Attack of the boxes...

I've just moved house.  I don't really like the experience..Don't get me wrong, the first bit - looking at places on-line and going on viewings - is fun, but the actual moving bit is a total pain. 

It's been a fairly big move, into a different city that I have only known for 6 months.  (My main excuse for no posts of late has been an eternal commute across the country everyday for work which took me out of the house for at least 12 hours a day) I'm still learning my way around and getting used to the different rules that come with a new city.  For one, people here don't queue.  I'm so used to the (generally) ultra polite ways of both Norwich and Edinburgh that this fact has been a little hard to get used to.  On the positive side however, the majority of people here are very friendly, and the standard of customer service in general is far higher...it's nice not to just receive a grunt from checkout operators in supermarkets! I'm certainly enjoying living in Glasgow so far, the reputation that puts people off visiting doesn't appear to be well earned...I've yet to witness anything that I wouldn't have seen on the streets of every other city in the UK.

We have been lucky enough to land ourselves a much larger flat than before, the same number of rooms, but better proportions and less wasted space than our last place.  The only downside to that is that all of our furniture (or what we have at the moment) now looks very small and doesn't really fill many of the rooms...I'm a fan of minimalist living but this is a little extreme!  The boxes were making up for it but as we empty them the place is...emptying.  I can see some shopping in our future in the months ahead.  (The cats on the other hand are loving their new spacious playground and have been in box overload...whenever you open a box...there's a cat.)

You never seen to realise quite how much junk you accumulate until you have to pack it all up and then unpack it again into a different place, the books that came off a bookshelf should all fit back on right?  Not according to the laws of physics on my bookshelf! I've even removed several large books and there still doesn't seem to be enough room...


I've unpacked a vast amount of boxes and have now officially entered "home making mode"....my desire to hang pictures and place furniture is overwhelming but making my new place feel like my home is an important stage of the whole moving process for me...I can be very territorial and get rather antsy if I don't have recognisable objects around.   I have spent hours today wandering around the house armed with various pictures and other objects trying to figure out where I want them...B Man gracefully lets me have free reign of this part of the decoration, provided that I leave control of his man cave to him.  I can handle that.   I still have many hours of wandering ahead before I get all the pictures I have up (never mind the ones that I'm sure to find on my travels and add to the collection!)

Once I've finished with the boxes, and I stop getting lost on my way to work, I'm looking forward to life settling back into a nice easy routine...one with evenings and weekends when I actually have some spare time!   I'll let you know how that goes....

Aggressive Fruit?

Sometimes I'm unsure whether some people have much of a concept of reality....in today's case the award for overly-cautious-health-and-safety-hazard-spotting goes to the Royal Mail who have refused to deliver to a house due to it's aggressive raspberry plants.

I'll pause there to let you reflect...


Raspberry plants.
Not triffids.
Not giant Venus flytraps.

Raspberries.
Honestly.

The bushes' retired owner is quoted in the article:
"The Royal Mail say it is dangerous. They came round and told me they were aggressive raspberries. It was a visit out of the blue....I have got a fierce growth apparently and the postmen are intimidated and threatened by it....But they haven't got any thorns on them and they are not like nasty brambles so I don't see what the problem is.'"


Royal Mail certainly get my vote for overzealous claim of the year so far...intimidated by raspberries.

Negative...positive...negative?

I stumbled across this article online tonight.  Its titled: 10 jobs you can get with just your GCSEs.  I read it out of interest as I am one of the (seemingly unusual) people who has a brain but no degree - you may remember me talking about this is a previous post - I was hoping that someone was trying to show some positive news for those of us without this magic piece of paper...but alas, wrong again...the article basically reinforces the idea that in order to get a decent job you need a degree.  The jobs they list are:

Accounts Clerks
Receptionist
Medical Secretary
Customer Service Assistant
Waiting Staff
Engineering Maintenance Fitter
Fitness Instructor
Sales Representative
Care Assistants

Whilst this may dispel any concept that you must have a degree to even be considered for any job, these probably aren't the best selection to make someone really confident...they are only a step away from listing Binman and Street Sweeper (both of which probably pay equal or more than those they have listed!)


