However, now I work at home, I’m in during the day. However now I get my post delivered home, I’ve noticed something, which well, really isn’t on – I’m still getting those slips. Not once, but every delivery this week, has failed, with “We tried to call, but no one was in” “The item was too big for the letterbox” type excuse.

This has happened with RoyalFail, DPD, HDNL, all of them pretty much. Most of the things I’ve ordered from Amazon, with Amazon Prime (which gives next day delivery). However when I’ve picked this up with them, they say the next day isn’t guaranteed if there are any issues with their courier.

I really don’t get that, I have a contract with Amazon, for them to deliver the next day. They then outsource the delivery to a courier company, yet if there is an issue with that contract, then it’s me, that paid for the Prime service – yet don’t get the item.

My theory here, is that most delivery drivers/postmen who deliver to home addresses, know that 99% of the people won’t be in during day, so rather than carrying around a big postbag, just pre-fill out the redslips.

Grrr.

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• 6 July 2011 -- The Kindle and I (0)

A few months back, I had a letter from Natwest, who informed me they were charging me £25 a day for being over my overdraft limit. Interesting, I don’t have an overdraft, nor have I used that account since I worked for them quite some years ago.

Checking my online banking with them, and noticed ~£450 worth of PayPal direct debits. Interesting, these transactions were not listed on my PayPal account. Sent them a few emails explaining this, and they then said I had to call to discuss further. When I called they had no knowledge of the email correspondence, so I had to go through it all again. They basically said that they could not help as the transactions were not listed on my account, and they could only talk to me about MY account. They advised I talk to my bank.

Called up the bank, and explained the situation, then got put through to fraud, explained, then put through to another department, who said as I had given my bank details to PayPal years back (to deposit, not debit), it wasn’t fraud, and it was something I’d need to take up with PayFail. Back to step 1.

I then explained they can’t help, and it’s up to the bank to resolve. The only thing they could do was advise me to go into a branch, and fill out a direct debit indemnity form, as these were direct debits, and they could return them that way.

Off to the branch I went, to then be told, that form is for modifying a direct debit, I.e. you’re paying £50 a month to sky, but should only be paying £45. It wasn’t for historic transactions. They suggest I talk to PayFail. Awesome! nobody wants to take ownership.

I then asked to talk to a manager, who apparently was busy for the afternoon. I advised I probably wouldn’t be leaving the branch until I spoke to he/she, so I’ll happily wait. I had the paper, my iPad and my Macbook, so I had plenty to keep me busy. Within 10 minutes, that very busy manager was then available.

She was very helpful, and talk to the fraud team, who had earlier said they couldn’t help. They agreed to take on my case, and would give me a call by 16:00 (it was 14:00 at the time) to confirm the refunds were in place.

At around 17:00 I thought, hey, where is my call? I gave the fraud team a call, and the person I spoke to had advised the chap who was dealing with my account had gone home. I then proceeded to ask for a manager, as I had been given the royal run around. Spoke to a very nice lady who was the supervisor who advised the handling team had rejected the case, as I had at some point given my details to PayFail.

As you can imagine, not the best of responses to give to an already peeved customer. She was pretty good, and said that department was now closed, but she was in at 09:00 the next morning, and would personally go talk to the manager of that department. She advised I check my account in the morning, and if there weren’t refunds on the account by 10:00 to give her a call directly.

The refunds were on there. Awesome. Later that afternoon, I started to get emails from people on eBay I had previously purchased things from. PayFail in their infinite wisdom, had not just looked at the amounts I had contested, they had rejected all payments I had made, all the genuine transactions. I can only imagine they couldn’t find the actual transactions that had been posted to my current account, so made up the funds from the genuine transactions. So lots of irate (and rightly so) people from eBay. I explained the situation, and most of them were fine. They just had to give PayFail some docs to prove they were g transactions, and a copy of my email.

I thought that was all done and dusted. Until someone sent me some money today, I had totally forgot they had an annual auto payment to my account. The money has been accepted, and now cannot be returned. So I have funds in my PayFail account, and oh, I can’t get hold of them.

See above, my account has been ‘limited’, funny, as it was them that had made all the errors, but they feel the need to limit my account. Interesting.

The only way I can get my account working again, is to confirm my details. One of the things I need to do, is confirm 2 transactions to my bank account. They put two transactions through up to £1, and I need to tell them how much they were for. Except, my bank have blocked all transactions from PayFail, and I do not particularly want to give them the details of my actual current account, just in case they go on a frenzy again.

Arse!

