Starting Off Badly

Posted: Mon 6 November, 2006 | Author: | Filed under: Customer Services, Cynicism, Five Year Plan (now Ten), Getting Organised, Thoughts | Leave a comment »

Having signed up about ten days ago for that Open University course, I was expecting to get a bundle of paperwork, course information etc. last week. But it didn’t arrive. Hmm, that sounds familiar from last time I signed up with them.

Anyway, having given it a clear two weeks ’til today to allow them time to be inefficient, I gave them a call today. Turns out, despite having paid, and the money having left my account, they’d still got my account listed as “on hold” , rather than “registered”.

I’ve sorted it now, and the paperwork should be on its way. But really, it’s not an auspicious start to the course, is it?

Heavy Debt Levels

Posted: Fri 3 November, 2006 | Author: | Filed under: Cynicism | 1 Comment »

I was watching a thing on Channel 4 the other night about people in debt, and I must admit that I really don’t understand how (as in the case of this one programme) someone can end up with debts of £65,000 over the span of six years. I just don’t get that mindset of “I want [xxx], but I can’t afford it, so I’ll just get it on credit”.

Personally, I also fail to understand how someone can run up debts like that, and even keep it secret from their partner. I just couldn’t handle that much stress or deceit, to be honest.

Chaotic

Posted: Wed 1 November, 2006 | Author: | Filed under: Cynicism, Weirdness, Work-related | 4 Comments »

In some ways you just have to love my ex-employer, if only for their crapness.

It’s now a solid month since I left – and I have to say that so far, even with the joys of travelling etc., it’s been a bloody good month. But this morning, just for the hell of it, I tried to log in to the servers at my ex-employer.

You see, I had this nagging feeling that – despite all the company’s protestations that they knew what they were doing, and were a professional organisation – my account, username, password etc. would still be active. They’d promised to delete my account – and let’s be honest, it’s a pretty standard procedure, that if someone leaves a company, their username/password is changed or deleted so they can’t get on to the system and do anything nasty. The same thing applies to giving back your office keys, security pass, or whatever.

But with my ex-employers, nope, I can *still* log in to all the systems, into my work email, and on to all the servers, websites, and databases.

It really is fortunate that I’m not the kind of malevolent nasty person who would delete things, or change data, isn’t it?

Tossers

Posted: Fri 27 October, 2006 | Author: | Filed under: Customer Services, Cynicism, Work-related | Leave a comment »

Regular readers may recall that a good few months ago, I had an interview with a certain mobile telecoms company. At the time it went really well, and would’ve been great to change jobs and do a year with them – working within a huge corporation is something my CV currently lacks, as the last one I worked for was back in 2002 or so.

Anyway, following the interview, the feedback was really positive, and they said to the agency I’d applied through that they wanted to offer me a job. And then it all went quiet. Calls weren’t returned, nothing got confirmed, and indeed the telecoms company failed to communicate with either myself or the agency at all. So I ended up looking around again, and at the same time the decision was made for us to move towards Norfolk.

I got a call today from that agency, asking if I was still available for work. The telecoms company had come back to the agency, wanting me to work for them. And was I available to start next week?

Quite honestly, in the face of an attitude like that, even if I were available, I wouldn’t want to work for a company that was so blatantly disinterested in people, and so contemptuous of anything except themselves. Just unbelievable.

Travelodge and Watchdog

Posted: Wed 25 October, 2006 | Author: | Filed under: Customer Services, Cynicism, General, Travel | 1 Comment »

One thing that interested me last night was to catch BBC’s Watchdog programme, which featured Travelodge being shitepots. Nothing new there – but I didn’t know about this particular policy of Travelodge’s.

Turns out that despite offering a “guaranteed” room when you book with them, they have a policy of overbooking, so you could easily find yourself still without a room. They call this a “last man standing” policy – although it might as well be called a “last man sleeps in his car” policy. Of course, they can then say they’ve got a room at another Travelodge, but if you head off there (assuming that you can, have a car, and all that jazz) and someone else gets there before you, you can still not have a room.

And even better, because you can’t get a room at the original place, you don’t check in. Which means that the devious scumbags then get to charge you a full room rate for not turning up!

Now that is briliant. In a sleazy scumbag way, of course, but it’s still brilliant.

Recorded Delivery

Posted: Tue 24 October, 2006 | Author: | Filed under: Customer Services, Cynicism, Thoughts | Leave a comment »

Ten days ago, I sent a letter to the scumbag bandits at Holmes Place via Royal Mail‘s “Signed For” service. (“Signed For” being the dumbed-down name for “Recorded Delivery”) Basically, I wanted to know that Holmes Place had received the letter and cheque – not an unreasonable concept, really – and I wanted to be able to check online when it’d been received. And Royal Mail emphasise that you can use their “Track and Trace” online system to check that an item has been delivered.

Only, well, you can’t. It’s been ten days now, and still all I see when I key in the Track and Trace number is

Come back later
Recorded Signed For™ items are only tracked after the item has been delivered. Depending on whether the item was sent first or second class, this may be a few days after posting. Please try again later.

Information on your item is not yet available online.

So frankly, what fucking use is that as a service?

‘Tis the Season

Posted: Thu 19 October, 2006 | Author: | Filed under: Cynicism, Festering Season | Leave a comment »

Bah, HumbugThis week I’ve been watching some TV via that USB adaptor (which works fantastically now it’s linked to a proper aerial, instead of the piece o’ crap micro-aerial that it came with) and I’ve noticed something. The adverts.

It seems like a good 80% of the adverts are for either perfumes, toys, or ‘greatest hits’ compilation CDs. (The other 20% is for either Cillit Bang or some kind of crappy room-fragrance candles)

Anyone would think it’s coming up to Christmas…

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