Yet again, MSN article authors must try harder!

All Lushed out

I am a secret fan of Lush cosmetics. Everything I've ever had from there has been very lovely but unfortunately I do find them a bit on the costly side for everyday use so I consider them a special treat from time to time. I popped onto their website to browse today only to remember that they recently suffered an "attack" from a hacker and are having to investigate possible card misuse because of that. Due to this they have temporarily closed their site, so the page that came up was a simple explanation that they are still trading, just not online at present. Further into the page I noticed this fab sign....


Nice one Lush!

Someone understands the banks...

The bank next to my workplace received some rather choice graffiti last week.. Obviously someone understands the banks and has an environmental conscience....

Some people just don't know what manners are

Disclaimer before I start.....Don't get me wrong - Living in Edinburgh during the tourist season is a hate-filled time for many residents and I complain about them just as much as the next person.

Even bearing the above statement in mind I was quite disgusted to see last week at the attitude of a bus driver to some very confused American tourists. It was late and they got on a bus and repeatedly asked the driver where they needed to get off. I couldn't hear his response but even my awful knowledge of the city told me that the stop they first asked at was the one they wanted and he didn't tell them. They got into the centre of town, (still asking the driver where they needed to get off) when I felt I had to intervene. I tapped the guy on the shoulder and asked him where he was going. He wasn't totally sure, but knew roughly so I told him where he was if he got off the bus at the next stop and where to go from there. I don't think I've seen anyone more grateful in my life!

Maybe I should go work for the tourist board after all....

Grrr Ryanair strike again!

I mentioned back in June that I had booked a holiday to Barcelona for B Mans birthday. An extravagant gift I know, but I had managed to get it all for a pretty cheap price, £98 for the flights from Stansted, £380 for the hotel, and £40 for a coach to the airport and back. Everything has been booked and mostly paid for, and today I got an email from Ryanair telling me of a change to our flight times...they have moved it forward from 12:15 to 06:50!! This wouldn't be too much of a problem if we were flying from a local airport, but the overnight coach to London (which we are booked onto) doesn't even arrive in Victoria until 07:30. Hmmm...that just doesn't work.

Ryanair have offered a full refund and to be honest we are considering taking it. We don't really want to cancel our holiday but getting to catch the flight is now going to be a major (and costly) problem so the temptation is there to scrap the whole thing and book/plan a bigger better holiday in the early part of next year instead.

I'm pretty pissed off with them right now as you can imagine.

Not a good start

Following from the post below...Virgin media came and fitted our new line and broadband today.

As you may have guessed the broadband is working...but not quite how we would like...

First thing the engineer does is fit the phone line, simply plugs into the old Telewest line and hey presto! magic.

Next we wanders off to fit the broadband. (He has been asking some odd questions up to this point and seems to not understand the concept of a network with cables...)

Whist he is banging on the wall outside extending the line or something I got proactive and plugged in the phone. On testing the line all I could hear was a terrible connection and constant crackle which I promptly pointed out to him (I'm getting better at complaining it seems) he went away again but came back to inform me that there seems to be a problem with the network and he wouldn't be surprised if the whole street has the same problem as the box is damp, but he will have to report it as a fault and send a service engineer round.

So off he toddles "my work here is done" (or that's what he would have said if he had any form of eloquence or could even string a decent sentence together...) I venture out into the hall where the modem is...and its just a modem...no router. Bugger.

I hastily plug my network cable into the modem and hit the net to check that we were supposed to get a free router...yup. Ok not a good start then eh? faulty line and no router on day one, so I phoned Virgin media and explain the problems. I have a service engineer coming over Tuesday (almost another week) and I am informed that the router doesn't get fitted by the engineer, but has been posted out to us today...well at least its on its way, but its really no use that its not already here.

