Some progress on My Dell Hell

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

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

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

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

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

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?

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

This is why we are here :)

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

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

Last stupid picture me the year

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

Amazon starting early for Next Christmas?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Unbelievable

First sign of Xmas 2008 in May!

Webhosting Problems leading to Blog problems

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

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

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

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

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

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.

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

Unexpected extra journey

Via train transit for B gates at Heathrow terminal 5

Flying through Terminal 5 today.

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

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

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

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

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)

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

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

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

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

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

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

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!

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

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

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

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...

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"

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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?

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

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:

1. 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
   
2. 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
   
3. Highways Agency cars done up to look like police cars - Remedy - any ideas?
   
4. Those unexplained delays when everybody slows down but you can;t see any explanation - and then everything starts moving again without any explanation. Remedy - ???
   
5. 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

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

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?

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

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?

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...

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...

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Talk Talk Broadband Problem

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

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

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

1065m above sea level

Out on the town with the boys

Barry, Shaun and Mike at the Fiveways pub in Liverpool

Sophie and her Nana

In Liverpool this weekend staying with my mum.

Daniel joining in with all the fun

As soon as Daniel saw the picture of Sophie he had to have one too

Dave

Testing this mobile blogging thing

Sophie

Sophie looking very happy to see her daddy :-)

Click on my Google link pleeeeze

Just noticed that my Google Ad Sense ad at the top of this page is an ad for "Free Broadband" and guess who the lucky company bidding for this term is? You guessed it Talk Talk!

So click on the link pleeze and I will at least get some cash out of them

Irony, I love it...

The Ever Increasing Power of Bloggers

Working in the internet world is fascinating, watching new technologies, new ideas being born, growing, in most cases receiving broad adoption and occasionally crashing and burning.

Today I was reminded how powerful the internet generally has become and specifically the impact blogging can have. It is sad to see that some people, who really really need to know what it can do, are failing miserably to understand it's potential and in this case the part blogging can play in demanding and receiving accountability from out public servants.

What on earth am I rambling on about? Well it's simple, an experienced blogger and erstwhile colleague of mine, Tim Ireland is a waging a war of words with his local MP Anne Milton and the alleged actions of some of her campaign staff. I am not even going to try and explain further, just direct you over to Tim's site Bloggerheads.

Before you go, I will wish Tim well in his battle, it looks like right is on his side and I will watch with interest for news of a by-election in Guildford.

Update on Talk Talk Broadband Problem

After writing the previous posting about the problems mum is having getting Talk talk Broadband, I decided to email my blog to an old business contact of mine at Carphone Warehouse. I knew it wasn't his job, but asked him to forward it onto one of his colleagues who maybe able to help. He responded very quickly on Friday, telling me had sent on my email to the MD of Talk Talk Broadband - excellent.

He went onto say "Unfortunately we are in a situation where demand is far outweighing supply leading to our customer service problems. We are getting this sorted but finding and opening new call centres takes time. Apologies for the inconvenience caused."

Great to see some people at CW can respond quickly - thanks Ady.

So what has happened recently?

On Monday I got a less than helpful response from the Broadband Support team:

>>>

Dear Mr Mutton,

Thank you for your email.

Sorry for the delay in response.

upon checking, the order that we placed rejected as the system claimed that the post code does not match up with BT's database. Thuis is unusual as we used the same details to order the line rental for you, hence I have passed the account details to a department who will investigate this. If you do not hear any further details within the next ten working days, please contact customer services for an update.

If you have any general queries, please call customer services on 0870 444 1820.

For technical queries, please contact broadband technical support on 0871 226 7146 or email broadbandsupport@talktalk.co.uk. Calls to this number are charged at 10 pence per minute (call charges may vary from mobile phones and other telecom operators).

Both of these numbers can become busy during peak periods and TalkTalk apologises for any inconvenience caused by the delays.

<<<>

• Bad grammar and spelling
  
• No specific contact details for the "department" now dealing with it
  
• No easy method of follow up - for example I can tell them that the property is new and the postcode is also recently allocated, so they are probably using an old database
  

What I am most cross about is the fact that nobody bothered to contact my mum when the order was "rejected".

Then today, Wednesday, Mum called and told me about a report on BBC Breakfast News all about Talk Talk - you can read the article and watch the video here

The storm is gathering, I suggest Mr Dunstone starts looking for shelter...more soon.

