Collection Chaos

Posted: Tue 14 April, 2009 | Author: | Filed under: 1BEM, Customer Services, Cynicism, Domestic | 7 Comments »

Ah, you’ve got to love our fuckwitted local authority. When it comes to bank holidays and religous festivals, this year they’ve decided to fuck about with how the rubbish collections are done – only they’ve pretty much forgotten to let their customers (i.e. the residents of the area) know what they’re doing. And they’re not even consistent on what they’re doing.

In the normal world, collections just become later by one day – so if your collection’s on a Monday, it gets collected on a Tuesday, so on and so forth. I can’t recall quite what happened for the Friday collections – I think they just did them on the Saturday instead, so everything was back in sync for the following week. Simple, easy to remember, no messing about.

But now of course, we’re in the world of alternate collections – so the council decides to fuck about with things.

In our case, (a Monday collection) it meant that our normal 6th April collection was supposed to happen two days earlier, on the preceding Saturday 4th April. Only, um, the council forgot to inform people. Oh, they put it in the local press – except that a lot of people don’t get a local paper (we haven’t received the supposedly local free paper since we moved to the village) and don’t bother with the regional EDP. The booklet with all the Bank Holiday timetable revisions came out to us on – um – 6th April.

This Monday’s (recycling) collection was supposed to happen yesterday – but being Easter Monday, they moved that forwards to today. Well, according to the booklet anyway. Only, because so many people didn’t know about last week’s collections being made at least one day earlier than usual, the council only collected from 30% of homes last week.

So they’ve changed things around again – as you can see on Breckland’s revised collection schedule here – and moved the collections two days forward. So our Monday collection now won’t be collected ’til tomorrow.  And how have they let people know about these changes? Um – they haven’t. Supposedly it’s been in the local press – except again, there’s lot of people who don’t bother. It’s not even on the front page of the council’s site – you’ve got to hunt for the bloody thing.

And even better – there’s now a knock-on effect into next week as well. So next Monday’s collection is also delayed, but this time only by one day, so it’ll get collected on Tuesday instead of Monday. Finally, the Friday collection is on a Saturday, and the world returns to normal for the end of the month.

So the supposedly “better” jiggering about that Breckland Council have done with the waste collections for Easter 2009 is actually far more invasive and confusing than the old method.

Ain’t “progress” grand?

Even be

Promotional

Posted: Sat 4 April, 2009 | Author: | Filed under: Advertising, Customer Services, Cynicism, Thoughts | Leave a comment »

Going by the number of promotional emails they’ve sent me this week, I guess MalMaison hotels are crying out for more business.

I’m a bit surprised, to be honest – I’ve been a fan of the Malmaison range of hotels for a number of years now, although (and I guess this proves the point of why they’re doing the promotions) I don’t use them often. Mind you, some of that is due to the fact we don’t do a mass of travelling at the moment, and I’ve been working in Norfolk rather than all over the place.

Then again, if I do work away from home, I’d have a tough job of justifying a MalMaison stay at £140+ per night to the taxman/accountant/auditor, rather than using (for example) a Premier Inn or Travelodge for half that…

So I suppose that yes, they are crying out for the business. But all the same, just this week I’ve received from them :

  • A promotion for spring stays at a discounted rate
  • A promotion for discounted Sunday nights
  • A promotion for discounted Monday nights

So, Malmaison (and their marketing department) – There is such a thing as looking desperate, you know.

Outages

Posted: Fri 3 April, 2009 | Author: | Filed under: Customer Services, Cynicism, Weirdness, Work-related | Leave a comment »

You know, in the six months I’ve been in the current workplace, there hasn’t been one day where the internet connection and/or network have stayed up all day without needing to be re-started by the IT department.

Every bloody sodding day, at some random point, the connections die. Most of the time it’s the proxy server they’re using, so it “just” needs a service restarting.  But not once has anybody said “You know, this is effing ridiculous – let’s look at the logs and see what’s breaking, so we can fix it or upgrade it”

In fact, no-one seems to care at all. It’s just another of those things that always happens, always has happened, and always will happen.

Updating Company Details

Posted: Tue 17 March, 2009 | Author: | Filed under: Customer Services, Own Business, Work-related | Leave a comment »

Following on from the fun last week where my accountant got himself declared bankrupt (fucker) I had to get the registered office for my company moved and re-registered with Companies House as soon as possible.

In light of that, I downloaded the necessary form from their website, printed it out, filled it in, and posted it off.

Checking today, the registered office change has been processed, and is part of their online record for my company.

I have to say, I’m impressed with the efficiency. I’ve said about it before, but Companies House really do tend to be disturbingly efficient – particularly when you realise they’re a branch of Government. It’s most unnatural – yet strangely reassuring.

Dark/Black Blood

Posted: Fri 20 February, 2009 | Author: | Filed under: Customer Services, Cynicism | Leave a comment »

Over the last few years I’ve become a fan of two books by John Meaney, Bone Song and Dark Blood – so I was pretty eager to get what Amazon described as the new book by John Meaney, Black Blood.

I received it yesterday from Amazon, and it turns out that actually Black Blood is the US title for Dark Blood. (Yes, perhaps I should’ve looked on the author’s site – but I didn’t. Mea culpa on that point at least)

I’ve sorted out returning it to Amazon, and they haven’t objected – but all the same, you’d think that there could be some mention of it on the Amazon site, wouldn’t you?

This is the second time I’ve been bitten by this in the last couple of years – the first instance was Richard Morgan’s “Black Man”, which is titled “Thirteen” in the US. Again, no mention of this is made (still) on the Amazon site either.

Personally, I don’t understand the need for re-titling the book, either. I can (kind of) see it for “Black Man”, but that understanding goes out the window when “Dark Blood” is renamed to “Black Blood”.

Kitchen Doors

Posted: Thu 19 February, 2009 | Author: | Filed under: B&Q, Customer Services, Cynicism, Domestic, House Work | 2 Comments »

You’d think we’d have learned after the last farce with B&Q about kitchen doors, but no – Herself found the ones we liked, and ordered them from Ballsup and Quit. And the delivery was due today…

Oh dear, oh lord, oh what a to-do. I don’t know quite how to break it to you, gentle reader – so brace yourself.

B&Q delivered everything. On time. And it all appears to be correct – even the kitchen worktops. My gob has never been so smacked.

It looks like (in fairness to them) B&Q have sorted themselves out in the intervening time, and now everything is bar-coded, and checked in a hand-held terminal before it comes off the truck. If there’s stuff missing, the terminal won’t let them make the delivery.

It makes the delivery a lot slower – they were sodding about on the truck for a good twenty minutes before anything came off it at all – but it means we’ve got everything, and it’s all ready to go.

So fair’s fair. In this case, B&Q has definitely improved, and upped it’s game. Despite myself, I’m impressed.

New Tyre – How Much?

Posted: Tue 27 January, 2009 | Author: | Filed under: Customer Services, Cynicism, Driving | 2 Comments »

Well, much to Gordon‘s amazement, I’m not going to whinge or complain at all about the cost of the new tyre for the car.

When I replaced both front tyres back in May ’08, I paid out an extra £18 for something that ATS call “MasterService“. That (very roughly) 10% extra on my bill at the time of replacing the tyres just saved me £80odd.

You see, the tyre itself (well, from the remnants of it that were still anywhere near the wheel) still had very little wear at all- as you’d expect on a tyre that’s less than 9 months old- so I got the full 100% discount on a new tyre.

To me, that’s £18 well spent…

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