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• 13 March 2009 -- How to break as much as possible with just one stone (0)
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Yesterday I was in Slough for work, and was planning to go out in Vauxhall in the evening to an event I knew a friends would be at. I txt/IMed a few people earlyish in the day, but didn’t hear anything back. Assuming they weren’t going, on my way back to London, I took the route that would take me straight home, and then settled in for the eve. I then get messages later on to say they were there, at this point I was in no mood to travel back across London. Also spoke to another friend later in the eve, who wasn’t going to go, but knew I wanted to, who turns out to have gone. Would have been nice to let me know? but hey, guess not.

Today I wanted to go around the Tottenham Court Road computer fairs, I’d mentioned it to a friend to see if he wanted to go along, and he was going to let me know if he could make it. Nothing heard back this morning. I was then meant to meet another friend for lunch in the afternoon. She said she was going to finish work at 13:00, and give me a shout, to look to meet around 13:30/14:00. I’d come home back to East London where I live, and she works in anticipation of hearing from her. At 14:30, I was a bit worried as hadn’t heard back from her, so gave her a shout, to be told she now wasn’t coming.

Seriously WTF, do people not have any concept of general courtsey? If I arrange to do something, and I can’t make it, even if I just don’t fancy it, I’ll certainly let the other people know as soon as know. I certainly wouldn’t expect them to have to chase me after the arranged time to see if I could be bothered. My day has been mostly trashed, and my time wasted. All could have been averted if others had just had some forthought. These are by no way isolated incidents, this happens far too often for my liking.

Same goes with people being late, sure shit happens that makes being bang on time difficult. However we all have mobiles today, it’s not like you cant send a call/txt. Nobody is perfect, however people who are prepetually late, really get my back up. I make every effort to be on time for everything, and if I’m not, crikey at least I’ll make sure you know before hand. Being on the tube is no excuse either, I’ll always ensure I send a message before going down to the tube/losing signal.

RARRR!!

P.S: if you read this and think this is about you, I don’t mean this to be directed at or moaning about you, just about today’s society in general. I don’t hold grudges, but maybe just think about someone other than yourself next time?

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I’m in the process of swapping out the wireless card in my netbook (for osx86) so don’t have any drivers or modules setup in the OS’s at the moment.

Luckily though, I do have a vodafone data sim, and the 4213 has an inbuilt 3G modem.

Here comes the fun part, the data tariff is on Vodafone business, so you would think they’d be slightly reliable… erm nope.

Every month, without fail, they mess up the billing. Apparently my Direct Debit fails, it doesn’t. A few ways I know, is it’s gone through a couple of times, so we know that it’s got the correct details. The other being when a DD does bounce, my Bank arse rape me on charges. Third being, there is always funds to cover all my DD’s.

Now vodafail, are funny people, because you know how I said it’s a data card, well how do they try to contact you… by txt message. That’s a big clever idea.

I can sort of see the idea, in that their app for windows, does have a sms function, but I would at least have thought an email may be a better option? or even both. However, I don’t use windows, instead my netbook is running Fedora 10, and NetworkManager doesn’t support sms… FAIL

The best one is when I do look at the missed call txt’s, from their sales drones. WTF? do they talk binary? no, well don’t call a datacard then!

Bah, alas, I phone them up, and go through the usual crap of, could we take your mobile number (No, I don’t know it, I never have, and have no intention of, it’s a datacard.) Can I have the account number, it’s on your bill (No, it’s a datacard, I use it when I am out and about, I don’t carry a copy of all my bills with me)… so we eventually get there, and they say to switch my PHONE off and on… FAIL.

Alas I am mobile again, thanks to the friendly folk at vodafail.

Hmm, the contract runs out next month, who should I move to?

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• 16 May 2008 -- Changing Mobile Provider (0)

For anyone that doesn’t know, spec’s cameras, are average speed cameras, so they take a photo of your number plate when you join the road zone, throughout the zone, and a final camera when you leave or the zone, then they work out your average speed. A few pics below (taken from the link at the bottom).

This are, a double edged sword really, as they are very effective at stopping speeding, which is the idea, but then you can’t cheat by just slowing down at the cameras.

The problem with them putting these up, are people are idiots. The A127, is a dual carriage way, with traffic devided by a central reservation, with National Speed limits. So the speed limit is 70mph. However the idiots, see these camera’s and hit the breaks down to about 40mph or sometimes 50mph. This is by far more dangerious than going 75mph or something terrible like that.

If these idiots, had bothered to check [1] The highway code, they’d know it’s 70mph [2] The road signs, i.e. there aren’t any saying the camera’s are live [3] Google to see if they are live [4] a lot more sites, including the council’s.

Further reading & pictures: http://www.pocketgpsworld.com/a127-specs-speed-cameras.php

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I’ve always been a fan of not keeping all your eggs in one basket, so I have my emergency account & savings with a different bank to my usual current account. The emergency account happens to be IF or Intelligent Finance. Opening the account was a nightmare, but that was largely due to muppets at Halifax. All that set aside they’re not too terrible.

