Price Rise
Posted: Wed 3 January, 2007 Filed under: Customer Services, Cynicism, General, Travel Leave a comment »Ah, the joys of a New Year, the time when a train operating company’s thoughts turn to a) profit, and b) gouging customers. And thus, yesterday’s objectionable New Year price increases – always above inflation, usually for no good reason, and most certainly not indicative of any improvements in the service.
However, you can tell that I’m now out in the sticks.
My month’s season ticket for travel between Norwich and Cambridge has gone up from £240 to £250. For once, that’s “only” a 5% increase.
Last year, when I was in Berkshire, it went up by 8%, so a “mere” 5% increase isn’t too bad at all, although obviously it’d be better to not have a price rise at all…
Paid Off
Posted: Sun 31 December, 2006 Filed under: Customer Services, Cynicism, Getting Organised Leave a comment »Having paid the smug twunts at Inland Revenue their 88p, I’ve just checked my online banking, and can confirm that the payment has now gone out of my account.
This was the main reason I paid using my debit card – (well, apart from just so that it cost them more money – what can I say, I can be incredibly petty myself) so that there’s no way they can say “Oh no, we haven’t received that and/or paid it in”, which I’m certain is what would have happened if I’d sent in payment by cheque.
In fact, from the evidence of previous submissions to the incompetent keffers, even if I’d sent it recorded, and been able to present them with proof of receipt, they’d still have lost it. And then it would still be my fault that payment had been delayed, and would thus be liable to that £100 penalty fine for not paying by 31st Jan 2007.
At least this way payment has been processed by the scumbags themselves (can’t you see how much I love them really?) and there’s no way they can make out they haven’t received it.
So in theory (I’m still expecting some shit to hit the fan at some point) the last three years’ farce with the Inept Revenants is now drawn to a close, and we’re all sorted.
Amnesia
Posted: Sat 30 December, 2006 Filed under: Customer Services, Getting Organised Leave a comment »Arses, I knew there was something where I’d forgotten to change my address details. Yesterday I found what it was…
One of my credit cards. I’d obtained a new one just before moving, and while it was arriving, kept the registered address as the old place, so as not to confuse things (well, not too much, anyway) by swapping addresses halfway through the process.
Yesterday, I needed to call them and sort out some other stuff on that credit card account, and – of course – gave the wrong address as verification. Oops, and indeed bugger.
Ah well, it’s been changed now, so that should be all of them.
I think.
Negligible
Posted: Thu 28 December, 2006 Filed under: Customer Services, Cynicism, Getting Organised, Weirdness Leave a comment »Back at the end of October, I got a letter about how much money I owed Inland Revenue for the tax year 2005-06, which was sent to me first class (and cost about 58p to send) along with a postage-paid response envelope.
Just before Christmas, I got a “statement of account” from Inland Revenue, again sent first class, again with a postage-paid reply envelope.
The amount that all this paperwork and postage is for?
88p
I’ve paid it today, by debit card. (Which should cost them even more) All told, I reckon it’s cost them about £2.00 to process £0.88. Which is impressive in anyone’s book.
Not Informed
Posted: Sun 24 December, 2006 Filed under: Customer Services, Cynicism, Thoughts Leave a comment »Currently, I’m a little bit annoyed.
While I was returning the car to Avis the other day, I saw a little leaflet on their desk, talking about making a booking and getting Tesco Clubcard points for how much you spend with Avis. Having booked three lots of cars with them now, and having just spent £300+ on this one (although it’s on expenses, so it’s OK on that score) I was a bit narked to have lost those 300 points, plus t’others.
Now, I know that Clubcard and the like are cynical marketing ploys that allow the card owners (by which I mean ‘people who issued the cards’ as opposed to ‘people who carry the cards with them’) to track people, and target offers to those people with ever more efficiency and effectiveness (I wanted to type effectivity there, but I know it’s a made-up word) but at the same time, I don’t object hugely to them – and I allow my data to be used in that way.
(I used to do a clubcard swapping programme, so that their marketing data went to shit, but haven’t done that in a while – maybe I should restart. It always used to confuse them when a 30 year old man started buying tampons or whatever…)
Anyway, it annoyed me. Not because I’d missed out per se but because actually, it’d never been mentioned when I booked the cars – nothing on the site at all. You really had to search to find this page about it – and fortunately you can reclaim those points afterwards if you want to, by way of that same page but still, it’s just not a great promotion if no bugger knows about it…
B&Q – Comments and Feedback
Posted: Sun 17 December, 2006 Filed under: B&Q, Charm School, Customer Services 1 Comment »Back in February 2005, I wrote a very snarky post about B&Q‘s general inefficiency, incompetence, and piss-poor attitude.
It’s had a fair number of comments along the way, but yesterday, some charming person from B&Q dropped by to leave his thoughts.
Lovely…
Speedy Response
Posted: Sun 17 December, 2006 Filed under: Customer Services Leave a comment »On Tuesday, a poxy ticket machine ate my credit card at Cambridge rail station. In the run-up to the Festering Season I was emphatically not amused.
Anyway, I reported it on the lost/stolen line, so that the card was cancelled, and all that jazz.
Yesterday, a new one arrived – and they’d already sent through a reminder of PIN and so on, so all was cool.
And I have to admit, considering they must be chuffing busy at this time of year, I can’t help but be a bit impressed that it’s taken four days (I’ll exclude yesterday, as that was just delivery in the post) from reporting it lost to it being replaced.
Collecting Stuff
Posted: Fri 15 December, 2006 Filed under: Customer Services, Cynicism, Festering Season Leave a comment »
About a month ago, I ordered something for Herself’s Christmas. Because I didn’t know how long it’d take to appear or where we’d be living at the time, and because the company offered it, I used Royal Mail’s Local Collect® service, which means that the package gets delivered to a local post office of your choice, from where you can collect it. Bloody brilliant – makes life a lot easier than wondering where something’s going to arrive, or when – I can just pick it up on the way to/from work.
Which is what I did this morning. Only, well, it looks like perhaps the actual Post Office people didn’t know what the service was. Or even the meaning of the word “service”.
They tried telling me that I’d used the service incorrectly, and that they’d have been perfectly within their rights to send the parcel back.
At lunchtime, I’ll be dropping in a printout of this page which may help explain it to them.
Oddbins Response
Posted: Fri 15 December, 2006 Filed under: Customer Services, Getting Organised 2 Comments »Blimey, they got back to me last night…
Yes, I agree it’s a pretty appalling time for our website to have problems.
We hope that they should be sorted out later on today, but I can totally appreciate the fact that that’s a bit too late!
If you decide you want to you could call us on 0800 328 2323 and we can place the order over the phone.
If you mention that you’ve been having problems online we will endeavor to get the order out for delivery before Christmas.
So – fairly impressive all told. But they still lost my business…
Ordering Stuff
Posted: Thu 14 December, 2006 Filed under: Customer Services, Festering Season, Thoughts Leave a comment »Despite not being a fan of the Festering Season (a revelation rapidly filed under “Sherlock, Shit, No”) I do still do an amount of present purchasing for others.
In this case, I was trying to order something that my father would like, and so went to Oddbins as they’ve been useful in previous years. This time? A good selection, but can I get it delivered? Can I chuff-as-like. Each time I try, I get thrown out with an error.
So it’s off to email customer services…
I have repeatedly tried ordering from your website, and have failed each time when I try to add a delivery address to my account.
The process throws out an error, telling me to contact the webmaster. Unfortunately, Oddbins has managed to not have a contact
for the webmaster on the site, so this’ll have to do.
Anyway, because of these problems, and the complete refusal on the part of Oddbins to guarantee delivery by Christmas, you’ve now lost the custom. Admittedly it was only £40, but all the same, that £40 has now gone to another supplier.
In the run-up to Christmas, I’d recommend fixing the website problems ASAP – it happens any time I try to add a new delivery address (whether to my address book, or just for this one delivery)
Which I think is pretty helpful, all things considered.
It remains to be seen what the response from Oddbins will be…
Bloody Expensive
Posted: Wed 13 December, 2006 Filed under: Customer Services, Geeky 1 Comment »Having lost it yesterday, and having absolutely no idea where the spare one is since we moved (it’s in a box…) I had to nip out at lunchtime today and buy a set of spare stylii for the XDA.
£10 for three ?!?
Fucking hell. Still, that’ll teach me for losing the bugger. Ah well.
First Class?
Posted: Fri 8 December, 2006 Filed under: Customer Services, Cynicism, Travel, Weirdness Leave a comment »Can someone tell me, just what is the point of buying a first class ticket when you’re on a regional train?
I can understand it (up to a point) on the big long cross-country jobs – I used to take advantage of club class, first voyager, or whatever the feck they called it when I was travelling reguarly between Manchester and Reading, because most of the time it was the only way to guarantee getting a seat. Even better, it was normally a seat that wasn’t dead opposite a squealing child, or some mad git trying to talk to everyone. And you make sure you take advantage of the free snacky things and so on that come as part of the “benefits” of ‘first class’ when you have to pay that much extra, so it kind of works out. (well, it doesn’t, but if you get enough freebies off them, you can almost convince yourself it’s worth paying double the price – and having a seat for four+ hours is a definite advantage over standing for the entire journey.)
But when it comes to the small regional trains, the only difference between first and standard class is that you’re in a different spot on the train. There’s absolutely no extra benefit. Well, maybe again you get a seat – but on all the services I’ve used of late (whether it’s London – Bracknell, Cambridge-London, or Cambridge-Attleborough) have all had free “normal” seats.
So what is the point of the first class bit on these little local services? Other than, of course, to fleece egotistical twats who think it makes them special, and to fill the coffers of yet another train company? </cynicism>
Paste’n’Go
Posted: Thu 7 December, 2006 Filed under: Customer Services, Geeky, Weirdness 1 Comment »One other thing (which Jann mentions in a comment below) I experienced yesterday with Firefox was that all of a sudden all my keyboard shortcuts stopped working.
I couldn’t use [tab] to switch between form fields (which is one of the things I do a lot of, for some godforsaken reason) , couldn’t use Ctrl+Enter in the address bar, nowt.
Turns out, it’s a bug in the Paste’n’Go extension – that had an update yesterday as well, and it just blew the keyboard shortcuts away.
If you disable that extension, all the keyboard shortcuts come back…
Sorted
Posted: Sat 2 December, 2006 Filed under: Customer Services, Cynicism, Getting Organised Leave a comment »Amazingly, both BT and Sky did what they’d promised.
By the time the Sky man arrived (at about 10am) the phone line was active – broadband didn’t come online ’til about 5pm, but BT had said that it could be anytime ’til 8pm. So that’s OK.
But surely this is a sign of the impending apocalypse?
Diet Coke
Posted: Sat 25 November, 2006 Filed under: Customer Services, Cynicism, Travel 2 Comments »Why is it that the following phrase has so many problems being understood?
A Diet Coke, please, with no ice or lemon
Over the last two months, I’ve been eating in restaurants four nights out of seven. Some places have become regular haunts, some have been one-offs, some are just irregular “when I feel like it”s. But the commonality with all of them is that it’s incredibly rare to get what I ask for.
- Drink with ice, but no lemon. Common
- Drink with no ice, but lemon. Equally common
- Drink with both. Worryingly common
- Drink with neither – i.e. what I ordered. Depressingly rare
I just don’t get what the issue is with that order…
Bobble-Hats
Posted: Fri 24 November, 2006 Filed under: Customer Services, Thoughts 1 Comment »I know I give them fairly regular links and comments here, but I still really like Innocent Drinks and their attitude to life in general.
At the moment, they’re doing a very silly, but really good promotion where the bottles have little knitted bobble-hats. Even better, for every one of these bottles sold, innocent will give 50p to Age Concern. With the 175,000 bobble-hats that’ve been done for innocent, that adds up to £87,500 given to Age Concern.
Absolutely brilliant – and really nice to see a company leading the way on things like this.
Oh, and the bobble-hats fit perfectly on mobile phones, for extra silliness.
Sky Redux
Posted: Thu 23 November, 2006 Filed under: Customer Services, Cynicism, Domestic, Getting Organised Leave a comment »Following on from the farce a couple of days ago with dealing with the idiots at Sky’s “Customer Services” I called them again.
Six calls to India later, having dealt with idiots who couldn’t take down phone numbers correctly, in fact couldn’t do anything correctly, and were incapable of passing a phone-call to anyone else in the department – cutting me off each time, which meant I then had to call back – I ended up speaking to someone in the UK call centre instead.
And lo, the Moving Home form hadn’t been received, so I had to go through it all again. What a shocker. Even better, I’ve paid £40 for an installation fee, then been told they can’t find a free slot, so they’ll call me back.
That, of course, was 24 hours ago, and nothing’s happened.
Sky really are a useless bunch of cunts. It almost makes me want to go back to NTL. Not quite, though.
Preparation for Moving
Posted: Wed 22 November, 2006 Filed under: Customer Services, Domestic, Getting Organised 1 Comment »One of the supposedly fun things when it comes to moving is the transfer of existing stuff to the new place. Over the last couple of days I’ve had two experiences that were polar opposites.
First, BT. Amazingly – and obviously we still need to see the proof of it next Friday – they’ve been really efficient, and seem to be pretty well organised. I’ve been able to call them, organise the connection of a new phone line, and have the ADSL connection done at the same time, and making sure it’s ready to go on the day we move in. In addition, I know what our new account number will be, what the new phone number will be, and also everything is in place for getting the final bill sorted once we’ve moved – they’ll tell me how much it’ll be, and it’ll be paid by direct debit. And how long did it take to get everything sorted? One phone call, maybe fifteen minutes all told. Most impressive.
And then, of course, we come to Sky. So far I’ve had to register our user account online, go through the Sky website (a sack of shit in itself) follow useless ‘help’ information, fill in a form, and receive absolutely no information in return about whether they a) have received the information about us moving house, or b) will do anything about it.
So I tried calling them direct, and it took at least five minutes to get through five levels of automated voice stuff, “to direct me to the right person”. Once I’d eventually got to the ‘correct’ location, the person in the call-center answering told me their systems were down, and I’d have to try again! And all at national rate, too. I was promised a callback, but that hasn’t happened yet either.
So, BT are currently looking pretty impressive, and – as usual – Sky are looking like total tosspots.
Bizarre
Posted: Fri 10 November, 2006 Filed under: Customer Services, Weirdness 2 Comments »As I think I’ve said before, I’m a member (or gullible sucker, whichever) of one of those mail-order book club things.
Usually, they’re not too bad, and at least I get the books I want while not paying through the nose for them from Waterstones etc.
Anyway, this month I’d ordered The Book of Lost Things by John Connolly, one of my favourite authors. And that’s definitely what the delivery note said they’d sent, too.
Only when I opened the box, it wasn’t the Book of Lost Things at all. Instead, it was this…
Yes, “Mustn’t Grumble” by Terry Fucking Wogan.
Now really, how the blinking chuff do you get those two mixed up?!? The mind boggles…
Starting Off Badly
Posted: Mon 6 November, 2006 Filed under: Customer Services, Cynicism, Five Year Plan (now Ten), Getting Organised, Thoughts Leave a comment »Having signed up about ten days ago for that Open University course, I was expecting to get a bundle of paperwork, course information etc. last week. But it didn’t arrive. Hmm, that sounds familiar from last time I signed up with them.
Anyway, having given it a clear two weeks ’til today to allow them time to be inefficient, I gave them a call today. Turns out, despite having paid, and the money having left my account, they’d still got my account listed as “on hold” , rather than “registered”.
I’ve sorted it now, and the paperwork should be on its way. But really, it’s not an auspicious start to the course, is it?
