Mutton's World

Rip Off Britain

2011-11-30T16:33:00.000Z

I saw a link on the BBC website to submit story ideas for Rip Off Britain - so I submitted this idea - something that has been bothering me for a long time.

One of the biggest rip offs in Britain today is the selling of concert tickets months if not years before the actual event.

Typically events from major music and comedy stars sell out within minutes of going on sale, for example earlier this year I bought tickets for Michael McIntyre’s tour for dates in September 2012, almost 18 months before the actual show at the O2. The O2 has a capacity of over 20,000. The tickets are sold for £35 each, that is a total of £700k gross ticket revenue for just one show.

Michael McIntyre’s tour has over 58 dates, 6 of which are at the O2. I decided to do some quick maths for his entire tour – the dates for which are published here

Tickets for the tour went on sale at the end of March, 2011 and according to the Daily Mail sold out quickly

So, over £24m was paid out, about 18 months before the events. What happens to that money? Presumably some of it goes on fees for the venues, booking agents etc. – but I assume a substantial part of it gets paid to the artists up front. The Daily Mail article says not, claiming that he will "only" make £2m from the tour if it sells out. So who is getting all that money?

But what really concerns me is the fact that I have to pay the money so far in advance. If I bought 4 tickets for the show, costing £140, I am missing out on the potential interest for that amount. Over 18 months that is equal to approx. £6.50 at 3% savings rate. So the actual cost to me of the tickets is £146.50, approximately 4.7% more than the advertised price.

Now that doesn't sound a lot, but if you multiply that by the total amount of tickets sold in the tour, that is 688,200 x £35 x 4.7% = £1,132,089 of missed interest by fans who bought tickets for this tour. How many big tours are there every year, 10, 20, 50?

If I place an advance order on Amazon for the latest album by Coldplay, or new novel from JK Rowling, they do not charge me anything until the product actually ships. So why should we be paying all this money so far in advance?

These big stars could advertise their tour as early as they like, but don't actually put tickets on sale until a month or two at the most before the shows. Anything else and I believe they are ripping off their loyal fans.

What do you think?

Last Day of NaNoWriMo

2011-11-30T16:03:00.000Z

So this is the last day of NaNoWriMo and I have to admit defeat. I started OK, lost some groujnd, then pulled it back about mid month. However, this has also coincided with a manic period at work and something had to give.

But I don't think it's a complete failure, I've written more in the last month than I have done in years and I think it's good stuff too.

So my personal commitment is to keep on writing and get this novel out of my head. Obviously long term goal is to be published, but that, as they say, is another story.

Day 14 of #Nanowrimo

2011-11-15T10:12:00.000Z

So after Day 14 of NaNoWriMo, I am up to just over 17,000 words. To hit the goal of 50,000 words by end of November, I need to maintain another 2,000 per day. From a practical POV, I am totally capable of creatively writing 2,000+ words per day, but it is a combination of motivation and time that stops me.

I wrote over a 1,000 words on the train to work today and aim to do it again on the way home, but yesterday was a different story. On the train into London I didn't get a seat, nor on the way home, so no writing there. When I finally got home about 8.45pm, I knew I should write something, but the combination of TV and family meant it was soon past 11 and I was just too tired.

I suppose if you are talented and lucky enough to become a full time author, you don't have these issues, but I'm a long way from that. But I will persevere, this is the most writing I have done for years and I feel really good about it

NaNoWriMo Day 8

2011-11-08T15:43:00.000Z

So Day 8 of NaNoWriMo and it's been a busy few days, unfortunately mostly Birthday related at the weekend, so not as much writing done as I would like. After 7 days (not counting today yet), I'm only up to 3,737. Which is an average of only 467 words per day.

So to hit the 50,000 I now have to do over 2,000 per day for the rest of the month...ho hum

Day 1 of Nanowrimo

2011-11-02T08:01:00.000Z

Spent several hours planning and writing last night, in a Mcdonalds of all places, whilst waiting for Hannah at her Irish dancing lesson. Only managed 790 words, but that was after a lot of planning and laying out several sections before actually writing something - could have written more, as was in good flow, but had to go and pick Hannah up.

If I get back into that flow today, then I hope to write 2-3 times that and get my stats back on track to write 1666 words per day. Note to self - must remember to update stats on the Nanowrimo site each evening as today it thinks it's Day 2, so my average is 395 words per day and it's predicting I will finish next March!

Taking part in National Novel Writing Month

2011-11-01T10:40:00.001Z

After years of procrastination, I decided that drastic action was required and have signed up for NaNoWriMo - National Novel Writing Month. The challenge is to write a 50,000 word novel during the month of November. That works out to 1,666 words per day.

Now nobody expects to have a bestseller at the end of this, at best you will have a rough first draft - but as several of my author friends have told me - just get it out, get it on paper, onto your computer, anywhere than in your head - you can then edit, rewrite etc far easier because it's out.

Looking back at my pas efforts to write a novel, the best I did last year was writing about 7,500 words over a couple of months - so the pressure is on. The good news is that I still like that idea and plot, so can use the same broad outline and characters.

Just to add extra pressure and no doubt to give me an extra outlet for procrastination and do anything other than actually write anything, I will update this blog, my Facebook and Twitter profiles with my progress.

All comments, suggestions, offers of beer welcome - email me

Successful Conclusion to Churchill Dispute

2011-08-30T13:19:00.000+01:00

This actually happened a few weeks back, but I've been on holiday for two weeks, so no chance to update before now.

After disputing the offer I was made by Churchill, I finally got to speak to a far more reasonable and understanding person in the Customer Complaints team. He agreed that it wasn't just about specification, but also about the brand of the product - even though this is not clear in the policy wording.

We haggled a bit over the final amount, but in the end I am pleased with the result and believe it was a good compromise that allows me to go out and buy a laptop of similar style.

It's a shame it took several complaints and emails before getting to that point - I even had to chase up after receiving a letter promising a prompt response, after I had waited two weeks.

Personally I think Churchill Insurance keeps the language on their policy deliberately vague in their policy for this sort of issue, as I doubt many people would push as hard as I did. If that is the case then I do not like that business style, as it comes across as trying to provide a minimum level of service and not caring about the quality. If you compare that with the level of service you get with a brand like Apple, it just doesn't stack up.

Anyway, a good result and yet another reminder that it pays to be persistent and stand up for your rights

If at first you don't succeed...keep going

2011-07-26T16:41:00.000+01:00

After a couple of days of waiting and playing phone tag, I’ve just come off the phone with one of the senior team in the Claims department at Churchill Insurance. Unfortunately, their position has not changed and they are only offering a new laptop based on spec not brand.

He explained that this is their company policy, but had no real answer when I challenged this as this is not stated anywhere in the current policy wording.

The matter has now been passed to the Customer Relations team, who will apparently write to me first before contacting me.

In the meantime, after writing the original blog, I tweeted about the situation to a few consumer advice gurus and had some feedback from Paul Lewis of BBC Moneybox

His first response was “New for old should mean what it says. Challenge the claim and if no joy then go to Ombudsman.” When I explained about the age of the laptop and the specification issue, he replied “Problem of advancing technology. Decide what you think is fair, ask for it, and if no then complain, if no again go to ombudsm”

I agree with him and think it is fair to have my old Sony laptop replaced by another Sony Laptop, not a bulky plasticky feeling Samsung. I will wait to hear what response I get from Customer relations.

In a related matter, they have agreed, in principle, to replace the software on the laptop – the major cost being Microsoft Office Professional – have submitted estimates to replace this and am waiting again to see what they offer.

Do you believe your Insurance company?

2011-07-22T17:26:00.000+01:00

I can feel another dispute coming on, this time with Churchill insurance, a dispute over a home insurance claim.

Specifically, this dispute is arising from the definition of “as new” also known as “new for old”.

In this case an old laptop was accidentally damaged and has been assessed as uneconomic for repair – so far so good. The laptop was a Sony Vaio, a premium brand, which when bought for over £1200, was described as a “desktop replacement entertainment machine” and in independent reviews, it was described as "Extremely elegant and time proof design” and T3 magazine said “It looks hotter than a bikini-clad Caprice, has a great screen and uses the latest tech. All in all, it's hard to beat.”

The insurance company has offered, as a replacement, a Samsung laptop reviewed by PC Advisor as: “Build quality is also fairly solid, if a bit chunky and plasticky feeling. It’s a well-rounded package and certainly worth short-listing if you’re shopping for a no-frills laptop under £500”

On the face of it, hardly a good comparison.

So how can the insurance think this is a good replacement? Well they say it is because it is a much better technical specification than the original laptop – which it is. Not surprisingly of course with Moore’s Law driving tech specs higher and higher every 18 months – it’s impossible to buy a brand new laptop with the old specification.

So why am I unhappy? Well, although, I would get a new laptop with a much better specification than I had – I am a bit of a brand junkie and Sony have been my brand of choice for a lot of my high tech kit for a long time (excepting my Apple iPhone)

Personally I don’t think replacing a high end (in its day) well designed premium brand laptop with a chunky, plasticky no-frills laptop is what “as new” means. Choosing a new laptop isn’t just about processor speed, RAM and Gigabytes, it’s also about the emotional Brand choice.

However, this is where the problem comes in - there is no actual definition in the policy of “As new”, certainly no mention of “equivalent or better specification”.

For curiosity, I checked the policy documents for a few other major insurance companies and they are all just as vague. The only one that is different is a mention on a review site I found about how Sainsbury’s Bank interprets “New for Old”. It says:

“Sainsbury's Bank offers you peace of mind at affordable rates and with superb customer service. Policy holder's claims are handled promptly allowing the policy holder to rebuild or replace that which is most important. With the “New For Old” feature, the policy holder who paid £125 for a brand new television in the 90s will be able to get the same quality of television today even if that television costs £300. Why? Because Sainsbury's Bank sees you as a person not just as another account or policy holder; because Sainsbury's Banks understands if you are comfortable and believe in their service, you will continue to be a client year after year.”

I think this type of clear and unambiguous language is exactly what consumers need and I applaud it, although I couldn't actually find this on the current Sainsbury's bank website.

I then telephoned the Association of British Insurers and asked if there was an Industry best practice about the interpretation of “new for Old” – surprisingly there isn’t.

This is main reason, why I have decided to pursue this a bit further – I wonder how many people just accept this type of replacement, glad to have their kit replaced.

But I don’t think it should be this way, Insurance companies looking for every opportunity to minimise their payout. Policy documents need to be explicit about what “New for Old” actually means so when consumers are shopping around for the right policy for them, it is clear what they are getting.

If you know of any case studies in this area, please do comment and let me know, or you can reach me via Twitter

123-Reg - Problem resolved, but core issues remain

2011-06-24T09:39:00.000+01:00

As of this morning, I now have 4 working websites, with 4 separate webhosting packages - effectively back to where I started over two weeks ago - except the packages I now have are better and allow the use of Wordpress.

So, overall I am better off, but I would have preferred not to have had the inconvenience and hassle of this whole experience.

In the end, 123-reg did the right thing, sorted it out and apologised. However, looking at some of the comments I have received after writing this blog and describing my experiences on Twitter, I think 123-reg still have some significant issues with their products and services.

123-reg - The end maybe in sight

2011-06-23T10:59:00.000+01:00

10.15 this morning I get a phone call from the Senior Technical Consultant at 123-reg, he mentions specifically he is calling because of my email to Thomas Vollrath and the catalogue of errors over the past two weeks.

He apologised profusely for the experience I have had and has offered to give me 4 seperate hosting packages - one for each domain - at no cost, to resolve this experience. It's clear that the Shared web hosting and domain sharing package at 123-reg has some significant issues, so I agreed with him that this was probably the most reliable solution.

He was also apologetic about the way the customer service and support teams have dealt with my issues and reassured me that this is not how they want to deal with customers.

So, top marks to 123-reg for a prompt response to my blog and email, but the fact remains that it should not have had to go that far.

What was also interesting, was that he had clearly read my blog in detail and tried to respond to some specific comments that I made, for example, using a customer complaint as an opportunity to turn a negative experience into a positive one.

