Un-Fucking-Believable (Part 2)

Posted: Thu 27 August, 2009 | Author: | Filed under: Customer Services, Cynicism, National Express East Anglia, Travel, Work-related | Leave a comment »

Following on from yesterday’s mini-rant about National Express East Anglia‘s huge price-rise coming in on the 5th/6th Sept, I’ve kept on looking for more information.

Unsurprisingly, National Express East Anglia’s website doesn’t really mention fares at all (although there’s plenty of references to penalty fares) and the upcoming fare-rise doesn’t appear to feature in their news section either.  They still talk about off-peak fares, but it’s nigh-on impossible to get one. I’ve gone through ’til November using The Train Line’s website, and any time you ask about off-peak tickets you just get a “Not Available” (if you can even find the access to the off-peak tickets.

As the National Express East Anglia website itself says in the terms and conditions for off-peak tickets,

In most cases off peak day tickets are not available for travel on trains arriving in London before 1000 or departing from London before 0930. Travel is also not permitted on services departing from London between 1629 and 1834 Monday to Friday, except for travel to stations between Hatfield Peverel and Braintree inclusive on the 1636 departure from London.

None of the trains I’m using fall into these categories – I get in to London at around 1015 on the Monday , and was leaving at 1615  on the Friday – but still, the off-peak tickets appear to be completely unavailable after 6th September.

And for the pedantic and picky among you, yes, there is a cheaper off-peak ticket via Norwich – but that journey takes at least an hour longer, takes me to a less-useful London station, and is one of the more renownedly unreliable lines in the country…

Un-Fucking-Believable

Posted: Wed 26 August, 2009 | Author: | Filed under: 1BEM, Customer Services, National Express East Anglia, Travel, Work-related | 7 Comments »

In the spirit of being organised, I’ve just been booking accommodation and train tickets for the rest of the contract, which takes me through to the end of September.

I’d already booked stuff for next week, and that was all sorted.

However, it looks like 5th September is National Price-Rise Day – and in the case of the train tickets in particular, it’s abso-fucking-lutely extortionate.

This week and next, the return ticket from Attleborough to London (including Tube to get me to the office) is £39.50. Which, in fairness, is pretty good value.

For travelling on the 7th September, that self-same return ticket is – are you ready for this? – £74.

Yes, for reasons known only to themselves, National Express East Anglia think it’s acceptable to pretty much double the price. How the fuck can that be justified?

No Frills

Posted: Wed 26 August, 2009 | Author: | Filed under: Business, Customer Services, Thoughts, Work-related | Leave a comment »

During the new contract, my accommodation in London is courtesy of Travelodge, also known as “The RyanAir of hotels” – well, in my book anyway. They’re definitely “No Frills”, but as a room/bed for the night they’re serviceable.

In this case, they’re also at least £25 cheaper per night – so yes, £100 per week – than their closest competition. And in this contract, where the day-rate is being squeezed so hard it’s almost screaming, that £25 per day/night is a significant difference.

It’s interesting to see over the years (He said, sounding like a right old fart) how the Travelodge rooms and facilities have changed.

Back in October 2006, for example, I had a big rant about Travelodges based on the one in Cambridge which was (and probably still is) a total piss-take. (And yes, if you look around on that month you’ll also see I swore never to stay in one long-term again. Ah well.)  At that time, the Travelodge was charging obscene rates for phone calls and dial-up internet connections.

Now, there’s no phone at all in the rooms. I assume they realised there was no real money any more in having landline phones when ‘everyone’ has a mobile, and ‘all’ laptops have a wireless network capability. There’s wireless internet (in this case through Spectrum Wifi) for a fee which is fucking extortionate if you’re there for one or two nights, but works out pretty well if you know you’re there for a month. (Something like £10 for 24 hours, but £30 for a month).

And of course you still pay for breakfast – although if you book online it’s got something like a 20% discount on that too.

I still think that to some degree Travelodge and the like are extortionate – if you think there’s 150 rooms (give or take) in just this one Travelodge, and people are paying at least £60 per night, that’s a pretty good figure per week. Assuming 75% occupancy, that’s at least £47,000 per week, excluding extras for food, drink and internet access.  But at the same time there’s obviously the demand there, so why not charge for it?

Cutting Down on Waste

Posted: Thu 6 August, 2009 | Author: | Filed under: Customer Services, Domestic, Green, Stupidity, Thoughts | 3 Comments »

In the news today, there’s a piece about a Plymouth dairy that’s encouraging its customers to use “Milk Bags” – recyclable bags of milk, and a reusable ‘jug’ holding the bags.