Turns of Phrase
Posted: Thu 26 October, 2006 Filed under: Customer Services, Getting Organised, Weirdness Leave a comment »The other night I had to talk to a bank’s “customer services” department. I’ve been trying to set up a savings account, and they offered one of the better rates around (roughly 4.75%) so I sent in an application. Two months ago. They’re only just processing the application now, and were calling to find out whether I knew my (now-ex) employer’s company number, because they couldn’t find the company on Companies House, and directory enquiries couldn’t find the phone number. (In fairness on that point, I can’t find the phone number either)
So they called me, but wouldn’t/couldn’t
- accept the number if I gave it to them
- accept the company number if I gave it to them
- use the company’s website to find the number
or - find the company details in the HSBC system, even though the company banks with HSBC
Which rather led me to question just what the point of the call was. Unfortunately, the woman I was speaking to couldn’t actually tell me what the point was, except to go through the cyclical argument of “well, it’s on the form” – “but you can’t find the information, and it’s irrelevent anyway, so why do you need it?” – “because it’s on the form”
Eventually, we had the following conversation snippet
Me: OK, this is now utterly farcical. Can I speak to your supervisor please?
Her: Sir, I’m the on-duty supervisor tonight.
Me: OK, can I get a call from your manager tomorrow then?
Her: I don’t know. It’s not the usual procedure…
Me: Fine. Can I speak to someone who’s even vaguely competent, or at the very least capable of independent thought?
Her: …
I don’t think First Direct have any of those…
Anyway, I’m now going to use a different bank – First Direct can get stuffed if that call is representative of their attitude to customers.
Travelodge and Watchdog
Posted: Wed 25 October, 2006 Filed under: Customer Services, Cynicism, General, Travel 1 Comment »One thing that interested me last night was to catch BBC’s Watchdog programme, which featured Travelodge being shitepots. Nothing new there – but I didn’t know about this particular policy of Travelodge’s.
Turns out that despite offering a “guaranteed” room when you book with them, they have a policy of overbooking, so you could easily find yourself still without a room. They call this a “last man standing” policy – although it might as well be called a “last man sleeps in his car” policy. Of course, they can then say they’ve got a room at another Travelodge, but if you head off there (assuming that you can, have a car, and all that jazz) and someone else gets there before you, you can still not have a room.
And even better, because you can’t get a room at the original place, you don’t check in. Which means that the devious scumbags then get to charge you a full room rate for not turning up!
Now that is briliant. In a sleazy scumbag way, of course, but it’s still brilliant.
Out Of Stock
Posted: Tue 24 October, 2006 Filed under: Customer Services, Letters Leave a comment »Over the weekend I got an email from Marks and Spencer advertising their new range for big wide bastards (not quite the way they phrased it, but that’s what they meant) that was currently only available on-line. It’s a range that interests me – hey, I definitely qualify as a big wide bastard – so I had a look.
Surprisingly, there were a couple of things I liked the look of, so I ordered them through the site. All well and good.
Last night I got an email…
Dear Lyle,
Thanks for your recent online order.
I am sorry to tell you that we have had to cancel [one of the items] from your order as they are currently out of stock. You have not been charged for these items and your new order total is £xx.xx. I understand that this information will bedisappointing and I’m sorry for any inconvenience that it will cause you.
The remaining items on your order will be delivered within the next 4-7 working days.
We update availability regularly, so you may wish to check the website again in the next 2-3 weeks however, if these items were part of a sale we will not receive any more stock. If you would like to order an alternative product please call us on [I can’t be arsed to give the number]
Thanks for shopping with Marks & Spencer Online.
Kind Regards,
Customer Services, Marks & Spencer, www.marksandspencer.com
My response wasn’t quite so polite…
Dear Customer Services,
Thank you for your email.
Personally, I would rather have been given the choice of whether I wanted the items removed from the order, or held for when the items came into stock. So many thanks for giving me that option.
Actually, I’d *far* rather have had the website not even show the items that were out of stock – or even at least to *say* the items were out of stock, and would be delayed. I find it hard to believe that a company like M&S can’t organise that kind of integration between warehouse and website. However, it’s obvious that they can’t.
I think it’s even worse for the company to hold the attitude of “you ordered it, wecan’t provide it, so hey, why don’t you come back in a month or so and see if we’ve managed to get our fingers out or not“. Surely if you have this order listed as “out-of-stock” in the system, it’s not *that* much of a leap to then mail customers when the stock becomes available again, so they can order/re-order.
As it is though, congratulations, you’ve lost a customer for M&S online. I’ll go back to using Cotton Traders, who at least have the competence/systems to say “that’s out of stock, you can’t order it” on their website.
Sincerely
Lyle
Recorded Delivery
Posted: Tue 24 October, 2006 Filed under: Customer Services, Cynicism, Thoughts Leave a comment »Ten days ago, I sent a letter to the scumbag bandits at Holmes Place via Royal Mail‘s “Signed For” service. (“Signed For” being the dumbed-down name for “Recorded Delivery”) Basically, I wanted to know that Holmes Place had received the letter and cheque – not an unreasonable concept, really – and I wanted to be able to check online when it’d been received. And Royal Mail emphasise that you can use their “Track and Trace” online system to check that an item has been delivered.
Only, well, you can’t. It’s been ten days now, and still all I see when I key in the Track and Trace number is
Come back later
Recorded Signed For™ items are only tracked after the item has been delivered. Depending on whether the item was sent first or second class, this may be a few days after posting. Please try again later.Information on your item is not yet available online.
So frankly, what fucking use is that as a service?
Breakfasts
Posted: Sun 22 October, 2006 Filed under: Customer Services, Thoughts, Weirdness Leave a comment »Over the last month, I’ve been in a selection of different hotels and B&Bs, and one thing I’ve noticed is the sheer difference in quality that’s around. However, there’s also a weird little equation that seems to keep on coming up – it’s not just in the last month I’ve noticed this, but over the last rumty tumty years.
The more a hotel is per night, the poorer the breakfast is
I still don’t really understand how this works out, but I know that the cheapest B&B I’ve used is the one with the best breakfast – and the one that cost me the most was easily the worst. (And yes, that was the one with the watery scrambled eggs)
Very odd.
Holmes Place
Posted: Tue 17 October, 2006 Filed under: Customer Services, Getting Organised, Health 7 Comments »So yes, Holmes Place, the snivelling bunch of bureaucratic tosspot scumbags. I really can’t begin to emphasise just how gobsmacked I am by their attitude to customers, but I have to say, I wouldn’t ever recommend Holmes Place to anyone ever again.
Fair enough, I understand, they have a minimum contract, and they make their money from the people who sign up in January in a fit of the New Year resolutions, do maybe a month or two, and then don’t come back. That’s where the profit and cream comes from for the business – after all, if people have to pay, but choose not to use the facilities, that’s their choice.
What I object to on just about every front, though, is their attitude when this isn’t the case, when you’ve moved (or, in my case, am primarily based) somewhere else, where there’s no Holmes Place within a radius of 65 miles. I can’t help that, and it’s down to the company not having a facility in the area. If there were a Holmes Place in the area, I’d be using it, and I would’ve transferred my membership over to that one. But there simply isn’t the facility. Yet I’ve still got to pay for four months where I can’t use the gym, not where I decide not to.
I’m still going to find the name of their customer services director, and write another snotty letter to them. In the meantime, well, it’s time to get D4D™ into the top ten on Google for a search on Holmes Place. Currently I’m only at about #15…
Accuracy
Posted: Fri 6 October, 2006 Filed under: Customer Services, Geeky, Thoughts, Weirdness 3 Comments »Do you ever look at an email that’s been “personalised” (i.e. data about your preferences, or the other things you’ve bought from the same company, has been used to modify the content so that it’s more ‘targeted’ towards you) and just think “Man, they’ve got that one so wrong”.
Today’s example came to me from those uber-twunts of the gig-ticket world, TicketMaster. The subject line, to get my attention, was – um –
Lyle, don’t miss Lionel Ritchie
Wow, how wrong can one line get?
Next Week
Posted: Wed 4 October, 2006 Filed under: Customer Services, Getting Organised, Travel Leave a comment »So yes, after the Travelodge mistake, I’ve booked somewhere very different for next week. But at least it has broadband and wireless across the entire place. And my commute/walk looks like it’ll be about five minutes at most between hotel and office.
Mind you, they’ve got a fucking horrible website, and the booking procedure’s been a nightmare. Like I’m going to send my credit card details (particularly when they ask for card number, expiry date, and the security number off the back) through email. Dullards.
But still, it should be pretty swanky for a week’s stay. I love this expenses lark…
Mind you, following that I’m going to be back in the B&B I started with, and I’ve managed to wangle access to their wireless network now (Not something they offer as standard, it has to be said) so that makes it more likely I’ll stay there for the rest of the duration. They’re not the greatest place, but it does fulfil all the requirements – the only one it really missed out on was the internet connectivity, so now that’s sorted too, it should be fine.
The Travelodge Rant or Mistakes I have made (Part One)
Posted: Tue 3 October, 2006 Filed under: Customer Services, Reviews(ish), Travel 1 Comment »Well, I can honestly say that booking myself into the Travelodge this week was a mistake. An epic mistake, in fact. OK, I can write a lot of it off as “a learning experience”, which roughly translates to “Things I intend to only ever do once in my life”.
Put it this way – I now understand why they charge you upfront for the rooms. If they left it ’til the end of the stay, they’d be losing money.
Obviously, I understand that the entire thing is a business, and thus is there to make a profit. I’ve been in the hospitality business, and have been strongly considering going back into it in the long run. But that’s a post for another time. However, running a profitable business doesn’t – well, doesn’t to me, anyway – mean gouging every available penny from one’s customers. It also doesn’t mean “annoy the shit out of them with stupid unnecessary stuff”. Oh, and it does mean “get into at least the 20th century”.
Bear in mind, this Travelodge that I’m using is brand new. It’s been built less than four years – and I think, only in the last couple of years. But because of the “gouge as much as possible from customers” ethos, they still try to charge a minimum of 50p per minute for phone calls. And more if they can get away with it. Calling a local-rate 0845 number that should be dead cheap? 50p a minute please. Calling an 0800 (or whatever the bloody code is now) freephone number? 50p per minute, please. Yes, even freephone calls are charged. So internet access is chargeable, and at rates that would’ve been extortionate five years ago, let alone now.
I just don’t understand the ethos. If you let that kind of stuff go through, it’s not costing you anything as a business – and in fact it’s going to increase your business, as people will stay there because it’s allowing through the internet access without gouging you for it. But oh no, instead they’ll charge through the nose for things that people usually now take for granted.
In the same context, I don’t really get the “charge extra for breakfast” ethos either. The place I stayed last week was a flat rate, including breakfast (although still no internet access – can’t have everything) and still cost less than the Travelodge’s room-only rate.
Oh, and when you get to the room, you have to use your key-card to turn on the power, lights etc. And it turns on the bloody air-conditioning too. Not that I normally object to air-con. But in October? Is it really necessary? It’s incredibly loud too – and you can’t turn the fucking thing off. I spoke to reception about it, and got told “No, it’s not something you can turn off. It’s automatic”. (It turns out that there is a way to do it – if you have a spare card, or piece of plastic, or use the cardboard wallet the keycard comes in, fold it in half, and slot that down the left-hand side of the slot. Apparently, this turns on power etc. without activating the air-con. I’ll be trying it tonight, you can be sure) The only other way to turn it off is to pull out the keycard from the power box. Which, of course, means you don’t have any power or light. That’s OK when you want to sleep, but not during the evening!
Ah yes, power. For a hotel only built in the last five years (at most) you’d think they’d take things like power-points into consideration, wouldn’t you? But oh no, Travelodge don’t want to waste power costs on nasty things like customers. So there’s precisely one available power socket in the room. Nothing near the beds, it’s over on the desk. How tight-fisted can you get? Of course, you’re not going to want to , I don’t know, charge up a mobile phone overnight. Or use a laptop. Well, you might – but you can only do one at a time. And you won’t be able to charge anything overnight because – yes! – you’ve pulled the power card, so that the fucking air-conditioning doesn’t keep you awake!
In short, Travelodges are probably fine for a one-night stay, as just somewhere to crash and burn. For a prolonged stay, they’re just fucking horrible – and will try to charge for absolutely everything. Needless to say, I won’t be staying at Travelodge next week…
Libraries (Again)
Posted: Wed 20 September, 2006 Filed under: Customer Services, Cynicism, Getting Organised Leave a comment »So, after Saturday’s arse-about with bureaucracy, and the sending of a snotty email, I still hadn’t had any response. So I thought well, what the hell, give them a call.
Twenty sodding minutes later, I’m a member of the library in Cambridge. But not before going through three different people, two of whom insisted that I couldn’t actually join the library because I don’t live in Cambridge. Irrespective of the webpage about who can join the Cambridgeshire libraries that specifically states
Question:Can anyone join the library?
Answer:You can join the library at any age if you:
- are a permanent resident of Cambridgeshire
- work or study in Cambridgeshire
- are visiting Cambridgeshire
the first two jobsworths insisted that I could only join if I lived in Cambs. But that’s not what the web page says. Well, sir, you still can’t. Fuckwits.
Eventually I got through to someone who had at least two braincells active, who went through the procedure no worries. Maybe she was the rocket-scientist of the three. I don’t know.
But at least now all I have to do next week is provide proof of my ID (breaking out the trusty passport and/or drivers licence again) and job done.
Apologetic
Posted: Fri 15 September, 2006 Filed under: Charm School, Customer Services, General, Travel 1 Comment »One thing that brightened my day this week – I got a full and unreserved apology from the council for the utter fuckup that was made of the recruitment process.
I sent off a letter last Friday to the chief executive of the council, and copied in the head of HR, and the guy I’d been dealing with at the agency. The reply came back within the week, and was exceptionally apologetic, explaining that the guy who had caused the problem has been off sick, and has been replaced by a new interim Head of IT, and that the entire process is now under investigation within the council.
So it sounds like Mr Sensitive is in for a major kicking at the hands of the HR department, and frankly it won’t be anything he doesn’t deserve. And because of the letter, the agency are now going to send an invoice to the council for their recruitment costs, as they got the right person, and got the job offered, but then everything at the council turned to ratshit. Which ain’t the agency’s problem, and as such they might as well see whether they can get anything out of it.
So, a bollocking, an apology, and an agency that’s very happy with me even though I’m not currently working for them. Can’t be bad!
e-Commerce
Posted: Thu 14 September, 2006 Filed under: Customer Services, Cynicism, Getting Organised, Weirdness Leave a comment »Over the last few days, the iTunes music store has been annoying me. OK, I know I’ve got some fairly obscure tastes on occasion, but even so, when looking for things like “Leonard Cohen” the list is missing some fairly relevant stuff. The last couple of albums, for instance. Let alone some of the older stuff – and finding the album I particularly wanted, which is a collection of cover versions of his stuff, well, that’s just never going to happen.
And I can’t find anything on iTunes for a bundle of other bands – OK, some of them are old now, but isn’t that what “The Long Tail” was always supposed to be about? But no, nothing on there for Timbuk3, The Pale, or a couple of others.
Anyway, back to Leonard Cohen, and in fact it’s easier to go back and find the exact album on Amazon, and add it to the basket.
However, Amazon’s not perfect either. I was also looking for an A-Z map of Cambridge, for obvious reasons. But hang on – a £1.50 sourcing fee? What the hell? And up to 14 days for delivery? Fuck off. In that case it’s far easier to go direct to the company and order it direct. No sourcing fee. No postage. A flat £3.50. And I’ll get it by Monday. Perfect.
Remembering
Posted: Wed 6 September, 2006 Filed under: Customer Services, Getting Organised, Own Business, Thoughts Leave a comment »Ah, memories. This post on Waiter Rant has brought back lots of memories of idiot customers and the things they used to say, back when I was in that game.