So, I hope the end is in sight, I've had this call - he has followed up with an email telling me what he will do, now let's wait and see if they actually follow through quickly

I hope 123-reg learn from this experience, rolling out new products and services is always difficult, but a core part of this process is not just testing that things work, but effectively preparing other parts of the business, namely technical support and customer service, to be able to deal with issues or avoid them completely. The guy who called me freely admitted, that I should never have been offered the shared hosting package with the intended use I had outlined - if that is the case - why didn't Customer Services know this?

123-reg - Listening but will they answer?

2011-06-23T09:05:00.000+01:00

After I posted my blog rant about 123-reg yesterday, I sent a link to the post to their MD, Thomas Vollrath by email, Linkedin and Twitter. I also tweeted about it directly to their main account @123reg

So far no answer, but I did get a read receipt for my email at 23.45 last night

I did get a request from @123reghelp asking if they could help and could I DM them with the details of the problem. Only issie is that they do not follow me on Twitter, so I can't DM them. I commented back to them that it looks like their Social Media capabilities match their levels of Customer service

123-reg webhosting - Named and Shamed as providing poor customer service

2011-06-22T18:41:00.000+01:00

It’s been quite a while since I have written on this blog – I really should get out of the habit of writing only when I am complaining about something – but I tend to use Twitter for my day to day comments.

So this post is about another example of poor customer service and my struggle to get a decent response from a big business when something goes wrong.

In every case when I have a complaint like this, I always try to go through the internal customer service and complaints process and only resort to this type of activity when my patience is exhausted.

So this time it’s about webhosting.

I’ve used 123-reg.co.uk for many years as both to purchase domains, manage my email domains and host my websites.

I have 4 separate domains hosted with 123-reg.co.uk:

mutton.co.uk – a personal page really only bought for the email domain
Thirdaspect.co.uk – a corporate site for my consultancy business
Brosena.co.uk – a corporate site for an Irish Dancing business
Elitesecretarialservices.co.uk – a corporate site for my partner’s virtual PA business

For each domain I had purchased just the basic hosting package as none of the sites have high traffic. The original package did not allow installation of any software such as Wordpress or Drupal, just basic HTML

I recently decided to move some of the sites over to use a CMS system and chose Wordpress for the broad range of Themes available as well as the ease of use. I logged into the 123-reg.co.uk website to look at upgrading my webhosting to allow the installation and I noticed that all the packages had been updated to now offer Wordpress as a free app for all webhosting packages. I also noticed that they were now offering shared hosting for multiple domains in just one webhosting package.

So instead of having 4 separate webhosting packages with 4 separate domains – it looked like I would be able to have just 1 hosting package with 4 domains hosted within it.

(Technically this was the first mistake made by 123-reg by not offering existing customers the benefits of their new packages, or being ready to offer them to old customers who notice the change – why do businesses alienate their best customers like this – customers who actually already paying good money for their services)

So I called 123-reg on Wednesday 8 June and talked to their customer service teams – I explained what I wanted to do and they told me that as an existing customer the new packages were not yet available for me – only to new customers, but it was suggested if I upgraded 1 of the hosting packages to the next level – business hosting – I would get all the new services and then I could cancel the other 3 hosting packages and get a pro-rata refund on the unused portions (they were annual packages)

This sounded good to me, so I agreed – I paid for a new annual package (about £75) and was told to copy my websites into the new webhosting, then use domain mapping to point my domains at the new versions. I was also advised that the DNS change could take up to 48 hours but should happen very quickly as it was all within the 123-reg shared hosting.

I copied the files across and then tried to use the domain mapping to point the domains to the right place.

Mistake 1

Unfortunately the 123-reg control panel can be a bit temperamental – I could see exactly what I should be doing, choosing a domain, then choosing where to map it to – but every time I tried, in multiple browsers, the form never populated with data so I couldn’t actually do it. So I raised the first support ticket on Thursday 9^th June.

I got a very fast response to my ticket – within 6 minutes – telling me the domain mapping had been put in place but that I should wait up to 48 hours for the DNS change.

Content with this, I got on with installing Wordpress into the one domain that was already within the webhosting and started to build a new website.

48 hours passed and I could see no change to the hosting listed for my domains in the 123-reg control panel. To see if anything had happened, I logged into my webhosting via FTP and made a small change to one of the site homepages and then refreshed the site – no change was reflected, so I could tell the domain was still loading the old version of the website.

I posted an update to the ticket stating that the domain mapping had not taken affect and it had been over 48 hours.

Mistake 2

This time it took 2 days to get answer (Saturday to Monday) – telling me that the Domain mapping wouldn’t work until the old webhosting had been deleted and could I call their Customer Services to resolve matter. Why should I have to call them, costing me money, when what they had told me to do didn’t work?

Hoping to resolve this matter quickly, I did call and spoke to a customer service team member, who frankly, did not know what they were talking about. First they claimed that the person I had spoken to the previous week had done the wrong thing, pointed the domains to the original webhosting and said what I actually needed to do was web forwarding and he transferred me to a technical helpline.

The second person I spoke to disagreed and said no it was definitely Domain Forwarding and said I needed to speak to another team – again I was transferred. This time I sat on hold for 20 minutes until giving up in disgust.

I raised another ticket and asked for somebody to call me back. Nobody did.

If it is clear that a customer has an unresolved problem and the company admits it was their fault, surely best practice would be for someone in the customer service team to take ownership of the problem and try to resolve it, not keep passing the customer from team to team?

12 hours go by and get an answer to my ticket saying, the three old webhosting packages need to be deleted before any Domain Mapping will work, only the Customer Relationship team can do this so please call them.

Mistake 3

I telephoned and tried to resolve the matter over the phone. The person I spoke to again didn’t seem to know what was going on and what was the best thing to do or who was the best person to speak to. I asked to speak to a supervisor and was told nobody was available. I asked for a supervisor to call me and was told we don’t call customers. I insisted that somebody call me back otherwise I would take the complaint further and I was reassured someone would call me.

Nobody called back and my original ticket with the history of the issue was closed as resolved.

Companies who do not have an effective complaint escalation procedure are missing an opportunity to turn a negative experience in to a positive experience through good service.

I recently had occasion to use an Apple Genius Bar repair service in an Apple store in London and the end result far exceeded my expectations, leaving me with a very positive feeling about the business – one which I proceeded to share to my professional network via Social Media

Mistakes 4 & 5

On 15 June, I opened a new ticket, referenced the old ticket and asked for a call back

Within three hours I had a reply asking me for more information – obviously the agent replying had not bothered to read the original ticket.

I did however then receive a call back from a supervisor. I explained all the problems I had been having. She was quite brusque with me and stated:

I should not have been told I would get a refund on the old packages, they don’t do that
I really need to talk to a technical person who could resolve this for m
As a gesture of goodwill, she would extend my new webhosting package by 1 year

I accepted the year extension and asked her to put it in an email to confirm what she had done.

I was then put through to the person the supervisor said could solve all the problems and was immediately told, actually no, I still need to speak to the webhosting team and she was about to transfer me.

I told her that I had no confidence in that team and had been assured she could help. So in the end, she proceeded to delete the original hosting and set up the domain mapping I originally had tried to do a week ago – it took less than 5 minutes.

I was told (again) it might take 48 hours to resolve the DNS changes and in that time all three of my other domains would be unavailable.

Unhappy with this, but content that I seemed to have found someone who actually knew what they were talking about, I resolved to wait for the domains to reappear. I also reminded her that I had not received any email from her colleague about the extension to my webhosting.

If a company chooses to offer a service such as multiple domain hosting in a shared web hosting environment, then they have a duty of care to existing customers to deliver a high quality service that minimises disruption to a customer’s business. In addition, if a customer service rep promises to do something, they must follow through.

Mistakes 6

17 June came around and none of my domains had reappeared – in fact, if anybody tried to access any one of the three domains, they were immediately redirected to the 4^th domain that was sitting in the root of the web hosting – a totally unconnected brand – very confusing for the visitor.

I called the helpful customer service agent back asking for help and she said I needed to now speak to webhosting team – but she promised to talk to them first and explain the situation. I waited on hold and then she came back and told me that the failure of the Domain Mapping was a “known issue” and had been escalated in their engineering team – but no idea when it would be resolved, so I just had to wait.

If a company experiences a major technical issue that requires escalation, surely they should notify affected customers ASAP, especially customers who have already raised this issue independently?

Mistake 7

I added a comment to the ticket on Saturday 18 June, complaining about the lack of contact, the outstanding issue and the fact that as it was the weekend, no doubt nobody would respond to me before Monday

If a company delivers a service in a 24/7 environment such as webhosting, then a 24/7 customer response should also be available

Mistakes 8 & 9

Monday 20 June, still no response (as expected) and now I notice no email being received on one of my domains. I update the original ticket and add a new one for the email issue

I receive an answer within 10 minutes, stating that it looks like what I want to do and have always wanted to do – namely, have multiple domains in one webhosting all using Wordpress is actually not possible. It actually says:

“However, this is an oversight I believe in the way 123-Apps and the new "mapping" features work together and will need to be properly investigated and debugged by our development team"

The reply then goes on to suggest a possible temporary solution and asks if I want to proceed.

I give my permission to proceed and immediately my three other websites are suddenly available, but now the 4^th - Wordpress site – is now not loading correctly.

When a company discovers that one of its services is flawed and is not delivering what has been promised, they have an obligation to resolve the issue ASAP and discuss the resolution with affected customers – I would suggest this should not be done by technical staff but should have been raised to a more senior level

Mistakes 10 & 11

Over the next two days, I have regular dialogue with the technical support agent trying to resolve this issue and get all 4 sites available. The agent tells me at one point:

“So basically, by trying to fix things with workarounds, we are clouding the original issue and making things worse for elitesecretarialservices.co.uk”

So he freely admits this is a workaround and the core underlying system IS FLAWED. I try several times to talk on the phone with him, but repeatedly told “we don’t do call-backs” so we continue using the ticketing system.

Finally by re-installing the 4^th website from a back-up earlier in the week, we manage to get the site back up and all 4 of my sites are available.

I ask if there is any reason why I should NOT install Wordpress into any of the other domains and I am told:

"No, I can think of no reason why you would not be able to install Wordpress as either a 123-App or directly from Wordpress for any of those mapped domains"

So I attempt to install Wordpress into one of my other domains but although it says it installed, when I try to access the Wordpress Admin control panel, I get a failed page. So I uninstall, thinking I will try again.

I don’t know why, but I decided to check on the status of my other domains and discover, that my 1^st Wordpress site has disappeared – I login to the webhosting by FTP and I can see the whole site has been deleted and I realise what has happened. My attempted installation in one of the mapped domains resulted in Wordpress being re-installed into the root of the webhosting and it overwrote my other site – when I deleted it – the website was deleted too.

I update the ticket and call the entire webhosting system from 123-reg a pile of shit – obviously a personal opinion.

I state my disgust as the level of service, poor quality of the product and the catalogue of errors over the past two weeks – I ask for a call back by a supervisor.

The immediate response is sorry we don’t do call backs, but here is our address if you want to write to us.

Enough is enough – I put my blogging hat on and tweet about the crap service.

I used to work in a business that had a simple strategy for dealing with problems – if you discovered a problem, you own it until you can pass it on to somebody who can resolve it.

How can a company like 123-reg owned by Web Fusion Ltd., claim on its own website to deliver outstanding customer care when its customer service agents openly admit their own products are flawed, fail to resolve the core problem and then hide behind a customer service doctrine of not actually calling customers when they have made a complaint.

I have sent a link to this blog via LinkedIn to Thomas Vollrath, MD of Web Fusion – I have also tweeted him, but I will not be able to read what he might say as he has protected his Twitter profile and I can’t follow him, without his permission.

I’ll let you know his response (if I get one)

My Dell Hell – It’s Over and I won :)

2010-08-12T13:37:00.000+01:00

I’ve just come out of court from the hearing to decide my claim for compensation against Dell Computers.

If you have read my blog, you will know that I chose to take Dell to court at the end of a long dispute regarding two Inspiron 1545 laptops I ordered pre Christmas.

My decision to take this to court was twofold:

First, to receive recognition and some compensation for the appalling customer service that I experienced that resulted in my 12 year old son Daniel not receiving his Christmas present in time
Second, to demonstrate to Dell that they can’t expect to treat customers like this without consequences. I want to show that they need to treat their customers with respect and be responsive to complaints more effectively than in this case.

