Postcode Finder
Posted: Mon 12 December, 2005 Filed under: Customer Services, Festering Season 2 Comments »At last – it appears that Royal Mail have finally let their Postcode Finder be used without having to sign up for the service first.
It may be just over the Festering Season – I don’t know – but for the moment it’s sat on their homepage. This is where it should be all the time, and I hope they’re finally learning. Of course, my registered email address of ” fuckoff@youtwats.com” is hardly useful to them, and I’m sure I’m not the only one using such useful email addresses in order to register with business…
Complaining
Posted: Fri 9 December, 2005 Filed under: Customer Services 2 Comments »Sometimes I come across a person who makes me feel like an amateur when it comes to complaining to people and getting stuff done.
This man is a perfect example of that. Respect is due.
Interlink “Express”
Posted: Thu 24 November, 2005 Filed under: Customer Services, Thoughts 1 Comment »Well, not just Interlink, but a large number of delivery companies in general.
In a similar vein to the Parcelforce farce earlier this month, I ordered some stuff from Jessops on-line shop last week. Nothing special, just a soft case for the “old” Fuji S5000 camera, a polarising filter for the new camera, and a couple of spare lens-covers. (I’m forever losing them, somehow, so spares are normally a good idea) I’ve ordered stuff through them before and it’s all come through fine.
This time though, for no good reason that I can find, they used Interlink Express. So on Friday we had a card through the door that basically said “we tried, we’ve taken it back to the depot”. No other information on it at all, and even the tick-boxes on the card for “we’ve taken it back”, “we’ll try again on Monday” or “we’ve left it at a neighbours” weren’t filled in. So – no help at all then. Joy.
It then turns out that the local depot is a) in the arse end of nowhere, and b) is only open 9-5 Monday to Friday. Well, that’s bloody useful. So how’m I supposed to get my stuff if they won’t even be open for me to collect it?
I rang them up, and actually ended up with someone who seemed to know what they were up to. No, we’re not at home for receiving the parcel today. No, we won’t be in during the week at all. Can I get you to leave it with a neighbour? No, I don’t know which one. Oh, I’ve got to give them a card that says they’re authorised to take the package, and only then will your guy give it to them? Fuck that – I don’t know which one will be in or not. Oh, hang on, can you deliver it to my work place? Yeah, no problem. Ok, do that.
It’s worth also bearing in mind that the delivery label when I eventually got the package also says “do not redirect – deliver only to address on label”. Still, at least we’ve got the stuff now. But why do companies insist on using delivery companies that can only handle stuff Monday-Friday? It’s something that constantly annoys me, this seemingly casual attitude towards people/customers, and a lack of understanding that people work for a living, and might not be available at home on Monday-Friday…
By comparison, I ordered a PSP “Giga Pack” from dabs.com / gameplay.co.uk yesterday, and it arrived today in the post. No problem at all, and quick and easy to do. Although Herself has insisted I wait ’til Christmas before I can use it…
Qoop revisited
Posted: Tue 22 November, 2005 Filed under: Customer Services, Geeky, Photography 1 Comment »Having posted some stuff over the weekend about them, I figure it’s pretty impressive that I got a response in the comments yesterday from a representative of Qoop…
D4D et al:
Thanks for checking out QOOP. Right now the only option for the ordering of photos in your books is in the way they were uploaded from Flickr, so that means the way the photos were ordered in your sets, etc. You can, in Flickr, edit the order of your set to be uploaded. We realize this doesn’t provide much flexibility and additional layout options are in the works. We had to start somewhere and we opted for efficiency and convenience first. Both cover and page layouts will have greater design possibilities very soon.
We hope you’ll check us out again!
Hugh
QOOP
Pretty impressive – and, as such, only fair for me to do this and print it up on the front page rather than having to hunt through the comments for it.
Parcelforce
Posted: Wed 9 November, 2005 Filed under: Charm School, Customer Services 1 Comment »When we got back on Monday, there was a card on the doormat (along with about a thousand other things) to say that Parcelforce had tried delivering something to me, we hadn’t been in, so they’d left it at the local post office.
Only it wouldn’t be at the local post office ’til Tuesday. Yes, apparently it takes 24 hours to drop off something just down the road.
So I called up the *ahem* Customer Services people at Parcelforce to try and get it redelivered to the house today – because of course I’m not at home for the rest of the week in the hours that the post office is open. Nor are we there at the weekend when it’s open, so frankly, the delivery’s knackered.
[I’ve cut out lots of the preliminary stuff – it was all just obstructive and a pain in the arse]
“Oh yes, it’s on the delivery truck today”
“OK, so can you get it redelivered to my home address today”
“No, because it’s on the truck already”
“Eh?”
“We can’t contact the driver to tell him to redeliver. He’s tried, you weren’t at home. It’ll be at the post office tomorrow”
“But I won’t be. So you’re telling me that you can’t contact your drivers at all?”
“No, we can’t. They’re not allowed to take mobile phones out in the trucks. [sarky] You see, it’s illegal to answer them while they’re driving”
“Yes, I know that. Obviously the concept of ‘leaving a message’ is beyond your experience.”
I tried getting it delivered to my work address on Tuesday instead – you know, so I can at least receive the sodding thing. But first “we need the postcode” which, frankly, I’ve no idea of. I can give the address, but they also apparently don’t have anything that can find a postcode from the address. Oh, and they charge £5.50 to change the address.
So, it’s waiting at the post office. With luck I might get there at some point in order to collect it. But you can be fucking certain I will never ever use Parcelforce, if that’s the attitude they’ve got. Fuck ’em – there’s better services out there that charge far less.
Canon Can
Posted: Sun 6 November, 2005 Filed under: Customer Services, Photography, Thoughts 1 Comment »Buying the new camera has been an interesting experience in a number of ways. The sheer number of offers related to the purchase has bordered on the ridiculous.
Not content with Jessops offering the lowest price around for the kit I got, if I registered with the Canon Image Gateway (a kind of Flickr-like service for users of Canon cameras) I got a 256Mb Compact Flash memory card free. Not bad – so of course I did it.
Also, if you buy a Canon DSLR before the end of the year, they’re offering a cashback offer of £100 / €150 which obviously brings the price down even further.
Oh yeah, and as well as all that, you also get a booklet with a further £625 of cashback offers on lenses, flashes etc. if you buy them before the end of the year too.
Anyone would think they were trying to give the damn things away!
One step forward, two steps back
Posted: Mon 31 October, 2005 Filed under: Customer Services, Sweary, Thoughts 1 Comment »Recently, my bank‘s online banking section finally took a turn for the better, and made use of a lot of accessibility and usability recommendations. Halle-fucking-lujah, I hear you cry – about time one of ’em did.
Last Friday I upgraded my installation of Firefox up to the latest 1.5 beta release, which in many ways is utterly stonking, and great to use.
Today I went to the online banking and got back the same message I used to get…
The Internet browser you are using is not supported by Digital Banking. Use the link below to see the complete list of browsers we support.
- Microsoft® Internet Explorer version 5 and 6
- Netscapeâ„¢ Navigatorâ„¢ version 7.1 and up
- Mozilla 1.5 and up
- AOL 8.0 and up (AOL subscribers only)
- Firefox 1.0
For fuck’s sake – so it’ll work on 1.0, but not on 1.5? Useless bastards…