Wallis provide terrible customer service
Posted: February 13, 2010 Filed under: Rants, Shopping 3 Comments »There. Hope that loses them a few customers!
I am not a happy bunny. I went to take back my psychedelic top. I bought it 13th Jan and had a month to return it. That’s what it said on the receipt.
Today is 13th Feb. That’s within a month, right?
Wrong!
A month in Wallis world is 28 days … because ”some months have 28 days in them”, as I was helpfully informed by the shop manager.
They wouldn’t give me my money back.
I stomped out of the shop and called Customer Services, who were more sympathetic and told me I was entitled to a refund. The Customer Services dude told me to pass my mobile to the person behind the counter and he would sort it out.
I went back into the store … but there was no mobile phone reception inside the store and got cut off!
The woman behind the counter told me to call Customer Services back, get a reference number, and then they would give me a refund. I said that I didn’t want to call an expensive number from my mobile again and asked if I could use their in-store phone. They told me I couldn’t: “it’s company policy”.
I asked if they would call for me, and begrudgingly they did … only for Customer Services to have closed!
Could they not just give me a refund now as Customer Services had stated that I was entitled to one and it would save me a trip back on Monday?
No, they couldn’t.
So there we are. A waste of an hour and a half.
Wallis’s refunds’ policy is unclear and unfair. I will be calling Customer Services again tomorrow and am determined to get my money back!
Flaky freecyclers (again)
Posted: August 30, 2009 Filed under: Rants, Recycling 2 Comments »Will I ever learn?
A freecycler has just turned up an hour and a half late!
My friends and family would no doubt tell you that I am not always the most ‘punctual’ of people, but an hour and a half, with no phone call, is taking the piss, don’t you think?
Admittedly I don’t have any major plans for this afternoon… but quand même … I couldn’t relax properly waiting for her to get here.
She called when she arrived outside to ask what number I lived at … so it’s not as if she didn’t have my number with her.
I was tempted to say I was out, and that she had missed her slot … but, keen to get rid of the items in question, I in fact acquiesced.
No explanation or apology was proffered until I asked her (with an exaggerated grumpy face) why she was so late.
“I missed my train” .
And? There are trains all the time in London. And that still doesn’t explain why she didn’t call.
Grrr.
Even though I had two lovely, prompt people who came to collect items yesterday, flakes like Little Miss Late really do put me off the whole scheme.
Shame on the lot of you
Posted: May 10, 2009 Filed under: Politics, Rants, Work 2 Comments »Just been reading all this stuff about MPs and their expenses, and it’s making my blood boil!
It may well be within the rules, but some of them have really been taking the piss, haven’t they? A few randomly selected examples I’ve just been reading about:
Kevin Brennan bought a widescreen TV which was delivered to his home in Wales, and then claimed back under his second home allowance. He says it was for his home in London - yeah, right.
John Reid claimed for a pouffe(!), ice cube trays (cost £3), and a glittery toilet seat (vital for his role as an MP, that one) - again all for his non-London home.
Kitty Ussher claimed for a full make-over of her house within 12 months of becoming an MP – estimated cost to the tax payer £20,000.
Baroness Thornton claims £22,000 a year in expenses by saying that her mother’s house in Yorkshire is her main residence … when she actually has a £1 million house in Hampstead Heath!
Sinn Fein MPs have been claiming money for properties in London when they don’t even attend parliament!
And on, and on….
I realise that the examples I have given relate mainly to Labour MPs, but we can be sure that the Tories are fleecing us too, can’t we? And this whole ‘switching around which is your second home to maximise what you can claim back and possibly to reduce the amount of capital gains tax paid’ malarky is appalling!
I am feeling particularly narked by the whole thing because of a recent experience of my own with expense claims. I didn’t submit a claim for travel expenses for about a year when I started in my current SLT job. (We can claim back bus fares and the like, incurred when travelling to meetings which are part of our work). The reason I was slow to submit my claim was that I was generally too busy working! I always had an urgent report to do that took precedence. When I eventually did submit my claim (for about £80), I was told that I was too late! I would not be able to claim the money back as a new rule had been introduced saying that you can only claim back expenses arising in the past three months!!! I was so pissed off! (And my claim was for expenses I had genuinely incurred in the course of my work – not for a fancy loo seat!)
But back to the MPs … the whole system really needs sorting out, doesn’t it? It will be interesting to see who, if anyone, comes out of this untarnished. And I really hope that Tory MPs’ expenses are exposed in the same way as Labour MPs’ have been … although given that it is The Telegraph that seems to be doing most of the exposing at the moment, I doubt whether that will actually happen.
London bus drivers
Posted: November 22, 2008 Filed under: Rants, Travels in the Metropolis 3 Comments »I caught the tail end of “Drive Time” with Eddie Nestor on my way home from work yesterday (yes, working late again).
He was taking calls about bus drivers in London and how rubbish/ horrible they are. And his callers had a lot to say on the subject.
One man called in and explained what his wife had recently witnessed: woman on the bus with two children, one aged about 5, the other an infant in a buggy. Woman gets off the bus to help the older child off. Woman gets back on the bus to take the buggy off and the doors close! Mother and everyone on the bus start screaming at the bus driver to stop but he refuses and drives on to the next stop whilst the 5 year old is left screaming on the pavement!
Sounds incredible, but I can believe it as I have dozens of stories like this myself.
Many a time I’ve run to the bus stop (with my heavy rucksack) for the driver to close the doors and pull away just as I got there.
And I can’t count the number of times a driver has sailed past people waiting at stops, even though there is plenty of space on the bus, or pulled away/ braked too quickly causing elderly people to almost topple over.
On one occasion I rang the bell (in good time) to ask the bus driver to stop at a request stop but he just carried on driving. When I asked why he hadn’t stopped to let me off he replied he hadn’t heard the bell. He said that he didn’t believe that I had pressed it and that I was changing my mind now to be awkward! After a minute’s worth of panto-style oh-yes-I-dids and oh-no-you-didn’ts he finally relented and let me off, huffing and puffing as he did.
My worst bus experience happened a few winters ago. I had been standing at a bus stop for what felt like forever in the pouring rain. A little old lady with a walking stick was waiting with me. The bus came along and I got on. Then the old lady got on and showed the driver her pass. It was 9.28, and a few years ago, older people were not allowed to use their free bus passes until 9.30. The bus driver refused to let the old woman on unless she paid the full fare. I weighed in and explained that we had been waiting for ages and that it was raining and cold and it was almost 9.30 anyway … but he wouldn’t budge. So the poor old woman had to wait for the next bus. (If I’d had any cash on me, I would’ve paid for her myself …)
You could say the driver was “just doing his job”, i.e. he’d been told that no exceptions are allowed (I mean, where would it end?!) but a bit of flexibility wouldn’t have gone amiss …
The reason for the discussion on the radio show was that there has been an increase in the number of complaints received about drivers recently (112,185 in 2007 compared to 95,984 in 2006, and 70,152 since April this year). A large number? Maybe, maybe not. TfL says no, and that the number of complaints they receive is actually very small given the number of bus journeys made everyday in London (around 6 million). But of course they have to remember people only really complain when something extreme happens …
To be fair, I’m sure there are hundreds of good bus drivers out there, who do their jobs professionally and with great courtesy in some very stressful circumstances (busy roads, gobby teenagers, nutters, fare-evaders, etc). But it’s not those ones that we remember, is it? And after years of commuting by public transport, I must say I was very glad to be listening to Eddie Nestor from the comfort of my car.
