#Rant# No Apology for this one…

Picture the scene…

Visitors on the way, dashing round the house in full ‘panic cleaning’ mode, when an ungodly sound emerges from the living room where my co-skivvy was vacuuming.

What follows is an exercise in the more colourful use of the English language and a very pretty coloured cloud of smoke floating over the now to be known as ex-vacuum.

-1 vacuum in the Rochester household

Visitors enjoy a fun filled time and, despite the initial worries causing the cleaning frenzy, don’t seem to be too perturbed to be sitting in a quagmire morass of filth (this is what I assume my GF sees when looking at a room not immediately available for surgery due to the less than surgical level of cleanliness).

1 cup of tea later and I’m on the web – I’m a wolf searching out the prey of pre Christmas deals for the replacement of the aforementioned ex-vacuum. Seeking out those little known sites where the mythical ‘Bargain Beast’ resides.

Littlewoods – best deal – who’d have believed that!

Ordered – paid – time for the patience of the saints to manifest… ETA 12th December…

Nope

HDNL or as they are now known ‘Yodel’ seem to think that the company of my vacuum is a pleasure to savour. It’s obviously a vacuum of some social standing as they choose to delight in it’s presence for a full 7 days before reluctantly relinquishing the pleasure and dropping it to my home.

Meantime I’m corresponding with Littlewoods – via a system that seems to have an inherent delay longer than that encountered by NASA when speaking to the International Space Station ~ every time I send a reply it takes 2 days to receive a reply!

Now I get to endure the cleansing of the knee-deep banks of dust that have built up in the interim.

So, to recap, this is the delivery procedure from Littlewoods via Yodel

• Order
• Pay
• Wait the 3 days Littlewoods say the deliver will take (track the package online)
• Expect the delivery to be enacted within a day or so of the ‘arrived at depot’ report
• 2 days later spend about 45 minutes trying to converse with a bored employee of the couriers attempting to discover the location and likely ETA
• Send an email to Littlewoods complaining that this is not good enough – Google ‘Worst UK Courier” and experience a sad sinking feeling when multiple results come up with HDNL and/or Yodel
• 2 days later, receive an email asking for account confirmation details for ‘security porpoises’ (spelling intentional!) – reply as soon as possible
• 2 days later receive the stock “sometimes these things happen’ email – reply as soon as possible
• Finally get an update on the tracking system saying the package is on the drivers van
• Receive a package nearly 9 days after ordering it

Sigh…

 

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Please bear with me on this one – it’s a bit of a personal rant..!

I have, for the past few weeks, needed some joinery work doing on my home ~ nothing too complex you understand, just a door re-hanging and some simple boxing in of pipes.

WHY THEN, IS IT SO DIFFICULT TO FIND SOMEONE TO DO IT!!!!

I have recently been through 3 joiners, trying desperately to get them to at least give me a quote.

The 1^st guy, left me hanging for about 2 weeks, and then was mysteriously ill for a couple of days – coincidentally when he was supposed to be doing the job – when I told him to forget it he didn’t miss a beat despite having needed to buy some stuff to do the job.

The 2^nd guy was at best uninterested and gave me a ballpark quote of “about £xxx”, about £100 more than the first guy AND didn’t bother to leave any other details…

The 3^rd guy has let me down this evening; not even getting to the quote stage.

Apparently he’s ‘Not in my area’ – HE ONLY LIVES ABOUT 3 MILES AWAY!

If I ran my business like these idiots I’d not be doing it much longer – that I can tell you.

I am seriously unimpressed by tradesmen at the moment – I’d have thought that tough times in the business world would mean people are more keen to provide good service – it seems that I’m sadly wrong in this

Suffice to say I’m not my usual chicken of happiness
Grr… 

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For this Christmas, my lovely GF got me the Amazon Kindle – a gadget that I’ve been eyeing up for a few months, ever since they released the 3^rd generation version.

I opted for the non 3G version, as the coverage for the 3G one seems to only cover the places you’d not go to on holiday and the function to up date all your magazines ‘instantly’ was of little use to me.
Obviously I’ve got access to quite a few WiFi networks dotted around, so I can get the thing loaded with enough material to carry me through the longest period of WiFi withdrawal…

I must say though, it’s a sexy (as far as technology goes! ) little device, feeling kinda like a large thin calculator in the hand.
This is a good thing :) It feels quite sturdy and comfortable - a MUST for those extended reading hours – the buttons are positive in their actions, so you know you are pressing something.

The screen – the much vaunted ‘Digital or E Ink‘ does seem to give a nice ‘paper feel’ to the reading experience, and the matted screen is great for reading in the sunlight.
There is however, something to note – there is no lighting on the Kindle itself; Making reading it much the same as a book, poor light = poor reading.

Battery life seems to be excellent – no lights and ‘funky extras’ means with things like the WiFi turned off, you’ll get a loooooong time to enjoy your books before heading for the charger (I’ve just got mine so I have no idea how long it’s going to last!)

