Missing Letters
Posted: Wed 3 February, 2016 Filed under: Customer Services, Cynicism, Domestic, Getting Organised, Stupidity, Thoughts Leave a comment »Way back in early December, I posted a couple of letters, both by Royal Mail Special Delivery – a service that tracks the letter, requires a signature on delivery, and is guaranteed to be delivered the next working day by 1pm.
In my case, one letter arrived, and the other didn’t.
After a week, I raised this with Royal Mail through Twitter, and they were… pretty slack, to be fair. The letter had disappeared into the system, they needed to investigate, blah blah. At no point did the words “sorry” pass their (online) lips.
Another week or so passed, and they came back with “we can’t find it, can’t you check with the recipients whether they’ve received it or not“. Which is taking the piss, as that was the entire reason for sending the sodding thing by Special Delivery in the first place. And still, no sorry.
I ended up having to file a compensation claim with Royal Mail – again, the person who paid for the service has to jump through all the hoops, fill in the forms and so on – and wait even more. Still no “sorry”.
I finally got the response today to that compensation claim. They’ve taken six weeks to acknowledge that this “guaranteed service” isn’t, has failed, and I’ve finally got my money back.
The kicker, in my opinion, is that in that letter they say…
“If you need to cover yourself against this in future, I suggest you send items by Special Delivery “Guaranteed”
So the fucking clowns recommend I use the service that lost this letter in the first place – because it’s better. What the fuck?
All told, the customer-service experience of this process has been abysmal.
- It’s taken nearly two months to get this sorted
- Once we were past that ‘guaranteed delivery’ timeline, it should’ve been an automatic process to say “Yep, we fucked up, here’s your money back”
- If you can’t guarantee delivery, don’t guarantee delivery.
- If you don’t trust your own tracking systems and still require ‘proof’ that the item was posted into the system, you’re doing it wrong
Car Health – Hopefully Sorted
Posted: Wed 27 January, 2016 Filed under: Car Repairs, Domestic, Driving, Getting Organised, Thoughts Leave a comment »Another day, another visit to the garage.
Having been repaired last week during the MOT, the same issue (or at least what appeared to be the same issue) recurred on Friday. Annoying, to say the least.
With everything else that was going on, the car didn’t get to revisit the garage again ’til yesterday (Tuesday) for them to find out what the problem was this time.
It turns out to have been *another* pipe to the turbo inlets that had perished and snapped. So – a similar issue, but not the same one, even though it presented in precisely the same way. (And bizarrely, occurred at precisely the same place)
Thankfully, both issues have been resolved quickly, easily and fairly cheaply. All the same, I’m hoping that there won’t be any more for a while.
In a ‘tempting fate’ moment, I took the hire car back today, and I’ll use the Saab for tomorrow Manchester run. If it fails me on that run, then I think I’ll be starting to look for a new vehicle before very long at all.
Final High-Mileage Weekend
Posted: Sun 24 January, 2016 Filed under: Domestic, Driving, Getting Organised, Gigs, London, M1, Travel Leave a comment »As per previous posts, January has been a busy month, with a fair amount of travelling every weekend. That’s not a complaint – hell, I kind of planned it that way (well, events combined to make it all into busy weekends, but I allowed it to happen, so yeah, that qualifies as planned) but it’s definitely been busy.
This weekend was the last weekend of high mileage for a couple of weeks. (The week itself is another matter, but we’ll gloss over that for now)
Yesterday, I took my dad in to London to see Billy Connolly at the Hammersmith Apollo – and it was a really good day. We got in to Hammersmith really easily (despite a large number of tosspot drivers etc.) and parked, had food, and enjoyed the show. (I’ll write more about the show itself later in the week) Once that was done, got dad back home, and drove home myself. As usual, getting back around 2am. (I don’t know how that’s been so consistent over the month, but it really has)
Today was a far dafter plan, involving a blast up to the outskirts of Manchester and back. Basically, I’m up there on Thursday for a concert that I’m going to with two friends, and it’s been spiking my brain that the tickets are with me, and I don’t want them to miss out on the concert if there’s problems on the M1 for me on Thursday.
So I took the opportunity today to blast up there, drop their tickets off, and come back. It means that whatever happens, everyone’s happy – I’ve got my ticket, they’ve got theirs, and we don’t have to go through hordes of organisational stuff for meeting up, getting everything sorted, and that if anyone’s transport screws up, it doesn’t fuck things up for everyone.
