Parasol and P60s

Posted: Fri 2 May, 2008 | Author: | Filed under: Customer Services, Cynicism, Work-related | Leave a comment »

Regular readers may remember that last year I had issues with my P60 disappearing when it was sent out by the incomparable twunts at Parasol, the umbrella company I’ve been using. (And thank God that period is coming to a close)

It’s P60 time again, and at least this year I’ve received it. Which is more miraculous than one would suppose, considering it was posted to:

Lyle
[My House_Name]
[The Street_Name]
[Postcode]

(Obviously I’m not going to give out the address details on here, but you get the idea)

Yep, no town, no county, nothing. Just house name, street name, and postcode. Luckily, that’s all the address data that is really needed – but it’s hardly the best way of getting essential (and non-repeatable) documents to a person, is it? And particularly when I’d gone through all the hoops for making sure my address data was accurate on Parasol’s records. As insisted upon by bloody Parasol!

I called them up to find out why.

“Oh, well, we’ve found out that actually payroll use a different system for the addresses to what’s on our own records, so there have been some problems with people who’ve changed their details. The IT department are looking into it.”
But I reported this problem last year, when Parasol screwed up sending out my P60.
“Well it’s been reported by a lot of people this year now, so we’re looking into it.”

The day I leave them just can’t come soon enough. (9th May, I’m looking at you here)

Spell Cheque

Posted: Fri 2 May, 2008 | Author: | Filed under: Customer Services, Cynicism, Thoughts | 1 Comment »

I’ve just had an email from an agency (that will remain nameless) describing…

This highly sort-after role

Of course, you know what they mean is sought-after , but that’s the joy of spell-checkers.

Maybe when someone writes a spell-checker that can work semantically from the words around it, and understands phonemes and the like, we might get somewhere closer. Thing is, that’d involve lots of AI, fuzzy logic, and nightmarish rule structures.

Or just, you know, education.

Offensive

Posted: Wed 30 April, 2008 | Author: | Filed under: Customer Services, Cynicism, Thoughts | Leave a comment »

The BBC has a piece today about 2007’s most offensive adverts (in this case ‘most offensive’ equals ‘most complaints to the Advertising Standards Authority’).

What I find interesting is that out of the ten cases, in only three and a half (one ad had ‘some complaints upheld’) cases did the complaints actually come to anything. Which is only something like a 37.5% of complaints are upheld.

Mind you, I didn’t think most of the adverts were offensive, so I can understand that, too.

Ah well.

Recruitment

Posted: Tue 29 April, 2008 | Author: | Filed under: Customer Services, Own Business, Work-related | 2 Comments »

Hello, is that Lyle?
Yes.
Hi, It’s [x] from [y] Recruitment. I’ve got this position that I thought you might like, it’s a six month contract that needs a lot of knowledge about PHP development in a LAMP environment, paying around £35 per hour. Would you be interested?
Yes.
OK, I’ll send you forward for it.
OK, no worries.
By the way, is Glasgow an OK location for you?
Um, no, not really. I’m based in Norfolk. It could be done, but it would be difficult…

You’d think that by now agencies would know enough to at least look at locations (and/or discuss them) first, wouldn’t you.

*sigh*

Braille

Posted: Fri 25 April, 2008 | Author: | Filed under: Customer Services, Weirdness | 1 Comment »

The other day, I was in a local Sainsbury’s and noticed that the door to the toilets had braille for the toilet signs as well as the normal signography. (I know that’s not the right word, but I just can’t think of what the right word is)

However, the signs were screen-printed onto the door, and thus the braille wasn’t actually raised off the surface of the door at all.

Seen the problem yet? Yeah, me too.

When I pointed it out to the store manager (Yes, I asked to see him) his reaction was

“Oh, well no-one else has complained…”

Water Shortage

Posted: Tue 22 April, 2008 | Author: | Filed under: Customer Services, Cynicism, Domestic, Health | 7 Comments »

Since last Thursday, we’ve been unable to use our mains water.

About a year ago (apparently) one of the people on our road had an oil delivery, and some amount of oil spilled/leaked into the ground. Since then, Anglian Water have occasionally been testing the water supply there, and the diesel has now leaked into the pipes. (Apparently, in a fit of genius, the blue plastic pipes used for the supply of clean mains water are permeable to diesel oil. Which fucking Mensa member came up with that one, particularly for an area where every house has oil central heating?) Therefore, it’s now contaminated for everyone on our road – which admittedly only runs to about eight houses. We can use it for washing and so on, but we can’t use it for drinking, cooking, giving to animals, etc. etc. In short, it’s unfit for consumption.

So since Thursday, Anglian Water have been keeping on checking the contamination levels, and supplying all the houses on our road with bottled water.

Yesterday (Monday) they confirmed that the entire of the water main for our road is going to need to be replaced, which might happen next week. And even then we can’t go back to using the mains water until it’s been repeatedly tested. And I bet they replace the pipe with another blue-plastic one that the diesel oil will eventually seep into as well.

So with luck, we’ll be back on mains water in a couple of weeks time. And until then, Anglian Water will keep on supplying us with bottled water.

Surely it would’ve made far more sense (financially, practically, and from the perspective of customer services) to replace the pipe with a non-permeable version a year ago when the leak/spillage originally occurred, spend a day or two doing it, and have no further issues, rather than the farce of sending someone out to check it every so often for a year, then have to supply eight houses with bottled water for a fortnight while they finally get round to repairing/replacing it?

AutoGlass

Posted: Tue 15 April, 2008 | Author: | Filed under: Customer Services, Domestic, Driving | Leave a comment »

A couple of weeks ago, the windscreen on Herself’s car developed a fairly serious crack. Not in the field of view, thankfully – but still serious enough that she could hear it continuing to crack as she drove. So out came the insurance, and out came AutoGlass to replace the entire screen.

Only when they did it, the replacement screen had a poxy great scratch acrosss the field of view. So it needed another replacement.

That’s been done today. I’ve driven Herself’s car to my workplace, and Autoglass have come here to fix it, under warranty, and thus at no extra charge.

It’s all done – they came an hour ago, and it’s all sorted. And much as the first replacement was a bit of a bodge, I can’t help but be slightly impressed at how smoothly the entire thing’s gone – it could’ve been so much worse.

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