Bates Motel
Posted: Thu 24 February, 2005 Filed under: Weirdness 6 Comments »I got a semi-spam email today from Figleaves.com which has left me utterly befuddled.
Mother’s Day – 6th March
Treat your mum to something gorgeous from Figleaves this Mother’s Day. To help you choose, we’ve put together some suggestions for different types of mother, from young to home-loving, chic to sporty
Now, you tell me – would you buy stuff like this (or even this) from Figleaves (or anywhere else, in fact) for your mother? I know I wouldn’t…
B&Q – You couldn’t make it up
Posted: Wed 23 February, 2005 Filed under: B&Q, Customer Services, Weirdness 36 Comments »Following yesterday’s successful uplift of the-stuff-we-didn’t-order, I got a call from B&Q’s customer services person this morning. (Yes, I did mean person. I reckon they’ve only got three or four people to deal with the entire country) She was ringing to confirm that the uplift had happened, and told me that the refund on our now-cancelled order would happen once they could confirm that the items had been received back in the warehouse. Supposedly this could take up to two weeks!
“Oh, well I don’t know how often the delivery people return to the warehouse”
Every fucking day or two, I’d hope. Twat.
I also asked if she’d seen the report on BBC’s “Watchdog” last night about the shyster fuckwit twunts. She hadn’t.
“Oh no, I was watching the Sci-Fi channel instead”
Well, thanks for that information, but I really would have to try very hard in order to give a shit. Anyway, this meant she conveniently hadn’t seen that the majority of complaints regarding B&Q were regarding the fact they can’t find their own arses with both hands, a team-building exercise, and a flashlight. Let alone find the correct items in the warehouse, and deliver them to the correct house at the correct time. Rocket Science this ain’t.
The suggestion that perhaps I should write in to Watchdog myself, as they at least seemed to get some results out of B&Q didn’t go down overly well. Nor did the reminder from me when she said “well, we have to make sure that all the items are in good condition” that she had actually said I could leave the worktops out in the front garden ’til they were collected, and that she would authorise me to do so and it wouldn’t affect our refund. (We ignored their directive to leave it out, and kept it all dry in the house instead)
“Oh yes, I did say that didn’t I? I do hope you haven’t done so, the weather’s been awful in that two weeks.”
Power
Posted: Tue 22 February, 2005 Filed under: Geeky, Thoughts, Weirdness 10 Comments »It’s hard to believe, but most people in this office leave their computers on (although ‘locked’ from unauthorised access) overnight here. Most of the time they leave work-in-progress open under the ‘locked’ screen, or programs open. I’m one of the few who prefers to power-down completely and thus keep data etc. saved and safe instead.
Last night the office had a power-cut for a while. It’s been panic today while people have tried to restore and/or recreate the work they’d been doing yesterday which they hadn’t saved. And of course because the files were open, they weren’t backed up on the nightly data back-up. So in short, they’re shafted.
I can’t deny, I do have a little feeling of smugness this morning. I bet it’s company policy by the end of the week that all PCs should be shut down properly at night…
B&Q – Finale(ish)
Posted: Wed 9 February, 2005 Filed under: B&Q, Customer Services, Weirdness 5 Comments »I’ve just cancelled the order with B&Q. Now we just have to fight to get the wrongly-delivered stuff removed before we can get a refund on it. The tossers.
Never again will I shop using the online B&Q site. It’s crap. The latest chapter in the epic has involved dealing with a person in their customer services team – one who was apparently offended at the word “effing” (I got told not to swear at her – she hasn’t seen this site, obv.) and who tried to say the entire farce was my/our fault for ordering the wrong items.
Speaking slowly, I explained that we’d used the website, where order numbers weren’t entered by the customer. If the twunting fridgelickers couldn’t get the right numbers into their website, how was that our problem? The offer to re-do the order (“I’ll put in the correct code this time for you” – patronising shitehawk) and still not get it delivered ’til mid-March was, shall we say, received unenthusiastically by myself.
So now we’re back to square one, and need to order 2 x 3m worktops. I wonder what Homebase can do to fuck it all up?
London Thoughts – part 1
Posted: Tue 8 February, 2005 Filed under: General, Thoughts, Travel, Weirdness 4 Comments »Well, I made it unscathed. It’s a lot easier getting to London from Bracknell than it is from Manchester, that’s for sure. It’s a sod-load cheaper too!
London still strikes me as a strange place though. I suppose that a lot of it is to do with being a city, and having all types/genres of people in a fairly small space. Seeing homeless people outside the ultra-expensive stores like Liberty and Aquascutum always leaves me fairly sad, particularly after the work I did with the homeless charity in Manchester. But it’s more than that – for a city where everyone always seems to be in a rush (while sat at Waterloo it was quite comical seeing all the people running for trains etc.) the pedestrians on Oxford Street and the like seem to have some of the slowest walking speeds known to man.
Also, people seem to be so security unconscious. Travelling on the tube,I could easily see who was listening to an iPod – and if I were of that mindset, I’d probably aim for iPod users as those who’d be likely to have other gadgets and high-cost small-size items on their person. Disposable income, and all that jazz. But there’s the other things too – seeing people with laptop bags slung over one shoulder, dead easy for someone to run past and snatch it without even stopping. And an amazing number of people with bags slung over shoulders and pocket flaps open etc. – just open targets for pickpockets, particularly in busy and crowded environments like Waterloo. People are strange.
B&Q – Tossers
Posted: Fri 4 February, 2005 Filed under: B&Q, Customer Services, Weirdness 3 Comments »This time, the stuff didn’t even come off the lorry. The worktops were light grey with black flecks, instead of the expected black with grey flecks. You have to wonder at the epic degrees of twuntdom necessary to fuck up an order to this level, don’t you?
The worktops from the last ballsed-up delivery are still in the house too – the arsewipe bureaucrat tossnerds hadn’t even managed to tell the delivery company that they were supposed to be collecting anything.
Snotty letters will be getting written this weekend, I suspect. Copies will be placed on d4d™ as and when they’re written, which pay provide some level of amusement out of the entire farce process.
B&Q – The Tale Continues
Posted: Fri 4 February, 2005 Filed under: B&Q, Customer Services, Weirdness 2 Comments »Over the last month, we’ve had endless hassles with B&Q. The initial order was remarkably simple. Two black(ish) three-meter-length worktops, and two laminate worktop ends. You wouldn’t think it was rocket-science, would you?
In the first order, they sent one blue worktop, two kitchen wall-units (1x1000mm and 1x800mm) and four 500mm cherrywood kitchen doors. You’ll note, the doors weren’t even going to match up with the wall units that we received but hadn’t ordered.
In the second one, they managed to deliver two worktops (and take away most of the problem delivery, except for one of the wall units) but also put in a metal vegetable rack, and something that now escapes me. And the worktops were a very nasty reddy-marble finish. Nowhere even in the vicinity of “black”. They were supposed to deliver “in the afternoon“, which translated to 11.30am.
Today is the third attempt. They’re supposed to be delivering in the afternoon, and give Herself 30 minutes notice so that she can get home from work to check the delivery.
So why have they called at 9.45am to say “we’re at the house – where are you?” ? Something makes me think there’s no fucking chance the delivery’s going to be right this time either. I just hope the blood’s been wiped off the street by the time I get home this evening…