You Get What You Pay For

It's time for a bit of a rant today about companies who think they have got a winning proposition but haven't really thought it through and can't deliver on the promise. My favourite one from history has to be Hoover's free Flights offer which reportedly cost the business of $50m over several years of litigation.

But today my rant is about Talk Talk from Carphone Warehouse and the free broadband offer they launched earlier this year. I'm a heavy user of broadband at home and currently use BT as my provider partly because I was working at yahoo when they launched BT yahoo and we got a discount, partly through apathy about the hassle of changing, but mostly because I have never had a single bad day of service and working in the internet biz requiring a reliable connection, this has been invaluable.

My mother however is a light internet user with an old PC of mine, still using dial-up, but already a customer of the Talk Talk phone service. So when the free broadband offer was launched she snapped up the opportunity and signed up. That was 23 April 2006. Since then she has had only one (1) communication from Talk Talk, advising her that her expected go live date was end of July 2006. Ok so that was a bit of a shock, but on the face of it, it looked like TT was being cautious and not promising quick service due to the rapid take-up of the offer. The letter also said that the broadband modem etc would turn up about ten days prior to Go live.

So the months rolled past and my mum forgot about it until early July when she started to look expectantly for her broadband equipment to arrive (she also started to make sure that I was available to visit her and set it all up when it arrived). July moved ever on and no equipment, so she thought she would try to ring customer service and find out what has happened (note, Mum still has not fully embraced the internet so at this point had not tried to email or use the web to contact TT).

Just for interest, I looked up the definition of Customer Service in Wikipedia:

"Customer service is the provision of labour and other resources, for the purpose of increasing the value that buyers receive from their purchases and from the processes leading up to the purchase"

It goes on to say:

"Strategic advantage through customer service
A company can outperform rivals only if it can establish a difference that it can preserve. Customer service can be such a difference. It is very difficult to control, and therefore difficult to imitate. It is difficult to control because of its variability. The level of service may vary greatly between two providers in the same organization. It may also vary from one moment to another, even as delivered by the same provider. The difficulty is compounded in multi-unit operations: in addition to variability within units, there is also variability among units.

That is both the challenge and the opportunity. The consistent delivery of superior service requires the careful design and execution of a whole system of activities that includes people, capital, technology, and processes. The few companies that can manage this system do stand out, and are sought out. This is the foundation of their sustainable competitive advantage"

To me the definition would be a bit less complex - "Customer Service means you pick up the bloody phone, listen to your customers and resolve their issues in a polite, efficient manner."

This is what happens when you call Talk talk Customer Service:

• Nice chatty welcome message
  
• List of options, you need option 2
  
• List of options, you need option 2
  
• List of options, you need option 5
  
• Friendly female voice says that all operators are busy so please call back later
  
• The line is disconnected
  

That's right, that's all you get.

No offer to leave message
No information about the company website
No way of staying on hold
Basically we're too busy go away

The other thing to note is that Customer service number is an 0870 number, i.e. chargeable and rarely included in any "free minutes" call package. But don't worry about that, go to Say No to 0870 and you can find the 0800 phone number for Talk Talk customer service - 0800 0855900.

With no luck on the phone, Mum decides to pop into a CW store and enquire. The response was something like "Oh we have been inundated, we can't tell you when you will get it, we've got no idea"

So I decide to get involved and went to the Talk Talk website. It's easy to get order status and today, 18 August, 2006 it shows the Go Live date to be end of July - hmm no red flags here, you would expect somebody to be worrying about the service.

So I start hunting around the website for interesting snippets of poor customer service:

• On this page all about tracking your order it says "We'll also update you regularly by email, and as we roll out free broadband 1 across the UK we'll publish updates here on our website."
  
• It goes on to say: "Our online order checker gives you the very latest information about your order. Please don't call us unless there is another problem, as our advisors won't have any more information than you can see online."
  
• My favourite bit is: "Although our engineers are working night and day, there'll be some customers we can't connect immediately, and for a few people it could be several weeks. Whatever happens, we promise to connect you as soon as possible."
  
• And wait for it: "I don't want to wait any more. When you join we give you an estimated "go live" date for your broadband. If there's a serious delay and you're still not connected after this date, please contact Customer Services. If you decide to cancel before we've had a chance to connect you, there may be a cancellation charge."
  

