Ferndale Lodge
Posted: Tue 8 April, 2008 Filed under: Charm School, Customer Services, Cynicism Leave a comment »Just under a month ago, I ordered a couple of things from Ferndale Lodge for Herself’s birthday, which should’ve arrived in plenty of time.
Except, of course, one thing didn’t. One delivery came nice and quickly, all sorted – and on the delivery note it said that the other item had been “despatched seperately”. OK, still two weeks before Herself’s birthday, so it should still get here.
Except, of course, it didn’t. Two weeks passed, and nothing arrived.
I emailed Ferndale Lodge on Friday, expecting some kind of response so I could know what was going on. Nothing.
Having given them a fair crack of the whip at answering, I called them today and (eventually) got through. Turns out they were out of stock of this particular item, and just couldn’t be arsed to tell their customers. Their systems don’t integrate with the website, so if it’s out of stock, you can still order it, and they’ll just send it out when they get more stock.
Now it’s fair enough to put things on back-order, I don’t mind that. But all the same, it would also still be nice if Ferndale Lodge at least considered letting their customers know that, rather than just annoying them by ignoring the problem and hoping it’ll go away.
Supposedly, everything will now be delivered by the weekend.
I’m not going to hold my breath.
Not Yet
Posted: Tue 25 March, 2008 Filed under: Customer Services, Domestic, Geeky 1 Comment »Well, having done some major fucking about this evening (And Yes, that is the technical term) we can now send emails from home again.
In the end I’ve set up an SMTP server on one of my hosted sites, and we’re using that rather than screwing around with BT. So we can send email – in addition to the absolute fuck-up BT have made with blocking the emails themselves (and not telling anyone about it) they’ve also changed their perspective on using an external SMTP server. (Up ’til the 12th, I had to send all email via BT’s own mail server – now they’ve fucked about with everything, I can send mail with an external mail server – and of course they didn’t tell anyone that either!)
So for now I’m not going to swap suppliers just yet – probably. The contract is up in June (The anniversary of when we moved in – although they initially told me it was a three-month contract and then I could leave any time, so I detect the possibility/probability of another call to their customer ‘services’ – and of course they’ve broken the contract anyway, with their failure to sort out emails at all) so we’ll be moving supplier in June without a doubt.
At least this way I get to do some more research on which supplier is the best one to replace the smeghead shyster twatbags at BT.
Changing Broadband
Posted: Tue 25 March, 2008 Filed under: Customer Services, Domestic, Geeky 9 Comments »Since March 12th, I haven’t been able to send email from home. BT Broadband have an issue with SMTP servers, and still can’t actually tell me when it’s going to be fixed. (Supposedly it ‘might’ be in the next 24-48 hours, but they can’t guarantee it, and can’t really say what the problem is either.)
So I’m going to be looking at changing my broadband provider. Currently we’re considering either Tiscali or Sky (as we use them for TV service anyway) as the best options for the area. Of course, first I need to get an MAC code from BT Broadband so I can move easily, and tell them where to shove their ‘service’.
Mind you, it does mean it’s likely to cost me less, which is a bonus.
Dental Plans
Posted: Sat 15 March, 2008 Filed under: Customer Services, Cynicism, Getting Organised, Health Leave a comment »Once we come back from our week away, there are a couple of things I need to get sorted. Nothing urgent, but still, needs to be done I think.
First among those is a visit to the dentist. It’s been a fair while since I last went (Probably coming up for two years ago now, if not three – UPDATED : Ah, a quick check tells me it was May 2005.) so I know that the odds are I’ll need some work doing again.
Which makes me think that it’s probably worth organising getting some dental insurance first, so I’m not massively out of pocket when it comes to getting the work done. I wonder what the insurers think if you buy the insurance, then a couple of months later get a load of work done…
MOT – All Passed
Posted: Fri 7 March, 2008 Filed under: Customer Services, Driving, Travel Leave a comment »So yes, the car passed it’s MOT with flying colours – it didn’t need a thing doing to it.
Needless to say, after a year of being thrashed around motorways and dual carriageways, covering about 20,000 miles, and with the prospect of a long drive up to the Lake District in a weeks time, I’m really rather pleased about that.
I know I’ll need some new tyres for it before long, but for now at least they’ve passed the MOT, so *shrug*. We’ll see. Still, now I know it’s not an urgent requirement (bearing in mind that long drive in a week’s time) which is another relief – I wasn’t sure quite when I was going to get time to do it…
Waiting
Posted: Wed 27 February, 2008 Filed under: Customer Services, Cynicism, Domestic, Getting Organised, House Work Leave a comment »One of the things most guaranteed to drive me crackers (other than the animals in the house, obviously) is when people say they’ll arrive at a certain time, and then not doing so. Particularly when we’re bloody well paying them to be here.
The current plumber is a case in point.
While the work he does is actually bloody good, saying “I’ll be there by 9am” and still not being here (currently) an hour later really fucking annoys me. And fair enough, he’ll probably stay later than 5pm too, but still – I’ve got stuff that I need to go out and do today, and if I’d know he wasn’t going to be here ’til 10am, I’d have gone and done that before he got here.
I suppose I should know all this by now – it was the same last week as well – but all the same, it’s bloody annoying, to say the least.