The hard thing in this case was how to value my time and set an appropriate level of compensation. I did this by calculating how much time I had spent and valuing this at an hourly rate that I regularly charge for my consultancy business.

I was also claiming for loss of use of the laptop by my son and the value of missing software that was in the original order but did not make it into the replacement

In court today, attending on behalf of Dell was a barrister and a solicitor, whilst I chose to represent myself. I’ve had some experience of courts through my divorce, but I was surprised to see a barrister in attendance
My approach to the case was to claim that Dell were in breach of their own terms and conditions for not providing confirmed order documentation and not communicating with me in the manner or the timescales outlined in the conditions.

Dell’s approach was to focus on the minutiae of the law regarding : legal liability for an order; at what point was the order confirmed; what was a reasonable time to deliver it and what was a reasonable time to resolve a dispute

Interesting to note, Dell reserves the right in their T&Cs to change the specification of a system so long as the changes offer at least equivalent functionality

In my case, the original laptop included Napster software and a 12 month subscription to the online streaming service – this was not in the replacement laptop and dell offered me Office Home and Student as an alternative

Both I and the barrister had opportunity to put forward our case, answer questions from the judge and clarify and question each other on the evidence given

The judge then made a quick decision and in summary he found:

Dell were in breach of contract to deliver the laptop in a reasonable time frame, although from a legal perspective “Time was not of the essence”
There was a period of 2-3 weeks when there was a loss of use
The missing software should have been replaced or an appropriate alternative
I did not prove my case to receive compensation either for the amount of time or at the rate quoted
I also received partial costs paid and did not have to pay Dell’s costs

Why did I not get all my costs? Well last week, Dell made me an offer to settle in advance of court. However this offer was conditional on not publicising the settlement, so I refused.

The judge found that as I could have accepted that offer, worth more than I received today, I could have avoided the court listing fee for today.

Consequently, whilst I won, it is a pyrrhic victory and I am slightly out of pocket.

Despite this, I have no regrets for the action I have taken. I strongly believe that if consumers do not stand up to big business occasionally we will all suffer. I took on a multi-billion dollar company and won!

It is National Complaints Day tomorrow, Friday 13th and I support this wholeheartedly and have started to participate in the forum at Complaint Community which is a very interesting approach to resolving these emotionally charged and frustrating issues

Actually I do have one regret: if I had received larger compensation then I would have gone out and bought myself a new Apple iPad – sorry Dell not interested in the Streak

Off on holiday soon, but if you would like to contact me regarding this situation, email me

My Dell Hell - In Court today

2010-08-12T08:34:00.000+01:00

Just a quick post to say that I am just leaving now for my court case with Dell computers. I am confident I will win my case and I shall post here later with the results - whichever way it goes

Wish me luck!

My Dell Hell - Posted on Complain Community

2010-08-10T18:23:00.000+01:00

just had an interesting talk with the sponsors of National Complaints Day, 2010, namely Complain Community

It is an interesting approach to collect multiple complaints and group them by companies people are complaining about. They then engage with the brands concerned to see if resolution can be reached.

It's a bit late for me, as I am currently still expecting to be in court this Thursday with Dell Computers, but I would encourage you to check their site out - for anybody who feels they have a complaint, or what sounds likemore often, people who have a complaint about how their original complaint has been dealt with.

It is also possible that we can levferage my experience for some media coverage this week for National Complaints Day - watch this space

My Dell Hell - It's National Complaints Day this Friday

2010-08-10T14:10:00.000+01:00

Just had an interesting chat with Sarah Pennells at Savvy Woman regarding my court case with Dell Computers this Thursday, 12 August.

She told me that this Friday is National Complaints Day, so I have made contact with them to see if they want to use my situation as a case study - more news soon.

If you would like to help publicise my case and you use Twitter, you can follow me or tweet using the hash tags #dellsucks or #ncd2010

Or of course please feel free to blog about this, post on Facebook - use this link to my Blog with all articlaes posted about Dell http://bit.ly/dm_vs_dell

My Dell Hell - Dell vs Dave Mutton - In court this Thursday 12 August, 2010

2010-08-10T11:44:00.001+01:00

It’s been quite a while since I updated this Blog for lots of different reasons, but the main factor was that court proceedings in the UK can take a long time to process

In the last few months several important things have happened:

I had contact from a solicitor working at Geoffrey Leaver solicitors, on behalf for Dell. He had two objectives, one was to re-arrange collection of the extra laptop which finally happened in mid April and the second was to discuss my claim
We had several conversations based around the fact that I was looking to achieve two core objectives:

Primarily to have Dell publicly acknowledge and apologise for their poor Customer Service
Receive appropriate compensation for the time and effort I have gone to and for my son for the upset and inconvenience of not receiving his Christmas present on time

Despite several calls, I think the main focus from the solicitor was retrieving the laptop and he never really gave serious consideration to my case
Consequently, time passed, various deadlines for the court elapsed and I continued the process
On Monday 2nd August, I had to pay a final listing fee to the court for the case to proceed. I received a letter from the solicitor on Saturday 31 July with a Without Prejudice offer from Dell. This offer of several hundred pounds would just about cover my costs incurred so far, but I feel still did not give me any compensation for the all the hassle I have gone through. Furthermore, the offer was conditional on not publicising the offer and payment in any format, such as this blog.
I replied to the solicitor, making these points and stating that not only was the cash on offer unacceptable, but also the fact that I would not be allowed to mention the settlement was totally against one of the primary purposes of me taking this case to court in the first place
I suggested that an improved offer, accompanied by a public letter of apology from Dell would be acceptable.
This was formally rejected by Dell, their solicitor stated: “My clients do not consider this proposal to be reasonable and it is rejected.”

Consequently, this Thursday at 2pm I will be attending the High Wycombe County Court and defending my case for compensation from Dell Computers for terrible Customer Service

What is most interesting is a story that I saw on BBC TV news this week – which is also available on the BBC News website – here

This story was about a 59-year-old man from Rotherham who has successfully billed British Gas for his time after two years of ongoing disputes with the energy supplier.

Barry Payling said he was paid more than £2,000 by the company after he threatened to take them to court for a "horrendous catalogue of errors".

British Gas said it had paid the money as "a gesture of goodwill, an apology" - not for Mr Payling's time.

BBC TV News interviewed Sarah Pennels, a well-known personal finance journalist and broadcaster, who runs Savvywoman.co.uk

This is perfect timing for me, setting a great precedent and I will contact Ms Pennels to see if she is interested in my case

I will try to update this blog over the next few days as and if things develop, watch this space

Dell vs Dave Mutton - It may go to court

2010-03-22T12:32:00.001Z

Things are moving again with regard to my action against Dell Computers. ]

If this is the first time you have read my blog, I decided several months ago to take action after I had received such poor and incompetent service over the supply of two Inspiron 1545 laptops, despite numerous emails and phone calls to Dell Customer Services and several emails to Michael Dell, Chairman of Dell. It was a long and painful process to resolve my situation and Dell just didn't seem to care about what was happening and their eventual offer of compensation was insulting.

So I issued a claim in the UK County Court for compensation and last week Dell Computers filed a defence. This means they dispute my claim and will defend it in court.

Although the legal department of Dell Computers managed to actually file the defence on time, they have lived up to the reputation of the rest of the business by filing a defence that is both incomplete and inaccurate, but in one significant instance is fundamentally untrue.

So, I have some time now to file more documents with the court and then a judge will decide if it will go to an actual hearing.

This will cost me a bit more money, but I am determined to continue my action and not let them get away with how they treat consumers such as myself.

I wonder how much it is costing Dell to defend this action - probably a lot more than I was asking for in compensation.

I'll update my blog with more information soon, including how you could maybe help my case.

Dell Computers - bunch of useless incompetents

2010-03-08T19:06:00.003Z

It's 7pm and what a surprise, no courier has turned up to collect the spare Inspiron 1545 laptop.

This collection was arranged one month ago, but I remembered and I would expect a multi $billion business with sophisticated customer service systems to remember too.

I'll just add it to the ever growing list of reasons why I will never buy from Dell Computers again and also raise it in court if I get the chance.

Dell Computers vs Dave Mutton Update

2010-03-08T10:45:00.003Z

Nothing much has happened in the past few weeks since Dell formally acknowledged my claim. They have 28 days from the date of service to formally respond, then it's up to the court to decide what happens next. This notice expires in two weeks on Monday 22 March.

I now have the details of the solicitors acting on behalf of Dell Computers, namely, Geoffrey Leaver Solicitors based in Milton Keynes. I Wonder if they will make any effort to contact me and check the facts of the matter before making their response. I don't hold any hope that Dell Customer services in India have detailed records of my complaint as they are so inefficient.

The only other thing happening today is the extra Inspiron 1545 laptop that I have had unopened since late December, should be collected by Dell. I say should, I had confirmation on a an email on 15th February that it would be collected today, but so far had no other communication. So presumably, Dell expect me to wait in all day for their courier - I think not.

I will not go out of my way to be away from home, but neither will I wait in to ensure collection. I give it a 50% chance that a) The courier from Dell Computers actually turns up and b) I'm actually here to hand over the Inspiron 1545 laptop.

by the way, if you are reading this and you work at Dell, I had occasion to buy a new Netbook recently and guess what? I didn't buy Dell - so there is the first sale you've lost as a direct result of your incompetent customer service.

I bought a stylish Samsung N220 netbook and so far I am very happy with it.

Dell Computers vs Dave Mutton

2010-02-25T10:03:00.004Z

Checked in on my court claim for compensation against Dell Computers last night and they have formally acknowledged the claim. This means they now have 28 days to prepare and file a defence.

I'm not surprised that Dell Computers legal team are more efficient than their terrible Customer Service team based in India. So it will be interesting now to see what they do next - will they try to contact me and make an offer or will they take it all the way and I'll see them in court.

Looking at my Google Analytics data, I am still getting a lot of traffic from Dell servers, so somebody over there is watching this blog - interestingly I haven't had any further traffic recently from the Radian6 service. I wonder if they changed the way they use it - getting a lot of traffic direct using my name as a search word. Maybe someone in their Social Media team realised that the when they click in the Radian6 report it shows up as a referring site to whichever blog or site they are looking at??

Finally, although my emails to Michael_Dell@dell.com didn't get a direct response, I did get my missing Inspiron laptop eventually - it's just symbolic of the inefficiency of Dell that they offered me compensation worth less than the missing software and making no allowance for the unbelievable hassle I have had dealing with their incompetent customer service team.

To anybody who is struggling with your own Dell Hell, it might be a late order for a Dell laptop or Dell desktop, a problem with Dell technical support, or any other type of Dell after sales support, my advice to keep on persevering and I recommend you do this:

Keep a note of when and how long it takes you to do anything - this could be how long you stay on hold when you call Dell Customer Services, how long it takes you to write an email to Dell technical Support, or even how long it takes to write a blog post or Tweet about how poor Dell Computers customer service is
Always ask for a name and email address for who you are talking to - they will not always give it - so make a note of that too
when you send any emails always set your options to ask for a read receipt and copy everybody you have been dealing with on the same email
Don't lose your temper on the phone - be polite, but don't let them get what they want which is for you to go away. If you have a legitimate problem, be persistent
If it is clear that the person you are dealing with has no way to help you, then ask to speak to their supervisor - ask for their name and contact details before they transfer you (or put you on hold)
If somebody says they will call you back, make sure you get:
- Their name
- Their contact details, name and email
- A specific time when they will call back, or the latest time. Then repeat this back to them as some CS calls are recorded, e.g. "To confirm, you "their name" will call me back by 2pm on "day and date" regarding my complaint about "your problem"
- ask them to email you and confirm what actions they are taking and when they will get back to you
Above all else - Don't Give Up

I hope that helps you with your Dell Hell. I've been dealing with my complaint now since the middle of December 2009...

No News from Dell - I'm not surprised

2010-02-22T15:30:00.003Z

It's been almost a week since I issued my claim in the county court for compensation from Dell Computers for terrible customer service. They have 14 days to respond and I'm hoping that they are such a disorganised company that they will not even bother to defend and I will win my claim.

Of course if they do actually choose to defend that will also be interesting as it will mean that there legal team are far more efficient than their customer service team - nice choice of priorities.