So, in summary, "We will get you live as soon as possible, but it could be several weeks (16 weeks so far), we will keep you advised regularly by email (nothing) and if there is a delay, you can call us (but nobody will answer), but if you get fed up waiting we may charge you for the privilege of having wasted all those months.

And then do a quick search on the net about the actual quality of service when it (hopefully) eventually goes live - like these people on the Consumer Action Group website and you come to the conclusion that was my title - You get What You Pay For.

Personally I am glad I don't own any share in Carphone Warehouse, because I think they have yet to reap what they have sown, but it is coming, just wait and see.

p.s. Two other facts - there is no phone number for customer services on the TT website and Ofcom - the telecoms industry regulator - doesn't investigate individual complaints, but if enough people complain, they will investigate the company - you can do that here - I did :)

Social Networking

I've been doing a fair bit of work recently looking at social networks, several start-ups that I can't name (yet) and it's been fascinating seeing the different approaches to this new phenomenon.

And then I realised that it isn't really new, it's just been given a fantastic new lease of life via the internet and via so called "web 2.0" tools. It's never been easier to keep in contact with disparate groups of people and sites have been created and evolved to serve niche markets. Here are some of the ones I belong to:

Friends Reunited - Main use for this is my old school friends from Liverpool, most of whom I discovered I wanted to know what they were up to, where they were living, jobs, families etc. - but there was nobody there that I had really missed and they have all faded away into non contact again

Yahoo Groups - The first type of social network I can remember. I belong to several groups - one is a collection of people who all love Science Fiction and Hitch Hikers Guide to the galaxy in particular. We originally met in the SF Forum on CompuServe back in the mid 90's and amazingly we still go through spurts of activity and messaging and the occasional meeting. The last unfortunately was to go see the HH movie, not a pleasant experience. Stay Hoopy guys. The other important group for me is "Ex_Amazon" started by me to keep in contact with the amazing people that I worked with in the first few years when Amazon.co.uk was launched. In fact it's the main reason for this post today - we are getting together tonight for a few beers - first time in a couple of years, will be interesting to see how people have moved on.

LinkedIn - This is my main business network, with over 200 contacts to my name. It's proven very useful for me as a consultant, both bringing me work and also helping me forge new contacts leading to more business. Of all these sites, this is the one I currently use most often.

I have also joined other sites like MySpace, LifeLogger, Flickr etc., but I can't say I am really active with any of them.

Just like the long awaited interaction between yahoo IM, AOL and MSN, I wonder when these different networks will start to talk to each other and share data. A Trillian for social networking, not there's a thought, where is my VC phonebook...

Marketing Gone Mad!

Well I suppose that title should really be Merchandising Gone Mad. I went into my local Sainsburys yesterday to get a sandwich for lunch and had a quick wander around the non-food aisle, always looking out for a CD or DVD bargain.

Nothing to be seen in that area but my eye was inexorably drawn to a new display being put out, replacing the tired old Footie/England/World Cup stuff. I couldn't believe my eyes, it was "Kids Back to School" uniforms! I kid you not, on Tuesday 19 July, more than a whole week before the local schools actually finish this year, Sainsburys are promoting the BTS range.

WE always moan every year as Christmas seems to start even earlier, but this is just ridiculous. Can't you at least allow the kids a couple of weeks of summer before they get confronted with the prospect of returning to their studies.

I think this is a big mistake and I say "Boycott Sainsburys" - so there - that will get them worried. I am off now to send this to the BBC, I want action.

Cycling is fun and good exercise

I've just got back from a long lunch, during which I went for a lovely bike ride along the Thames Path from Staines three quarters of the way to Windsor. Why three quarters I hear somebody ask? Well, I wanted to see how far I could get in 25 minutes riding, then stop for 10 minutes to eat lunch and then cycle back.

I have been walking this route and can get from Staines to Runnymede Pleasure grounds in 25 minutes. I've calculated that this is about 3.5 miles there and back - a good healthy walk for lunchtime.

But today I came to work by bike as Staines bridge is temporarily closed to vehicle traffic, see this post for the original fiasco. So I thought I would see how far I would get in the same time by bike.

The Thames Path is great for cycling as it is almost uniformly flat, being by a river, and has beautiful views of the river as you travel. By a quick estimate of my speed, I think I did about 6 miles out, so 12 miles round trip, burning approximately 691 calories according to this calculator