Makes me even more surprised I’m still thinking about the possibility of going back to it…
WebStats – Part Two
Posted: Mon 21 August, 2006 Filed under: Customer Services, D4D™, Getting Organised 1 Comment »OK, having done some checking, and also discovering that Webstats was now also shoving in a pop-up ad when people looked at d4d™, they’ve been kicked to the kerb.
Instead I’ve just installed the MyBlogLog stats tracker as a replacement, so it’ll be interesting to see how that works out instead. Yay me.
Most Odd
Posted: Tue 25 July, 2006 Filed under: Customer Services, Domestic Leave a comment »You know, sometimes customer services things can be really bizarre. For ages you don’t get anyone who’s decent at all, and who all drive you utterly insane. Then all of a sudden you get a splurge of semi-decent ones, although you’re still stuck with the knowledge that it’s far more likely to return to the status quo, rather than becoming the norm.
Anyway, about a month ago we got a quote for a replacement garage door, as the current one has been knackered for at least 18 months. However, when it comes to selling the house, any buyer would object to the door, so we might as well get it done now. Absolute bog-standard door, nothing special at all.
At the time, the company (the National Door Company) gave us a quote for about £360, which included VAT, delivery, installation, and taking away the old door once they were done. Pretty damn good price, for all that, so we went ahead and got it booked in to be done today.
Herself was going to be at home to deal with it when they came in the afternoon. However, it turns out they arrived earlier than expected. And they’ve fitted the door, dropped the keys through the letterbox, and buggered off, job done. Talk about painless! Of course, now we have to pay the final dollop, so we’ll wait to make sure the invoice is correct before singing their praises too loudly, but on current evidence, they’re a bloody good company, and have got their shit sorted out. Which is definitely a novelty.
Dumped
Posted: Mon 24 July, 2006 Filed under: Customer Services, Geeky, Getting Organised, Sweary 2 Comments »Well, yesterday I finally dumped the two Shuttle boxes I bought. I got the first one a long time back, in October, and it was a cunt. Never worked, and we finally established that the motherboard was fucked. Nothing worked on it, couldn’t install an OS, and ended up testing the memory, the hard drive, the processor, the optical drive, everything. No joy.
Shuttle wouldn’t replace it, and nor would the supplier, MicroDirect – despite repeated letters to both, they both just put their hands in the air, shrugged, said “Not our problem, mate”, and because it was a self-build system, they pretty much insisted it must be my fault, and I didn’t know what I was doing. Smug cunts.
Anyway, glutton for punishment, I ordered a replacement Shuttle box, this time from Dabs. Some people have said they’re useless fuckers, but when it comes to ordering stuff from them, I’d have to say that they’ve been OK with me. Somehow, I managed to get another box that didn’t work, and had another motherboard problem. All the components, and some new ones, got tested, and no fucking joy.
So I gave up, and ended up ordering a PC from Dell, which is an absolutely storming bit of kit. And I’ve been able to add in pretty much all the components I bought for the Shuttle boxes, with the exception of the processors – Dell use intel, the shuttles were AMD 64-bit processors.
Despite repeated contacts with Shuttle, they’ve absolutely refused to acknowledge any problems with their boxes, even on evidence of everything I’ve tested.
I’ve spent about £600 on the boxes all told, and there’s fuck-all I’m going to get back for them. So now the two boxes have gone to the dump, and I’ve just had to write the loss off. However, what it does also mean is that I would never recommend a Shuttle box to anyone. Maybe – just maybe – if you can buy a system that’s pre-built, and sold as a unit, then OK. But a DIY kit? Don’t touch Shuttle with a shitty stick. In my experience, their products are crap – beautiful, a great idea , but ultimately crap – and their customer service is worse – well, if something non-existent can be deemed to be worse than crap.
And am I fucked off about throwing £600 of stuff on the local dump? You bet your arse I am – but sometimes even I just give up the fight, because I know it’s one I will never win, and in fact never even get a draw on. In this case, it’s just not worth fighting any more. Even when that leaves me almost as pissed off as the battle did in the first place.
Canon
Posted: Sun 23 July, 2006 Filed under: Customer Services, Photography, Weirdness 2 Comments »I knew there was something I hadn’t installed on the new PC, and today it came to me. All the drivers and software for the EOS20D – no drivers, no software, nowt. Ooops.
And just when did I discover this? Yep, when I was trying to move some photos around. Ain’t it always the way?
And then when I looked on the Canon site, it’s got all the bloody updaters and revisions for the software, but has it got the original files? Has it buggery. Cue a mad hunt through the CD Graveyard – really must organise that a bit better at some point – and eventually found the relevant CD.
So now I’ve installed all the original programs etc., and then I have to update them all. It’s fucking bizarre.
Ah well.
Thames Water again
Posted: Thu 20 July, 2006 Filed under: Customer Services, Cynicism, Thoughts 1 Comment »So Thames Water are in line for a huge fine because of their utterly deficient customer service?
How much do we want to bet that they’ll weasel out of it one way or another?
New Paradigms Redux
Posted: Thu 20 July, 2006 Filed under: Customer Services, Cynicism, Thoughts 1 Comment »I’ve been asked to point out by Herself’s Sister that, despite what I wrote on Tuesday about GameTart.com, they’re actually still a useless bunch of fuckers when it comes to customer service.
She’s tried on multiple occasions (and we’re talking “in the tens” rather than “one or two”) to get hold of them and sort problems out, and so far has never yet been successful.
So while they may check out their own references on Google, they’re still a bag of shit when it comes to the important stuff.
Insuring
Posted: Tue 11 July, 2006 Filed under: Customer Services, Cynicism, Thoughts 8 Comments »You know one of the most depressing things around? Getting quotes for car insurance.
Up ’til now, I’ve been a named driver on Herself’s car insurance – it makes a lot more sense for the first year of driving, as that’s when insurers add on an arbitrary amount, just for having passed the test. Of course, the downside is that after a year’s driving, I still have no No Claims Bonus. Ah well.
Anyway, once we’ve moved – as and when it happens – to Norfolk, it’s most likely going to mean that we need two cars, which’ll mean the current one becomes mine, and another (smaller) one becomes Herself’s. And that means I’ve got to sort out insurance on the current one. So I’ve been getting quotes.
So far, MoreThan will cost me £646 , or £57 per month, and DirectLine will cost me £690, or £57 per month. (No, I haven’t quite worked that out either – I probably mis-read something)
Then I went to Norwich Union, just for a laugh. Their “Quote Me Happy” campaign has been laughably bad, and I know when I was looking for house insurance they were awesomely high – in fact, about twice the price of anyone else. So OK, same details, and *quote* – fucking sweet Jesus H Christ on a smelly warped pine crutch – £1532, or £140 per month?!?!?
Quote me fucking incredulous, more like. Now I can see why all the people in the adverts piss themselves laughing when they get their quote…
Thames Water – A Response
Posted: Thu 6 July, 2006 Filed under: Customer Services, Domestic, Thoughts 3 Comments »A while ago, some of you may recall I sent a snotty email to Thames Water’s Customer Service People. For ease of reference, this is what I sent…
To whom it may concern,
If, as your current news story puts it, “Approximately a quarter of all leakage is on customers’ pipes.�, that still means that three-quarters of all leakage is on TW’s side of the pipes.
How does a utility company justify selling people a product, and then telling them they can’t use it?
How does a utility company justify leaks that amount to the equivalent of 6.6 million people’s daily usage ( using the DFID’s estimate of 135 litres per person per day ) every day ?
I’m just interested to know.
Sincerely
Lyle
In return, I today received this scintillating effort…
Thank you for your e-mail of 21 June 2006.
I note your comments regarding our water leakage rates and your concerns are understandable.
We know that we need to improve our leakage detection and repair rates and are working hard to achieve this. We currently have over 150 repair teams fixing leaks every day. We also have leakage detection teams working during the night to detect and pinpoint leaks.
OFWAT have agreed that we need to focus our attention on reducing leakage from our ageing mains network in London. We have been set very tough targets and it is not an easy task but we are determined to resolve this issue. The sheer volume of pipework means that we cannot complete this overnight and it will take time. We have, however, already made a good start.
During the early part of last year, OFWAT agreed a series of bill increases over a period of 5 years. We have been given strict guidelines on how this money should be spent and last year we began a #3.1 billion project to improve our services, including replacing thousands of kilometres of ageing water mains throughout our region.
In addition to the money we are already committed to spend on leakage reduction, the extra investment of #150 millioin announced by OFWAT will be funded by shareholders and will accelerate the Victorian Mains Replacement Programme to complete at least an additional 230 miles of new mains by 2010.
For the last 15 years we have been able to provide water services without any restrictions. However we must acknowledge that increased use of water in the home, population growth and climate change are placing increasing demands on our water supplies. To simply ignore these issues and refer everything to our own leakage rates would be irresponsible. Indeed, we have managed with similar leakage rates for the past 15 years without imposing a ban.
We need to employ numerous methods to safeguard our future supplies. We are working hard to increase sources of water, for example more boreholes to access groundwater and seeking planning permission to build a desalination plant to treat salt water in East London. We are doing all we can but we must ask our customers to work with us to conserve water. You may be interested to know that in Berlin, domestic water consumption is 115 litres per person a day compared to London’s 155 litres, although interestingly the prices there are approximately three times as high. Clearly this shows that there is room for water efficiency amongst our customers.
The simple fact of the matter is that this ban is as a direct result of the lack of rainfall and even if we were to repair every leak we would still be in a drought situation.
We do not seek to justify leakage; we are taking on the challenge to improve our services to benefit our customers.
I note that you refer to a particular point made on our website with regard to leaks on customers’ pipes. We use this information to highlight that not all leakage comes from our pipework, however, we wholly acknowledge that our own leakage standards need to be improved.
I appreciate your frustrations but trust that this addresses your concerns and explains our position.
Considering it didn’t answer any of the questions, and in fact studiously avoided being anything except PR flak, I’m currently debating the best response…
Getting Away With It
Posted: Tue 4 July, 2006 Filed under: Customer Services, Cynicism, Domestic, General 1 Comment »I can’t believe that Thames Water have managed to get away with not having to even pay a fine on their awesome leakage figures I wrote about a while back.
OK, so they’ve been “forced” (their words, not mine) to spend £150m on stopping leaks, but that’s what the shyster bastards should have been doing anyway. But oh no, tell them they might get fined, then let them off. They must be laughing all the way to the bank.
Shocking
Posted: Sun 2 July, 2006 Filed under: Customer Services, Domestic, Geeky 1 Comment »You know, sometimes a company actually exceeds the requirements and expectations you’ve given them. OK, so you don’t really expect much from BT, and so expanding those expectations isn’t too difficult- but all the same.
In this case, they’ve actually connected up the Wireless Broadband ahead of schedule. Its just unreal. The router etc arrived yesterday morning instad of the expected Monday, and when I connected it up, it worked straight away. In fact, I’m using it now, sat in the garden, writing on my XDA. I *SO* need to get out more…
Water Butts
Posted: Mon 26 June, 2006 Filed under: Customer Services, Domestic, General, Green 2 Comments »A while ago, we bought a couple of water butts, in order to save some rainwater for the garden, and all that jazz. (In fact, we now have three water butts, including one that was getting used (and probably will again) for “grey water” – ie washing-up water etc.)
Anyway, out of the three we’ve got, only one has a tap that doesn’t leak. Turns out, two of them were supplied without all the parts for the taps, so they didn’t seal properly – we ended up fixing it with silicone sealant, but all the same, on one it still drips.
Eventually I got round to emailing Sankey, the people who made the butts in the first place, and asked about getting a couple of the missing nuts for the taps.
I got an email today (which had been filtered into “junk mail” because of the subject line – “Butt Taps”) saying they’re going to send out the spare parts. Woo, and indeed Yay.
Drip, Drip, Drip – Extra
Posted: Thu 22 June, 2006 Filed under: Charm School, Customer Services, Green Leave a comment »Ah, I do like annoying people.
I’ve just emailed the following to Thames Water’s customer services.
To whom it may concern,
If, as your current news story puts it, “Approximately a quarter of all leakage is on customers’ pipes.�, that still means that three-quarters of all leakage is on TW’s side of the pipes.
How does a utility company justify selling people a product, and then telling them they can’t use it?
How does a utility company justify leaks that amount to the equivalent of 6.6 million people’s daily usage ( using the DFID’s estimate of 135 litres per person per day ) every day ?
I’m just interested to know.
Sincerely
Lyle
Should be interesting to see what they come up with…
Upgrading
Posted: Sat 17 June, 2006 Filed under: Customer Services, Domestic, Getting Organised Leave a comment »It may seem a little bit odd, in light of what I was saying earlier in the week about our decision to move before the end of this year, but at the moment we’re also moving over our phone line from NT-Hell to BT. Now yes, I know BT have their problems too – but it always worries me that actually, despite all that, BT are still the best of the bunch when it comes to phone lines and so on.
In fact, the phone line installation and activation happened on Monday, and went without a hitch. Actually, there was annoyance, but that was down to lack of communication. Turns out, they don’t actually need to visit the house in order to get everything switched on. Except they didn’t tell us that ’til the Saturday before – you know, when I’d already booked the time off from work, and too late for me to change it. Which pissed me off, but hey, what can you do?
Still, it all got activated fine, so we’ve now got a working BT line, and notice will be given to NTL on Monday, to tell them to piss off. I can’t wait.
And now we’ve ordered the new ADSL connection too. 8Mbs. Lovely. That’s going in on the 3rd July. So we’ll see how that goes too. Yay.
Game Tart
Posted: Wed 14 June, 2006 Filed under: Customer Services, Cynicism Leave a comment »Recently, I wrote a little bit about a company called GameTart.com, and their shonky procedures. I left them because they were turning deeply shit, and never responded to any queries.
Yesterday, when I checked my bank account online, I saw that they’d charged me for another month’s membership. Cue ballistic Lyle.
I sent them an email through their website, asking them what the hell was going on, and asking them to call me.
Nothing.
I sent them another email (they don’t do convenient things like, say, having a phone number) asking them, again, to explain why I’d been charged, and to call me (and yes, I did include a phone number) so that this could be sorted out.
Nothing.
I got a call this morning, where they tried making out they’d replied to emails, and they’d all bounced. Convenient – especially considering that every other email I was expecting yesterday came through fine. Then they tried making out that they’d called me yesterday, but the phone had been busy. Which is, in theory, possible – except that when it’s busy, it goes direct to voicemail. Ooops.
Anyway, the situation’s sorted. It’s still left me with a feeling that they’re actually just a small-time business with very few staff, and less consideration for customers though.
Nice Idea, But…
Posted: Sat 27 May, 2006 Filed under: Customer Services, Thoughts 1 Comment »Recently, I’ve been renting PSP games from a company called GameTart. It’s a nice idea – a PSP (and Playstation 2 etc.) version of ScreenSelect and Lovefilm, where you rent a game, get it sent by post, play it, return it when you want.
Unfortunately, with GameTart the implementation hasn’t been all that great…
Initially the service started up with a free trial period. All went smoothly. However, since that trial expired, GameTart have managed to “lose” two games, one from them to me, one from me to them. Supposedly they then send out a “lost mail items” form, which has to be filled in within ten days, or you can be liable for the full price of the game. I’m still waiting…
All in all, it’s a great idea, but it’s just not done right.
Common Sense
Posted: Tue 23 May, 2006 Filed under: Customer Services, Cynicism, Travel Leave a comment »Scene : A major commuter railway station. 8.30am.
A flood of people are coming off the train from London to work here. The flood is such that people wanting to get in to the station can’t.
Why?
Because the fucking twunts in the station have locked half the doors, so no-one can use them, in or out.
