Cooking with Lyle Craddock – part 2

Ah, now that’s much more like it. Another steamed sponge, this time with sliced apple on the bottom, and stewed apple (OK, before anyone thinks I’m way too domesticated, I cheated and used a tin of apple pie filling) then a standard sponge mix, with some added cinnamon. 25 minutes in the steamer. A quick prayer to Delia and Fanny, followed by flipping the pud onto a plate.

The finishing touch? Demerara sugar, blowtorched into caramelisation. Yummy.

And on and on it goes

It gets better. The response to the email below is as follows…

Dear Customer

Thank you for contacting Amazon.co.uk.

I hope you’ll understand that we do our best to ensure that all of our customer orders leave our Fulfilment Centre as close as possible to the availability and delivery estimates that are listed on our website.

We are sorry that your shopping experience at Amazon.co.uk has been so disappointing.

Please know that your business is very important to us. We hope that you will allow us another opportunity to prove the quality of our service to you in the future.

Thank you for shopping at Amazon.co.uk.

I bet this won’t be the last thing I write to the incompetent motherfuckers….

OK, this situation is now beyond farcical. Is there any chance of Amazon managing to send a reply to my queries that _isn’t_ a form response?

In response to an email saying “you’ve lost a customer”, the reply says “we hope you’ll give us another chance”. Frankly, if I got any response from a person as opposed to a glib form-letter, I might consider it.

So far this problem has now carried over no less than seven emails. Absolutely none of them have addressed the problem that we are dealing with here – namely that Amazon has utterly failed to deliver the ordered goods at the expected time, and has then utterly failed to manage my problem at all.

When Amazon is capable of either a) sending me a personalised response from a customer service manager, and b) manages the obviosuly impossible task of calling me on 07729 60xxxx to explain why the entire process has gone wrong on this occasion, then I might consider coming back to Amazon.

Until those occurrences, then I will not be shopping through Amazon again, and will in fact go out of my way to direct people to other online stores instead of Amazon.

Congratulations – not only have you lost a regular customer, you’ve also hacked him off enough that he’ll tell all his friends and colleagues not to use them. An impressive achievement, for want of a simple explanation and “sorry”.

Useless bastards

Way back on the 12th December, I ordered two books from Amazon for part of my parent’s christmas presents. Various complaints have ensued, but today’s one was the final straw. First we have Amazon’s reply to my previous email…

Dear Customer

Thank you for contacting Amazon.co.uk with your enquiry about your
order #202-9848300-35xxxxx.

First of all let me apologise for the delay you have experienced in
the dispatch of your order.

Having checked your order, we can now confirm that it was sent from
our Fulfilment Centre in the UK on 30 December via Parcelforce 24
using the following tracking number RR470xxxx.

Here is the delivery address for your order:

xxxx (deleted delivery address, for obvious reasons)

In addition to our large selection of goods, one of the benefits we’d
like to offer our customers is convenience, and I realise that we have
not met that standard in this case. I hope that you will give us
another opportunity to prove the quality of our service to you in the
future.

We do want to make sure you receive your order. Thank you for
shopping at Amazon.co.uk.

Which resulted in this being sent back to them…

Frankly, to receive an email saying “one of the benefits we offer to customers is convenience” is quite insulting in this situation. Damn right Amazon haven’t offered convenience in this instance.

I placed this order on the 12th December – plenty of time for a company that says it will deliver within two days. (as the order said at the time) In fact, we’re now 18 days down the line, and they’ve finally been dispatched. Because of Amazon’s blatant incompetence, I’ve had to field arguments from (understandably) hacked-off parents who’ve thought I didn’t get them anything for Christmas. To receive things a week late is better than never receiving them, but not by much. In this case, apologies don’t matter a toss – with my current feelings about Amazon, I may use them for my convenience, but I’ll never trust them to deliver presents to anyone else again, and nor will I recommend them to anyone else.

The simple fact of the matter is – Amazon didn’t fulfil their part of the agreement. There’s been no explanation of why, and the requested phone call has (as expected) never happened. The level of customer service and complaint investigation is appalling, and I currently wouldn’t recommend Amazon to my worst enemy.

Many congratulations on the almost-certain loss of another customer.

Which seems reasonable.

Wow

Thanks to a small obsession (i.e. regularly, but not every five minutes) looking at my referrers, I’ve discovered that d4d™ has it’s very own Googlewhack. How geeky pleased am I?

Cooking, by Lyle Craddock

One thing I did get for Christmas was a steamer for a different form of cooking. I’m pretty impressed with it too – one thing it’s exceptional for is steamed puddings, sponges and the like. So far, my score on the sponges is one-all – the banana one came out really well, but the chocolate one was slightly shonky, as the chocolate hadn’t melted. We still don’t know why – it was warm enough, but the stuff just didn’t melt. The sponge wasn’t quite perfect, but it was OK – the entire thing was edible, but the chocolate made it look rather more unpalateable than it actually was. Ah well, it just gives me an excuse for keeping on making them ’til I get them right…

Oh, and Pewari, the recipe’s the same as for a normal sponge. (I need to buy scales, so bear with me on this) … According to Tony my haute cuisine advisor on these things, cream together 100g of Butter and 100g Sugar, add in two eggs (one at a time), followed by some vanilla essence, a teaspoon of baking powder, and about 50g of sieved self-raising flour. Line the bottom of the bowl with – for example – some golden syrup, or jam. Then put the sponge mix over the top, and cook in the steamer for 20-25 mins. Flip the bowl onto a plate so that the pudding comes out. Bingo.

Here endeth today’s domestic lesson.

Work

I swear it should be illegal to have to work between Christmas and New Year. There’s nothing going on, and to call this lot a skeleton crew would be a misnomer. Still, I suppose that at least I’m getting paid for doing fuck all. Could be worse… *Grin*

Jodrell Bank

Yesterday was a geeky day out in many ways. The friends I’ve got staying are very into things as esoteric as canal boats and astronomy, so it seemed like a good idea to mix the Anderton Boat Lift at Northwich and then troll a few miles down the road to Jodrell Bank Observatory, particularly while it’s also involved in trying to find Beagle 2.

Anderton Boat Lift was OK – interesting to see but bugger all to do – particularly as the Vistor Centre is closed from 22nd December to 7th January. Handy, when it’s possibly somewhere that sad geeky gits people would want to visit during the Christmas Break.

Jodrell Bank on the other hand was wonderful. A princely sum of £3 (for car-parking) gained us entry to the visitor centre, a 15 minute 3D film of a fictional journey to Mars (fictional, but factual, with plenty of footage of Mars landscapes including Olympus Mons and the Mariner Valley) and also a 40 minute talk on the Beagle Mission to Mars, as well as it’s European Council parent project. Well worth the money, and a truly fun day out, improved only by the wonderful views of the dish itself.