Delivery revisited: II

With so much happening out there in the ever wide expanding universe; rolling 24 hour news, reality TV - are these more real than actual real life news events? Radio, blogs, disasters, killings, starvation, cabals, fundamentalist's, some bloke spending a few billions in an investment bank unwisely! Murders and general mayhem. It seems rather churlish of me to just pander on, about my little ongoing delivery problem.

But I shall.

As mentioned at the end of Delivery Revisited, I expected the resplendent top today. Between 07:00hrs and 12:00hrs. Its delivery was faithfully guaranteed. Although in hindsight I should have gotten a couple of drops of blood, made them swear their first and second born to perpetual servitude whilst getting those short chains ready, to put to some good use!

To ensure that I would be ready and awake with plenty of time to spare, the night before I did the sensible thing went around setting all the alarms for 06:30hrs. All of them, at around 02:45hrs!

06:30hrs arrived and the klaxons went off. Dazedly I sprang out of bed. Briefly meandered around, waiting for the call and delivery.

12:00hrs arrived and I called them up. To be put on, off, on hold, then 'someone will call you back in 5-10 minutes!'

Fifteen minutes later I get the call. "Very sorry, I don't know what's happened," the voice from the other end said. "They did the paperwork, and sent it through to us, but for some reason they never sent it to themselves!"

"Oh," was all I could muster.

"Will tomorrow morning be okay?" he asks. Sounding very contrite mind.

"Tomorrow morning, like this morning?" I ask, trying to keep the cynicism just below the screaming abuse threshold. "Between 7am and midday?"

"Yes," he replies.

"Well," I feel the buried side of me rearing up. "If it isn't delivered this time, the next time I call it will be for you to collect the whole order, and I will expect a full refund along with compensation for wasting my time."

"Oh," he says. "Okay, it will be with you tomorrow!"

And at this moment, this is all I can recall. As sleep deprivation appears to be sapping my will to live!

Delivery, revisited

The metal thing from Curry's works like a dream. No complaints about it at all. So an excellent thumbs up to the Leisure corp. Whilst throwing a very big, over-ripe raspberry, at Curry's!

And now onto Argos. I suppose having to deal with hordes of people in the retail section is sometimes like dealing with the living dead. But then the very same complaint can be made about those working behind the counters.

My faith, however, in the commonsense ability of the everyday man (or woman) was partially restored by the efficiency of their initial delivery service.

Sadly the shoddy item (made in China), had to have one part returned, and with the only available (apparently) delivery slot, in a week's time; I agreed and patiently waited.

Delivery day arrived and I received a call from the driver, saying they'd be here in five minutes. Ten minutes go by and sitting in the living room, I notice a brightly coloured Argos van go sailing by. Get a call from the driver saying he can't park because it's on a red route. I inform him that if Salisbury's, Tesco's, meal-on-wheels can unload so can he. But no, he's adamant and drives off saying I will have to re-schedule.

I contact customer services to inform them of this turn of events and give them the same information that I have just given the driver.

They contact him. After a few moments I get a call from him saying, he should be here by 14:20hrs, but he will call me five minutes before hand. At 14:10hrs he calls to say he's nearly here, again, and have I removed the cones from the bay? "What cones?" I say, "there is no bay here, it's the road and I will be by the pavement with the packaged item. It should only take a couple of minutes maximum!" After all if Tesco can disgorge £70 worth of shopping in about five minutes, a one metre sheet of non-heavy packed glass, shouldn't take any longer than that.

I go outside, 15 minutes later see the van coming around the corner and I start waving franticly, whilst holding onto the glass. He slows down (in the middle of the road), saying "I'm not going to stop, its a red route."

"You can stop, you're only briefly unloading," I shout to the passing lorry.

So he speeds up and drives off.

I'm flabbergasted. Decide to hang outside for another ten minutes, in case he is turning around somewhere, and coming back. But no!

Go back inside and again contact customer services. In a previous tapping, I might have mentioned the fact that at this stage, all you want to do is scream down the phone. But with large companies the person you usually scream at, is far removed from the actual events occurring outside your door.