When I asked why this was, the first person said “I don’t know, I’m Revenue, I just check tickets.”
Well, can you pass the comment on to someone who does work in the sodding station?
“Oh no, I’m just Revenue. You’ll have to talk to the guy in the ticket office”
Grrr.
So I ask him.
“Well, I suppose we could unlock it. Don’t see why though.”
Because it’s busy?
“Oh, I suppose so”
Talk about enthusiasm. I bet the sodding thing’s still locked when I go home tonight.
Unexpected Efficiency – Part Two
Posted: Sat 13 May, 2006 Filed under: Customer Services, Cynicism, Thoughts Leave a comment »Following on from that post about efficiency vs. bureaucracy, I forgot to say, the necessary documents from Comapnies House arrived the next working day.
And they were the right ones – how’s that for impressive?
But really, isn’t it pretty sad when all you have to do to be impressed with a place is to be dealt with efficiently, to get what you ask for, and get it when they say it’ll arrive?
Water cockup
Posted: Tue 9 May, 2006 Filed under: Customer Services, Cynicism 1 Comment »(via Pete)
Oh, fantastic – a “natural spring” that’s been running for 16 years turns out to be – um – a dripping tap.
Yet a spokeswoman still insisted: “The leaks in the past were spring water, but the spring water seems to have gone and this is a proper leak. It’s just a coincidence. The present leak is not spring water.�
Aye, right.
Cost-Cutting
Posted: Sun 7 May, 2006 Filed under: Customer Services, General, Thoughts 1 Comment »You know, every time I see a story like this one, about hospitals having to sack people in order to balance their budgets, there’s really only one answer that keeps on coming back to me.
I reckon that if the hospitals eliminated about three levels of useless, pointless middle-management, then they’d…
- Save shitloads of money
- Be far more efficient
- Not be in this situation in the first place
Observer
Posted: Mon 1 May, 2006 Filed under: Customer Services, Weirdness 2 Comments »I don’t know what it is about this town, but sometimes finding a Saturday Guardian, or an Observer on Sunday is a total nightmare.
Yesterday was a case in point – OK, we didn’t go out ’til about 1, so that was part of the issue, but when I looked for a paper, I couldn’t find one at all.
The Esso garage was sold out, the BP garage only had ones with no supplements. It’s no wonder those hadn’t sold. Tescos had sold out – but only of Observers – in both the shop and the seperate garage section. They always sell out early, but never order more for next week. No idea why.
The other Esso and BP garages had sold out too. In the end, I picked up the last copy in – wait for it – Marks and Spencers. Because, like, that’s where everyone looks for a paper. *sigh*
I just don’t understand why, if the Observer is such a popular paper (and it’s worth pointing out that most places still had plenty of all the other papers, it’s just that I like the Observer) then why don’t all the shops order more of the sodding things?
Oh, and before anyone asks, we don’t get it delivered because a) the local newsagents has closed, with no sign of anything replacing it, and b) because even when it was open he wouldn’t do a delivery for just one day a week. Which probably goes some way to explaining why it’s now closed…
Price reductions
Posted: Fri 28 April, 2006 Filed under: Customer Services, Thoughts, Weirdness Leave a comment »Since getting the XDA phone, apparently I’ve had an O2 offer of “free internet”. Would’ve been nice to know about it, but there we go – that’s life.
Anyway, half an hour ago I got a message saying
We hope you enjoyed the O2 Active free promo. Charging begins from 01 June 2006, but remember it’s only £3 per Mb. For money-saving Bolt Ons, see o2.co.uk.
Then just now I got one saying
We hope you enjoyed the O2 Active free promo. Charging begins from 01 June 2006, but remember it’s only £2.25 per Mb. For money-saving Bolt Ons, see o2.co.uk.
That’s quite a price reduction for half an hour, isn’t it?
Carphone Whorehouse
Posted: Fri 21 April, 2006 Filed under: Customer Services, Cynicism, General 1 Comment »Herself has a mobile phone on O2 through Carphone Warehouse – up ’til recently she’s had a Samsung D500, but then about a fortnight ago upgraded to the flashy new one with iMode and 3G stuff on it. All well and good.
However, because it’s a 3G phone, she needs a 3G-capable SIM-card. Not previously having had a 3G-capable phone, the SIM wasn’t a 3G one either. However, the upgrade twunts at Craphone Whorehouse didn’t bother mentioning this. At all. Not once.
Last weekend we spent a good half an hour on the phone to their customer “services” department, explaining six times to six different people that we needed an upgraded SIM card. Oh, we don’t deal with that, I’ll put you through to someone else. Not once did person a explain to person b what the problem was, or why we were calling, or why they were putting us through, so we had to explain it – and go through the ID procedures – six fucking times.
Eventually, I ended up getting through to the right person. Who had to authorise sending out the SIM card with her manager. Supposedly they normally have a cost attached to them, but because this was an upgrade, we wouldn’t have to pay, so she needed the manager to provide a code to reduce the price to zero.
The card arrived last night. I put it in the phone…
“Unregistered SIM”
So today Herself is going to call Craphone Whorehouse (again) and try to get them to register the fucking SIM card that they sent out in the first place, already knowing we’d been stuffed about once. I’m currently not optimistic about getting a resolution to this one just yet…
Ticket Barrier
Posted: Thu 6 April, 2006 Filed under: Charm School, Customer Services, Travel 2 Comments »Bracknell train station has automatic ticket barriers. In general they’re no bad thing (we’ll gloss over the fact that half the time they’re left open while the ticket inspectors sod off somewhere else) and just make getting on and off the platform into a bit more of a bottle-neck than usual. Could be better, could be worse.
I’ve got a season-ticket for using the trains on the way to and from work, and again, in general this works fine. However, somehow this month the ticket’s magnetic strip has been blanked, so the automatic barrier won’t accept it, and I have to go and deal with the Numpty Bint on the gate, who lets through people with knackered, or non-standard-size tickets. I don’t care that this person is female, but I do care that she’s a fucking numpty with, on current evidence, more feet than IQ points.
Last week I made the cardinal sin, while going past her, of having my ticket upside down. Now, bear in mind it’s got “12th April 06” on it in friggin’ huge letters, the fact it’s upside down shouldn’t really matter a toss. But oh no, to Numpty Bint we’ve got to have the “I can’t read upside down, turn your ticket round” episode. Is it really that difficult to figure it out? Obviously so.
Today, though, was the last straw. After a week where I’ve been face to face (and generally fucked off) with Numpty Bint every day, twice a day, today she says “Oh, you’ve got to prove to me that your ticket doesn’t work. I’m not supposed to let you through until I’ve seen your ticket doesn’t work.” So I’m supposed to walk back down to the other end of the ticket barriers (through a shitload of commuters all flooding off the train that’s just arrived) to have the fucking ticket barrier beep at me, tell me to ‘seek assistance’, wade back through the commuters, and get back to her.
Instead, I opted for
If the fucking ticket worked, or had worked in the past fucking week, I’d be through the bloody barriers, and going to the platform, rather than dealing with you
She let me through.
MultiMedia Messaging
Posted: Wed 15 March, 2006 Filed under: Customer Services, Thoughts, Weirdness 3 Comments »Ah, O2 you bunch of fuckwits. Apparently they have decided on an arbitrary limit of 100Kb for media messages (i.e. sending a photo from your phone to someone elses). At its default setting, the XDA I now have takes photos that are 104Kb in size.
Now, what kind of sodding use is that, when you’re trying to send one? *sigh*
Excellent Technique
Posted: Tue 14 March, 2006 Filed under: Charm School, Customer Services, General 2 Comments »This morning:
[phone rings]
“Hello there sir, my names Josh and this is just a quick customer service call about your Orange phone”
“I don’t have an Orange phone. Never have.”
[*click*]
Short, sweet, and pithy. It doesn’t get much better, really.
Overheard
Posted: Mon 13 March, 2006 Filed under: Customer Services 1 Comment »In the supermarket…
“Have you not got any Daily Expresses today?”
“No, sorry, they only sent seven copies today, we’ve sold out.”
“Oh, OK. I’ll have to get a Daily Mail then. It’s just it’s such a rubbishy newspaper”
Local Public Transport
Posted: Mon 6 March, 2006 Filed under: Customer Services, Travel Leave a comment »While we’re away, the Mother-In-Law (well, almost in-law) is looking after the house. One of the things I had to do before she arrived was to sort out timetables for the local buses and trains.
Now, the train bit is no problem, and the timetables are always at the station. So that was fine.
The bus situation, however, is a bit different. When I went to the bus station, which always used to have an office where you could pick up timetables, it turns out that they’ve decided it’s more economical to not bother with that, and simply have the timetable p on the bus stands, wrapped in plastic. In other words, you can’t get a copy of a timetable to take away with you. Well chuff me, that’s helpful, isn’t it?
In fact, you have to either get a timetable online (and do they do timetables in PDF format so you can at least get one easily? Do they fuck-as-like) or you have to ring them or email them and get one sent out. Which is OK if you’re organised and getting this kind of thing sorted in advance. But what happens when you’re just wanting to find out when the next bus is? In short, you’re knackered.
And then they wonder why less people are using the sodding service. I sometimes wonder if First Bus haven’t made the executive decision that actually they’d be able to run a decent service if only they could stop people being inconvenient and actually wanting to use it.
Continued Downage
Posted: Thu 2 March, 2006 Filed under: Customer Services, D4D™, Geeky Leave a comment »Well, it looks like 34sp are still having intermittent problems with their service at the moment.
So, why aren’t I pissed off?
Well, primarily because as usual with 34sp, they let you know what’s going on. OK, you’ve got to know about status.34sp.com, which is on a different network entirely so even if every 34sp website is down, status is still letting you know what’s happening.
Secondly, it’s because it’s not actually their fault – this is a problem with the link from 34sp to the outside world, which is failing a lot. And they don’t yet know why. But they’ve said they’re looking into it, and for once I believe them.
And thirdly, because this is a rarity. In four years with 34sp, this is the first major unintended downtime I’ve seen. And that, for my money, is pretty good service in anyone’s book.
Is It Me?
Posted: Mon 27 February, 2006 Filed under: Customer Services, Cynicism 1 Comment »On Friday I ordered a new desk (for the refitted office at home) from Argos to be delivered today. OK, I should’ve known better, I realise. But hey, that’s life.
Anyway, I ordered it online, and all was fine. I got a confirmation message on the screen which said something along the lines of “We need to manually verify this order, then we’ll send you a confirmation”. OK, for e-commerce that sucks, but it’s well known that the entire company of Argos has an IQ of 100, and most of that is kept in head office. So OK.
By today, still no confirmation, and it’s supposed to be being delivered today. So I thought I’d ring the useless bastards and check.
First of all we get the “I’ve got to have an order number before I can help you. But I haven’t got an order number, because Argos’ve never given me one. Well I’ve got to have an order number for the system” farce, but eventually we get through that one.
Finally I get to the correct department (“Oh, sorry, there’s two departments that deal with home delivery, and you’ve come through to the wrong one”) and get it confirmed that the desk is on the delivery truck, and will be with us sometime today. Helpful they’re not.
And what’s the excuse when I ask why I haven’t received the order confirmation, despite a) the money having left my account, and b) the order having been processed, and on the truck?
Oh, sorry, the internet’s slow at the moment
Yeah, OK, I’ll fall for that one. Like I came off the carrot truck this morning.
Don’t you just love it when people expect you to know as little as they do?
Voiceovers – a solution?
Posted: Fri 3 February, 2006 Filed under: Customer Services, Thoughts 1 Comment »Having been getting annoyed by voiceovers, summaries, and all sorts of other “dumbing down” guff recently, I think I’ve just come up with the solution. (OK, it’d take some approval from the TV people, but all the same it’s a bit of a knockout idea
Channels. Soundtrack channels, like on a DVD. You could have the normal soundtrack channel, voiceover and all, as the default, but you could then change the soundtrack channel if you wanted, similar to the “director’s commentary” on DVD, so that all you got was the actual programme, no voiceovers.
Hell, I’d subscribe to an option like that, if it could be made into a generic ( i.e. multi-channel) consideration. Mind you, I’d also be willing to do the same for advert-free viewing, but that’s something else, and probably technically harder to do.
Personalisation
Posted: Fri 3 February, 2006 Filed under: Customer Services, Cynicism, Thoughts Leave a comment »Sometimes I find it quite amusing to get supposedly “personalised” emails from companys. For example, on occasion I know I’ll never use a site again, but if I have to register in order to make an order, I’ll use a made-up name, and/or email address, just to see whether anyone ever checks these things. Then you can end up with an email to “tosspot@{domain}.com”, and the title in the email reads to “Mr FuckOff YouBastards”, or somesuch. But that’s something for another post…
Today’s example came from Ticketmaster, who have decided that because I’ve bought tickets in the past for Faithless, Henry Rollins, Chris Rea and the V Festival 2006, I might like – are you ready? – Robin Gibb at Blenheim Palace. Yeah, that’s so similar to all my other preferences…
Renewal
Posted: Fri 27 January, 2006 Filed under: Customer Services, Sweary 1 Comment »Oh bugger. My mobile phone contract is due to expire at the end of Feb/March (can’t remember which) and last night I got the first of the calls from some scamming bunch of bastards wanting me to move to their service to change my mobile contract.
“Hi, i’m from [insert name of scamming bastards here] and I understand your mobile contract is coming to the end”
“I’m not interested, thank you.”
“We can offer you a better service, and ”
(louder)”I’m not interested, thank you.”
“it’ll cost you less than you’re currently on. We check with the”
(even louder, and speaking slowly, as the guy’s obviously borderline retarded)”I’m not interested. Thank you.”
“five main mobile companies, O2, Vodafone…”
“Not interested. Goodbye”
*click*
The twat then rang back. Realised, and fucked off.
However, I know that this is just going to be the first of many. Time to get snotty….
Getting Round To Things – Part II
Posted: Sun 22 January, 2006 Filed under: Customer Services, Domestic Leave a comment »Oh yes, and I finally got round to registering with Shuttle that my new(ish) box is, frankly, fucked.
I know, I should’ve done it a while back, but – as with many things with me – I never got round to it. As part of ’06’s semi-resolution to be more organised (and it’s slowly happening – very, very slowly) then that’s one of the things that needed doing quickly. So now we get to see what their customer services and support stuff is like. Oh goody…
Bookshop
Posted: Tue 17 January, 2006 Filed under: Customer Services, Thoughts 2 Comments »Over the Festering Season I received some National Book Tokens, which were pretty cool, as I obviously read a lot, and all that jazz.
Spending them, on the other hand, was a bloody nightmare. Although it did help to remind me why I normally buy books online instead.
First of all, the local bookshop. It’s an Ottakars – not brilliant, but not bad, and (for the moment anyway) at least it’s fairly independent, and not part of a huge chain. (although they may end up being taken over by HMV.) Their stocks are OK, but not brilliant.
I’d taken in a list of books I was thinking of buying. Could I find any of ’em? Could I chuff. Not one. And when I asked the staff, I got told “Oh no, we’d have to special order that – it’ll be at least two weeks”. Useless. I did end up getting a couple of books, which amounted to £12.98, and paid with the £15 of tokens. Great, no problem at all.
Or not. Turns out that Ottakars won’t offer change (i.e. actual coins) for book tokens – they give you the difference back in yet more tokens. Great, 2 £1 tokens. They’ll go towards something useful, I’m sure. Of ocurse, it would’ve also helped if they’d actually had any £1 tokens in the tills, too. Instead they had to a) get a supervisor, b) get the supervisor to go back to the office to get the tokens, and c) wait for them to come back to the till. All in all that took about ten minutes.