Thanks to the people who have sent me messages of support either on the blog or via Twitter - I am keeping both updated (#dellsucks on Twitter) with any news and who knows maybe I will start a trend...

Legal Process started against Dell Computers

2010-02-16T13:08:00.003Z

I have today submitted a claim in the County Court for compensation against Dell Computers for their appalling customer service and arrogant attitude. Full details of this process have already been posted on this blog in my most recent posts.

To bring the record fully up to date I have been exchanging emails with a customer service rep at Dell who offered his apologies; confirmed the c£50 compensation; stated that the missing software was now no longer available (no offer of anything to replace it - was worth £60); confirmed that they will collect the extra laptop on 8th March (this is about how long I had to wait to get the order). Finally, he also confirmed that Dell would defend any court action, so I look forward to the next steps in this process.

Finally, I have also decided to seek publicity for my dispute and will be contacting several consumer affairs programmes on both TV and Radio.

Big corporations have to accept that they cannot behave this way to customers who are paying them money for goods and services.

I got Dell's attention at last

2010-02-10T11:08:00.003Z

Less than 24 hours after emailing Michael Dell and notifying him that that I intend to make a claim in court against Dell Computers, I had a phone call from the "Dell Customer Service Escalation team".

Unfortunately, it still isn't good news, he offered me a free copy of Microsoft Office Home and Student 2007 - worth about £60, or a 10% discount on the order worth about £48. He obviously hasn't done his homework as I rejected that offer weeks ago. So I told him that his offer was totally unacceptable and I would see them in court. Dell Computers has until Friday to make a better offer, otherwise I will make my claim.

At least one thing is good - my advice to anybody who is in dispute with Dell Computers is to threaten to take them to court and send your email to michael_dell@dell.com.

More news when it happens

My Dell Hell - time to take Legal Action

2010-02-09T12:32:00.004Z

My Dell hell saga continues - below is the text of my third open email to Michael Dell, Chairman of Dell Computers

Dear Michael Dell

This is the third time I have emailed you to complain about the terrible customer service I have been experiencing from Dell Computers.

A further 10 days have passed and I am shocked that your company has continued to ignore me. I have had no further contact from Dell Customer Services or from any senior executive at Dell Computers UK in Bracknell, nor from Dell Computers Corporate offices in Round Rock Texas

I have email read receipts from 5 different people who received an email from me on Friday 29 January, 2010, including one from your email address Michael_dell@dell.com so I know that people in your organisation are reading my messages. I can also see from Google Analytics that visitors have arrived at my blog from your Social Media Monitoring service Radian6.

For whatever reason people at your company, Dell Computers, have chosen to virtually ignore me with regard to my complaint over the supply of several Dell Inspiron 1545 laptops. I will not go into the details as I have done that before on numerous occasions to numerous people, including yourself in my first email, sent on Tuesday, January 19, 2010.

I have now taken advice from Consumer Direct, part of the Office of Fair Trading in the UK and your company is clearly in breach of contract. Furthermore, as I am an independent consultant, I know exactly what my time is worth (expensive) and I have kept a detailed log of the time I have spent attempting to resolve this matter.

Consequently this email notifies you, Michael Dell, Chairman and founder of Dell that I now intend to take this matter to the County Court in the UK and will make a claim against Dell for compensation for breach of contract and loss of earnings for the time spent dealing with your company.

The clock is ticking and the amount I will be seeking is already in the thousands of pounds.

As stated in previous email I am happy to be contacted by a senior executive of your company to discuss my complaint and see if we can reach an agreement on appropriate compensation. If this has not happened by 5pm on Friday, 12 February, 2010 I will start the legal process.

Finally, I will also now be seeking to publicise this situation with consumer affairs programmes in the UK to ensure that potential customers of Dell Computers know what they are letting themselves in for if they choose to trade with your company.

As with my previous emails, this will be posted on my blog, http://muttonsworld.blogspot.com

Regards

Dave Mutton

2nd Open email - complainingg to Michael Dell about terrible customer service from Dell Computers

2010-01-29T12:03:00.003Z

Dear Michael Dell (and assorted senior colleagues)

Congratulations, your company has now become (in my opinion) the most inefficient and rude online business that I have ever had the misfortune to deal with.
For most of the last two months I have struggles to complete a simple order for two Dell Inspiron 1545 laptops and finally received the second one this week. The process has been long and tortuous, made far worse by your customer service team in India continually failing to deal with me in good faith and follow through.

I have tried and failed to escalate the problem within Dell customer services and found the senior CS people as inefficient and rude as the junior ones.

I tried to escalate the issue to the management team at Dell UK in Bracknell and was told that there was nobody to talk to in the UK who could help and that I needed to continue to talk to Customer Services in India

I tried to escalate the matter direct to you, Michael Dell, Chairman and founder of Dell computers, not expecting answer direct from you, but at least to have the email passed on by a PA or intern to someone who could help.

I have tried to engage with Dell Computers via social media by writing on my blog (http://muttonsworld.blogspot.com), posting on Facebook and Twitter (@dbmutton). Despite seeing traffic to my blog from your Social Media monitoring service provider Radian6, nobody has attempted to contact me.

Despite 10 phone calls, 9 emails, 2 faxes, 1 online chat, 6 blog posts (including this one) and 10 tweets (all with the hash tag #dellsucks), I still have not been offered any significant compensation for all the hassle that I have endured in this process.

I now have an additional problem: the laptop that finally arrived has a slightly different software configuration than what I ordered. I have emailed the rep that placed the order about how to resolve this and have not received any response after nearly 5 days – I am getting very tired of this.

So I now have a simple question for you and your colleagues: How does an angry customer who feels he has been virtually ignored by Dell Customer Services resolve this situation when it appears that your business has no interest in taking my complaint seriously?

One last thing I will add – I still have an Inspiron 1545 laptop, ordered in error (wrong colour) by your customer services. According to your own customer services, it was supposed to be picked up and returned to Dell Computers this week. Unfortunately the courier turned up a day earlier than notified and I was not there. So I still have this laptop and have decided that I will retain it in protest. I will gladly discuss the return of this laptop and compensation for the unbelievable hassle I have experienced by Dell customer services. However, I will no longer deal with Customer Services in India as they have been given every opportunity to resolve this problem and have failed miserably.

I will now only deal with a senior executive of Dell Computers in the UK or the USA. If I don’t hear from anybody within 3 working days, then I will take the matter further and complain to the Office of Fair Trading in the UK

I await your reply

Dave Mutton

P.S. As with my previous email – I have posted this email on my blog http://muttonsworld.blogspot.com

My Dell Hell saga continues

2010-01-23T11:54:00.003Z

So today there is both good news and bad news in my continuing efforts to get Dell Computers and especially the terrible Dell Customer Services in India and Dell corporate offices in Texas.

First the good news - despite saying the replacement Dell Inspiron 1545 laptop would arrive on 3 February, I just checked the order status and it has actually shipped from the Dell manufacturing facility in China and is due to be delivered in the next 4 days - fantastic.

Then the bad news:

I received an order confirmation twice this time (none the first time) and I thought I would go through line by line to check the same configuration had been ordered. What a surprise, it's slightly different - the original order included a 12 month Napster offer - 60 free songs streaming and 1 free download per month. the replacement Dell Inspiron 154 laptop doesn't have this - I've emailed customer service again to ask them to resolve it. I wonder how long that will take.
2 hours after I sent my original email to Michael Dell, Chairman of Dell Computers (michael_dell@dell.com), I received a phone call from the Dell Customer services supervisor in India that had failed to call me for several days. he told me the order had been placed but when asked about what form of compensation Dell were going to offer me, he had no answer. He did say that he wanted to focus on dealing with my problem and that could we "park" this issue and he would get back to me.
in one of my later posts, I predicted that if I did not follow up on this, he would not follow up with me - no surprises there - despite being given an assurance from a dell Customer services supervisor that he would get back to me - I still have not received any email or phone call four days later. Personally I am getting a bit tired of continually having to chase up Dell Customer Services it really is now becoming the worst customer experience I have ever had.
Finally, I am now getting very cross with Dell Corporate Headquarters in Texas. Did I really expect to get an answer from their Chairman, Michael Dell, when I emailed him - no not really - but I did expect to get something back from his office. I expect that some office junior or intern actually reads the emails sent to michael@dell.com, or to michael_dell@dell.com and their job is to pass it onto somebody more relevant - well it looks like my personal email has gone unnoticed and unreplied to. Even though I know that some people in Dell are reading my blog - I can see the traffic to my blog from the Radian6 Social Media Monitoring service which claims dell Computers as a customer - nobody from the Social Media team has actually responded to my blog post, or my Twitter posts with the hash tag #dellsucks

So what do I do?

Do I accept that my replacement laptop is arriving over a month after Christmas and get on with other matters or do I continue my efforts to secure adequate compensation for the trouble I have gone to to try and resolve this?

Personally I think it unacceptable for major corporations to ignore their customers who are trying to complain - especially when I have offered constructive advice about how they should resolve matters. So if you are reading this Michael Dell, I don't give up that easy.

Watch this space...

Some progress on My Dell Hell

2010-01-20T13:51:00.003Z

Wonder of wonders. Less than 24 hours after emailing and blog posting my open letter to the Chairman of Dell Computers, Mr Michael Dell, I have actually received an order confirmation for the replacement Dell Inspiron 1545 laptop.

Unfortunately the expected delivery date is shown as 3rd February, so my 12 year old son will have to wait two more weeks for his Christmas present. It's not clear if this prompt action has been in response to any actual communication internally at Dell or just because it was a kick up the backside of the incompetent Dell Customer service reps now running scared for their jobs and being shown up as bloody useless.

Of course, the matter of compensation has still to be discussed and I will await with interest to see what they come back to me with and how long it takes. What is the betting that if I do not chase the useless Dell Customer Service department then I will not hear anything from them for at least a couple of days - at least 50:50 I think.

So Mr Dell, if by any chance you are following this angry rant via your Radian6 social media monitoring service, what do you think I should be given? Maybe you should call your own customer service line and wait for 45 minutes to talk to one of your Indian customer service reps and see what they are going to do.

In fact I think that is a great idea for you - at Amazon we used to all go and work in the Amazon warehouse every Christmas - partly to help with the volume of orders but also to ensure the head office team understand the pressures of the people at the sharp end of the business. Do you do that? Have you spent time with your CS teams recently? Or have you or one of your senior team tried recently to interact with your business as a customer - probably not.

Well maybe you should and experience the pain your paying customers are going through to buy your products - it can't last, you know. Good will and past experience can be stretched only too far until it snaps...

Open email to Michael Dell generating traffic

2010-01-20T08:58:00.003Z

My open email yesterday to Michael Dell has generated a ten fold increase in traffic to this blog. I can see from the stats that about 20% of the traffic came from Dell itself in both India (Dell customer services) and the US, presumably Dell Corporate. Several visitors from a interesting site Radian6 which is some form of Social Media monitoring service - so I think my message got through to someone at Dell - but will it get to the man at the top, Michael Dell himself.

I also had an anonymous comment posted to the blog: "I work at Dell and I couldn't agree with you more"

I've not had any further contact yet from Dell Customer Services, so still waiting...

Dell Update

2010-01-19T16:57:00.003Z

A very quick development - just had a phone call from the Dell supervisor who hasn't been in contact since early yesterday. Apparently, the replacement order was made "about two hours ago", but he still can't give me any detail on when it will actually be delivered.

What a coincidence, the order gets placed just after I send my open email and post it here. Nice try Dell, but you still haven't actually solved my problem, nor have you offered me any recompense for all the hassle. So Dell customer services is still very poor. The other problem was his pronounciation of my surname - I am now Dave Mutant!

I have been promised an update by email no later than tomorrow, or another phone call.

At least they have been faster in responding than either Sky customer services, or Talk talk Broadband customer services...more news soon.

My Dell Hell

2010-01-19T14:35:00.003Z

Open email to Michael Dell, Chairman and founder of Dell Computers inc., from an angry and disgusted Dell Customer

Dear Michael Dell

I have been a fan of Dell computers ever since I bought my first computer from you, more years ago than I care to remember (it was a Pentium 90)

Over the years I have bought from you:

4 desktop machines
5 Laptops
2 Printers

All of them, apart from one printer are still in use, somewhere in my family, a testament to the quality.

