Right Hand Meet Left Hand

My quest for a Nokia E71 has come to an end. It hasn’t been a success. I’ve been trying to buy one for some weeks. I wanted to get one from O2 (my current phone company) as being an existing customer has some small advantages (even if it’s only a few free texts each month).… Continue reading Right Hand Meet Left Hand

Egg Web Site Stupidity

Another example of web site stupidity. When she finishes at university this summer my step-daughter is planning to go travelling. To make this a bit easier for her we decided that we’d give her one of our credit cards. That’s a pretty standard thing that parents do, isn’t it? I decided to make her an… Continue reading Egg Web Site Stupidity

Proof of Residence

Like, I suppose, most people in London we live in a controlled parking area. To park on my road you must either have a resident’s parking permit or buy a ticket from the machine (£1.80 an hour, maximum stay four hours). We don’t have a car, so most of the time this doesn’t bother us… Continue reading Proof of Residence

Good Customer Service

One thing I’ve often written about is the decline of customer service. I don’t often get the chance to praise good customer service so I’m going to grab the opportunity that I got yesterday. Yesterday morning I got up to find two mail messages from Ebay in my inbox confirming that my items had been… Continue reading Good Customer Service

Spolsky on Customer Service

Anyone who has anything to do with customer service in their organisation should read and learn from Joel Spolsky’s article on the subject. It’s not just software companies he’s talking about. Anyone who deals with customers could benefit from taking his advice. I particularly liked point 2, “Suggest blowing out the dust”. Microsoft’s Raymond Chen… Continue reading Spolsky on Customer Service

American Dates

Why are American companies so determined to confuse the rest of the world with their illogical way of writing dates? Yesterday I got an email from register.com reminding me that one of my domains needed to be renewed. They said that the current registration expired on “12/07/2005”. “Bloody hell,” I thought, “that’s over a month… Continue reading American Dates

Please Forget Me

The previous entry about Rojo (and, in particular, Aristole’s comment) reminds me of big complaint that I have about pretty much all web sites – which is that they like to make it incredibly difficult to close your account with them. Oh, I understand completely why that is. If you’ve registered with a web site… Continue reading Please Forget Me

Dell Again

The new Dell computer I recently ordered has been shipped. I predict a weekend of Linux installation. And remember my complaints about their customer service and how I didn’t get the free delivery I thought I was entitled to? Well that’s all been sorted out and they’re refunding the money.