Apart from their online service, which is the only way you can manage your account. I must say I only ever check ever couple of months, and I need to at the moment, so I log on, and because I rarely use it, I have all the details recorded. What a supprise:

It seems everytime I log on, I’ve been locked out. No doubt due to one of those nice chinese hacker folk. So I duely phone up the number provided, and get an IVR, pop in my details, then get connected to an operator, who I have to go through all this again… the joy. The chump then informs me that, the only way I can unlock my account is to be sent an unlock code, which is sent by second class post. Being Friday, it’ll be quite a few days then.

I asked why it had been locked out, and due to excessive log on attempts, which backs up what their site says. No I know it’s not me who has tried to log in, baring this once, so there isn’t really much I can do here.

So there we have it, everytime I want to check my IF account, I’ll have a weekish delay.

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• 3 April 2011 -- More PayFail (0)
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This is in an attempt to make the quiet zones, quiet. One word…. FAIL. The noise in these carriages is usually a screaming 6month old, or some 13 year old chav, playing eminem, out of their tinny Nokia music player… I hardly thing cutting the business world off from their crackberrys is going to do much.

Also interestingly they don’t mention that they will cut off their ‘in-train wi-fi’ which is run by t-mobile, using their ‘cloud’.

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The story with Barclays continues. You know how I had written back in Janurary, about how the saga of them cocking up my account, was a bit of a joke, but they had promised to fix their mistakes. Well they’re still on going, the latest being that they had setup a £200 payment from my current account, every month. Well the ‘Account Manager’ that set it up, set it up for 2 days after the due date, so immediately this was classed as a late payment, with all the natural charges and interest attached.

I thought enough is enough, so tried writing to the Chief Exec, usually you get a better class of monkey typewritter operator. On this occasion, I thought I had, got a letter back a few weeks later, stating that they were sorry… blah fee’s refunded…etc I thought, at last hopefully it’s setup correctly.

Nope, wrong! I checked my current account this morning, and what’s this, seems a bit lighter than I had thought it would be. FUCKWITS, they’re now taking the payment as this regular £200 jobby, and now a DD as well.

So it would seem, even the Chief Exec’s team, can’t even manage a simple task. Barclays, you suck.

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• 16 January 2008 -- Too much to write, too little time. (0)
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Example

Me: did you reseat the hard drive in server xyz?
Fuckwit: ?
me: what are you asking here fuckwit, you know you have to put a question in front of the ?

Enough said. When people do it to me now, they will be referred to this entry, as I think 3 fuckwits today have done it.

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—-

(Sorry now, I need to rant)

Today was driving to a friends, after we’d been out, and was low on petrol, but the usual low where I get about 20 miles more…. and then donk, no more engine… tried to start it and whoops, look’s like I’d ran out.

Pushed the car off the road, and then proceeded to the nearest garage (bout 2 miles away, in the rain ) get back to the car, and fill her up… oh dear still not starting. Now I have had a problem before with my fuel pump, but checked that, and the original problem wasn’t there.

Poked around, checked all the fuses, all good.

So gave in and decided to ring the greenflag. Now I have had them out before and always been picked up by on-call, who are just a pickup truck service, so this whole fix 80% by the road is bo**ox. Anyways 1 hour and 10 minutes on hold, I thought this was a bit of a pi** take, so hang up and went to sales, instant pickup… I tried to explain, that I had been on hold this long, costing a bomb, and battery about to go. Also that the van is supposed to be with me within an hour, and I hadn’t even got through… nothing he could do and just transfered me to the same hold music (which is great, Rescue me).

Fuming, called back and spoke to a manager, who said the same and did the same. Another 30 minutes on hold I gave up.

Got a friend and a toe rope.

Turns out, after all that, I thought my ECU had died, as a bit of voltmetering, could see now power to the fuel pump, or the coil pack…

Took off the super chip and she started up fine, so will be phoning them up… also the car seems a lot faster too now (weird?).

So I think I am going to be sending a super sh**ty letter to greenflag, asking for my phone bill, premium, and the cost of alternative toeing send to me…. think I’ll get much luck?

have never let a complaint go passed yet without winning… I think the best was frankie and bennies, but thats another story

—-

Haven’t had time to post recently, been v v busy, but am still about

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Called up the store, and they said they would look into it and get it repaired. Hmm would they have repaired it if I hadn’t called? me thinks not, even though apparently a ‘Second Repair’ has priority. Later this afternoon, the store called me back, saying it had been fixed, would need to be tested tomorrow, and then shipped out, for delivery that evening. When I asked the ‘Genius’ to check the address, he correctly identified it was my work address, and couldn’t see a problem of it being delivered in the evening. Anyways.

He also said the squeaky hinge problem was not covered under the warranty, and there would be a charge normally, but as I asked for this to be repaired at the same time as the back being fixed, they would do it for free. Hmm this is interesting, as I have never mentioned a squeaky hinge, didn’t know it had one to be honest.

