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Nuisance marketing calls

nospam@example.com (James Valentine) — Thu, 25 Mar 2010 18:53:33 +0000

Follow through with me here.

Marketing calls to individuals on the telephone preference service are illegal. Our fixed-line phone companies (BT, for example) know who just called us. Why, when we get a nuisance call can we not simply pick up the phone and dial a 5-digit code which allows us to report the last call as a nuisance? That would seem to work on a lot of levels: consumers often don't know where the caller is coming from, and shouldn't have to do a lot of work to report these cases. In addition, numbers are often withheld, or the message is recorded. I wouldn't even mind answering, say, three questions about the call by pressing keys on my keypad if it helped with the investigation of this callers.

Sadly, I suspect that phone companies want to make revenue whoever is making the call, whether it bothers the recipient or not.

Reply from Empire Cinemas

nospam@example.com (James Valentine) — Wed, 20 Jan 2010 11:10:24 +0000

This is what I got back in response to my complaint about the Avatar 3D showing I attended on Saturday.

Dear James,

Thank-you for your email regarding your visit to the Empire High Wycombe, which has been passed to me as General Manager of the site. I was very disappointed to hear of the experience you had.

Saturday evening, as I am sure you are aware was extremely busy, with Avatar, in fact, more popular on Saturday than any previous day since it’s opening in December. It was very clear from your comments that the number of staff working was not sufficient for this level of business, and this was further impacted by sickness.

Clearly this does not excuse the poor service on offer. I can state that everyone working at that time was doing their best to try to get everyone into the screen as quickly as possible, however, I take on board your comments that more effective communication would certainly have aided us.

I am not sure if you are a regular visitor to the cinema, but if you are, I hope you will agree that the issues you experienced on Saturday evening are not commonplace at the cinema.

If you would kindly reply to this email with details of your postal address, I would be happy to send you out some guest tickets so that you may visit the cinema again. I am confident that your next visit will be a much more enjoyable one, but would welcome any further comments you may have.

Yours sincerely

Paul Damms

General Manager

Complaint to Empire Cinemas for botched Avatar 3D foyer experience

nospam@example.com (James Valentine) — Sun, 17 Jan 2010 00:26:12 +0000

Just sent the following complaint to Empire Cinemas after my disappointment in Wycombe when I went to see Avatar 3D. Utter madness, and all caused by cost-cutting and bad management.

I attended Empire High Wycombe today to find the place in complete chaos. Queues snaked slowly around the foyer, confused customers tried to find someone to answer their questions, staff were scarce. There appeared to be no effective management at all; no one taking responsibility.

The box office was shut this very busy Saturday night, presumably to keep costs down. There was a lot of unhappy conversation between customers. I suspect you will lose a great many.

These seemed to be the issues:

- too few staff, none of them in control

- no clear information about where booked tickets could be picked up - many did not realise that all desks could print tickets, not just the machines.

- only three machines, one of which developed a card-reader fault and would not print any more tickets.

- only one person checking tickets for the Avatar showing, and taking a long time about it.

- no announcement from staff to explain that the feature would be delayed to give everyone a chance to get in, so there was some concern that people would miss the beginning, and those that were already inside and seated were subjected to the advertising twice.

My irritation would have been salved somewhat if I had not paid an additional card handling fee for booking in advance in the first place. Where is the logic in that? You must also be paying for box office card purchases. Why pass this on separately to the customer?

I'm influential amongst my friends. Unless you can make amends in a satisfactory way, I won't attend an Empire again, and I'll discourage people I know from taking the risk. The excellent feature experience was marred by chaos, disorganisation and bad pre-planning by Empire. There is no excuse for being a victim of your own popularity when you have all the visitor data that you do. Today's jaunt was a disappointment.

Thanks for your time.
J.

I wonder what they say? If I get a response, I'll post it here.