Then get a call on the mobile from the delivery side of Argos, and again explain what's been happening.

The next time I have a delivery, will have to make a recording. So when I have contact someone I can just press the play button, which would save so much time and energy.

So the kind lady enquires if I wish to re-arrange delivery. I count to five before saying "yes, any time."

"Is Friday, between 7am and 12am any good?" she asks.

"That's perfect," I reply, wondering what's coming next.

"Well the driver will call you half an hour before. To make sure there's no problems!"

I wanted to say that, having to be up at 6.30am, is indeed a hassle and I shouldn't have to. But just say, "that will be fine."

"He'll deliver it in a transit van, as there shouldn't be any problems with that, for quickness."

I agree.

"Will there be anything else?"

"No, that will be all," I reply.

And with that and another five hours in the future to be wasted, I can feel the urge to send letters out to the Delivery department as well as the Chairman's office, lambasting them about the inefficiency of their set-up!

There are many roads in the capital that are on red routes. Wardens although quick to ticket, are also not stupid and around here they do understand that in many situations a five minute (usually less) drop-off is necessary.

So after an initial burst offering a beacon of hope; sadly Argos to, gets the big over-ripe, raspberry.

Remarkable - it's not always AOL's fault

There's nothing nicer than freshly laid carpets tickling the soles of your feet. Certainly an improvement over draughty floorboards.

But back to AOL. Over the past couple off weeks I have been experiencing intermittent connection problems, with my otherwise perfect AOL service. So, decided to give them a call!

Call centres are a wonderful idea, especially when they help to keep costs down, give big fat bonuses to directors and dividends to shareholders.

But one of the reasons they gave for changing from a free call number to their member services desk to a national charge, was to improve the service. It's one thing hanging on for half an hour, trying to get an issue sorted out with your connection, when the call is free. Quite another when you have to fork out 10p/minute for more than 10 minutes.

I, along with many others, resented that change from a free to a charged call, which on average lasted 30 minutes. Especially when they started outsourcing, root and branch.

I have nothing against outsourcing - I'm sure once the recession hits and markets slump, with millions of unemployees milling around chasing pigeons, companies will be flocking around at the hint of increasing profits from the surplus of cheap willing labour. But when you have to repeat yourself 3 - 4 times to get the nature of the problem across, and go through the whole process again when the person can't deal with it and has to 'upscale'; it's no wonder people get frustrated wishing to bang their head (but more likely the member services representative's head) onto the nearest sharp object. Whilst screaming at the top of their voice out of pure frustration!

On this occasion it took over an hour to get AOL to finally escalate the problem up to the Tech II stage, and to do a line test. Which, after the results popped up are poured over, and reveals that there is indeed a problem with the line.

Having been with AOL now for over five years (yes, the term Mug does spring to mind), missing out on the free Laptop Offer, the free year talk time, upgrading to faster package plan meaning I'm stuck in an 18 month contract - without perks. I was all in mind to claim breach of contract and terminate.

But then I started noticing that the fault mainly occurred when someone was walking around. The DSL and Internet lights would go off for a second then the DSL would flash and both would reconnect again.

Looked at the connections? All fine. But perhaps it was the original cable? Original in the sense that the wires were individually wrapped with cloth and encased in lead. So that was changed. But the problem still persisted. Maybe the filters? Swapped them around. Just had the DSL cable and wireless router connected to the master socket without any thing else, and still the connection would go off and on. Could it be the Wireless Router itself playing up?

But that nagging suspicion about movement wouldn't go away.

So, to cut a long story short - even starting to bore myself! When the carpet was put down, one screw was screwed into a carpet holder, which partially cut one of the wires (but still made a connection), but also cut the cloth of the other wire. But, the two wires didn't touch (and thus short-circuiting the system) until there was movement, which happened? When people were walking on the floorboards around that screw.

So as much as I like to bash AOL, this had nothing at all to do with them. Wasn't their fault in the slightest.

However shall be having firm words with the installer; for causing me two weeks of connection misery.