So yes, overall, I can’t really see me being converted back to bookshops from Amazon, if that’s indicative of how it all works…
Ikea
Posted: Wed 4 January, 2006 Filed under: Customer Services, Thoughts 2 Comments »Well, we did end up at Ikea in Brent Park last night – and all told, it wasn’t too bad. Amazing, I know – I wouldn’t say it was good, as the blue and yellow monstrosity still seems to act as a magnet for all the braindead fuckmonkeys in North London, but at the same time nor was it awful. Which makes a change.
I’m never going to like the place – but at least Ikea seem to be finally doing something about the more heinous cock-ups at the store – the car-park has been redesigned, they’re making a new entrance to the place , and they’ve eliminated the awful blockade that was the area for collecting purchases.
Of course, the ordering process is still nightmarish, and the customer services doesn’t deserve the title. But the stuff’s good quality (in general) and popular. I just wish that the customers had brains that stayed active…
Touchscreen
Posted: Wed 14 December, 2005 Filed under: Customer Services, Thoughts 2 Comments »I wonder how long it’ll be before some bright spark figures out how to use a touchscreen to scan for fingerprints at the same time.
That way when you’re using an ATM to get money, and touch the screen to say what amount you want, or what options you want at the time, the screen could scan your fingerprint on the button, and lo, instant ID verification without having to twat about with PIN numbers, cameras, fingerprint scanners or anything.
Seems like a good idea to me, but I assume there must be some kind of technical problem with it. Otherwise surely someone would’ve done it already, right?
Postcode Finder
Posted: Mon 12 December, 2005 Filed under: Customer Services, Festering Season 2 Comments »At last – it appears that Royal Mail have finally let their Postcode Finder be used without having to sign up for the service first.
It may be just over the Festering Season – I don’t know – but for the moment it’s sat on their homepage. This is where it should be all the time, and I hope they’re finally learning. Of course, my registered email address of ” fuckoff@youtwats.com” is hardly useful to them, and I’m sure I’m not the only one using such useful email addresses in order to register with business…
Complaining
Posted: Fri 9 December, 2005 Filed under: Customer Services 2 Comments »Sometimes I come across a person who makes me feel like an amateur when it comes to complaining to people and getting stuff done.
This man is a perfect example of that. Respect is due.
Interlink “Express”
Posted: Thu 24 November, 2005 Filed under: Customer Services, Thoughts 1 Comment »Well, not just Interlink, but a large number of delivery companies in general.
In a similar vein to the Parcelforce farce earlier this month, I ordered some stuff from Jessops on-line shop last week. Nothing special, just a soft case for the “old” Fuji S5000 camera, a polarising filter for the new camera, and a couple of spare lens-covers. (I’m forever losing them, somehow, so spares are normally a good idea) I’ve ordered stuff through them before and it’s all come through fine.
This time though, for no good reason that I can find, they used Interlink Express. So on Friday we had a card through the door that basically said “we tried, we’ve taken it back to the depot”. No other information on it at all, and even the tick-boxes on the card for “we’ve taken it back”, “we’ll try again on Monday” or “we’ve left it at a neighbours” weren’t filled in. So – no help at all then. Joy.
It then turns out that the local depot is a) in the arse end of nowhere, and b) is only open 9-5 Monday to Friday. Well, that’s bloody useful. So how’m I supposed to get my stuff if they won’t even be open for me to collect it?
I rang them up, and actually ended up with someone who seemed to know what they were up to. No, we’re not at home for receiving the parcel today. No, we won’t be in during the week at all. Can I get you to leave it with a neighbour? No, I don’t know which one. Oh, I’ve got to give them a card that says they’re authorised to take the package, and only then will your guy give it to them? Fuck that – I don’t know which one will be in or not. Oh, hang on, can you deliver it to my work place? Yeah, no problem. Ok, do that.
It’s worth also bearing in mind that the delivery label when I eventually got the package also says “do not redirect – deliver only to address on label”. Still, at least we’ve got the stuff now. But why do companies insist on using delivery companies that can only handle stuff Monday-Friday? It’s something that constantly annoys me, this seemingly casual attitude towards people/customers, and a lack of understanding that people work for a living, and might not be available at home on Monday-Friday…
By comparison, I ordered a PSP “Giga Pack” from dabs.com / gameplay.co.uk yesterday, and it arrived today in the post. No problem at all, and quick and easy to do. Although Herself has insisted I wait ’til Christmas before I can use it…
Qoop revisited
Posted: Tue 22 November, 2005 Filed under: Customer Services, Geeky, Photography 1 Comment »Having posted some stuff over the weekend about them, I figure it’s pretty impressive that I got a response in the comments yesterday from a representative of Qoop…
D4D et al:
Thanks for checking out QOOP. Right now the only option for the ordering of photos in your books is in the way they were uploaded from Flickr, so that means the way the photos were ordered in your sets, etc. You can, in Flickr, edit the order of your set to be uploaded. We realize this doesn’t provide much flexibility and additional layout options are in the works. We had to start somewhere and we opted for efficiency and convenience first. Both cover and page layouts will have greater design possibilities very soon.
We hope you’ll check us out again!
Hugh
QOOP
Pretty impressive – and, as such, only fair for me to do this and print it up on the front page rather than having to hunt through the comments for it.
Parcelforce
Posted: Wed 9 November, 2005 Filed under: Charm School, Customer Services 1 Comment »When we got back on Monday, there was a card on the doormat (along with about a thousand other things) to say that Parcelforce had tried delivering something to me, we hadn’t been in, so they’d left it at the local post office.
Only it wouldn’t be at the local post office ’til Tuesday. Yes, apparently it takes 24 hours to drop off something just down the road.
So I called up the *ahem* Customer Services people at Parcelforce to try and get it redelivered to the house today – because of course I’m not at home for the rest of the week in the hours that the post office is open. Nor are we there at the weekend when it’s open, so frankly, the delivery’s knackered.
[I’ve cut out lots of the preliminary stuff – it was all just obstructive and a pain in the arse]
“Oh yes, it’s on the delivery truck today”
“OK, so can you get it redelivered to my home address today”
“No, because it’s on the truck already”
“Eh?”
“We can’t contact the driver to tell him to redeliver. He’s tried, you weren’t at home. It’ll be at the post office tomorrow”
“But I won’t be. So you’re telling me that you can’t contact your drivers at all?”
“No, we can’t. They’re not allowed to take mobile phones out in the trucks. [sarky] You see, it’s illegal to answer them while they’re driving”
“Yes, I know that. Obviously the concept of ‘leaving a message’ is beyond your experience.”
I tried getting it delivered to my work address on Tuesday instead – you know, so I can at least receive the sodding thing. But first “we need the postcode” which, frankly, I’ve no idea of. I can give the address, but they also apparently don’t have anything that can find a postcode from the address. Oh, and they charge £5.50 to change the address.
So, it’s waiting at the post office. With luck I might get there at some point in order to collect it. But you can be fucking certain I will never ever use Parcelforce, if that’s the attitude they’ve got. Fuck ’em – there’s better services out there that charge far less.
Canon Can
Posted: Sun 6 November, 2005 Filed under: Customer Services, Photography, Thoughts 1 Comment »Buying the new camera has been an interesting experience in a number of ways. The sheer number of offers related to the purchase has bordered on the ridiculous.
Not content with Jessops offering the lowest price around for the kit I got, if I registered with the Canon Image Gateway (a kind of Flickr-like service for users of Canon cameras) I got a 256Mb Compact Flash memory card free. Not bad – so of course I did it.
Also, if you buy a Canon DSLR before the end of the year, they’re offering a cashback offer of £100 / €150 which obviously brings the price down even further.
Oh yeah, and as well as all that, you also get a booklet with a further £625 of cashback offers on lenses, flashes etc. if you buy them before the end of the year too.
Anyone would think they were trying to give the damn things away!
One step forward, two steps back
Posted: Mon 31 October, 2005 Filed under: Customer Services, Sweary, Thoughts 1 Comment »Recently, my bank‘s online banking section finally took a turn for the better, and made use of a lot of accessibility and usability recommendations. Halle-fucking-lujah, I hear you cry – about time one of ’em did.
Last Friday I upgraded my installation of Firefox up to the latest 1.5 beta release, which in many ways is utterly stonking, and great to use.
Today I went to the online banking and got back the same message I used to get…
The Internet browser you are using is not supported by Digital Banking. Use the link below to see the complete list of browsers we support.
- Microsoft® Internet Explorer version 5 and 6
- Netscapeâ„¢ Navigatorâ„¢ version 7.1 and up
- Mozilla 1.5 and up
- AOL 8.0 and up (AOL subscribers only)
- Firefox 1.0
For fuck’s sake – so it’ll work on 1.0, but not on 1.5? Useless bastards…
Choccie
Posted: Tue 18 October, 2005 Filed under: Customer Services, Travel 1 Comment »One thing I really shouldn’t do is head in to excellent chocolate shops on my own. While wandering around last night I found the Puccini Bomboni shop in Singel, Amsterdam. Adrian had mentioned about this a while ago on the currently-defunct-and-thus-no-link Uborka.nu so I made a mental note to go back.
I had some time spare today where nothing was going on, so I wandered back – and oh dear, oh dear. €35 later, and I’ve got a selection box of some truly evil-looking (calorie-wise) choccies, as well as some caramel nougat, and chocolate-covered orange slices. (Think grand-scale jaffa cakes) – and I’m being dead good, and not even opening any of it ’til I get home.
The shop is fantastic though – you can almost get high on the smell of the chocolate. The staff were lovely too, translating the Dutch labels (who’d have thought that rabarber meant rhubarb, eh? Ha. ) and generally just being really nice. I’m sure I’ll do more of a review of the chocs themselves when we’ve eaten a few, but I can say already that some of them look deeply tempting. Getting them home intact will be an achievement for sure.
Bias
Posted: Thu 13 October, 2005 Filed under: Customer Services, News 1 Comment »Some companies just don’t seem to learn from their mistakes, do they?
A case in point – good old RyanAir. Not content with having had to go to court about their failure to provide free wheelchairs for their disabled passengers, they’ve now refused to allow a group of blind- and partially-sighted people to fly.
Supposedly it’s because “Ryanair has imposed a limit of four disabled passengers per flight”. Brilliant…
Speed of Communications
Posted: Tue 4 October, 2005 Filed under: Customer Services, Weirdness Leave a comment »After the conversation today, I’m beginning to suspect that either a)Argos exists in a different dimension to the rest of the world, or b) they’re a bunch of fucktard cunts with the technical skills of a slightly retarded marmoset. Or c) Both.
I’ve ordered a new sofa-bed for the spare bedroom – a long story I can’t be arsed to go into now, but it was needed – and ordered it from Argos. No particular reason, other than that they had one we liked. Which, when all’s said and done, is as good a reason as any.
The first insult-to-injury moment comes when the website says “This item is only available for home delivery” – fair enough, I don’t want to load a sofa-bed plus mattress etc into a Ford Focus – and I can see that this kind of thing would take up room in the shop warehouse, so great, deliver it directly to me. “Delivery costs £5 extra”. Cunts. Charging me to deliver something I can’t collect from the store – not just because it’s a hassle, but because you won’t stock it in the shops is taking the piss. But hey ho, it’s only a fiver. I can live with that.
So I ordered it. Easy. Except no confirmation comes through to my email address – it should do, they say they’ve sent one. And I can’t log back in using the email address I thought I’d given them, which means I’ve probably fucked it up. I call the customer helpline…
“Oh, don’t worry, the order’s gone through, but sometimes we it takes two days to send out the email”
“Eh? You’re taking the piss. Two days to send an email?”
“No, that’s right. It can take two days. It takes at least twenty-four hours for your customer account to be sorted out too.”
“But I did it all online – the information’s in the bloody database already!”
“Yeah, but it still takes time to set up…”
I despair. Bunch of idiots in a parallel dimension, I’m sure of it.
Despair
Posted: Tue 27 September, 2005 Filed under: Customer Services, Cynicism, Thoughts Leave a comment »For some reason unknown to all but themselves, I’ve recently been getting a lot of contacts from a couple of IT agencies (I won’t name them here, because why should I give them any credit? Instead I shall name them Aldous and Regressive – which should be enough of a clue for any other IT people who read this…) about jobs in Manchester. Now, I told all the agencies I deal with (including Aldous and Regressive) that I had moved – and let’s face it, we’re talking nine months ago here, so you’d think they might have had time to alter their records by now.
Anyway, yesterday I got emails from both companies, despite repeatedly telling them by phone and email that I a) had moved, and b) wasn’t looking for work. You’d think that was fairly blunt, wouldn’t you?
But oh no, not in Regressive’s case. Instead, I got the following reply.
Thanks for the update- where are you now looking for work? Regressive has offices across the Uk and Europe and we would be more than happy to keep you posted about other suitable roles.
Kind regards
Sometimes agencies are just too bloody thick to be believed.
Arses
Posted: Fri 23 September, 2005 Filed under: Customer Services, Sweary, Thoughts Leave a comment »It’s going to be one of those days today. The ineffable tossers at TicketMaster sent out an email today containing an offer that – for once – was actually going to be of use to me, as it involved tickets for a new London show at half price. Perfect for Mother’s birthday in late November, in fact.
So I went to order them, typed in the password that was on the page they gave me, and an error message popped up. “That password doesn’t exist on our system”, sayeth the message. “Oh bugger”, thoughteth I, “must’ve typed it wrong”. But no – repeated tried later, it’s still knackered.
I finally got hold of ticketmaster on the phone, to be confronted with what can only be described as an idiot. “You must have an offer code, or I can’t enter it”. “There isn’t one on the email ticketmaster sent out, nor on the web-page”. “There must be – I can’t enter the offer without the code”. So forth, so fifth. Yes, another prize twunt-monkey employed by Twuntmaster.
Eventually, a supervisor comes on the line. “Yeah, the password was entered wrongly. We’re sorting it out now.”
And lo, job done – but surely it’s better to let the front-line frigmonkeys know that there’s a problem, rather than ending up with pissed-off customers, and complaints?
Mickey D’s
Posted: Fri 23 September, 2005 Filed under: Customer Services, Sweary, Thoughts 2 Comments »This one’s been brewing since last weekend – you have been warned!
Currently, there’s an advert on TV for McDonalds, telling everyone about their “great” new toasted deli sandwiches, “freshly prepared on the premises”. (In fact, it says it on the website too – “Did you know that our Deli sandwiches are freshly made on the spot?“) OK, all fair and good.
On the weekend, on our way down to Portsmouth/ Waterlooville, we ended up stopping at a McDonalds for the first time in ages. Now, Herself is vegetarian, which kind of limits the choices in a burger place, but all the same you don’t expect to be greeted with the response “Sorry, we don’t do veggie burgers any more, we only do these “Grilled Veggie Melt” sandwiches. Which, frankly, sucks – if you’re going to something like fucking McDonalds, you’re pretty likely to want a fucking burger, not some grilled sandwich with houmous, pitta bread, and chargrilled vegetables. It’s not rocket science, but apparently McDonalds (advised by those pious holier-than-thou cocksucker in the Vegetarian Society) have decided that vegetarians don’t want burgers, they want these godforsaken concoctions loaded with bland cheese and – having now tried one – no fucking taste whatsoever.
The secondary factor is that, for reasons known only to Herself, she doesn’t like courgette. Fair enough. These pox-arsed sandwiches are – let’s not forget – “prepared fresh on the spot”, so we can just ask for one without courgettes in, can’t we? Um, no. When they say “prepared fresh on the spot”, the bullshitting lying corporate tosswhores knows as McDonalds actually mean “we get in bags of pre-mixed vegetable concoction, and thaw it out in the morning. When you order it, we put the stuff together, which is how we can get away with calling it ‘prepared on the spot'”. So you’ve a) no choice, b) no options, and c) a diagram involving a canoe, a creek, and the exact directions to the nearest paddle-store, 100km away. Cunts.
