say clearly throughout the site “make a booking through OpenTable, and get points“, with no provisos, asterisks, or get-out clauses. This isn’t even me being pedantic about something – they’ve said something (repeatedly, in black-and-white!) that’s simply not true.
This would’ve been an easy fix for OpenTable, if they’d had any sense at all. If they’d said “Oh, sod, sorry, here, have the points, and we’ll make that text clearer“, we’d be done. But no, they started backtracking, patronising, and explaining why I was so wrong to believe their “Get points every time you book” spiel. No apology, no “thanks for letting us know“, nothing. All the customer-service skills of a concrete monolith.
Having hit that concrete monolith with no joy, I decided to take it further. Having checked their criteria, I raised it with the ASA (Advertising Standards Authority) and I’ve now had a confirmation from them that, having done an initial review, they’re going to investigate it further.
So, that’s going to be entertaining. I’m assuming that getting an ASA investigation done isn’t a trivial step, nor one that the ASA do for the fun of it. I’m also assuming that, because they’re investigating, the complaint has at least some merit.
As and when I hear back, I’ll write more here…