The range of material is fantastic, most of the new titles that I’m wanting to read, are available in Kindle format. If you are a connoisseurs of the classics, you can download many of them for FREE!
Yup – I’m currently enjoying Homers Odyssey, Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein and other ‘essential’ reads for NOWT!
You need not get stuff purely from Amazon either – there are a few sites offering extremely cheap, if not free, books in Kindle or compatible format.

Just a couple of negative things:
Firstly, turning pages makes the whole screen flash black, then display the new page. This is a little ‘uncomfortable’ at first and does impact on your first few hours reading. Once you get into the mental ‘zone’ though, you’ll not even notice it!
Secondly, it’s a little USA centric in it’s content – there is a free dictionary installed for you ~ The Oxford AMERICAN Dictionary ~ pointless IMHO!
Finally, the operating system (the bit that controls the Kindle) seems a little uncomfortable to use and in my opinion, needs some polishing as it’s just not quite there yet…

Just one point to note:
Mine was delivered and unwrapped with keen anticipation, only to notice that there was a hair in the top right hand corner of the Kindle within the screen unit itself.
This was highly annoying when reading (imagine those little blobs of ink you sometimes get in books, in the same place on every page – annoying!).
After a quick phone call to Amazon, following sending an email to them noting this, they immediately sent a replacement unit under the Express Delivery, sent an email with a returns label and information to get DHL to collect the hirsute unit, and told me that if I didn’t send the faulty Kindle back within 30 Days, then I’d be charged for a second one – a process to those in the retail sector known as an ‘Advanced replacement’
Great service indeed.

To summarise – I’d give the Kindle 8/10 – it’s a nice little device that’s just not quite there in terms of the interface, and has a couple of little niggly bits, but I’d heartily recommend you buy on if it’s on your gadget horizon
Reading has always been a pleasure for me, and now it’s become so much more comfortable and convenient with my library of escapes now in my hand.
I’m loving it!

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So Marks and Spencer, that stalwart of the British high street since time began (actually founded in 1884 by Michael Marks and Thomas Spencer dontcha know )

Well, they have a returns policy which, on the face of it, seems quite reasonable ~ on request you can ask them for a gift reciept which doesn’t show the price but allows the recipient of the gift to return the item if they like within an extended period of time.
Sounds like a great thing for Christmas right..?

Hmm… (I hereby give notice of a mini rant…)

I was given a sweater for Christmas from the famed store – nothing unusual so far – unfortunately it’s made from man made fibres and I try to only wear natural fibres. In this line of work, generating static electricity from a lovely jumper, when you are wrist deep in a PC is not a good idea!

Upon opening the gift however there was the afforementioned gift receipt :)
Good methinks, visit to the local M&S and swap for a natural fibre equivalent – easy…

Brrmmmmmm – drive to M&S

Into the specially created returns department ~ which was a bit of a surprise ~ do M&S get so many returns that they need a department to handle them?
Apparently so; the lady in the 2 person queue in front of me said that the queue was all round the store earlier so she left and came back!

A helpful shop assisstant breaks off from her extremely important conversation with a colleague to serve a waiting customer (she really didn’t like the gift that her other half had given her and she’s questioning if he really knows her after 3 months! sigh…)
Check jumper – check gift receipt.. “sorry sir, this is the wrong receipt” :shocked: 
Now I’m not one to cast aspersions (!) but I know the gift giver is fastidious about such, lets just say that it’s a REALLY unlikely thing to happen. This also raises my suspicions when the other returnee is told the same thing…
Hmm…

This now means that, because we BOTH have the incorrect receipt, but the returned products come from M&S (check out my designer label!), and the products are now in the sale, we can only be refunded the current price of the item and not the original price ~ a difference of £5 in my case.

Right – so here you go M&S, have your jumper back and £5 too – thanks!

I realise this is simple a reaction to those members of our society who decide that living a more delinquent lifestyle, but really, there MUST be a better way…
Now I know why M&S have a seperate department – it must be a money making machine at this time of year…

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I received a phone call today, from the garage where I recently purchased my shiny new car…
This caused another minor flutter in the old ticker – was there something wrong with my little baby?

“There is a discrepancy with your paperwork”  - Garage
“I’ll pop in and we’ll get it sorted” – me

Zooooooom… Off to the garage.

The ‘discrepancy’ was the minor issue of me not having signed the agreement to pay for the car AND not having signed the direct debit.
Effectively I had a free car!
Jokingly I suggested that I didn’t want to sign – there was NO intention of this – but the guy did say that I would be surprised at the number of people who would have tried just that.
I signed the  paperwork and left several relieved car salesmen.

What kind of society are we living in?
Someone makes a mistake and someone would try to get out of paying!
It saddens me to know that I exist in the honest minority…

One solution –

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