Smooth Marketing
Posted: Thu 22 September, 2005 Filed under: Customer Services, Festering Season, Thoughts Leave a comment »
I’ve written before about the (in my opinion) really rather good company, Hotel Chocolat, who do some of the best chocolate I’ve had in a very long time.
In a similar kind of vein to Innocent, Hotel Chocolat have looked at the way people buy things, and have applied it to their company – and this is something that certainly shows up in both the way they market themselves, and the ordering process.
When you order with them, you can choose the dates you want the items to arrive – particularly in the case of things like Easter, Christmas etc. this can be really useful, as you can order well in advance, and choose to have them delivered to you immediately (so you can wrap it and send it on, or give it as a gift, I assume) or delivered straight to the recipient’s door as close to the day as possible. It doesn’t sound like much, but it shows the thought that’s gone into the process.
An example of the marketing skill came through in the post yesterday – an order form from them with a cover note that basically said “These are the people you ordered stuff for through us last Christmas – tell us what you’d like to order for them this year, and it’s all sorted” (I assume you had to pay them too, but that wasn’t mentioned in the letter) It just struck me that it was again something really simple, but that kept Hotel Chocolat in mind, and made you think “that’s actually really rather clever”.
Well, it impressed me, anyway. But I’m kind of sad like that.
Incompetence
Posted: Tue 20 September, 2005 Filed under: Customer Services, Sweary, Travel Leave a comment »Yesterday was almost amusing on the trains into work. Over the weekend, the line between Reading and Ascot was having engineering work done on it, so the train service was replaced by buses. Hey ho, all part of the joys of train travel – but at least it now affects me far less than it used to.
Monday morning and the local news (both BBC and ITV) were reporting that buses were still replacing trains, due to engineering work. OK, that slightly chuffs my morning travel, but thankfully not too much. Get to the station, the ticket machines have been turned off, and there’s a sheet of paper across each one saying that due to engineering works there’s no trains, and for some godforsaken reason known only to the train operating twats, you can only buy tickets from the ticket office itself. No good reason, it just must’ve seemed like a good idea at the time. Or something.
However, getting in to the ticket hall itself, there’s people waiting on the platforms. Eh? So when I get to the Ticket Twunt behind his little bulletproof glass shield, I ask where we’re supposed to be getting the bus from, and why are there people on the platforms? “Don’t know what you mean, mate – trains are running fine today” Turns out that the fuckwit cunts have a) forgotten to take the paper off the machines, b) turn the ticket machines on, and c) tell anyone that the train service is back to what passes for normal.
Still, it made my travel that little bit easier, not having to get a bus instead. But Jesus Christ, it’s really not that difficult to sort out, is it?
Weekend
Posted: Sun 18 September, 2005 Filed under: Customer Services, Health 2 Comments »Well, I now own a bow. And arrows. And case, quiver, sight, tab, bracer, stabilser, etc. And I’m £520 lighter for it too. Sheesh. One of these days I might even involve myself with a sport that’s cheap. One day. Maybe.
Other than that, the store we went to in Waterlooville was OK, but Waterlooville itself is – to be frank – a fucking dump. Strange, strange place.
And the weekend has been very quiet internet-wise, as we seem to be cursed by joint problems with the wireless network and the NTL connection. Not helped by the fact that motherfucking NTL don’t even have a customer services department that’s open on a Sunday. The cuntwit tossbags. So we’re unconnected (except via a slightly shonky dial-up connection through Tiscali, of all things) until tomorrow. Gah.
So all in all, a quiet weekend, and quite an expensive one. Roll on work. Never thought I’d say that…
Going Spare
Posted: Wed 14 September, 2005 Filed under: Customer Services, Thoughts Leave a comment »Like the numpty twat I truly am, I managed to lose the lens-cap for my camera while we were at Wells-next-the-Sea last week. Oops. It’s meant that I can’t/won’t carry my camera around with me (and thus also didn’t get any photos while in Amsterdam) as I do tend to just chuck the camera in my rucksack and be done with it.
Anyway, I’ve just ordered a new lens-cap from Fuji, the manufacturers, and it should arrive at home by the weekend. Not bad at all, particularly for a camera they haven’t been selling for a year.
Back to Work
Posted: Thu 28 July, 2005 Filed under: Customer Services, Thoughts 3 Comments »They finally turned up at just gone mid-day. So – not morning at all then. Tossers.
The work itself took just about an hour. Turns out that the company that had orginally fitted the carpet were utter fuckwits, and had managed to put in every single gripper-rod facing the wrong way, so basically the carpet just slipped off the nails that were supposed to be holding it in place. Cue lots of head-shaking, and “I’ve never seen a job as bad as this. Ever.” repeatedly.
To cap it all, I haven’t paid them. “Oh, the boss’ll be round to get the cheque. I don’t deal with the money side” sayeth the fitter. OK, this is the boss who couldn’t be arsed to tell me when they were coming until I called him to find out, the one who promised a quote for the other work we want doing and hasn’t provided it, and also the one who says “morning” and means “noon”. Fuck that, I’m not waiting for him to just turn up when he wants to in order to get his money, so I’m now in the office, and the shitepot can call me when he’s good and ready.
Seems fair to me.
Arse’oles
Posted: Fri 15 July, 2005 Filed under: Customer Services, Music, Photography, Sweary, Thoughts 7 Comments »Dear Brixton Academy,
You utter, utter bunch of cunts. I arrived at the venue last night to see Nine Inch Nails, which I’d been looking forward to since the tickets went on sale. When I got to the door, the security jobsworth motherfucker person searched me and my bag, and refused me access.
My sin? To be carrying a camera. To whit, a digital camera. Now, I realise that the ticket says “no professional cameras”, which is fair enough. And mine, while nice, is most definitely not a professional camera. But no, it turns out that – according to Brixton Academy – “professional” is the same as “digital”. If you’ve got a digital camera, you’re not coming in. If you’ve got a 35mm camera, you’re not coming in. Non-professional cameras would be non-digital, non-zoom, “use once” cameras. And that’s about it. Fucking hell, my bastard phone is listed as a professional camera under your classifications.
Oh, I did get told “you can leave it with us, and collect it at the end of the show“, but that comes listed under the “Yeah, right, pull the other one it’s got fucking bells on” scheme of things.
So, all told, that’s £40 up the swanny. I don’t know if the “no digital cameras” is the policy of the venue or the band, or if it’s just that you have utter fuckwit bastard cunts for doormen. Quite honestly I’ve no intention of finding out. Because I won’t be going back to Brixton Academy again.
You cunts.
Sincerely.
Lyle.
UPDATED : What really rankles is then seeing other people’s photos from the gig.
Inter-fucking-flora
Posted: Tue 5 July, 2005 Filed under: Customer Services, Thoughts 1 Comment »Ah yes, this one needed posting. This weekend is mental, (see the list below for more details) even without it also being our anniversary.
Anyway, on Friday (this being the best day to sort out anniversary-type stuff, due to aforementioned manic weekend) Herself is over at Grandfathers, as he’s having a heart thingy (don’t you love it when I get all technical?) done on Thursday, and Friday is a Day Of Rest™ for him. So last week (about Wednesday or so) I thought “I know, I’ll get some flowers delivered to her at Grandfathers, as a surprise.” Genius. Off I toddle to Interflora’s website and get it ordered, making sure the delivery date is 8th July.
Last Friday (the 1st) Herself gets a call from Grandfather. “Why have I been sent flowers?”. The useless tossers had sent it a week early – quite an impressive mistake.
In fairness, when I got hold of Inter-fuckin’-flora’s customer services, they were deeply apologetic, and have ensured that a) Grandfather can keep the first lot, and b) another lot will be delivered this Friday, when I wanted them delivered. Of course, it’s no longer a surprise, which pisses me off, but at least they’ve come through and done the right/ decent/ sane thing, which isn’t always the case in the world of retail.
However, it does also mean I’m going to cop a lifetime of piss-taking from Grandfather. Maybe I should’ve asked them for compensation after all…
Blueberries
Posted: Sat 2 July, 2005 Filed under: Customer Services, Health 5 Comments »I just drank an Innocent® Blackberry and Blueberry smoothie, and couldn’t resist copying the text that was on it. Sheer genius…
We don’t know who invented blueberries. Probably Thomas Edison, or Benjamin Franklin. Anyway, whoever did it, we thank you, mainly because blueberries seem to do a multitude of things very well. They look good on your cornflakes, they taste amazing, and they contain more antioxidant power than brocolli, spinach, or garlic. Over the years we’ve found that they taste slightly more agreeable when blended into a smoothie than garlic or any of those other things. If you disagree, please email your concerns to iwantmysmoothietostink@innocentdrinks.co.uk.
How ace is that? Particularly the email address…
Froggin’ Expensive
Posted: Tue 28 June, 2005 Filed under: Customer Services, Weirdness 3 Comments »Well, colour me shocked. There’s a story on the BBC News today about how signing up to the Crazy Bastard Frog (CBF) ringtone costs people a lot more than they expect. Basically, if you signed up to get the CBF, you’ve then signed up to Jamster‘s shite from now ’til the end of eternity. (and yes, pedants, I know that technically eternity never ends, but bollocks, I’m using the expression anyway) Or, in fairness, ’til you get enough IQ points to text “STOP” to whatever number it is. (if memory serves, I think that’s the code – see, I do pay attention to the adverts)
The whining twat on the BBC says this:
I did not spot the impossibly small print whizzing by on the bottom of the screen while a larger-than-a life Crazy Frog gyrated to his latest tones.If I had, it would apparently have informed me that by ordering the ringtone I had also signed up to a subscription.
The watchdog’s 2004 code says pricing information must be spoken on television adverts if maximum call costs can exceed £2. The code also states that “textual pricing information must be easily legible, prominent… presented in a way that does not require close examination”.
©BBC News 2005
She then goes on to say “I couldn’t find anything about this on the Jamster site”. Well, madam, then you’re obviously as thick as pigshite. If you click on the “Terms and Conditions” link on any Jamster Page (yes, I’ve just looked at the site for the first time ever you get to see this :
To unsubscribe by text message, text “STOP” to 88888, call 0870 121 3186 or go to “My Clubs” under “My Jamster!” on www.jamster.co.uk or send an email to info@jamster.co.uk. The termination shall become effective immediately upon receipt of termination request.
© Jamster 2005
Rocket science this isn’t.
So far as I can see, the entire Jamster ringtones thing is just like an idiot tax anyway – if you don’t read the text at the bottom (and I have – it’s not difficult so long as you don’t need to read aloud, or follow the words with your fucking finger) and just subscribe then a) you’re an idiot, and b) you’re fair game to get ripped off. This whine masquerading as news just goes to illustrate the point.
B&Q
Posted: Wed 22 June, 2005 Filed under: B&Q, Customer Services, General 32 Comments »No, not another set of events with that bunch of cunts, but having just looked through my referrers, and checked back, I’m pleased to confirm that I’m now in the top 10 on Google for the search “B&Q customer services“.
Told you I’d manage it…
Taking the Piss
Posted: Tue 21 June, 2005 Filed under: Customer Services, Thoughts, Travel 3 Comments »Just as an aside, this is the post I was writing, and lost earlier. A re-write, not a recovery
Do you ever wonder whether certain other people are actually on the same level of sanity as yourself? Today’s story about the potential for a “congestion charge” for rush-hour rail travel created this kind of doubt in my mind.
The real questioning came about when it was revealed that it was that Association of Train Operating Companies (ATOC) who were banging on about this. They’re obviously not aware that “peak” travel is already a shitload more expensive than travelling later in the day. And that’s the policy of every train company. If I were to decide to work in London, and had to commute from Bracknell to be in London before 9am, a daily Travelcard would cost me £22.60. If I can go in later, leaving Bracknell after 9.30am, that Travelcard will only cost me £13.30.
So the “rush-hour” congestion charge already exists. It’s just the train companies working to screw even more money out of people – and mainly out of business people and workers, who are the ones they’re forever saying are the “bread and butter” of the trainlines, which is why maintenance work is done on bank holidays and weekends, so that these super-important “bread and butter” passengers aren’t inconvenienced. Great, they’re just ripped off more and more each year.
The final insult came in the quote (and I’m going to paraphrase it a bit)
In the next 10 years the objective will be to run as many trains as we sensibly can, and as long trains as we can, to carry the maximum capacity.
…
The strategy document – entitled Looking Forward: Contribution to Railway Strategy – also said scrapping under-used trains and stations could help operators handle growth.
Now, let me get this right. Effectively, what they’re saying is “the trains are going to get busier. Therefore, what we’ll do is reduce the number of trains and stations, so that all these extra people will be crammed on the over-used trains at a smaller number of stations. Hey, what’s convenience, when we can ram ’em in like sardines?”
Useful
Posted: Mon 6 June, 2005 Filed under: Customer Services, Sweary, Travel Leave a comment »Out of interest, what the blue blazing fuck kind of use is a bank that opens on Saturdays, but doesn’t have its foreign currency desk do the same? Because of course a Saturday isn’t going to be when most people go and use a bank for that kind of thing, is it?
Yes, Nat-West Bank I’m referring (in this case) to you, you heap of incompetent unhelpful supercilious fuckmonkey cunts.
So instead we used the Post Office. Much easier. And at least they’ve (on this occasion) got some kind of idea when it comes to things like customer service.
Britannia
Posted: Tue 12 April, 2005 Filed under: Customer Services, Thoughts 10 Comments »Ah, joy. About eighteen months ago I had to deal with a debt collection agency who were operating on behalf of Britannia.
Today, I got a snotty letter (to my old address, but we’ll gloss over that) from a different company. This time it’s some shower with the imaginative company name “Debt Managers Ltd.” Having checked with Companies House at least this time they’re a valid company, which makes a change.
Anyway, this letter said that I still owe Shitannia money from nearly three years ago. Yes, the self-same account I disputed a year ago with the Robinson Way agency, who then referred it back to Britannia. And it’s taken them a year of doing fuck all before referring it to another debt agency. No contact at all in the meantime. Tossers.
So, a call to Debt Managers ensues.
I’d like to find out why I’ve got this letter from yourselves regarding a debt from Britannia.
We can’t help, we just collect the debt.
Well, can you request that Britannia send me a statement explaining what I owe, in accordance with the Credit Act’s provisions.
No, we can’t. We don’t sort out disputes, we just collect the money.
Can you give me a number for Britannia so I can do it?
No.
Well, I’d just like to say that’s the worst bit of customer service I’ve seen in a long time.
We’re not trained to do customer service. You’re not a customer, you’re a debtor.
Finally I ended up speaking to a supervisor, and after another ten minutes she’s agreed to send it back to Britannia “as the account is obviously in dispute” and of course they don’t deal with disputes, merely debts. They can’t confirm this in writing to me “as it’s not a standard letter”. And apparently typing is beyond them too.
So – back to Britannia, and a shitty letter will be written to them in the meantime.
As for Debt Managers Ltd.? (company number SC219618) Well, all I can say is that they’re one of the rudest, most unhelpful companies it’s ever been my misfortune to deal with. With luck I’ll never have to hear from the useless tossers again.
Easter Chocolate
Posted: Wed 30 March, 2005 Filed under: Customer Services, Reviews(ish) 3 Comments »I’m not greatly into chocolate at the best of times, it has to be said. However, if you’re after something spectacularly good and chocolatey, you can’t do much better than Hotel Chocolat.
We both had one egg from them this year, and they’re utterly fantastic. Seriously thick chocolate for the egg itself, and filled with chocolates inside. Not just one or two in a bag, but both halves filled properly. Yes, they’re more expensive than the standard Smarties egg or whatever, but damn, they’re worth it.