I thought this was ok...but I called BMan up to tell him how its all gone and he promptly called Virgin again to get it sorted. That was about 4:30. its now 6:30 and I've just had a text to tell me that he is still on the phone. I can't wait to find out what on earth has been going on but so far its BT -1, Virgin -1.

Sounds like its going to be an ongoing saga...

BT = Bloody Terrible or "Why I have had no internet for a week"

Oh dear here I go again....Another regretful business deal with a "service provider" When myself and B Man moved into our flat he already had a contract for Sky broadband so to keep it going we had to have a BT line. Neither of us were very happy about this as we had both had previous bad experiences with the notorious BT, but it had to be done (Its the only way you can have sky broadband for those who are blissfully unaware) So we had the line fitted and from day one have had constant hassles and problems, including a fault that took about a month to fix and again ended with us having no net connection for a week.

This time however the problem was dire, BMan got a call from his sister who had tried to call the home line but couldn't connect to it. This lead to us testing the phone and finding out that whilst we had a dialling tone we couldn't call out. So on the mobile I hop to BT "Customer services" I am initially told by the first advisor that I had a type of account that she couldn't deal with so I was transferred. A nice man in the billing department looked at my account and informed me that my line has been terminated..."Oh? I haven't had a bill" "hmm well the system is showing that you did not pay your last bill and you have been cut off. " Oddly he asked me when I noticed and was surprised when I said "about a day ago" so it sounds like it was cut off a good while before.
He checked the account and agreed that there was no outstanding amount (I had just made a payment for the month after the apparent "fault" prompted BMan to check the account online)
The nice man in billing then says - "well I can put you through to services and they will be able to reconnect you, just explain our conversation to them." Ok cool...easy to sort.

No.

I was then transferred to another man who instantly said "I'm sorry but I can't help you right now, our system is down so I cannot see your account." ok...but the last guy could...why can't you? "Its a different system, I can't see your account please call back tomorrow."

ok.. I'm baffled but I'll do that.

They were unfortunate, I didn't call them back...BMan did.... the end result was that they had disconnected our line for non payment (even though the bill was paid before it was actually due) the problem arose from a credit that was put onto our account that the highly sophisticated computer system had listed as unpaid (even though that amount had been credited...) and in order to reconnect us they wanted to credit check BMan again and sign us into another 12 month contract. He told them in no short order where they could stick that plan. They then had the audacity to inform him that a final bill with a disconnection charge would be heading our way, they were also told where to stick that and exactly how far... We should now be expecting a credit for the bill paid.

But this left us with no BT line...oddly the broadband was still working however so neither of us were very fussed.

The next day BMan gets home to find out that the broadband has also ceased to exist. So as an act of desperation we are now Virginmedia customers...

Life without net

Ohh I don't know how I survived!!! We have had ongoing problems with our Internet pretty much since we moved in. It had a fun game of randomly loosing connection for a minute or two at a time. We tried going to Sky to fix it, (thinking it was in ISP problem) and after poor B-Man repeatedly going through the troubleshooting with someone reading from a script until getting through to a minorly knowledgeable human they sent us a new router (it only took 6 months!) to our dismay the problem kept on going. During this time we got a new phone too after the other one decided that it didn't want to work anymore. Suddenly it was like someone switched a light bulb on over our heads....The new phone had periods of not working too.....and they coincided with the net downtime...ahhhhhhhhhhh. Now I get it.

I managed to get through to BT faults and found the only people who work for BT who are actually helpful!! I reported the problem and after they realised that a block had been incorrectly left on the line, they got their engineers on the job. Two days later I hadn't heard anything so called back. "Oh its fixed." Ummm no. That would be why I still don't have a phone line or a net connection then? The faults lady agreed that maybe it wasn't fixed then and sent the problem back to the engineers.

