Thursday, December 24, 2009

My favourite times of day

11.11
13.37
23.11 (11.11 but in the dark)

something draws my eye to the clock at this time, I have no idea why.

Sunday, December 20, 2009

That ain't customer service

Today's tale of asshattery comes from Tesco's.

We're carless (not careless!) so we often arrange for grocery deliveries online. We booked in our christmas shopping delivery nearly a fortnight ago for this evening - a 7pm till 9pm slot. Assuming that they wouldn't turn up (because of the weather, slippy roads and other general slackness) we rang them up today at lunchtime.

"Of course we'll be delivering - in fact we're loading your food onto the van right now!"

did they turn up?

No. no they didn't.

But of course, they'll arrange for our delivery tomorrow, because we're ... well, one would assume that we're now a priority delivery, right? I mean, we've just had our order cancelled even though we checked that it was coming not 6 hours beforehand?

No. the best they can do is Tuesday (no good, we're out) meaning the earliest slot we can make is Wednesday.

Anyone care to bet on whether they'll actually turn up on Wednesday? because I'm assuming that they won't.

I understand that it's cold out. I understand that the weather is bad. That is why we rang up. If they'd had the decency to tell us that they were not going to deliver - If I had known that they wouldn't arrive - instead of helping the neighbours clear out the road (so that the van would have no problems getting to our house) I would have walked to the local Sainsbury's and got at least enough food to see us through till Christmas. It's an hour walk, but I had all day to do it.

Speaking to their customer service was the usual fruitless persuit. Sugary words and a "oh, well, terribly sorry" attitude do not help me. I need the items that I ordered, that is the only thing that matters to me. I don't want to hear apologies or platitudes, I want to hear how I will be the first customer in the queue to have my order satisfied, in preference to anyone who placed their order after me.

After spending 15 minutes getting more and more irate, my wife took over the call, and decided that we would rebook for Wednesday the 23rd. I'm probably going to get the shopping after work each evening for the next few evenings anyway, but we assumed that it couldn't hurt to take a Wednesday slot. Right? Right?

So, this is what we get greeted with when we check the delivery slot time.

First off, the time slot is Tuesday 5th of January. Nice!

Next, we see that the order is 30 pounds more expensive than the original order we placed a week or two back. So, we decide to take a stroll down basket lane, and spot that some of the fresh produce prices are a wee bit inflated.

That's right - 7 parsnips, £10.92. 3 Leeks, 5.94. And you really don't want to know how much the bananas and carrots cost.


Needs more polish, Tesco. Not shiny.

Sunday, December 6, 2009

Ikea Jenga

After moving house, my wife and I have made strident efforts to throw away the mountain of crap that we've accumulated with our consumerist ways over the last couple of years. The mountain is still huge, but boy, you shoulda seen it when we moved last time.

While the floor plans say otherwise, I'm convinced this new house is significantly smaller than our old place overlooking the sea, and there was no storage in the house when we moved in, so a trip to Ikea was required to furnish our new gaff. Being the type who likes efficiency, we planned to do the whole house in one trip - wardrobes, bookcases, computer desks, chests of drawers, DVD racks and a few other bits and bobs. Basically, enough boxes to fill half a transit van.

So, now we have a house half full of boxes of stuff, and half-full of boxes containing boxes that will contain the stuff from the boxes once I unbox and construct them. I now have some wierd matroska box situation going on where the only way I can make space to make the furniture is to stack boxes inside boxes, and carefully slide stacks of boxes from one place to another. It may sound like a fun game, but Ikea Jenga is going to kill me at some point when I get crushed to death by a load of old CDs.

Hopefully by the end of today, I'll have everything unboxed and constructed, and we can start putting our clothes and books somewhere where they will comfortably live until the next time we move.