Having made several orders now with Hotel Chocolat, I’d wholeheartedly recommend them to anyone who’s into chocolate.
Twunting about
Posted: Wed 30 March, 2005 Filed under: Customer Services, Geeky 4 Comments »You know, sometimes my bank just makes me despair. WAY back at the start of the year, their online banking system started coming up with a little news item about how they’d be opening the system to more browsers (this being the system that, until recently, still recommended you use IE 5 or Netscape 4.7, as it was a browser that’d been tested, and wouldn’t run on the more up to date, more secure Netscape 6/7 or IE 6) and making it all more accessible.
The dateline on that was February 28th of this year.
The news item is still there, only now it says :
Digital Banking
We’ll be making some improvements to our Digital Banking service in the near future. The service will be easier to use and more accessible for customers with disabilities
More information on these changes will be available soon.
So – a month late, and still waiting. Useless tossers.
Shocking
Posted: Tue 29 March, 2005 Filed under: Customer Services, Weirdness Leave a comment »Bloody hell, this is unnatural. Having ordered my upgrade phone last Thursday it arrived this morning.
OK, so O2 didn’t manage to send out the confirmation email that I’d requested, but there we go, that’s nothing unusual. When I chased it up over the weekend to make sure the order was actually in and being processed, I got replies very quickly – and even with the correct information in them!
So all in all, despite other hassles with O2 over the years, this time I have to say that they’ve done well – although I still find it quite demoralising that I get impressed with a company simply for doing what it says it will. Not for exceeding expectations, just for doing what it says.
Tempting Fate
Posted: Thu 24 March, 2005 Filed under: Customer Services, General 1 Comment »Following on from yesterday’s Customer Services farce(s) – and let’s face it, Sky are renowned for putting the arse in farce – I’ve really gone and done it now.
In a bid for “three-for-three” purity of failure, I’ve only gone and upgraded my phone with O2 from the Nokia I currently use to a Sony Ericsson K700i. Supposedly I may get the phone during the next week. Mind you, they also said they’d confirm this through email, and as yet they haven’t. So I’m not optimistic.
More pleasingly, considering the last time I had to deal with O2’s upgrade “service”, it’s costing me sod-all.
I must admit that when it comes to mobile phones I’m back to being a bit of a dinosaur. In 2004 I had a 3G phone for a while and won’t touch another one ’til the entire concept has been sorted out. Which, apparently, is still going to take some time. I don’t need video calling, I don’t particularly care about having a 1.3Mp camera (in my experience camera phones are still fairly bobbins, and as I always carry around my 6Mp camera anyway, I don’t need another one), and I don’t really need to sync the phone to the PC all the time. In short, I want a phone that makes and takes calls/messages, has a silent alert and/or a decent unobtrusive ring tone, has a decent battery life, has a GPRS (or better) connection so I can do basic webstuff, and doesn’t piss me off. As for other stuff, it all falls into the “OK, I might use it” – calculator, clock, email (sometimes handy, in my experience, particularly when running late for work or whatever), and an alarm function for reminders. But I wouldn’t miss any of those if they weren’t there.
So yeah, an SE K700i. It’s going to be interesting, swapping over to yet another phone maker. Assuming it happens, of course…
Sky’s the Limit
Posted: Wed 23 March, 2005 Filed under: Customer Services, Thoughts 6 Comments »Ah, it’s obviously customer services day today
As most readers know, back at the end of December, I moved down to Berkshire, and went through all the fun of telling everyone. And yes, that included Sky. I wanted to do three things when I called them :
- Change my address details
- Change my package to the lowest/cheapest one
- Inform them I’d be closing my account once the 12 months was up (March ’05)
Not rocket science, is it?
So I called, and lo – all done. “No Problem”, said the lady on the phone.
Change my address detailsChange my package to the lowest/cheapest oneInform them I’d be closing my account once the 12 months was up (March ’05)
I cancelled the direct debit this month – hey, they’ve had three bloody month’s notice – and got a snotty letter (to my old address) on Monday saying “you’ve cancelled. Pay us now.” And so I ring up Sky, and that’s where it all goes to shit.
Oh no, you can’t have given us three months notice. We only work with a months notice. So you can’t have given three. We’ll put you through to cancellations, but it’ll be one month from today.
Eh? I’m going to get charged a month extra, through Sky’s mistake?
Well, we can only work on a month’s notice, so yes, the notice will run from today.
But I gave you three month’s notice
But our system doesn’t say that. So it can’t have happened. Your notice will start from today
- Change my address details
Change my package to the lowest/cheapest one- Inform them I’d be closing my account once the 12 months was up (March ’05)
I go through to cancellations.
Ok, sir, I’ll sort out your cancellation, and as you’re not using your card at the moment, I’ll set the account on the lowest setting.
… *the sound of incredulity, and expletives being deleted pre-interface-with-gob*
- Change my address details
- Change my package to the lowest/cheapest one
- Inform them I’d be closing my account once the 12 months was up (March ’05)
Let’s see how the fuckers do with the process now.
Information
Posted: Wed 23 March, 2005 Filed under: Customer Services, Sweary, Thoughts 2 Comments »A while back I ordered a couple of things for Herself’s birthday next week. (For obvious reasons I’m now not going to name suppliers etc. just yet – but maybe on April 6th I will) One of the places I used was one I’d had a mediocre experience with before, but it was a busy period, so I thought “OK, I’ll see what they’re like this time”.
In fairness, the ordering process wasn’t too nightmarish, although it’s fucking annoying to go through the entire process of finding the stuff, sorting out what’s needed, clicking it into the “basket”, then checking out, signing in to my account, and the bastard basket is suddenly emptied. That’s just bad coding, and meant I had to stay logged in and go through the guff again of finding bits, sorting out quantities, and putting them in the basket. But OK, it’s a minor hassle – more about useability than corporate efficiency.
Once the order’s been confirmed, the little doubts start creeping in. I haven’t had a confirmation email. No mention at all – not a “thanks for your order”, a “you’ve ordered this, and we’ll charge you for it soon”, nothing. Now that’s seriously not good. I’ve given my credit card number, yet you haven’t said it’s been received.
Check under “my account” on the site. And lo, the order’s there, all confirmed and so on. Let the heart-rate come down a bit now.
Today, it’s arrived. No fucking email to say “we’ve dispatched it”, no call, no mention under “my account” that the status of the order has changed at all.
I won’t be using the company again. And I’ll be writing to explain why. I may even refer them to this post…
Tickets
Posted: Tue 15 March, 2005 Filed under: Customer Services 1 Comment »In today’s post I finally received my tickets for the Faithless gig in Alexandra Palace from Ticketmaster. Recorded delivery, but that’s no problem at all.
I’m also still waiting for my ticket to Dead Can Dance at the start of April in London. They’ve been delivered by some shower called Special Mail Services, only no-one was in at the time, so they left a sealed envelope that looks like junk mail (and in fact has to have “This is not a circular” (AKA Junk Mail) emblazoned all over the outside. Unfortunately, this just makes it look more like junk mail…) with instructions on how to get it redelivered.
Second time lucky on this one – they should now be delivering it to the work office on Thursday. Still, at least they’re not as bad as ParcelForce.
Worthwhile cause
Posted: Wed 23 February, 2005 Filed under: Customer Services, News 2 Comments »It seems worth pointing out that Lea & Perrins Worcestershire sauce is NOT the one in the current “Sudan 1” food scare. And the Worcester MP has filed an EDM to say so.
While the anchovy essence in Worcestershire sauce mean it’s not for vegetarians, it still has a whacking 99% share of the market. Not bad going, really.
New category
Posted: Wed 23 February, 2005 Filed under: B&Q, Customer Services 6 Comments »In light of the fact they’re such utter, utter tossers, I’ve elected to give B&Q their own category.
I’m probably going to make up a seperate page on D4D™ for the posts as well. You know, just to make sure that Google and so on notice it too… *grin*
At the time of writing, D4D™ is #30 in Google for “B&Q Customer Services“. That’s only going to go up, if I’ve owt to do with it.
In the meantime, if you’ve come here looking for how to contact B&Q’s Customer Services, they can be reached on 0845 609 6688, or by emailing customerservicesdepartment@b-and-q.co.uk. Their address is listed here.
B&Q – You couldn’t make it up
Posted: Wed 23 February, 2005 Filed under: B&Q, Customer Services, Weirdness 36 Comments »Following yesterday’s successful uplift of the-stuff-we-didn’t-order, I got a call from B&Q’s customer services person this morning. (Yes, I did mean person. I reckon they’ve only got three or four people to deal with the entire country) She was ringing to confirm that the uplift had happened, and told me that the refund on our now-cancelled order would happen once they could confirm that the items had been received back in the warehouse. Supposedly this could take up to two weeks!
“Oh, well I don’t know how often the delivery people return to the warehouse”
Every fucking day or two, I’d hope. Twat.
I also asked if she’d seen the report on BBC’s “Watchdog” last night about the shyster fuckwit twunts. She hadn’t.
“Oh no, I was watching the Sci-Fi channel instead”
Well, thanks for that information, but I really would have to try very hard in order to give a shit. Anyway, this meant she conveniently hadn’t seen that the majority of complaints regarding B&Q were regarding the fact they can’t find their own arses with both hands, a team-building exercise, and a flashlight. Let alone find the correct items in the warehouse, and deliver them to the correct house at the correct time. Rocket Science this ain’t.
The suggestion that perhaps I should write in to Watchdog myself, as they at least seemed to get some results out of B&Q didn’t go down overly well. Nor did the reminder from me when she said “well, we have to make sure that all the items are in good condition” that she had actually said I could leave the worktops out in the front garden ’til they were collected, and that she would authorise me to do so and it wouldn’t affect our refund. (We ignored their directive to leave it out, and kept it all dry in the house instead)
“Oh yes, I did say that didn’t I? I do hope you haven’t done so, the weather’s been awful in that two weeks.”
Hallelujah
Posted: Wed 23 February, 2005 Filed under: B&Q, Customer Services Leave a comment »Well, blow me down. B&Q finally managed to get something right, and removed all the stuff yesterday. Wonders will never cease.
Of course, now we’ve still got to get the refund and compensation etc. out of the tightfisted pisswads, but well, at least we have a utility room that’s not doubling as stock storage for the arsehole tossers at B&Q.
Right Bloody Shower
Posted: Fri 18 February, 2005 Filed under: Customer Services, Thoughts 1 Comment »When I started my bank account with Royal Bank of Scotland I was told that part of the benefits of the account was that you could get a certain amount of legal advice either free, or at a very discounted rate.
Today I’ve tried using that service for the first time, and been told “Oh, sorry, we stopped doing that about nine months ago.” Would’ve been nice to have been informed about the change in services, as per your terms and conditions. “Oh, well, we stopped the motor insurance discount at the same time, and didn’t tell anyone about that, either“.
Hardly a recommendation, or designed to make me want to stay with ’em, is it?
Stylish Apology
Posted: Thu 17 February, 2005 Filed under: B&Q, Customer Services 2 Comments »I don’t normally read spam-mail from Amazon, and I didn’t read the original mail this refers to, but I do like the certain style with which they’ve apologised for the fuck up. It’s paragraph three that wins it for me…
We’re writing to correct a recent e-mail notification that we sent about “Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince (Book 6).”
In our e-mail, we stated that this title would not be immediately available from our suppliers, and that you may want to search for it elsewhere. We would like confirm that this book will be available from our suppliers and will be delivered to UK customers on the day of release (July 16th 2005).
We assure you that howlers have been sent to the muggles responsible for this action and we are investigating the possibility that You-Know-Who may have been involved.
I do like it when people can turn round, admit to a fuck up, and make me smile at the same time. Far better than the B&Q “It’s not our system, you must’ve ordered it incorrectly” methodology that makes me just want to reach for the over-powered cattle-prod.
Reading Arts
Posted: Thu 10 February, 2005 Filed under: Customer Services 9 Comments »In direct juxtaposition to the tossers at B&Q, I’m utterly impressed with the service from Reading Arts’ ticket booking.
On Tuesday I ordered two tickets to see Derren Brown‘s new show at Reading Hexagon. Their website was a bit shonky and wouldn’t accept Switch Maestro cards, so I called up the box-office instead. No problem, and yes, the website’s a bit old, but we’re working on a new version that should be live in a couple of months – no idea why it won’t accept switch, but the new one will. Fair enough – at least the booking staff know there are some problems, and they’ve got the information to hand to keep the customer happy and informed.
The tickets arrived in the post yesterday. Probably 12-18 hours after I’d ordered them. OK, they’d only got to be sent from Reading to Bracknell, but that’s not overly relevant. It was a nice efficient process, and yes, I’m impressed.
B&Q – still going
Posted: Thu 10 February, 2005 Filed under: B&Q, Customer Services, General 2 Comments »And in direct contrast I also got an email last night from B&Q’s customer services saying “Thanks for your comments, we’ve forwarded them on to someone who’ll talk to you soon”. Impressive – only three days between sending the email and receiving a response.
I despair.
B&Q – Finale(ish)
Posted: Wed 9 February, 2005 Filed under: B&Q, Customer Services, Weirdness 5 Comments »I’ve just cancelled the order with B&Q. Now we just have to fight to get the wrongly-delivered stuff removed before we can get a refund on it. The tossers.
Never again will I shop using the online B&Q site. It’s crap. The latest chapter in the epic has involved dealing with a person in their customer services team – one who was apparently offended at the word “effing” (I got told not to swear at her – she hasn’t seen this site, obv.) and who tried to say the entire farce was my/our fault for ordering the wrong items.
Speaking slowly, I explained that we’d used the website, where order numbers weren’t entered by the customer. If the twunting fridgelickers couldn’t get the right numbers into their website, how was that our problem? The offer to re-do the order (“I’ll put in the correct code this time for you” – patronising shitehawk) and still not get it delivered ’til mid-March was, shall we say, received unenthusiastically by myself.
So now we’re back to square one, and need to order 2 x 3m worktops. I wonder what Homebase can do to fuck it all up?
B&Q – the Complaint Letter
Posted: Mon 7 February, 2005 Filed under: B&Q, Customer Services, D4D™ 4 Comments »Following on from the B&Q saga, this email has just been sent to their customer services…
Dear Sir/Madam,
I am emailing you because I am utterly furious about the incompetent way our order has been handled by B&Q. At the end of December we placed an order via your website for 2x3000mm Stardust black worktops and 2x worktop edges. Personally, I wouldn’t have thought that this was a complicated order, but when it comes to B&Q, I’m obviously grossly overestimating their capabilities.
We first received the order at the start of January. This managed to consist of 1x3000mm Worktop – in Blue – and 1x1000mm wall unit carcase, 1x800mm wall unit carcase, and 4x 500mm cherry wood finish doors. In short, epically, spectacularly wrong.
We organised a re-delivery, and for the delivery company to remove the incorrect items. This time they turned up with two worktops. Great. Except they’re Red Marble finish. And we got a metal hanging rack as well.
For a third time we organised a re-delivery, and an uplift of the incorrect stuff. My partner checked it before it came off the lorry, and this time we had 2x 3000mm worktops. In Grey. We didn’t even take the worktops off the delivery truck. As for the items that were delivered incorrectly last time? Your wonderful delivery service hadn’t managed to detail that there was anything to come back, so they didn’t take anything.
To date we’ve now had three deliveries, none of which have been correct. We’re still waiting for the correct worktops, and the worktop edging. We’ve still got two Red Marble worktops we don’t want, and haven’t ordered, as well as a wall carcase we don’t want and didn’t order, and a metal hanging rack we don’t want and didn’t order.
Is it too much to ask that B&Q manage to sort out this delivery immediately? I can’t believe that this is how B&Q normally operate – otherwise you must be losing hundred of thousands of pounds per year delivering unordered items to people.