I have always recommended your products to my friends and family as reliable and great value for money. Not only that, but if something goes wrong with your machine, your after sales support, in my experience, has been excellent.

However, something has now gone wrong.

I placed an order for the most recent two laptops as Christmas presents - one for my son and another for my step-daughter. One of the things we liked about Dell was the choice of colours for the laptops, so we naturally chose one pink and one blue.

I placed the order on 1st December to ensure delivery in time for the big day and since that point it has been an ongoing nightmare.

First I had problems actually completing the order – your customer service team seemed unable to receive a fax or read it when it was received.
Then when the order was finally processed – on the last day that would ensure pre Christmas delivery, I received no confirmation so I could not check status other than by calling your customer services phone number.
Worrying that they wouldn’t arrive in time, I wanted to check status. So after several lengthy phone calls and one online chat with one of your sales people, I managed to discover what my order number was.
Unfortunately when I was able to check order status online, I then discovered that the order was wrong I was going to receive two pink laptops.
I called the customer service rep and her response was –oh sorry about that – I can send you a blue carry case if you choose to keep the extra pink laptop. My reply was that I didn’t think my 12 year old son would be happy with that
So at that point I knew that my son would not be getting his main present for Christmas.
I also got the strong impression that she didn’t really care that my son would not have his present on time
I asked when the replacement laptop could be delivered and was promised it would be early January
Unfortunately, despite my best efforts, this has turned out to be untrue. I have made numerous emails and phone calls and I STILL do not know when I will receive the laptop I ordered.

As I write this today it has been:

Seven weeks since I placed the initial order
26 days since my son didn’t get his present on Christmas day
11 days since the original customer service rep finally called me, and told me she was resolving this
Four working days since I asked for a senior customer service rep to call me. I’m still waiting
24 hours since this supervisor emailed me and said that he was really busy but give him 2-3 hours to investigate
1 hour since I lost my patience and called your office in Bracknell UK but was told that:
- They do not disclose any information about senior management in the UK
- They could email customer service for me
I have made:
- Ten phone calls to Dell Customer service
- Sent two faxes to Dell Financial services
- Sent eight emails to Dell Customer Services
- Chatted online once with Dell Sales Support

I should add that making a phone call to dell Customer services goes something like this:

Welcome to Dell, please choose from one of these options
Select an option
Welcome to Dell, please choose from one of these options (different options)
Select an option
Stay on hold for at least 15 minutes, straining to listen to hold music that is so low, that I actually called back twice because I had thought I was cut off.
An operator answers, asks a couple of questions then “transfers you”
Welcome to Dell, quiet hold music again – couldn’t tell you what was playing it was too low.
Wait at least another 15 minutes – the longest I waited was 42 minutes.

As part of this painful process I have searched around on the internet about how best to deal with complaints from Dell and I discovered that I was not alone.

If you search in Google for “How to Complain to Dell”, the response is over 1 million results! In your own community forum there was no easy way to complain – just a referral to Customer support. I also found comments about posts being removed or edited that were critical of your customer service.

I also discovered numerous blog posts with titles such as “My Dell Nightmare”; “Dell Customer Service Sucks”; "I Hate Dell” and “Want to Complain to Dell, Forget It”. There are 179 Facebook groups with names like “I Hate Dell”. #dellsucks on Twitter is always busy with complaints

The most relevant site I found was from Jeff Jarvis at Buzzamchine and his Open Letter to you posted several years ago.

In one of my last emails to the customer service supervisor I told him that I would not stop until I received satisfaction and work my way up the chain of management to you if necessary. My phone call to the Dell Head Office in the UK made it clear that messing around any more at the lower levels was a waste of time – hence I have chosen to emulate Jeff Jarvis and send this email direct to you.

I have been working in the internet industry for over fifteen years including five years at Amazon.com and several years at Yahoo. Everything I have learned shows me that how critical customer service is to building and maintaining a brand and how easy it is to lose customers through poor service.

I am not saying it is easy to do this, but I remember reading an interview once with Warren Buffett when he said:

“It takes 20 years to build a reputation and five minutes to ruin it.
If you think about that, you'll do things differently."

Based on my experience in the past seven weeks you need to do things differently.

I would suggest you need to do the following:

Carry out a high level review of the customer service experience concentrating on:
- Improving your telephone systems especially response times
- Improved email response times
- Review or develop effective complaint escalation procedures
- Improve training in how to deal with complaints, stressing the importance of keeping contact with the customer – they should not have to chase you
- English language lessons for your Indian call centres – I understand the logic of outsourcing, but consistently the standard of English is below average and this adds frustration by the customer when they have to repeat themselves
Review your policy of not disclosing information regarding your senior management – it is just annoying and makes people think you have something to hide.
On your customer forums, provide an area dedicated to people who want to complain about how their complaint is being dealt with – trust me - this will be the most popular area until you resolve the fundamental issues
Perhaps review your extensive marketing budget – your customers I am sure would prefer to receive high quality customer service and not listen to catchy songs about lollipops
Whilst I am emailing you – the other thing I do hate about Dell is your lack of effective CRM. I speak publicly on occasions and have used this as a poor example of online marketing.

If I have just bought a PC from you, receiving an email every week with lots of offers to buy another PC is probably not going to be effective – if I am anything to go by, my average time between purchases is at least one year – that makes at least 52 ineffective but annoying emails to me

Overall I am disgusted at the response of your business and you should be ashamed that the business you have built is now so widely regarded as delivering terrible customer service.

I am sure this email will go through several layers of screening and there is not much chance of it actually reaching you, so I am also going to post it on my blog – perhaps you will pick this up if you have a Google news alert for phrases like: “Does Michael Dell care about his customers”; “What has gone wrong at Dell, is Michael Dell still in control?”; “Dell Customer service – the worst on the Internet?”

I will also post references to this in various social media sites as I know Dell has spent time and effort engaging with their customers through these new channels.

The last reason is that I hope my blog will appear highly in Google for lots of these interesting phrases – see my previous experiences dealing with Talk Talk Broadband and Sky Customer Services

Finally, if it’s not too much trouble, I would like to actually receive the laptop I ordered and give my 12 year old son the present he has asked me about almost every day since Christmas – is that too much to ask? If you want the order details email me

Dave Mutton
A former Dell customer who will now look elsewhere to buy my next computer and who will even consider buying an Apple Mac.

Boycott the X-Factor

2009-11-09T12:06:00.001Z

On GMTV today they were praising Simon Cowell for what he did - saying how smart he is to generate all this extra publicity. They're right and it sickens me that some people will fall for it - and he will benefit financially.

I have nothing against making money and running a business but this is just not ethical - big... mistake Simon - you are messing with people's lives - Lucie is a very talented singer and I am sure she will survive and prosper - but think of the stress and heartache Simon put her through last night

Plus - he said he would judge on the last performance and he didn't - the boys did their best effort so far in the show - and it was still so much rubbish compared to Lucie.

Share this with your friends - let's stop the rise of Simon Cowell and teach him the power of the public!

My Facebook group has grown almost 1,000% today - keep it up!

Boycott the X-Factor

2009-11-08T22:20:00.002Z

I am big fan of X-Factor, but Simon Cowell has lost all credibility this week by allowing Jedward to stay in the competition after so many weeks of criticism.

Let's all boycott the programme, by all means still watch but don't vote, so they will lose revenue from the telephone calls and the competition will become a farce as the public choose not to choose.

If you are a Facebook member you can join my new group and add your comments to the protest.

Let's show Simon he can't manipulate the general public in such a cyncial fashion.

Time for change in Football world?

2009-05-07T08:27:00.003+01:00

I'm not a Chelsea fan, far from it, but after watching the appalling decisions made by the referee last night in the Champion's League semi-final against Barcelona, I did feel a bit sorry for them.

These glaring errors can not go on. I do feel sorry for referees a lot of the time, who have to make a difficult call in a split second, sometimes with limited viewpoint. The problem is, with big screens in stadiums and the watching TV audience it is now very obvious, very quickly when a major mistake has been made. This damages confidence in the referees and in the bigger picture harming football.

So why not put some level of TV review in place, but limit it as they do in the NFL. GIve each team the right to 2 or 3 reviews only per game - so it is te mangers decision if he thinks there has been a major error to call for the 4th official to review the TV coverage. A limited number of reviews will not slow the gamne down too much and I believe will result in fairer results and more confidence in the referees.

So come on FA, UEFA and FIFA, time to act

Saw at Thorpe Park

2009-04-13T14:28:00.001+01:00

This is why we are here :)

Waiting to go on Saw at Thorpe Park with Maria and Sam. Only another 90 minutes to go.

2009-04-13T14:17:00.001+01:00

At Thorpe Park today for Hannah's birthday and decided to queue for the big new side Saw.

Last stupid picture me the year

2008-12-31T17:50:00.000Z

I spotted these today in a cookshop, "Onion glasses" How sad is that?

Amazon starting early for Next Christmas?

2008-12-30T12:23:00.002Z

I've heard of starting early shopping for Christmas but this is ridiculous! An email received this morning with gift ideas and stocking fillers...

Classic Road sign error - the problems of dual languages

2008-11-01T10:23:00.004Z

I heard about this story on BBC radio 4, then found a picture of it on BBC News website

I sometimes need translations at work and we always struggle with agencies getting it mostly right. But in this example, the welsh on the sign reads:

"I am not in the office at the moment. Please send any work to be translated"

Lesson to be learnt - always get translations double-checked

New addition to the family

2008-10-14T17:41:00.003+01:00

We've been talking about it for a while, but last Sunday Theresa and I met Harold, a Border Collie cross. we thought long and hard about it and have decided to give him a new home from next week.

M4 stationary between Junction 6 and 5 Eastbound

2008-07-17T00:15:00.001+01:00

Not the usual view of the motorway at night obviously been a oilor incident somewhere ahead and we have been stationary for about an hour so far

No real news, just an update

2008-06-27T11:15:00.002+01:00

I realised that I haven't blogged much recently, just haven't had the time. And before any of you critics out there say to me - you haven't posted on your blog recently, I will just say in adavnce - where is your blog??

So what has been happening recently?

Moved house to Chorleywood and settling in nicely
Mum and Sheila came to visit and they were a great help with sorting the garden out - thanks!
Theresa has been working very hard with help from me on important stuff regarding Hannah's new school - fingers crossed
Sophie's summer fair last week, complete with circus - excellent fun
Daniel's summer fair this week, which should be fun - theme is "The Olympics"
trying to organise the regulars for this year's Fantasy Football auction - but t is a bit like herding cats
Watching some football, enjoyed the Germany v Turkey game
Thinking about a holiday, really must do something about booking that
Enjoying driving my car with the top down through all these lovely country lanes around Chorleywood
Work, work, work, work etc.

That will do for now, more soon, maybe...

Ikea Online - A long time coming but not worth the wait

2008-06-09T17:15:00.002+01:00

After another pain/pleasure experience at shopping in Ikea this weekend, I thought I would try out their online site.

I noticed recently that you can now order online from their site, but unfortunately i wanted to buy wardrobes and you can order everything to go inside the wardrobe, but not the actual wardrobe frame - really useful.

So Theresa and I visited our nearest Ikea this weekend and found a very helpful chap in the wardrobe department who helped us design the wardrobes and all the accessories. Unfortunately, some of the thing we wanted were not in stock - but that's Ikea for you. So he printed out a very helpful list of items in stock and where to go in the warehouse to find them.

Off we went down to the outer region of hell known as the Ikea warehouse on Sunday afternoon. After losing our way several times and trying to find things that were not where they were supposed to, we were missing only one item, well 5 x one item - and of course - it was out of stock - despite what the computer thought, none were to be found.

After returning home I thought I would see if I could order the missing items online and was very pleased to see that I could - at first. it was when I started the registration and payment process that the major problem was discovered - and it was a big one. Expected delivery date of my items was 26 August 2008.

Yes that's right - August - almost 2 and a half months away.

So, Ikea listen up - if Amazon can deliver me an item I order today at 4pm by tomorrow 1pm, perhaps you should think about trying a bit harder.

Or maybe it is a deliberate strategy, offer an online service and make it look like you care about your customers, but not actually offer a service that anybody would actually want to use and save a lot of money with all that mucking around with supply chains and deliveries.