Tasteless coincidence: Jon Eydmann death

nospam@example.com (James Valentine) — Thu, 03 Sep 2009 00:06:20 +0100

An unfortunate, and tasteless coincidence of reporting and advertising

I received an e-mail from a band called "Show without Punch" today. I get their circulars, as does Clare, because we saw them once at a gig and signed up to stay in touch. Today, though, the news was sad. Their manager, Jon Eydmann passed away. A quick Google pulled up the Telegraph version of the story.

What I couldn't believe was (what I thought was) the accompanying image. It is of a man floating face-down in water. The significance of this cock-up cannot be overestimated, and is perfectly clear when you read the article and see how Jon died. I now realise that the tasteless picture is in some way "arty" and alerts readers to a review or critique. A shame no one bothered to look at the article in place on the website.

A great afternoon on the airfield

nospam@example.com (James Valentine) — Sun, 10 May 2009 22:54:40 +0100

This afternoon the weather was absolutely beautiful, and there were several gliders up from Wycombe Air Park. I thought I'd pop up there (a couple of miles at the most from Mum's) and take a look around.

I started by dropping into the office, logbook in hand. That broke the ice with the receptionist immediately, and we got chatting about prices for flying in the club. Finally, she radioed the launch point and the CFI, Mike Cotter gave me the go-ahead to enter the field and pay them a visit.

Continue reading "A great afternoon on the airfield"

On the subject of traffic lights

nospam@example.com (James Valentine) — Wed, 06 May 2009 15:17:53 +0100

See the Guardian article on traffic light removal in Ealing.

A comment from one user: PhilippaB at 06 May 09, 2:07pm

The electric traffic light ...is a device inimical to the British character of waiting our turn. The British people should be trusted. When given freedom, a spontaneous order emerges, not anarchic chaos. We form a polite queue.
Isn't there then a danger that at busy junctions/crossroads, traffic will be slowed down even more as people wave each other on with cheerful cries of "after you, my good man!" - "no, please, I insist, after you!" - "Oh, really, you are too kind, good sir, but I really must insist!" - "Nay, sirrah, the privilege is yours!" etc etc.
Thus, traffic lights could be seen as actually speeding traffic up, by preventing drivers from being rendered immobile by their innate sense of generosity and fair play.
More tea vicar?

Wonderful. The British sense of humour.

Revising my planned trip

nospam@example.com (James Valentine) — Fri, 03 Apr 2009 00:14:12 +0100

Some of you may have read about my proposed trip through France. In the light of the huge number of miles, I think I'm going to scale back my expectations so that I can spend more time relaxing, rather than driving. If I think how tiring it is just doing a weekend run up to the Lake District and back, I'm simply not being realistic about my health and happiness in a 10-day trip. I'll save a longer run for when I can share the journey (and driving!) with Clare, and take a little more time. Going with someone else effectively halves all the costs as well: rooms for two cost as much as rooms for one, normally, and the fuel bill is halved. On the subject of halves, I'm also inclined to believe that other halves make for more fun holidays!

Accordingly, here is my adjusted route:

View a big'un

My stop-off in La Rochelle is due to the fact that I have a friend to visit there. It is also a great town that I've visited before, and, in fact, was the subject of one of my old French GCSE textbooks (don't ask me the name... Encore Tricolor?) I feel the place needs more exploration!

My plan will be to blatt through industrial France, sticking to the countryside where possible, and avoiding toll-roads. I'm hoping for sun (aren't we all?) and to find nice, reasonable places to stay. If you care to join me, you're welcome!

P.S. Thanks to all who kindly gave southerly suggestions. I'll make use of them in due course, but Atlantic Coast sights are of particular interest now!

A little trip through France

nospam@example.com (James Valentine) — Sun, 01 Mar 2009 22:31:50 +0000

When my lease runs out at the beginning of April, I'm not going to find a new place. Instead, I'm going to drive through France to Spain, and the route I plan to take is as follows:

James' France trip (Google Maps)

(Map and comments after the jump)

Continue reading "A little trip through France"

Postcode lookup for free

nospam@example.com (James Valentine) — Mon, 18 Feb 2008 12:44:28 +0000

I don't know what everyone is using for looking up addresses, but I normally use PostcodeAnywhere's demo. They allow five free searches a day, but now I'm going to the source of this information: I've found an equally fast service from no less than the Universal Postal Union: Address Doctor. It's international and lets you search with just a house number and postcode, or with whatever information you have. Sometimes I visit a customer and I know the street address but need the postcode for invoice purposes, so this is going in my bookmarks straight away and there's no usage limit. Any better suggestions?