I would also like to point out that I’ve just risked serious damage to myself by looking at your website and nearly busting a gut laughing at your statement “Supporting our employees, delighting our customers“. “Committed to great service” is also – in our case – an outright lie.
I would like to be given a call today (Monday 7th February) on 07xxx xxxxxx to tell me what B&Q intend to do to rectify this utter farce. So far it has cost my partner and I 8 hours off work to be present for deliveries, and god only knows how much time in phone calls, emails, and trying to fight our way through the most obstructive AVR phone system known to man.
At this precise moment, I intend to never shop with B&Q again, and would heartily advise anyone else thinking of doing so to go to Dodgy Bob’s DIY Warehowse instead of using B&Q’s “services”.
I hope we can bring this matter to a swift and satisfactory conclusion, and I look forward to receiving your call.
Sincerely
Lyle.
B&Q – Tossers
Posted: Fri 4 February, 2005 Filed under: B&Q, Customer Services, Weirdness 3 Comments »This time, the stuff didn’t even come off the lorry. The worktops were light grey with black flecks, instead of the expected black with grey flecks. You have to wonder at the epic degrees of twuntdom necessary to fuck up an order to this level, don’t you?
The worktops from the last ballsed-up delivery are still in the house too – the arsewipe bureaucrat tossnerds hadn’t even managed to tell the delivery company that they were supposed to be collecting anything.
Snotty letters will be getting written this weekend, I suspect. Copies will be placed on d4d™ as and when they’re written, which pay provide some level of amusement out of the entire farce process.
B&Q – The Tale Continues
Posted: Fri 4 February, 2005 Filed under: B&Q, Customer Services, Weirdness 2 Comments »Over the last month, we’ve had endless hassles with B&Q. The initial order was remarkably simple. Two black(ish) three-meter-length worktops, and two laminate worktop ends. You wouldn’t think it was rocket-science, would you?
In the first order, they sent one blue worktop, two kitchen wall-units (1x1000mm and 1x800mm) and four 500mm cherrywood kitchen doors. You’ll note, the doors weren’t even going to match up with the wall units that we received but hadn’t ordered.
In the second one, they managed to deliver two worktops (and take away most of the problem delivery, except for one of the wall units) but also put in a metal vegetable rack, and something that now escapes me. And the worktops were a very nasty reddy-marble finish. Nowhere even in the vicinity of “black”. They were supposed to deliver “in the afternoon“, which translated to 11.30am.
Today is the third attempt. They’re supposed to be delivering in the afternoon, and give Herself 30 minutes notice so that she can get home from work to check the delivery.
So why have they called at 9.45am to say “we’re at the house – where are you?” ? Something makes me think there’s no fucking chance the delivery’s going to be right this time either. I just hope the blood’s been wiped off the street by the time I get home this evening…
Council Tax Twuntdom – The Response
Posted: Tue 1 February, 2005 Filed under: Customer Services, Weirdness 1 Comment »Well, colour me (slightly) impressed. I’ve had a response from the council already. I quote it in it’s entirety… (and without changing the way it was written)
GOOD MORNING
TO CLARIFY THE SITUATION.
YOUR COUNCIL TAX ACCOUNT IS IN CREDIT OF £38.23, I HAVE TODAY REQUESTED THAT A REFUND CHEQUE IS ISSUED TO YOU, THIS YOU WILL RECEIVE IN THE NEXT 10 DAYS
THANK YOU
xxx (Name removed by me – fair’s fair)
So there we go – sorted. Well, questions remain unanswered about why they do the form in such a twunty way in the first place, but at least it’s an answer.
Council Tax Twuntdom
Posted: Tue 1 February, 2005 Filed under: Customer Services, Weirdness 1 Comment »One of the joys of moving is getting to deal with whole new levels of bureaucracy when it comes to Council Tax. (for non-UK readers, ignore this post, and simply read it as “Fuckwit cunts, can’t organise a piss-up in a brewery, rant rant, can’t find their own arses with both hands and a flashlight, seethe, seethe, sweary sweary, tossers” and be done with it) Not only do you have to register with a new council, and see what things they can screw up (council tax seems to be a great initiation and benchmark test into just how shite and disorganised a council truly is) but you have to talk to the old council in the place you’ve moved away from, and try to a) convince them you’ve actually left, b) state repeatedly that you are NOT staying within that council’s borders, and c) try to sort out whether you’ve over or under paid the council tax account, and thus try (in my case) to get a refund out of the tightfisted fucktwunt’s coffers. This is nowhere near as easy as it sounds.
Currently I’m now on my fourth letter to Tameside, and about the eighth e-mail. They’ve refused to believe I’m moving, they’ve then charged me for next year’s council tax, denied they’ve ever received the letter to which I’ve just read the reply, and finally said “Oh yes, you have moved. Silly Us. Why didn’t you register it on the website?” “I did. You lost it.” “Oh.”
Eventually, today, the final bill arrived. It’s a wonder of council workings and weirdness.
Amount due 01-Apr-04 to 28-Jan-05 £621.88 Less Disabled Relief 0.00 Less discount at 25&percent; 01-Apr-04 to 30-Dec-04 -£140.59 Less Transitional Reduction* £0.00 Less Council Tax Benefit £0.00 Less exemption relief** 31-Dec-04 to 28-Jan-05 -£59.52 Total Amount Payable £421.77 Payments made -£460.00 CREDIT -£38.23 * I have no idea what this is **I have no idea about this one either
Now, according to that, I’m owed £38.23 by the council because I’ve overpaid by that much. But they’ve listed it as a credit of negative money – which, in English, translates into “You owe us”. I’ve emailed them to ask which it is, and why the language they use is so convoluted and – frankly – fucking wrong.
I can’t wait for the answer on this one. Can you?
B&Q – Again!
Posted: Wed 26 January, 2005 Filed under: B&Q, Customer Services, Letters Leave a comment »The delivery from B&Q yesterday, as it turned out, wasn’t OK. In the least.
Three items delivered – two 3m length worktops, and a metal storage rack of some sort. Only the worktops were some kind of reddy “marble” finish that’s fucking vile, and is nowhere near the black ones we ordered. And the storage rack is something we hadn’t ordered at all.
They did manage to take away the stuff they’d delivered wrong last time though. Well, they took away three of the four bits. Maybe next time they’ll get it right. But currently I’m not overly optimistic that they could find their arses with both hands and a flashlight, let alone manage to deliver an order correctly.
B&Q – Revisited
Posted: Tue 25 January, 2005 Filed under: B&Q, Customer Services Leave a comment »Well, it’ll come as no shocker whatsoever to know that B&Q have the strangest concept of time known anywhere outside BT.
The delivery (and removal of items wrongly delivered last time) was scheduled for an “afternoon” slot. OK, no worries. But why are they now delivering it at 11.30am? Since when did that become “Afternoon”?
Not Taking The Piss At All
Posted: Sat 22 January, 2005 Filed under: Customer Services Leave a comment »On the other hand, I ordered a couple of spare parts from Fujifilm yesterday for my camera. They arrived today. Now that is what customer service is all about. And “under-promise, over-deliver” – I wonder why more companies can’t follow up on a policy like that?
Taking The Piss – Part 2
Posted: Sat 22 January, 2005 Filed under: Customer Services, Weirdness 1 Comment »Currently my mobile phone is on the O2 network. I’ve been with them for nearly a year, so it’s coming up to the time to upgrade the handset, and all that gubbins. Joy.
I’m looking for an upgrade to the one that I’ve got now, and quite like the Nokia 6600, which according to O2 is free (plus a free bluetooth headset) with a new account. So I call them up to see if I can upgrade my current phone to this one.
Well, I can, but only if I pay £100. Frankly, fuck that. If I move my number over to Vodafone I can get the newer model (the 6630) for £30 and simply port my number over to them. And save myself a nice little £70 into the bargain. I can get the 6600 for absolutely keff-all.
When I explain to the O2 muppet this situation, that I’ll actually just move my contract to another provider, the attitude is “Fine, you’ll have the same problems with upgrading the phone with Vodafone in twelve months time”. Hardly conducive to making me want to stay with O2, is it?
I have to wonder what kind of company seemingly is so happy to lose customers. Their attitude of “We’ll charge you to stay with us” seems utterly bizarre. Maybe I’m just naïve though. *shrug*
Taking the Piss
Posted: Sat 22 January, 2005 Filed under: Customer Services, Weirdness 1 Comment »As I said earlier this week, Nine Inch Nails are doing two concerts in London in March. Allegedly. Tickets went on sale today at 9am. Allegedly.
The website that’s supposed to be selling the tickets has no mention of them. Ticketmaster have no idea what the fuck I’m talking about, when I eventually get through. The Carling Live website (the London Astoria is now owned by Carling, apparently – Jesus God Fucking Christ help us all) doesn’t even list the gig.
In short, buying tickets for this event is currently an absolute no-no, and no-one seems to know what the fuck is going on. I despair.
B&Q revisited
Posted: Fri 14 January, 2005 Filed under: B&Q, Customer Services, Sweary 7 Comments »About two weeks ago, we ordered some items from B&Q’s website – nothing particularly special, two lengths of kitchen worktop and some doors to replace the current ones on the units. Not bank-breaking, about £250 all told.
Because I’m a twunt, it ended up being two orders – one for the doors, one for the worktops. Fair enough, that’s my fault, and I don’t have a problem with them for that part of it.
When all the stuff arrived at B&Q’s branch – all on the same day, I should point out – they decided in their infinite wisdom that the two deliveries should go out via two different carriers. Why, fuck only knows. But that’s how they decided to do it. Ah good – insanity from the start.
The deliveries arrived yesterday and today. The unit doors delivery was done by Parcelforce, and one of the most spectacularly unhelpful and braindead semi-primates known to science. He couldn’t bring both packages to the door, so I had to carry one. The one he carried (bearing in mind it’s wooden doors) was dumped right on the door jamb, and the packaging for the one I was carrying was split. “Not my problem, mate, I just deliver them. If you want to complain you’ll have to call someone. I just deliver ’em.” I think this was a pre-programmed speech, operated by use of the expression “where do I say on your little computer ‘packaging damaged, goods uninspected’?”. But I digress.
The second delivery – supposedly two 3m lengths of worktop, and an end-cap for the worktop – arrived today. Only – well – it’s one worktop. In the wrong colour. It’s also two 1000mm wall units in “cherry”, four cherry-wood doors, and a 400mm door. None of which match. None of which we ordered.
We now have to organise to get all the stuff taken away, and then re-order what we wanted. In short, the entire thing has been about as organised as elephants working in a jelly factory. Fucking farcical. I wonder if Richard Branson is the B in B&Q?
Reaping What They Sowed
Posted: Wed 12 January, 2005 Filed under: Customer Services, Travel 5 Comments »Sometimes life offers up an opportunity that’s just too sweet to miss. Many readers will know how much I hate Virgin Trains and their utterly shite levels of service/ punctuality/ common sense/ etc.
At Virgin Trains, we’re making moves towards a service that delivers
100% customer satisfaction. And with more new trains and faster, more
frequent journeys, we’re getting there.What we really need now is your feedback, to help us get there faster.
In return, we’ll enter you into a draw to win First Class leisure travel
for two on Virgin Trains for a whole year!
I got this email today telling me that they want feedback from customers about the service that Virgin offer. I can’t deny it, I couldn’t resist. So I’ve let them know what I think, and what could be improved.
Harveys
Posted: Wed 5 January, 2005 Filed under: Customer Services 13 Comments »There’s an advert currently on TV for Harveys furniture stores‘ January Sale, and frankly it annoys the tits off me.
The sales pitch is that they’ve “taken half the price off, then an extra ten percent”. Now, I’m no rocket scientist, but from the price examples they give, that’s just a bag of shite. They have one piece of furniture that was £899. It’s now £299. OK, So 899/2 is £450. Less 10% ( £45) we get £405. Not £299.
Not one example actually adds up to what they say. Quite how they’ve got the ad through OFCOM is beyond me. But there we go.
Ikea
Posted: Sun 2 January, 2005 Filed under: Customer Services, Sweary 3 Comments »What is it about Ikea? I’ve been three times now, and each time I reckon that the average IQ for the entire building is about 8. I’m including my own IQ in this average – but it’s not that much of a factor, considering the sheer number of people in the place.
Personally, I think a lot of Ikea’s stuff is bloody good. It’s just that buying it and getting through the store without aid of machetes and landmines is an utter cunt. If their website were any good – fuck it, even if their website were utter shite (Oh look, it is) but included some form of e-commerce (remember that terminology?) then I’d use the bloody thing. Instead it’s a sack of crap, and doesn’t actually even include some of the products they do. Guess what? The stuff we wanted was part of that section. Fuck it, we’re off to Ikea. Oh goody.
The problem with the place is that while the concept is great, the infrastructure is nothing short of fucking shit. The staff are International, to be charitable. Perhaps if you know Esperanto then you’ve a chance of getting sorted without resorting to sign-language and pop-eyes as a communication method. As it is, it’s like a Tower of Babel – multiple languages, and some impressive linguistic abilities. If you speak Swahili, or some obscure dialect from Papua New Guinea then you’re in with a shot of being served at Ikea. Effnic minorities are well served in this.
Unfortunately, Ikea’s concept seems to stick WAY too much in the hands of the general public, and they seem to be more comfortable with being spoon-fed stuff. Even the simple concepts like “getting your items in the car” seems to be beyond most of the motherfuckers. Rather than spreading themselves along the area, and standing back near the wall so people can make their way past, they all cram to the front where the cars are, as if they can book a space like that. No, instead it just blocks the entire fucking place for everyone else.
How more murders don’t happen every day in Ikea, I just don’t know – if I had to visit regularly, or God Forbid, work there, the place would be like a charnel house within minutes.
Getting Sorted
Posted: Wed 29 December, 2004 Filed under: Customer Services Leave a comment »Getting there – sorted out a multitude of address changes and account closures, either for now or for the end of January when I finally give up the house in Manchester.
It’s all happening, slowly but surely. Most unnatural – I’m sure these things are supposed to be more chaotic than this!
Bank Holidays
Posted: Tue 28 December, 2004 Filed under: Customer Services Leave a comment »Of course, the problem at the moment with changing all my address details is that if they can’t be done online, there’s pretty much fuck-all chance of doing them ’til tomorrow when Customer Services departments the country over finally open up again…
Renewal
Posted: Tue 23 November, 2004 Filed under: Customer Services, Thoughts 24 Comments »NOTE :If you’ve come here via Google, click here to go to the Royal Mail Renewal page.. This here is a blog entry about the renewal process, which has managed to get to #1 on Google.
Added 4/7/07
At long last, Royal Mail has started realising how useful the internet can be. My mail redirection was up for renewal, the letter came through about it, and yes, now I can do it online.
Simply go to www.royalmail.com/renewal and quote your reference number and PIN details as listed below.
Simple. Well, not quite. In a simple, yet silly, mistake, the form on the website has swapped the two numbers round, so that where the letter has Reference Number then PIN, the site has PIN then Reference Number. That’s just a niggle though, although personally I’d have thought it would be better to aim for consistency and thus making the process even easier. So you enter the numbers and ta-da, the redirection is renewed.
Except actually, no, it’s not. You then have to go through a registration process – email address, password, blah, blah, and when you complete the registration it takes you to a logged-in homepage, but doesn’t remember what else you were doing, so you have to go back and type in the Reference Number and PIN all over again. Another example of “usable, but not as easy as it should be”.
The rest of the process is a breeze, just credit card number etc. But that still doesn’t come down to “simply enter in the reference and PIN numbers”, does it? I know it’s only small niggles and irritances, but it doesn’t take much work to fix them. In fact even simple usability testing would/should have brought these to the attention of the developers.