Friday whilst tiling Gurns bathroom and covered in adhesive, I missed a call from a random unknown number. B-Man rang them for a status report on Saturday only to find out that an engineer was booked to come out top the house on Tuesday Morning. (No problem, but as Monday was a bank holiday I had to text my boss and beg for an extra morning off! Luckily my boss is a particularly understanding lady - obviously as she puts up with me!)

Ahhh so today, after 5 solid days of no net connection the BT engineer came round. After about 2-3 hours the phone is back on and we have connection!!! I'm not sure what I've been doing to cope with no Internet but I must admit I barely noticed. There was only a few times I wanted to check something until I remembered that couldn't.

I never used to be able to cope without a net connection for more than a day but it was actually quite a welcome break - not spending every waking moment staring at a PC screen!

The Forgotten Sphincter

Oh yes, you read that right.... A bout of hysterics was encountered today at my work when my desk mate (Alan) got a phone call. The call was unusual and was asking about a video that we have on a sister website. The call was the videos author asking for a copy as he had lost the original. So, towards the end of the call Alan asks for the title of the video so that we can find it and is told in a rather flat manner..."The Forgotten Sphincter."...Silence...Alan manages very well not to break into fits of giggles over the phone (We are supposed to be professionals after all) but is almost crying within 2 seconds of the end of the call when he tells me, as unsurprisingly am I.

The next bit of fun came when he had to contact the web team to actually track the video, He took great glee in sending an email with the same title as the video, and when he finally tracked it down called the original enquirers secretary to let her know. Even the Secretary couldn't stop herself from dying down the phone and both of them tried desperately not to mention the videos title (and failed miserably) I on the other hand, was almost under the table at this point trying to breathe.

See and people think that my work is stuffy and boring...

Opodo no no

Oh Dear... How does this start?...

Well it starts with a holiday of sorts... DaBMan and myself are heading dahhn saaff (note the very dodgy London overspill accent) to visit my friends and what little family I still have there. As I no longer have custody of a car I cleverly worked out that hiring a rental car and driving down for two people worked out financially better than flying or talking the train and less mind numbingly sickening than the 14 hour coach journey, and on top of that it means we have transport when in Norwich (Buses there are few and far between at best and costly, as are Taxis once you need to go out of the centre of town) so off I plod through the wonderful internet to find the cheapest car rental offer I could. A quick search came across Opodo, Online travel agenty booking third party people who offer me a car for 5 days for the wondrous price of £88.24. Too good to be true! well we all now what that means...

During the booking process the Opodo site states very clearly that all costs including taxes and additions etc will be displayed in total before payment. (Great Clear and Open! what more can a girl want??!) I finish booking and on the final page the price is shown - still £88.24 - there is also a note about a deposit amount that will be blocked from a credit card at the collection desk of excess+vat+fee. Now, I am very good at algebra, but even the best can't work that one out without being given a figure... Anyway work arrives so I toddle off, asking DaBMan to give them a quick call to find out this mystery sum. I get a text halfway through the day to tell me that the call is on a charged line (10p per minute) and he keeps getting through, getting put on hold for 5 minutes without speaking to anyone and then mysteriously cut off so He has found a contact us page and sent in an enquiry.

Today after 2 days I get a response...The amount to be blocked on a credit card is £700. Uh huh...because I have a spare £700 sitting unspent on a credit card don't I? Luckily there emailer from Opodo has put a telephone number for the local branch of the hire company(Auto Europe) on the email so I get on the phone to the directly to find out if this is correct and if so what I can do to get this price down?!

The first phone call got me the information of "Ah well you need to go to our website direct and take out the extra insurance cover"

This confuses me a little as the website given is for National car hire not Auto Europe but I try this anyway. the confusion hits even harder when I put my order number into the site and it tells me they have no such booking.

