Delivery Details
Posted: Thu 26 July, 2007 Filed under: Customer Services, Cynicism, Domestic, Getting Organised 2 Comments »As I’ve mentioned before this week, a couple of weeks ago we ordered a couple of water-butts from Greenfingers.com. Because they were likely to be delivered while we were both out at work, I also left a note in their “special instructions” part of the order process to say that if we were out, then it was fine to leave them in the garden behind the house. All well and good.
Anyway, I got a call from Greenfingers, telling me they were going to send the butts out the next day. Again, all well and good. After that, though, it all got a little bit surreal.
“Now, sir, you’ve added a note telling us that if no-one’s in, the order can be left at the back of the house”
“Yes, that’s correct”
“Well, can you also write the same thing on a piece of paper, and tape it to your front door? Our couriers need to have permission before they’ll leave anything at a property”
“But I’ve already authorised that to happen, by adding the special delivery comments”
“Ah, but the courier needs authorisation from yourself”
“He’s got it. I’ve given it to you, and thus by proxy to the courier”
“Well all the same, can you leave a note taped to your front door?”
“Let me get this right. You want me to advertise to all and sundry that a) I’m going to be out all day, and that the house is empty, and b) that there’s a good chance there might be some good stuff out the back. Do you want me to leave the door open for the courier as well, just to make sure?”
“Is that a ‘no’, sir?”
Now tell me, what’s the point of passing on a special request like that, if it’s not going to make it to the people who’re doing the delivery? And what’s the point of leaving a notice like that on my door?
As it turned out, the water butts did get delivered, and did get dealt with just fine. Even without a note on the bloody door.
Quality
Posted: Wed 25 July, 2007 Filed under: Customer Services, Domestic Leave a comment »Two weekends ago, we bought some new bedroom furniture. Not cheap – although not hugely expensive, either – but a new king-size bed, bedside tables, and a corner unit to hold a TV. (although that’s not in the bedroom) It all arrived last Tuesday, and I put the bed together (on my own) on the Wednesday. (The other bits were all assembled already, and thus were immune from my tender attentions.)
The bed though, was actually pretty easy to put together. Yes, sure, it had a couple of awkward moments- all to do with the (stupid) positioning of certain bolts that hold the frame together – but then the rest of it all went together smoothly and easily. Even the wooden slats went in without the need for additional screws – they just sit in their pre-assigned notches, and it’s all nice.
Even more importantly, though, it feels solid. That’s a novelty, for things I’ve put together. It doesn’t creak, groan, squeak, or wobble. It’s comfortable, and feels like it’s never going to move.
So it wasn’t the cheapest thing we could’ve bought. But sometimes (as in this case) paying a bit more has paid back dividends on comfort and security. Definitely A Good Thing.
Predicting the Weather
Posted: Sat 21 July, 2007 Filed under: Customer Services, Cynicism, News, Thoughts 1 Comment »While I realise that a lot of the people trapped in floods, or inconvenienced by the stopping of train services etc. aren’t having much fun, I do think it’s pretty impressive the way a number of agencies and organisations have been dealing with the unexpected effects of the weather.
Now OK, pretty much everyone should’ve known that yesterday was going to be exceptionally wet, with (according to a couple of sources) two months worth of rain dolloping down in 24 hours, but the unexpected bit came down to the effects of that rain on unexpected places. Over the last few years we seem to be getting a lot more cases where floods happen in places that’ve never flooded before – or at least have only flooded once every thirty years, or something. Yesterday, who expected that the M5 would be closed because of flooding, for example.
The quote that sums it up for me comes from John Kelly, Oxfordshire’s emergency planner (and what a weird job that must be, always expecting/planning for the worst or most bizarre situations. Hmm, must look at what it involves…)
We’ve ordered 150 sleeping bags from the Army… and some of my staff have gone down to the local Tesco to get things like towels, toothpaste and soap.
“This is part of our plan, this is a thing we plan for, and we make arrangements for, but things always go wrong.
“This is not the first choice of school, because the one we were going to had actually been flooded itself.” (from the BBC story linked above)
Yes, the place that was on the plan to be a safe haven from flooding was – um – flooded.
However, even with (I would expect) most people knowing it was going to piss down all day, how come I saw so many people in Cambridge yesterday dressed in just thin summer clothes, with no jackets, umbrellas etc. ? Did they just think that the prediction wouldn’t happen? Or that it wouldn’t affect them? Weird.
Updating
Posted: Fri 20 July, 2007 Filed under: Charm School, Customer Services, Geeky, Sweary 7 Comments »One thing I do very irregularly is update software. A case in point is iTunes. Or “Fucking iTunes”, as it’s known in this house.
Now fair enough, I get why a program can’t be running while it upgrades itself. That’s fine. It makes sense.
But in the name of all that’s fucking holy, why the blue blazing shit does iTunes need to shut down Fucking Microsoft Outlook while it upgrades?!? I could understand (ish) restarting a web browser. But email? (And yes, before any techie spod gets a hold on this one, I know poxy Outlook uses the IE rendering engine for HTML emails – well , until Outlook’07, anyway – but that’s a rant for another day. Oh yes.)
Even more annoying, if I tell it to “Ignore” the problem with Outlook, it goes back, tries again – and still insists that Outlook gets shut down. Apple has the funniest fucking perspective on the word “Ignore”, doesn’t it?
And then, not content with fucking about with poxy bloody email, once the upgrade is over and done with, it tells me it also needs to restart the entire fucking PC. Why?!?
And when all’s said and done, what sits there in the fucking system tray again? Oh yes, it’s Quicktime. Which I drop from the system tray every bastard time, because it’s a system-hungry piece of shit that doesn’t pissing bastard well need to be running every time I start the PC. If I want a fucking Quicktime movie to play, I’ll wait the extra ten bloody seconds for the fucking thing to start. That’s fine. I don’t care. But stop running in my fucking system tray all the time, you bastard piece of crap.
And then people reckon I should buy an iPod as well. Fucking Apple. I wouldn’t touch their hardware with a syphilitic leper’s dick.
Doh!
Posted: Wed 18 July, 2007 Filed under: Customer Services, Cynicism Leave a comment »I have to say that I do find the story about promoting the Simpsons movie by painting a big Homer next to the Cerne Abbas giant quite amusing.
Then again, I also find the slightly stampy-feet reaction from the local Pagans quite amusing, that “they’re doing a rain-dance, hoping rain will come and wash the ad away”.