You are currently browsing the The English Guy's Personal Blog weblog archives for October, 2010.

Posted at 12:53 am • Trackback Trackback

Posted in life

3 comments - Latest by:
  • richard
    Yeah it worked out, thankfully Mac! Usually I don't care about next-day delivery, but just this once I thought I'd ...
  • mel
    I never pay for next-day delivery because I've never seen it actually happen. By the way, I love the way you ...
 

Oct 28
2010

Posted by richard

Last week I’d ordered a new modem router, a Cisco wireless-N model, very swish. I’d ordered it on wednesday morning, before 8am, before I went to work, and I had paid extra for next day delivery because I was going to be off on the thursday (and thankfully the friday as you’ll read).

So I wasn’t going out on the Thursday, which was fortuitous of course, and worked while I waited for the delivery. It never came. Talk about pissed off, I’d paid £7.48 for the next day delivery, only to not receive it.

It came on the Friday, at 3pm. Again, annoying. And to be honest the guy didn’t seem to care that it wasn’t on time, was a bit sullen and just shoved the electronic signer thingy in my hands. That didn’t bode well for the service I’d ordered from, dabs.com.

Anyway, I thought to myself that I wanted the money back, but I also knew that it might be hard to get, these companies are notoriously difficult to get refunds from. I mailed them on the Saturday, wasn’t rude or anything and laid out the facts.

Astonishingly, I got a refund yesterday! I couldn’t believe it! I thought it would take weeks and weeks of wrangling and talking to ever more important managers, but no, refund issued, business solved. So to be fair, although I might have given them a 4 out of 10, I think I’ll say 7.5 out of 10 (the packaging was very thorough). If I order more products from them that might increase more.

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Posted at 12:07 pm • Trackback Trackback

Posted in technology

4 comments - Latest by:
  • richard
    To make matters even more laughable, this company apparently got nominated for a 'Best Customer Service' award in April...
  • MrCorey
    I usually end up playing janitor and cleaning up after people like Mr Nasty. He's not an asset to any ...
 

Oct 26
2010

Posted by richard

This is something that really irks me. I love that word, irks, it describes so much and so little.

At work, our internet went down yesterday afternoon. We weren’t working on it or anything, it just went down. We called the ISP, they said it was us. Not just a possibility mind you, but, it was us, and that’s that.

So I went and got a modem router from home, a fairly new one, and a good one at that – a Linksys Cisco router – and tried it in place of the original.

Same thing was happening, the DSL line was there, but we couldn’t get connected.

Today, I got another one, same thing. I got hold of someone who really wanted to help, he was quite helpful, and said we should turn the modem off, wait 20 minutes and try again to clear the login queue on their end. I did such. After lunch, I called in again, but this time I got Mr Nasty. This guy would not countenance anything other than the fact that it was us. My modems? They were shit, useless, I should get a new one, but God forbid it was them, there was no way that was it.

Talking to someone in the office, one of the girls came in and mentioned that another company on the industrial estate was having the same issues, and they had the same ISP. Ah ha!

So I called them, again, got customer service and explained this and perhaps there was something there that they could look at, that perhaps it wasn’t us. She transferred me to technical support. The guy I got hold of told me she had told him that I was unsure if I wanted to authorise the payment for BT to come check the line. WTF?! I never even mentioned BT.

Well, the last guy I got hold of there (yet another phone call) told me that of the 36 people in Louth using their service, 14 were logged on. I said ‘Wait a minute, that’s what the guy said yesterday, doesn’t that make you a little suspicious?’ He responded positively and as he said that, he said 10 people just logged in all at once. He mentioned that the local exchange down the road was having issues and maybe ours was too? Then minutes later, I could suddenly log in, internet restored.

Amazing that isn’t it? I mean, if I were running a Technical Support department I’d have all the phone companies on speed dial and knowledge of their exchanges and their statuses. Mr Nasty I talked to was supposedly one of their ‘senior managers’, so clearly he didn’t care, talk about making people see red.

Sometimes, the internet is not our friend…

Posted at 3:19 am • Trackback Trackback

Posted in politics

4 comments - Latest by:
  • richard
    *hugs* Mel! Hope it's all going well for you, got all the surgeries sorted out yet? Insurance company debacle fixed?
  • mel
    Oh my god. That's the last thing we need, different laws for different religions. I can see it happening, ...
 

Oct 14
2010

Posted by richard

I read this today on the MSNBC site:

A leading Muslim cleric has sparked controversy in Britain by claiming that it is impossible for men to rape their wives.

Sheikh Maulana Abu Sayeed, who is president of the Islamic Sharia Council, told a website that “sex is part of marriage” and suggested that husbands who commit such acts should not be prosecuted.

This is the person who controls the Islamic courts in the UK.

Not only do these muslims expect (and get!) their own legal courts, but now the person who controls them is stating something contrary to the laws of this land.

When contacted by The Independent, the cleric added: “In Islamic sharia, rape is adultery by force. So long as the woman is his wife, it cannot be termed as rape. It is reprehensible, but we do not call it rape.”

I sincerely hope that the UK does not let criminal cases be handled by these courts. How are to even know that the punishments meted out by these courts are in line with the ones handed out by our normal courts?

This is literally what is wrong with Islam, that people (men) who control the “religion” trying to cling to this inequality that the rest of the world is leaving behind. To subject women to this kind of slavery is barbaric, and does not belong here – the sooner this country realises that and shuts down these courts and subjects all muslims to the same laws we have to follow, the better.

Posted at 10:20 pm • Trackback Trackback

Posted in life

6 comments - Latest by:
  • richard
    Well the idea was first brought to the fore in the early years of the twentieth century I believe, just ...
  • mel
    OH well I misunderstood! So if you make less than 44K, no matter what, you have a kid you ...
 

Oct 4
2010

Posted by richard

It seems that £44K is the cut-off point for child benefits for a family. At least according to the Chancellor.

That does not feel, to me, to be too high, or too low. That’s a fair amount of money and there has to be a point at which benefits stop. Pre-tax that’s about £3500/mo. so not too shabby. Assuming tax, that might drop to something around £2250/mo.

Being someone who doesn’t have kids, it doesn’t affect me, but then again I don’t agree with child benefits anyway. The parents have sex, they know the possible outcome. They can’t turn around to the state and say, ‘That’s your responsibility’, can they? So why would us tax-payers be happy to pay for a child? They wanted the sex, they should pay for it.

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Posted at 2:46 am • Trackback Trackback

Posted in humour

3 comments - Latest by:
  • richard
    Now that sounds great Mel! I tried to get us to go paintballing but there wasn't as much support as ...
  • macbros
    I haven been in a go-kart in decades. Sounds like you had a great time in the rain. You too ...
 

Oct 3
2010

Posted by richard

We (five of us) went to the local Go-Karting track on friday afternoon. For £20 you can spend 30 minutes chasing each other around the track and pretend to be F1 drivers (well, Paddy probably did).

What a laugh! I have to say, the best £20 I’ve spent in ages! Of course it started to rain and although we wore waterproofs, I was soaked to the bone. I think a couple of the others were too, but nothing that a pint at the local won’t fix!

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