According to the story,

Dairy spokesman Richard Pryor said customer research showed people wanted inexpensive and convenient ways to reduce the amount of rubbish they put in their dustbins.

“This development is another important step in reducing the environmental burden of the 130,000 tonnes of plastic used in milk packaging every year,” he said.

Obviously, Dairy Crest in Devon are using plastic bottles for delivering milk.

But it occurs to me, surely the single best way of reducing that tonnage of plastic used in milk packaging is to go back to using glass bottles instead of plastic ones?

Our milk gets delivered every other day (Monday, Wednesday, Friday) to the door in glass bottles. At the same time, the driver collects our used (and washed) bottles, and takes them to be reused. No ‘rubbish’ relating to the milk – the foil bottle tops go in the recycling bin.

On the (exceptionally rare) occasions when a bottle breaks, it gets put into the glass box, to go to the local bottle bank next time we’re in that direction. Again, no landfill, no waste – it’ll get recycled into a glass ‘something else’.

So, who is it who does our milk deliveries? Yep, it’s Dairy Crest – the same ones who deliver in plastic in Plymouth.

iPhone Hassles

Posted: Sat 1 August, 2009 | Author: | Filed under: Customer Services, Domestic, iPhone, Reviews(ish) | 1 Comment »

Yesterday, Herself went out and got an Apple iPhone from Carphone Warehouse.

Initially I was fairly impressed with it, there’s some nice interactions and stuff going on.

However, today we (OK, I) updated it to the latest version of the operating system, version 3.0.1. And since then the new iPhone has been a nightmare.

Firstly, Herself always has a lockcode set on the phone, so when you turn it on, you enter a four-digit PIN. Normally, no problem. However, as part of the upgrade to 3.0.1, the iPhone needs to connect back to iTunes, and iTunes can’t do that with a lock code set. Oh, and the iPhone wouldn’t do anything except say “connect me to iTunes”. Nothing else, no way to enter the lock code.

Cue a call to O2 to find out what needs doing, and then one to Apple. Which resulted in…

Factory Reset Number One. Yep, roll it all the way back to how we got it, loss of any settings we’d sorted. Square One.  And an OS upgraded to 3.0.1.

And all was well. Um, except for not having any access to wi-fi settings (as in “Not installed” rather than  “Not available”) or Bluetooth®. Totally greyed out, nothing there at all.

So a few resets, and another call to Apple.

Half an hour later, Factory Reset Number Two – and still no improvement.

So tomorrow we’re off to Carphone Warehouse, armed with an Issue Number from Apple, to get a replacement iPhone.

Let’s hope that one works better.

I’m not slagging off the iPhone per se – however, my experience with it so far has emphatically not been the most positive one. We’ll see how things go with the second one before I write up a valid review of it…

Shoplifters

Posted: Thu 30 July, 2009 | Author: | Filed under: Customer Services, Cynicism, Thoughts | Leave a comment »

As usual, I haven’t quite got round to figuring the logic relating to this sign in our local Sainsbury’s…

How is this related to my safety and security?

How is this related to my safety and security?

I don’t know how prosecuting thieves is for my safety/security.

In fact, I’d suggest that a rather more honest sign would read

For our profits, we always prosecute thieves

Delivery Weirdness

Posted: Tue 28 July, 2009 | Author: | Filed under: Customer Services, Domestic, Getting Organised, Weirdness | Leave a comment »

One of the more major changes (well, the major non-structural changes) when we re-did the kitchen this year was to get a new a gas cooker installed to replace the old electric piece of shit that came with the house.  It was a significant change because we’re not on mains gas here, so it also involves using gas cylinders.

Our first cylinder has finally run out, which means it’s time to get a replacement from Calor. There’s no urgency, due to having two cylinders, but equally it’s better to have the replacement sorted well before we actually need the sodding thing.

As a result, yesterday I called Calor’s local depot in Norwich (from which the cylinders were obtained by the people who installed the cooker) to order the replacement one. Except, based on our postcode, it turns out we don’t deal with the Norwich supplier/depot, but instead we deal with the – um – Bury St Edmunds depot.

According to the people at Calor Direct, getting our gas delivered from Bury St Edmunds is “more efficient”. But having checked on my faithful Route Planner, from the Norwich depot to this house is 19 miles.  From the Bury St Edmunds depot, it’s 36 miles – nearly double the distance.

So how is that more efficient?

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