Desperation
Posted: Thu 5 October, 2006 Filed under: Thoughts, Travel, Weirdness Leave a comment »Another thing I watched on TV on Tuesday was a documentary on Channel Four about mail-order brides from Russia. It was an interesting thing, but dear God, I hve to say that I felt the blokes were pretty desperate.
And yes, I know, there’s similarities between my feelings about it and the stuff in the previous post. But for me, I just don’t really get the entire “must get married” thing, let alone being so determined to get married – to anyone – that you’ll go to another country in order to find someone/anyone. Mind you, I also simply don’t get how someone could go through that route, trying to find a bride in Russia, and not make any effort to learn anything in Russian at all. That, to me, is just fuckin’ weird, and shows some major levels of selfishness, and – rudeness. If I were to be in that situation (and I truly can’t see that I ever would be) I would at least make some effort to learn. But then, I suppose the difference is that I would want to have conversation with a partner – and conversation, or companionship, didn’t seem to be the primary goal for the men in the documentary.
Just bizarre, really. Well, to my mind anyway.
Travelodge 2
Posted: Wed 4 October, 2006 Filed under: Cynicism, Travel Leave a comment »Well, the advised fix for the air-conditioning actually did work – and it’s amazing just how much difference it makes, not having that bloody thing rattling in my ears all evening.
The place is still a money-gouging extortionate sinkhole, though.
But at least it’s not rattling.
Next Week
Posted: Wed 4 October, 2006 Filed under: Customer Services, Getting Organised, Travel Leave a comment »So yes, after the Travelodge mistake, I’ve booked somewhere very different for next week. But at least it has broadband and wireless across the entire place. And my commute/walk looks like it’ll be about five minutes at most between hotel and office.
Mind you, they’ve got a fucking horrible website, and the booking procedure’s been a nightmare. Like I’m going to send my credit card details (particularly when they ask for card number, expiry date, and the security number off the back) through email. Dullards.
But still, it should be pretty swanky for a week’s stay. I love this expenses lark…
Mind you, following that I’m going to be back in the B&B I started with, and I’ve managed to wangle access to their wireless network now (Not something they offer as standard, it has to be said) so that makes it more likely I’ll stay there for the rest of the duration. They’re not the greatest place, but it does fulfil all the requirements – the only one it really missed out on was the internet connectivity, so now that’s sorted too, it should be fine.
The Travelodge Rant or Mistakes I have made (Part One)
Posted: Tue 3 October, 2006 Filed under: Customer Services, Reviews(ish), Travel 1 Comment »Well, I can honestly say that booking myself into the Travelodge this week was a mistake. An epic mistake, in fact. OK, I can write a lot of it off as “a learning experience”, which roughly translates to “Things I intend to only ever do once in my life”.
Put it this way – I now understand why they charge you upfront for the rooms. If they left it ’til the end of the stay, they’d be losing money.
Obviously, I understand that the entire thing is a business, and thus is there to make a profit. I’ve been in the hospitality business, and have been strongly considering going back into it in the long run. But that’s a post for another time. However, running a profitable business doesn’t – well, doesn’t to me, anyway – mean gouging every available penny from one’s customers. It also doesn’t mean “annoy the shit out of them with stupid unnecessary stuff”. Oh, and it does mean “get into at least the 20th century”.
Bear in mind, this Travelodge that I’m using is brand new. It’s been built less than four years – and I think, only in the last couple of years. But because of the “gouge as much as possible from customers” ethos, they still try to charge a minimum of 50p per minute for phone calls. And more if they can get away with it. Calling a local-rate 0845 number that should be dead cheap? 50p a minute please. Calling an 0800 (or whatever the bloody code is now) freephone number? 50p per minute, please. Yes, even freephone calls are charged. So internet access is chargeable, and at rates that would’ve been extortionate five years ago, let alone now.
I just don’t understand the ethos. If you let that kind of stuff go through, it’s not costing you anything as a business – and in fact it’s going to increase your business, as people will stay there because it’s allowing through the internet access without gouging you for it. But oh no, instead they’ll charge through the nose for things that people usually now take for granted.
In the same context, I don’t really get the “charge extra for breakfast” ethos either. The place I stayed last week was a flat rate, including breakfast (although still no internet access – can’t have everything) and still cost less than the Travelodge’s room-only rate.
Oh, and when you get to the room, you have to use your key-card to turn on the power, lights etc. And it turns on the bloody air-conditioning too. Not that I normally object to air-con. But in October? Is it really necessary? It’s incredibly loud too – and you can’t turn the fucking thing off. I spoke to reception about it, and got told “No, it’s not something you can turn off. It’s automatic”. (It turns out that there is a way to do it – if you have a spare card, or piece of plastic, or use the cardboard wallet the keycard comes in, fold it in half, and slot that down the left-hand side of the slot. Apparently, this turns on power etc. without activating the air-con. I’ll be trying it tonight, you can be sure) The only other way to turn it off is to pull out the keycard from the power box. Which, of course, means you don’t have any power or light. That’s OK when you want to sleep, but not during the evening!
Ah yes, power. For a hotel only built in the last five years (at most) you’d think they’d take things like power-points into consideration, wouldn’t you? But oh no, Travelodge don’t want to waste power costs on nasty things like customers. So there’s precisely one available power socket in the room. Nothing near the beds, it’s over on the desk. How tight-fisted can you get? Of course, you’re not going to want to , I don’t know, charge up a mobile phone overnight. Or use a laptop. Well, you might – but you can only do one at a time. And you won’t be able to charge anything overnight because – yes! – you’ve pulled the power card, so that the fucking air-conditioning doesn’t keep you awake!
In short, Travelodges are probably fine for a one-night stay, as just somewhere to crash and burn. For a prolonged stay, they’re just fucking horrible – and will try to charge for absolutely everything. Needless to say, I won’t be staying at Travelodge next week…
TV through USB
Posted: Tue 3 October, 2006 Filed under: Geeky, Travel 3 Comments »Well, the USB Freeview thing works – just not very well. I’m not sure quite what the problem is: it finds channels, but not many of them, and then has real problems with displaying them. I think it shows maybe one frame in three, and just doesn’t seem able to update fast enough.
So I don’t know what the issue is with it, and it may just be that where I am is in an area of dodgy reception – but it could also be that the bundled software is ropy as fuck. I don’t know yet.
More investigation needed, I think, but in the meantime, well, I’ll just have to use the standard channels.