I am thinking these ‘Genius’s would fail an interview for McDonalds at this rate.

Saga continues… maybe on Monday they will launch a Genius v2 rather than a 3g iPhone… that would be nice

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• 1 June 2008 -- Rotten Apple (0)
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Noticed someone looking at my blog the other day in Internet Explorer, and it seems it renders it completely all over the place.

As I rarely use windows these days, I hadn’t noticed the theme b0rking it’s self. Grrr, going to have to see if I can find the culprit (or just change to a theme that does work).

Works fine in any other browser on an OS it seems barring Internet Explorer.

Grrrrrrr

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• 3 June 2008 -- Blog Fixed (0)

Pft. I retract my last blog entry regarding my MacBook.

You know I said it would be fixed next day, well the Apple Store called me this morning saying that it had been repaired, only 4 days late. I thought well, wasn’t really a huge problem.

Got up a couple of hours early (am on the night-shift at the moment, so sleep during the day), and thought I would take a detor on the drive to work, via Bluewater.

Got to the store, and had to wait about 15 minutes for someone to ackowledge I was there (the two people in the Genius bar were clearly too busy with their iPhones). Anyways a nice lady genius took my details, and presented me with my ‘fixed’ MacBook.

Well fixed, as in half-fixed. They had only changed half the case, so I still had cracks all over the bottom half. When I pointed this out, the genius said they had just carried out what I asked for. When I said all I said was here is my mac, fix it please, I didn’t specifiy what part of the case. I also pointed out that it said on the repair receipt to replace all panels. Grrrr, see seems quite nice about it all, but still the point is they cocked up.

She said she would need to take it back in for a 2nd repair, but they didn’t have the parts in stock, and don’t get a delivery until Tuesday. woop!

Naturally not happy at this point, as it’s quite a drive their from my house, and it’s always pissed me off that I bought the mac online, yet they don’t seem to offer any ‘mail’ support.

I had a word with one of the managers, and she said she could get it couriered back to me, once it had been repaired. Still super-chuffed off, such a waste of my time. GRRR

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It seems everytime I go through the drive though, I get the wrong order by the time I get back to the office, grrr.

Today was no exception, so thought I’d email them using the email addy from their site. So string a big email together, and send it off.

Oh guess what, it bounces. Should’a guessed!

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War of the Worlds 2. omg, it was unwatchable, and laughably shite. I didn’t personally think much of the first one, but thought I would give the second one a hit. It’s not actually an official sequel either.

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Was driving to work yesterday, as couldn’t face another weekend of rail replacement bus service. For once I didn’t have my TomTom or Snooper switched on. Was half asleep following some other car, when FLASH FLASH, the car in front got flashed, then FLASH FLASH, so did I. Could have only been doing about 35.

Turns out that the Limehouse link in Docklands, is a 30 (although looking today, I couldn’t even see it sign posted), and they have three speed cameras in there. I was hoping I may be lucky and it will have run out of film or something, over the Bank holiday weekend. However the limehouse link’s cameras are digitial, so do not need servicing or ever run out

BBC reports all about this. So looks like my ticket could already be in the post boo hoo

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Well  a bit of a mistake. My logic was, am in London, the Thames clipper takes about 20 minutes, sorted.

Everyday there has been some sort of cock up with tit, so not too impressed there. First couple of days, too foggy.

Then last night really took the piss. Coming home, waiting at Tower Pier, the clipper goes straight passed. The guy working there was clueless as to why. Then the next one comes along, and apparently there was only space for one more, great, I was first in the queue. However some cheeky bint was allowed to push in, because she had a season ticket. Grr. Now I’m sure if I had a season ticket, I’d want the ability to push in. A bit cheeky on public transport I thought.

Next week I get to test the C2C line to Fenchurch Street, I hope it’s slightly more reliable.

Also told by a few pals over at Kingston Communications, that my previous blog was mentioned in a management meeting, as it had flagged up an alert, that the company name was mentioned on the web. HA. As will this one no doubt this will too. (Hi to you all if you’re reading) I guess there wasn’t much on the agenda of the meeting. Also later on this afternoon, someone viewed my CV on the site, also from KCOM, or at least a customer, as the person’s IP resolved to Karoo (KCOM’s adsl division) ADSL. They were too wimpish to put their correct email address however, sad!

Am trying to post this via, email > wordpress. Wonder if it will actually play nice.  [UPDATE: it didn't. No text came through]

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I question this fact, because how often do they have an advert for the women… hmm I can’t say I’ve ever seen one?

Me thinks it’s a con. They’re just playing on sad old, pissed or just desperate guys, wanting to get their end wet.

The same goes for any medium really, just look over the net, it’s everywhere, but always one sided.

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