OK...Phone call number 2... This time I get the most helpful man on the planet! Great! He explains that to get the deposit down from £700 I do need to take out this extra cover - but that no one has yet told me that it costs £14 per day and should be taken and paid at the desk upon collection. I moaned at him about the service received so far from Opodo and he confirmed that this is a common story and people often have problems with them. I suggest that I am totally fed up and confused and want t o cancel my contract with Opodo because of the problems. Nice man offers to hire me the car directly with them to save on hassle and instantly offers me a lower price than Opodo (including the cover) I agree and he "pencils me in" for it. Woohoo! things are looking up! I'm still paying twice as much as I thought for the car but at least I know the score now!

Gathering my strength I call back the 10p per minute number for Opodo. working my way through the automated talking lady (press 1 for rectal exams etc.) I select the option to cancel my booking and at last a bored sounding man answers immediately.

I moan at him (nicely) and explain the problems I have had and that I want to cancel. He tells me that for the pleasure of being kept on hold, hang up on and generally ignored for 3 days he is going to charge me £15. He wanders away for a bit, leaving me on hold again (probably picking his nose or something)

I protest and receive the very stock answer of "But madam, the Terms on our website say that if you cancel within 7 days of making the booking we charge you £15, after 7 days it goes up to £40, and if you are a no show on the day of collection you loose your entire fee."

I protest some more but finally give in. "Ok, ok, you can have the £15 for doing nothing, just refund me the rest."

Bored man replies "Ok well I will also point out that the rest of your fee will be put into a refund request queue and will take 14-21 days to be processed."

WHAT??? you want to keep my money for another 3 weeks? (I am going away in 1 1/2) At this point I am in my office almost ready to eat my handset desperately trying to keep my voice down and slowly loosing the will to live. "Ok, so what are these damn extra costs that you re on about that I can pay to get this deposit down? if it means I dont have to cancel my booking?"

"Well I'm not entirely sure of the figures but if you would like to hold I can call the hire company and find out for you."

"Um no. I am paying 10p per minute to call you, I dont want to be on hold while you do that, could you maybe call me back with an answer?"

"Oh No madam, we are an incoming call centre only, If you would like to hold I'll give them a call..."

" NO, I'm not paying for that. "

"Ok, well um maybe I could send you an email with the information."

"Fine!" (I'm bored now, hes obviously rubbed off on me)

About 30 mins later I sneak up and check my emails, Bored man has answered. The prices he quotes are different again to 1, the originals from Opodo, and 2, the figures I got from the hire company direct. Gah! I have too much work for this so get back to shuffling emails for the afternoon (Its important... Honest!)

On the bus on the way home I again ring the hire company direct, cancel the pencilled in booking with them (no charge and no fuss) and another nice lady tells me that it seems every customer they get who books through an external internet company has these problems...

I come home and close to tears relate the whole sorry story to DaBMan who sits rubbing his hands together as he listens. (He loves a fight!) Obviously from here on in I can only really hear half the conversation...but it ends with Mr B thoroughly chewing the first "customer service rep" until he gets put on hold at least twice and finally gets through to a 'maybe' manager who makes him go through the whole story again, repeats the same standard replies again, and finally gives in with a "Oh well I wasn't told that you'd had all these problems, I was only told that you were disputing the £15 charge"

The 'maybe' manager finally agrees to refund the whole amount with no charge and dutifully passes the phone back to the "service rep" (of course managers couldn't possibly push a button to refund anything and its a good excuse for more holding!) The money gets refunded almost instantly (as if by magic, the refund queue has disappeared!)

The whole thing is finally sorted, (except of course I dont have a car booked still) I have vowed never to even think of booking anything through Opodo and making sure I let as many people as possible know about the most abysmal service they give. I'm even half tempted to contact those watchdog people and see if I can really stir up some trouble, but I'll see how vicious I feel tomorrow.

So the moral of today's lesson... DO NOT EVER, EVER USE OPODO!!