UPDATE

Ah, it is limited after all. I've noticed that the congestion charging page on http://tfl.gov.uk lets you look up a postcode, then presents you with matching addresses. That's very handy, too, but only if you already have the postcode, obviously.

I've finally bought my own domain!

nospam@example.com (James Valentine) — Sat, 26 Jan 2008 02:38:52 +0000

Structured Procrastination

nospam@example.com (James Valentine) — Thu, 20 Sep 2007 02:30:01 +0100

Don't you just love it when intelligent people seem to lazily put the world to rights? Take a look at Structured Procrastination. John Perry, a philosopher at Stanford wrote some essays "defending yet more life choices generally seen as faults". I'll get through them all at some point.

Chevrolet or Daewoo Lacetti 1.6 SX knocking sound

nospam@example.com (James Valentine) — Sun, 16 Sep 2007 21:54:49 +0100

This is just a quick note that I hope Google will index for the benefit of anyone else with the same problem: I tried to Google it when I first suffered with this irritation, but found no hits. Hopefully, this will help someone.

I bought a second-hand Daewoo Lacetti 1.6 SX. Lovely car, apart from one problem: an irritating knocking sound heard when the car was driven over uneven road surfaces, speed bumps or pot-holes. On affected vehicles, the sound emanates from the right off-side front quarter as heard from the cabin, and only occurs when the full weight of the engine drops down after a bump in the road. It is impossible to apply this force when the car is up on the ramp, so get the mechanic to test drive it hard with you.

The investigations made by various garages lead to replacement of (in order) stabilizer (anti-roll bar) bushes, right shock absorber, lower arm and steering rack. This was after 7 visits. Beware of misdiagnoses of this fault (although you might be glad that other faults are fixed, especially under warranty)!

The actual cause of the problem is well-known to Chevrolet, but because they do not deal with mechanics at even their main dealers, this crucial information was not passed on for many weeks. Have the hydro engine mounts checked. These are not like standard rubber ones on other cars, which clearly separate if faulty, but contain many components which produce the knocking sound on compression.

This fault affects both the 1.6 and (rarer) 1.8 models. Feel free to get in touch if I can help you in any way.

Doctor scribblings

nospam@example.com (James Valentine) — Thu, 12 Apr 2007 16:15:00 +0100

<Axe> I <Axe> do <Axe> not <Axe> know <Axe> where <Axe> family <Axe> doctors <Axe> acquired <Axe> illegibly <Axe> perplexing <Axe> handwriting; <Axe> nevertheless, <Axe> extraordinary <Axe> pharmaceutical <Axe> intellectuality, <Axe> counterbalancing <Axe> indecipherability, <Axe> transcendentalizes <Axe> intercommunications' <Axe> incomprehensibleness. <JediHobbes> woah <JediHobbes> blinks

http://www.bash.org/?406381

Rail complaint received a reply

nospam@example.com (James Valentine) — Thu, 12 Apr 2007 12:52:46 +0100

I'm pleased to say that I received a letter from First Great Western in response to my complaint letter, which didn't seem too boilerplate, but was unsigned. As a "goodwill" gesture, they enclosed a voucher for £20. I rarely make a journey that expensive, though, and they don't give change, but it is appreciated nonetheless.

Rail complaint

nospam@example.com (James Valentine) — Sun, 01 Apr 2007 00:46:37 +0100

It isn't like me to complain, at least officially, but today's train journey caused me to see the worth of writing this one. Read on after the jump. Might post the response, too.

First Great Western
Freepost SWB40576
Plymouth
PL4 6ZZ

31st March 2007

Dear Sirs,

It is not in my nature to complain, especially not formally in writing. If that is the view taken by many of your other

Continue reading "Rail complaint"