George the Lobster

2008-05-18T20:12:00.002+01:00

Gone to Alicante for the weekend and Theresa was introduced to George the Lobster. Thank you Ramon

Unbelievable

2008-05-09T21:51:00.001+01:00

First sign of Xmas 2008 in May!

Webhosting Problems leading to Blog problems

2008-04-18T13:13:00.001+01:00

Having a bit of a row with my webhosting company and going through a painful transition. As a result some of my pictures hosted on one of my other sites are down, normal service will be resumed soon...I hope

Snowman in Staines

2008-04-06T10:42:00.001+01:00

Just had great fun playing in the snow with the kids. Snow is starting to melt now so not sure how long it will last

Snow finally in the South

2008-04-06T08:24:00.001+01:00

After several previous warnings came to nothing and especially after this weeks mile weather I didn't really believe this weekends forecast. But this is the view out my bedroom window today. The kids are excited :-D

Conclusion on my Heathrow Terminal 5 experience

2008-03-27T11:33:00.002Z

So it was Day 1 at T5 and overall it was a good experience right up to the point I got to the gate:

Very easy quick access from new underground station to Departures
Beautiful light and airy building, very spacious very modern
Security was so quick you could have blinked and missed it
Unexpected transfer required to Gate B and C area, but that was quick and efficient small train
Gate B, again very light and airy
Then this is where the problems started. A couple of flights departed on time then nothing happened, no announcements, nothing on informatiuon screens, lots of people milling about.
finally after an hour of nothing - I heard "Last call for BA flight to Dusseldorf!" - no warning, no gate number, nothing, then a big rush by everybody to get on board

So 10 out of 10 for design, flow, ease etc.

But 0 out of 10 for information and punctuality.

I am flying back tonight, so we will see how that goes

But still late departures

2008-03-27T07:31:00.001Z

You would think today of all days it would be on time. But it is 7.30 and no gates posted for any flight including mine due to leave now :-(

Very bright and airy

2008-03-27T07:26:00.001Z

This is the view from Terminal 5 B gates looking over towards Terminal 4. The whole building is full of huge windows making it very sunny (and a bit difficult to read some of the information screens and TVs

Heathrow Terminal 5 view from B gates.

2008-03-27T06:51:00.001Z

Wasn't aware there were separate buildings. Impressive view !

Unexpected extra journey

2008-03-27T06:47:00.001Z

Via train transit for B gates at Heathrow terminal 5

Flying through Terminal 5 today.

2008-03-27T06:37:00.001Z

So far an excellent experience. From tube to other side of security in just 7 minutes :-D

A sad day - Dungeons and Dragons co-creator Gary Gygax dies

2008-03-05T15:28:00.002Z

I just read online that Dungeons and Dragons co-creator Gary Gygax has died, aged 69.

Love it or hate it, lots of people played Dungeons and Dragons over the years and all the spin off games that owe so much to the original. I met some of my oldest and best friends through D&D and today's modern equivalents such as MMORPGs and 1st person shooter games also owe much to the vision of this man.

Now personally after playing for a few years, it started to really annoy me with all its inconsistencies, but it was still the first real attempt to formalise a coherent methodology of role play and we can't take that away from him. Plus if we hadn't had all those issues with the games we wouldn't have had so many long involved arguments, which at the time seemed so important and now I just look back on so fondly.

For those of you who read my blog and were there, some of my favorite RPG moments:

Bareg (aka Simon) falling off a tower so many damn times that he created a nice indentation in the ground
The Paladin whose name I can't remember (aka the late Richard Bould), Bareg and a rather nasty trap
Oh look there is a Catabl.................
Slippery Jim, (aka me) and the chair that turned into a door
The whole RPG experience that lead to Hirad Coldheart and The Raven

and in more modern times, I'll never forget:

The damned Dam
The tropical island with Jimi Hendrix sound effects
The swamp and discovering you can't lie down in it "Too Deep!

...amongst many others.

RIP Gary Gygax, you gave the world something unique

Reverse Auction Nuts TV Resolved

2008-02-22T19:06:00.003Z

Another call back today from helpful chap at the company running the reverse auction. He was completely up front and told me that there was a system error which meant I was not notified when I was out bid.

As a gesture of good will he offered me an iPOD or £100 of Amazon vouchers and as I am a self confessed Appleophobe and Amazonophile I took the vouchers.

Its good to see that with a little persistence you can get a fair recompense for a genuine mistake, I'm happy.

p.s. He did want me to stress that they have a fantastic system and this is the first error of its kind caused by change over onto new servers etc etc. I hope so and I think that £100 is a fair price for some development QA work :D

Update on Mobile Competition

2008-02-20T17:00:00.003Z

Finally had a call back from the organisers of the mobile reverse auction for Nuts TV. They claim that I was outbid almost straight away and their system generated a message back to me - which I obviously didn't receive.

I was offered 10 free bids on the current auction running for a Plasma TV, but I pushed back and asked them to investigate further. As far as I am concerned I was notified that I was winning and never received anything to the contrary, so offering me £15 worth of free texts is poor compensation for an LCD TV worth over £300.

So they are digging some more and will get back to me soon

New Glasses

2008-02-20T16:55:00.003Z

Just picked up some new glasses today and for the first time I decided to go for some rimless frames. It takes a bit of getting used too, not having a frame around and only seeing the hinges in my peripheral vision.

But I like them so far...

To Win or not to Win, that is the question, (or in this case the text message)

2008-02-19T16:02:00.004Z

I was flipping around the channels late one evening the other week and strayed onto Nuts TV. Not the most intellectually challenging tv channel, but as I am a regular pub quiz goer, I stayed to watch their general knowledge quiz - (nothing to do with the contestants being scantily clad young women answering questions on a bucking bull until they get thrown off - honest).

Anyway, in the ad break, they promoted a competition to win a large LCD TV via a reverse auction by mobile phone and I reasoned that as this channel is:

hard to find and
rubbish

not many people would be watching and it might be worth a go.

So I sent in an entry and had a message back:

"Nuts TV: Congratulations! Your bid of 176p is currently the lowest unique bid! We will text you for free if this changes. Good luck!"

Now the compeition ended last Thursday and before that date, I had absolutely no more texts, so my reasonable expectation is I've actually won something. However, neither have I had any contact confirming I have won.

So, I found the competition T&Cs and managed to obtain a telephone number.

So far after three calls, I am none the wiser, but at least i now have a contact phone number and name of a person who seems to carer and has promised to get back to me. So watch this space...

mumbles to himself...."Now where is that number for Ofcom complaints..."

The First Project I Ever Worked on Online

2008-01-10T14:39:00.000Z

A long time ago, in what feels like a far far away place and time, I left my job as Promotions manager for Dillons Bookstores and set up my own business as a freelance marketing consultant.

This was end of 1994 and I have strong memories of spending three days trying to configure this strange thing called Internet access and having to edit .ini files to make my 9600 baud modem work with my new Dell 25Mhz 486 PC.

Anyway, I started working on quite a few different book related projects and one of my clients was Jamie Hodder-Williams who was Marketing manager for Hodder & Stoughton. They were publishing a book called "Being Digital" by Nicholas Negroponte and I was helping to organise an event that the author would speak at. Jamie thought that since the whole book is about the Digital Revolution, we should put some pages on the Internet promoting the book and the event.

So I wrote some copy and I found a woman whose name I can't recall, Kim maybe, who put the pages live on the Internet for me.

I remember looking at these pages years later and thinking how basic they were, sadly I can't find them anymore and never took any screen shots.

So why this long ramble about my past, well Negroponte's name came up on the BBC news site today, talking about CES in Las Vegas and his "One Laptop Per Child Project"

Incidentally, in his speech, I remember him talking about two online projects that he thought were useful and interesting, one was "Yahoo", the first time I ever heard that name and the other one was Ringo a music recommendation service - you send an email with 10 albums and what you thought of each one. Sometime later you'd receive a list of things you might like along with a prediction of how much they think you'd like each one. Sadly that seems to have also died a death over the years, vaguely remember it changing into something called Firefly but lost track after that. the idea of course lived on and lots of systems out there now for recommendations, including StoryCode and BlogCode

Bloggers in Staines

2008-01-08T17:42:00.000Z

By pure chance I found that in Blogger today if you go into a Bloggers profile and then click on location it shows you all the other Bloggers with the same location.

So I can see that on Blogspot, there are 77 other bloggers in Staines.

Here's the link if you want to see them. Can't see any logical order, so I wonder if it is in order of number of posts, in which case I am in the top 10 :)

Liverpool Capital of Culture, 2008

2008-01-03T15:26:00.000Z

Just remembered that my home town of Liverpool is this year's European Capital of Culture.

So if you want to find out what that menas and what sort of events are going on, check out Liverpool08.com

Happy New Year

2008-01-01T09:29:00.000Z

Just a quick post on New Year's Day to mention that one of my resolutions this year is to post more often to this blog.

I've just been checking my analytics for the blog and can see that I am still attracting a lot of traffic out there for my posts about poor customer service, I hope I have been of some help publishing my experiences and will continue to add more throughout the year.

Other resolutions include:

Improve my French
Lose some weight
Write more fiction/short stories
errr, that's it so far

A bientot

p.s. Added one more link to my blogroll - Filippo Loretoni a work colleague from StepStone

Fantastic Christmas Present

2007-12-28T20:21:00.000Z

So Christmas is almost over for another year and I just thought I would mention the favourite toy received this year (by my son, not me) Those clever people at the BBC and Marks and Spencer created a fantastic toy:

Radio Controlled Car Football

Much fun was had by all and this is definitely a toy suitable for childrens of all ages if they have any interest in football. Ideally played on a smooth hard surface like laminate floor or lino, so you can get creative with sliding tackles etc.

Enjoy!

Poor design in a potentially dangerous situation

2007-12-22T15:11:00.000Z

I was travelling back from Paris this week when just as the Eurostar train pulled out of Paris we were hit by a power failure affecting the whole area. All the trains in and out of Gare Du Nord were stranded for over 2 hours whilst we waited for the problem to be fixed.

The Eurostar staff were very helpful and friendly, but one comment really struck me as bizarre and unhelpful - but also quite funny.

The train had emergency power, presumably some sort of battery and the announcer said: "In the event that we are stuck here for a long time, it is possible the battery power will run out and the train will be in complete darkness. In this case none of the doors between carriages will operate (you pull a lever and they open automatically), but you can open them manually by pushing the black button above each door"

So that must have been a bad day in the carriage design team - "If we lose power and the train is in darkness, lets allow people to open doors by looking for a small black button black button above their heads - tee hee"

Amazon Can't Spell!

2007-12-10T12:54:00.000Z

I received an email last week from Amazon.co.uk and was amused to see that they can't spell Trilogy.

One mistake possibly, but three times in one email - come on guys this is basic stuff!

More Stupid Things

2007-12-06T14:55:00.000Z

Last year I wrote about few stupid things I had seen - article is here, one specifically was about blocking fire doors. Well last weekend I was out shopping with Theresa in Bristol and we were going through large automatically revolving door out of a shopping centre. On the door it had a sign, "In case of Fire Alarm sounding this door may stop and reverse direction"

I should have taken a picture and will add one later, but obviously not the place to be if there is real fire and you are trying to escape...

Update 1/1/08 - picture added

What a great idea

2007-10-03T00:04:00.000+01:00

I saw this story om BBC news today and thought what a great idea - taking something that is a bit of a pain to do and making it really useful. Top marks to some very smart people!

Elite Secretarial Services

2007-09-23T19:48:00.000+01:00

Theresa also reminded me this weekend that I hadn't mentioned her new business on my blog, so will write a longer piece later, but for now, if you need any short term admin, secretarial support, check out her new website: Elite Secretarial Services.

(And if you know me personally, I may be able to get you a discount :) )

I knew I was famous...

2007-09-23T19:46:00.000+01:00

Had to laugh on Friday, my partner Theresa sent me this link:

I can't believe it - a whole channel dedicated to me - let's hope you don't get bored :)

Poor Functionality Part 2 (I think) - or "How to check in Online with Alitalia airline"

2007-08-03T07:46:00.000+01:00

I was on a business trip to Milan recently and it was a very early start - 6.00am, so naturally anything that would help speed things up in the morning would be welcome, such as Online check in.