All told, it’s been the best part of 600 miles this weekend.
I must be a complete barmpot…
Car Health – Back On Blocks
Posted: Fri 22 January, 2016 Filed under: Car Repairs, Customer Services, Domestic, Driving, Getting Organised Leave a comment »I spoke too soon – when I took the Saab out this morning, the exact same problem occurred as had been ‘fixed’ yesterday.
Safe to say, I am unamused – and the garage are aware of this unamusement.
It goes back in on Tuesday, as I haven’t got the time to sort it before then, due to travelling. It’s a good job I kept my booking for a hire car for this weekend’s idiocy…
Car Health – All OK
Posted: Thu 21 January, 2016 Filed under: Car Repairs, Customer Services, Domestic, Driving, Getting Organised, Thoughts Leave a comment »The car, it turns out, was fine. The problem was that the hose(s) to the turbo had perished, and were leaking, which was roughly what I’d thought was happening.
So, that’s been fixed, and the MOT has been passed with flying colours. A couple of advisories that I’ll address in the next month, but really, all good.
This has made me much happier than I’ve been the rest of the week – while I may have been ‘pretty sure’ of what the issue was, I don’t have the confidence in my own technical knowledge to be 100% certain. Knowing that it actually was a minor thing is a weight off my mind.
All good – onwards and upwards, mes amis!
Car Health
Posted: Wed 20 January, 2016 Filed under: Car Repairs, Customer Services, Domestic, Driving, Getting Organised 2 Comments »Last week, my car started playing up – not enough to be serious, but enough that I wasn’t entirely confident in it while I was ferrying others late at night and so on. As a result, I hired a car for the weekend, and as it turns out, I’m glad I did.
Having returned the hire car on Monday, I went out in mine to get some stuff done, and while doing that, the engine management light came on. The performance is still OK on it, and it got me home etc., but still, it’s not something I take lightly.
As things worked out, it’s due for – and booked in for – the MOT test on Thursday anyway, so I’ve let the garage know about the extra issue, and I’ll see what they say.
I’m hoping it’s nothing major, that it’ll be a quick, easy (and generally cheap) fix – but I’m hedging my bets right now, and preparing for the worst. I’ve got another car booked for next week, as I’m doing a bundle of miles and travel, and that’ll give me time to sort out whether I get the car fixed or replaced.
Health Check
Posted: Tue 19 January, 2016 Filed under: Domestic, Five Year Plan (now Ten), Getting Organised, Health, Weigh Less, Weight Loss Leave a comment »A couple of weeks ago, I got a letter from my local GP, asking me to go in for an “NHS Health Check”. It was a bit annoying, as the accompanying leaflet said that my surgery ‘needed to update their records as I hadn’t been in for so long’ and so on. Considering I was in there for a check in November 2014, that was kind of worrying – implying that my records weren’t up to date and so on.
Anyway, they then called me up to chase getting an appointment, and today I went in. It wasn’t anything special, but still, always good to know what’s going on.
It turns out that what they meant was that this Health Check thing needs records less than three months old – which is understandable, things can change in that time. But it would’ve been good if their own bumf had actually said so, rather than implying that the record-keeping at the surgery was bad.
Still, onwards and upwards.
The Health Check is basically a quick check of the key figures: weight, blood pressure, blood sugar, cholesterol and the like, as well as various health factors (smoking, drinking, activity etc.) and comes out with a ‘risk’ factor at the end of it.
All told, the figures came out pretty well :
- blood pressure was fine at 130/80,
- blood sugar was fine – although I can’t remember the exact figure, it was well within acceptable limits
- cholesterol came in at 4.5 (anything under 5 is regarded as ‘good’) with ‘good’ cholesterol of 1.8
- weight is still ‘too high’, but has kept on coming down, so *shrug*
The final “risk factor” figure was 4 – which supposedly means I have a 4% risk of suffering a heart attack in the next ten years. They’re happy with anything under 10, so I shouldn’t need to darken the surgery’s door on that score for a while.
Obviously I’m going to keep on working on losing weight, and being healthier/fitter, but having a quick summary like that is good for pointing out that I’m not doing too bad, and could be doing one hell of a lot worse than I am. I can live with that, to be fair.