For anybody who is not a regular traveller, online check in allows you (with a good airline) to check in up to 24 hours before you fly, print out your own boarding pass and just go straight through security when you get to the airport.

So on the day before, I went to the Alitalia site to check in for my very early flight. Most airline sites will allow you to check in based on your airline locator code - a 6 to 8 character code unique to your reference and your surname or airline loyalty card number.

On Alitalia, I tried several time to get into online check in suing this code and my other details but it would not recognise me - then I realised they were actually asking for the e-ticket number which is something much longer atleast 13 characters and not usually used by any passenger - first mistake.

So I tried again with this much more difficult number and still couldn't get in. Now as my flight was so early in the morning, I decided not to give up and go to the airport even earlier and rang Alitalia customer services.

I explained my problem and a very bored sounding person told me that she knew exactly what the problem was. She asked me to try and login again using the e-ticket number, but when typing in my name she asked me to add MR to the end of my first name, e.g. DaveMR.

This I did and wonder of wonders I was in and could select my seat. In fact, I could select any seat - I could see clearly that almost nobody must use this system as every seat was available for me to select and after my experience I am not surprised!

Sky Customer Service Complaint Update

2007-08-03T07:41:00.000+01:00

It had been nearly a week since I wrote my letter of complaint and I had no response. So I rang up Sky Corporate offices again and asked to speak to Mark Andersen. Once they knew I had written a letter of complaint, I was shunted straight through to somebody in the escalation department. Unfortunately she couldn't find any record of my letter being received, but on looking at the account was happy to resolve things there and then and wipe clean the outstanding debt.

No real apology mind you and no explanation as to why this couldn't have been done much earlier, so either:

The fact that I had written a letter to complain bumps you higher up the priority and gives them more reason to act, or
Their customer service is so inconsistent that its pot luck as to who you get through too and if they feel like helping.

Personally I think its a bit of both and the moral of this story is don't be afraid to stand up for your rights and complain - it takes a bit of effort but is worth it in the end.

More Poor Customer Service - this time from Sky Television (British Sky Broadcasting

2007-07-25T21:33:00.000+01:00

After the Talk Talk broadband pooor customer service saga last year, I am now in a dispute with Sky television, regarding what should have been a simple change of name on an account.

After separating from my wife last year, there has been an ongoing list of things to do, transferring various accounts, such as utilities into a different name. Most have been no problem, but Sky Television (also known as Sky Subscribers, and British Sky Broadcasting) have excelled themselves in providing misleading, inconsistent and what I would describe as "jobsworth" customer service. Below is the timeline of events, tell me if you think I am wring to pursue this?

Sky Subscription Dispute – Event Timeline

21 April

Phoned to ask for change of account name as my wife and I had separated and I no longer lived at the address, told that I can’t do that on the phone and I would need to write in – was given the customer services address:

Sky Subscriber Services Ltd
Customer Care Department
PO Box 99
Livingstone
West Lothian
EH64 7PR

I sent letter asking for the name to be changed – no mention that I would need to give 30 days notice nor that a new account would need to be opened.

25 April

Sky received letter and replied that this was not possible and that my wife needed to open a new account in her name. I have mislaid this letter, but I do not recall any mention of the 30 days notice to cancel the account.

1 May

My wife notified me that she had opened a new account but that I had to call to cancel the old account. This of course means that there was no break in service at 4 Chiltern Close and no lost revenue for Sky

21 May

Being very busy at work organising a marketing conference overseas, several weeks passed before I had time to call. I rang to cancel the old account, talked to Jim (no reference number) and was told that I had to give 30 days notice – first time it had been mentioned to me. I was also told that I would be liable for outstanding costs for a service that I could not receive - the property I currently live in does not have Sky and I cannot get it installed due to an issue with the management committee for the building.

I have no Sky equipment at my address, no dish, no cabling, no box.

I complained about this and was told, nothing else could be done. I complained again and asked for note to be made that I would give the 30 days notice under protest and I had no intention of paying the bill.

29 May

Letter arrived dated 26 May, stating payment outstanding and that all my services had been suspended – I wondered how you can suspend a service that I do not have? I ignored it

30 June

Another letter arrived, dated 27/6 – same as above but this time threatening debt collection agency if no response within 10 days. I ignored it

17 July

Letter received, dated 11/7, from Intrum Justitia stating that they have been authorised to act on behalf of Sky Subscribers to recover the debt of £70.70

I called Customer service and asked to speak to a supervisor – I talked to Craig (7CB61) and explained the situation. He told me that he could see where I was coming from, but that there was no other option but to pay. I asked to speak to his manager and was refused. I asked for a telephone number of Head Office and was refused; I asked for the senior person within Sky responsible for Customer service and was refused.

I looked up the main head office number and called asking for information about who has overall responsible for Customer service in Sky and was put through to Customer services helpline – I hung up.

I called again and repeated my request and was told that if I had a complaint then I needed to talk to the Customer Relations Team – Escalation department and was put through.

I spoke to Lynn (84430) and was told that there was nothing they could do and the only way I could proceed with my complaint was by writing in. I was advised to go onto the Sky website to the My Sky area and submit an email using an online form.

When pushed, Lynn told me that the person responsible for Customer services was Mark Anderson.

I called the main switchboard and asked for Mark Anderson’s job title – Customer Marketing Director, but when I asked to speak to him or his PA, I was told he doesn’t take phone calls and if there is a complaint to tall to customer services.

I telephoned Intrum Justitia and notified them that I would not be paying the debt and that I was in dispute with Sky. They said they would suspend activity for 7 days and I must copy them on my letter to Sky.

25 July

Posted the letter off today (thanks Theresa) and we will wait to see what happens - watch this blog for more details.

Nice Viral Video from Triumph for the new Rocket III

2007-07-10T14:24:00.000+01:00

I saw this nice viral video from Triumph today, promoting the new Rocket III motorbike. I read the story about it here and you can watch the video below:

Let me know what you think

The Garden Chef

2007-06-30T09:52:00.000+01:00

Friend of mine from work, Luke, just shared his blog with me The Garden Chef. Very interesting reading if you're a bit of a foody. I especially found this post interesting - a new type of food smoker.

p.s. Nice picture Luke!

Very Useful Software

2007-06-30T09:35:00.000+01:00

Have you ever tried to save an SMS message from your mobile phone? Surprisingly its quite a hard thing to do, well it is for my phone Sony Ericsson K800i.

My phone allows you to save just 10 SMS messages separate from the inbox for long term storage - which is useless. Not only that, I couldn't find any way to actually download multiple messages off the phone. I want to do this as I like to keep a long term record of important SMS.

Then a friend of mine sent me a link to this site: FJ Software development and a fantastic product MyPhoneExplorer.

This is a really cool bit of software, for Sony Ericsson phones that allows you to view, sort, edit, archive and delete your SMS, as well as contacts, calendar etc.

The software is very professionally produced and is exactly what I am looking for - check it out if you have a similar phone.

The Mutton Girls

2007-06-18T11:02:00.000+01:00

Was just looking through my Google Analytics for this blog - wondering how on earth I get so many visitors when I haven't written anything for ages.

Surprisingly the top keyword resulting in a visit is "mutton", unusual I thought for such a generic keyword. I did a quick Google search and found this blog listed on page 2 - that is if you use the Google toolbar search box - if you go direct to Google.co.uk and search - this blog didn't appear at all on the first 10 pages! Any suggestions as to why are welcome.

Anyway, back to the main reason for the post - just below my blog was a link which said "We're Mutton and We're Proud" - so I had to click on that and found a site dedicated to "The Mutton Girls" and their comedy sketch show "Mutton".

The show is described as:

MUTTON DRESSED UP AS LAMB

For most women, approaching the age of 50, and worse, 60, can be a daunting prospect. Women deal with this mid-life crisis in many different ways, but there are probably very few who have seized upon it as a way of opening new doors of opportunity in their lives.

Well, three 40/50 something ladies have done exactly this and written a comedy sketch show poking fun at the trials and tribulations of the menopausal years.

The result is “Mutton”, a new, unique and brilliantly funny show that will appeal to women of all ages and the men that have to live with them.

I see from their tour dates they are visiting Guildford soon, I wonder if I dare go?

Amazon PS3 PreOrder Fiasco

2007-02-15T11:01:00.000Z

The one thing I can't stand is poor customer service - as regular readers of my blog will know, last year I wrote a lot about Talk Talk Broadband.

Well this month its Amazon in the firing line. I few months back I signed up to be notified when the PS3 console would be able to pre-order - launch date is March 23rd.

After Sony announced the final pricing recently I have been waiting for Amazon to let me know when I could order and watching with interest whilst other stores both online and in the High Street launched their offers. Finally, last Saturday, I received an email which said:

"Dear PlayStation fan,

The PlayStation 3 computer entertainment system is set to unleash a brilliant, high-definition entertainment experience when it's released in Europe on March 23. Whether you're into gaming, Blu-ray movies, music or online services, the PlayStation 3 will change your digital lifestyle. You can pre-order yours at Amazon.co.uk from February 15, during business hours (9am - 5pm GMT). We will stop taking pre-orders once we've pre-sold all the consoles Sony have allocated to us for release day. Order early to avoid disappointment! If you're not lucky enough to get hold of a PlayStation 3 in our initial pre-order window, we'll email you when we get more stock in. "

So, anticipating strong demand - as they must have emailed that message to thousands of eager gamers like me - I set my calendar to alert me at 8.45 this morning to be ready to place the order. From about 8.55 onwards, I started refreshing the product page to get the Preorder option and place one. Come 9.15, no button, so I waited some more. By 9.30 I was getting a bit cross and wondered if I had a page cache problem - so I rebooted my machine - still no button.

At 9.30, I thought I would send an email to the Amazon customer services - not really expecting a quick replay - but I fired one off anyway. I then had several friends check the site from their PCs - still no preorder button.

From about 10am, I have been going back to the page every couple of minutes and refreshing the page - still no button. Then I received an email response from Amazon - at 11.02 about 90 minutes after my email - so 10/10 for the quick reply, but 0/10 for the answer:

"Please accept our sincere apologies for any inconvenience caused.
Sony PlayStation 3 Console (60GB Premium Version) is currently not available to pre-order.

Please note that the console will become available for pre-order during UK business hours (9am to 5pm) today, and that we are unable to specify an exact time.

In the meantime, keep checking back on our site to see if Sony PlayStation 3 Console is available to pre-order."

Very similar, but subtly different from the email sent on Saturday. The big difference being that I, like many other customers, thought that the first email made it clear it would be available to order from 9.00am onwards - not at some unspecified time during the working day!

The email then goes on to refer me to the FAQ that Amazon has about the pre-order, which states:

When will I be able to pre-order my PlayStation 3 console?
From Thursday, February 15, 2007, during UK business hours (9am - 5pm GMT).

Not clear at all that it will be a some undetermined point during the day.

Overall, a poor experience and as I have more important things to do today - like work - I don't think I will be ordering my PS3 from Amazon

Will we evolve more arms?

2007-01-03T20:31:00.000Z

Doing a lot of travelling this week and worked out that we need to evolve into a next generation human with more grasping limb than just two. Why? I hear you cry, well quite simply to cope with the demands of modern security at airports - and it can only get worse.

Take today for example, flying from Oslo to Stockholm, waiting in line for security I had already deposited all metal coins, phone, etc. in my coat and pulled my laptop from my bag. As I got closer I noticed that this airport lets you put things into the little plastic trays before you actually get to the x-ray machine. So into one goes my laptop, into another goes my coat and little clear bag with essential liquids that may or may not be bi-polar explosives - who can tell just by looking at the packaging through clear plastic??

Then I get asked to remove my shoes and belt and move over to x-ray machine - so I am now trying to carry:

Two plastic trays
My shoes
My belt
my bag

Somehow I struggle across to the x-ray machine and get a angry stare from the security guy as I dump all this on the belt at the same time. He says something in Norwegian and then after my typical blank English abroad stare, he repeats "one at a time, please"

I think I will look at the cost of video conferencing, or work out how to emulate a Haggunenon

So this is Christmas

2006-12-28T22:21:00.000Z

Well after driving almost 1,000 miles in the past week and at least another 500 to go this next 4-5 days, here are my top 5 hates of the road:

Drivers that like to sit about 10 feet from your rear bumper, even when they can see there is lots of other cars in front of you and you have nowhere to go. Remedy - tap your brake long enough to put the lights on but not actually brake too hard and watch them spin out of control behind you
Drivers that decide the rules of the road don't apply to them and over take on the inside and then force their way out into your lane. Remedy - I have a small Blue LED light on my keyring - when they come out in front, I pull this out and flash it on and off near my windscreen - watch with pleasure as they pull over to the hard shoulder
Highways Agency cars done up to look like police cars - Remedy - any ideas?
Those unexplained delays when everybody slows down but you can;t see any explanation - and then everything starts moving again without any explanation. Remedy - ???
People that sit in the outside lane at 70 mph and ignore all attempts to shift out of the way as they are doing the speed limit. Remedy - unfortunately fitting cars with Hellfire missiles is illegal :(

This has spurred me on to write some other lists of the year - watch this space

Merry Christmas, 2007

2006-12-24T11:05:00.000Z

I have not written about this at all on my blog, as it has been too personal, but I recently separated from my wife and moved out of the family home. This is not the forum to go into detail about it, but this fact will start to creep into my blog over coming posts.

For example, this is the first year that I will not be spending Christmas day with my children, Daniel and Sophie. So on the last evening that I spent with them this week, I did a mini Christmas party with, turkey, chocolate Yule log and some small presents - that's the picture above. We all had fun and I hope that they remember on Christmas day that even though I will not be with them, I love them very much and will be thinking about them. Roll on Boxing Day...

Stupid things seen recently

2006-12-24T10:31:00.000Z

After the good comments I had about my rubber duck image, I have been keeping an eye out for other stupid things to snap and publish here. The first can be both be classified as:

Stupid things to do in the cause of security...

This sign was spotted on the back of a pack of batteries bought from Sainsburys. What worries me about this one is:

It implies it is OK to remove the security device and then microwave the batteries
I wonder what the cost of the security device and labour to fit it was - probably more than the batteries are worth
Is anybody that stupid? (Not to readers this is a rhetorical question - I am sure somebody out there is that stupid)

This sign was spotted on an office building in Staines - I just hope there isn't a fire just after somebody clamps a car in front of the door - thus ensuring that nobody will be able to get out...

Are we living in a James Bond movie?

2006-12-04T22:06:00.000Z

Is it just me or does the bizarre death of Alexander Litvinenko and the unfolding story of the criminal investigation into his death, make you do a double take and check you are actually watching the news and not the latest James Bond movie?

Its the combination of names:

Alexander Litvinenko
Mario Scaramella
Vladimir Putin

and the locations:

A Sushi Bar in Piccadilly
A hotel in Mayfair
London, Moscow, Nice

and the method of death:

Poisoning by Polonium 210

It all adds up to a rather dodgy plot with a bizarre method of removing your alleged enemies, if somebody mentions a small white dog soon I wouldn't be at all surprised.

And what must the "real" professional intelligence services think? Surely there are far simpler methods of reaching the same goal?

Personally I think it was all done as some sort of bizarre bet or dare on behalf of some bored agents and its all gone horribly wrong.

Probably we'll never know the truth...

Social Networking, part 2

2006-11-23T11:48:00.000Z

A few months back I wrote a blog post about Social Networks and in it I speculated that it wouldn't be long before somebody came up with some sort of aggregator, (cf Trillian for messenger) which allowed you to combine all your different bits on one site.

I received an email this week and blog comment, about the first site to do this, Spokeo.com, started by a couple of college Grads. I've not had much chance to play with it and my first thought was the interface was a bit confusing, but take a look and let me know what you think - I'll add more of my own comments, errmm, soon.

Where is Mutton?

2006-11-23T11:16:00.000Z

I know I do have a few regular readers out there in the wonderful world of the Internet and several have commented that I haven't done much blogging recently. Well, its true, I have been mad busy with a combination of work and personal stuff and just not had the time, but lots of stuff has been stored up just waiting to be unleashed on the blog. Watch this space...

Overheard on the BBC...

2006-10-16T22:15:00.000+01:00

Apparently last week one of the BBC News 24 presenters was talking about the North Korea nuclear test and at the end of the article was heard to say - "For more information, Press The Red Button"

Bizarre things you find in hotel vending machines...

2006-10-02T18:16:00.000+01:00

I am in Dublin on business and spotted little yellow ducks on sale in the hotel vending machines. Euro 3.50 in case you want to know

I have been online for 12 years

2006-09-28T14:00:00.000+01:00

Just recived an email and link to a blog post from a very old friend of mine, Vash. Vash was one of the first people I met on this strange thing called the internet and whilst we haven't been in regular contact for the past few years, I do have fond memories of making friends with people through a common interest, which was Science Fiction.

Specifically, we met in the newly formed Milliways discussion forum, dedicated to the works of that genius Douglas Adams. I made some good friends in that group, some of which, like Vash that I am still in contact with and some that I am not. But interestingly, I am in contact with a higher percentage of that group now thatn I think I would have been without the power of the interent, email etc. Living proof, if you need it, that the Internet is enabling things that have never been possible before.

p.s. In a totally serendipitous leap of surfing, writing this blog entry allowed me to discover this wonderful eulogy for the late Graham Chapman by John Cleese, briefly featuring at 1 minute and 23 seconds, the late and sorely missed Douglas Adams

p.p.s If anybody reads this and has a copy of the one hour documentary Hypertext, featuring Douglas Adamas and Tom Baker all about hypertext and micons and stuff like that - I would love to see it again.

p.p.p.s I found it myself on Google Video I recommned you go watch it...

Talk Talk Broadband - Fact can be stranger than fiction

2006-09-25T11:49:00.000+01:00

Regular readers of my blog will know that I recently had a bit of a rant about Talk Talk Broadband and the appalling level of customer service received by my mum. With a bit of inside help from an old contact at Carphone Warehouse we got the situation resolved and mum has been happy, so far, with the live service.

In fact I would go so far as to say the service has been quite good - I was at Mum's recently and took the opportunity to update her PC with all those large updates that would have been tedious in the extreme to download over dial-up. Over two days I must have downloaded over 250Mb of updates and had no real problems to speak of with the connection.

Then the other day I was browsing my web stats programme - I use Google Analytics, because it's free and quite good (for free). I noticed with interest that I have been getting quite a few visitors to my site who had searched Google for phrases like "Talk Talk Broadband problem" and "Talk Talk Broadband technical help". For curiosity I put some of these phrases back into Google myself and was amazed to see that for some fo them I am the top result!

So a little experiment into SEO, I am going to try and get myself as the top match into Google for the Top 10 phrases that have already been used to get to the blog. Below is the list and the current results position which is on page 1 unless otherwise stated.

talktalk broadband not working - current position - Top result
talk talk broadband problems - current position - not in top 5 pages
talk talk broadband not working - current position - Result #3
talktalk broadband installation problems - current position - Result #18
talk talk broadband update - current position - Result #4
talktalk broadband service update - current position - Result #9
broadband talk talk problems - current position - Page 2, Result #16
talk talkbroadband call charges - current position - Result #12
talk talk broadband instalation problems - current position - Result #14
talktalk customer helpline number - current position - Page 2, Result #8

For anybody who has reached this page and wants help resolving their problems, you can always try reading my posts about how I solved it - most of them are on this page here

From the list above you can see quite clearly that significvant numbers of people are having problem with Talk Talk (or is that talktalk) connection problems, installation problems, service updates, helpline numbers (that could be help line number I suppose too, or even talk talk freephone technical customer service helpline number) and just overall getting the damn thing to work.

Even more staggering is that somebody bothered to go past page 5 to click on a link to me in response to the query "talk talk broadband problems" - they must have been really desperate for some sort of solution.

If I was Charles Dunstone at Carphone Warehouse, the owners of Talk Talk Broadband then I would still be very worried about the potential consumer backlash from such a poor service as reported on the BBC recently in an article entitle Battling with Broadband This article has some useful advice about how to complain about talk talk broadband, or any other broadband provider.

I will leave this for a week or so and then see how my SEO ranking has improved for these terms.

Daniel's 9th Birthday Party Pictures

2006-09-19T15:08:00.000+01:00

It was my son Daniel's 9th Birthday last week and we had a "Make your own Pizza " party at our local Pizza Express in Staines.

Everyone hada good time and the staff were very helpful, we can definitely recommend it as a good idea for a birthday party.

We also took lots of pictures and you can see some of them on Flickr by clicking here.

StoryCode on Dragon's Den

2006-09-18T17:38:00.000+01:00

One thing I will write quickl;y about is to let you know that one of the businesses I am involved in, StoryCode.com, was featured on Dragon's den last week. Here is the video clip which somebody kindly put on YouTube.

Regular blogging can be difficult when you are busy

2006-09-18T17:33:00.000+01:00

I know I have a few regular readers so just wanted to let you know that I haven't fogotten this blog I have just been busy last few weeks, combination of work, kids birthdays and my mum being rushed to hospital last week.

So just for now, here is an aide memoire for the stuff I do want to write about but haven't had the time:

More on Talk Talk Broadband
A blind man who was banned from driving
The NHS
Public transport - specifically trains
Stupid opening hours

So if you can be bothered, come back soon and watch out for the actual posts...

Daniel on his 9th birthday

2006-09-15T18:45:00.000+01:00

Eating out for his 9th birthday, Daniel, Sophie, Louise and I went to the Angler`s Retreat near Laleham

Talk Talk Broadband Problem

2006-08-30T12:01:00.000+01:00

Been meaning to write this update, but things happened fast and I was away visiting family.

Last Thursday we were contacted by Talk Talk customer services, a very helpful person called Susan. She advised that the broadband service would go live on Thursday 31/8 and the relevant documentation and equipment would be sent out soon.

As luck would have it, I was visiting Mum in Liverpool this weekend and the broadband modem arrived on Saturday morning. Only slight problem was that it was addressed to the right address but the wrong person. Fortunately, Mum's postie is a conscientious bloke and rang the bell to double-check if it was for her.

I waited until Tuesday to see if the Username and password would arrive, but no such luck. So I decided to do as much of the installation as possible before leaving, thinking it would make Mum's job easier later in the week. The installation process was relatively smooth and I think even the most technically challenged person would be able to get through it.

The only slight hiccup was a failure to install the modem drivers first time, but a second attempt worked perfectly. Then, to my surprise, the modem actually managed to connect to the broadband service and it was clear the line was active for ADSL. So I called an automated helpline to retrieve the missing username and password and with a bit of trial and error, it is all working fine.

What trial and error? Well the helpline reads out in a nice female voice the password, which is case sensitive. But it doesn't tell you which letters are upper or lower, nor did it make any attempt, perhaps through use of the phonetic alphabet, to clarify potentially confusing letters. The only problem we had was an "n" or was it an "m"? "November" or "Mike" would have made it much easier.

So 18 weeks almost to the day to get the "free" service up and running. I haven't told Mum about all the complaints online about the actual quality of the service now it is working - we'll just see how that pans out.

Universal Music backs ad-funded download service

2006-08-30T11:53:00.000+01:00

The online music world has changed again this week with the planned launch of a new music download service called SpiralFrog. This new service will offer totally legal music downloads for free and will monetise the service through advertising. It will be fascinating to watch the reaction of other major labels and services like iTunes. Not forgetting how this will impact in other areas such as movie and game downloads.

Mobile Blogging

2006-08-28T22:19:00.000+01:00

As you can see from the photos below, I have been playing with a new toy, Sony Ericsson K800i. This fantastic new 3G phone came with a link to blogger pre-installed. Just take a picture with the awesome 3 megapixel camera and select "Publish to Blog" - add a title and caption and within 30 seconds your visual masterpiece is live on the net. I have to say all the friends I have shown it to were blown away that you could do it so easily - hats off to Sony Ericsson and Blogger for making it so easy to use!

Its Summer, but doesnt feel like it on top of Mount Snowdon

2006-08-28T13:10:00.000+01:00

1065m above sea level

Out on the town with the boys

2006-08-26T23:15:00.000+01:00

Barry, Shaun and Mike at the Fiveways pub in Liverpool

Sophie and her Nana

2006-08-26T16:28:00.000+01:00

In Liverpool this weekend staying with my mum.