LATEST MOAN FROM YOU AND ME 2018

Companies, contractors and forgetting that they need customers to survive!

First up is Sainsburys - we are having to order online now that I can't drive, and until recently our experience was OK. A couple of weeks ago, we placed an order, and part of that order was 10 x 20 litres of Sainsburys compost at £1.50 a bag.

Come delivery day, they didn't have the compost so substituted it with 3 x 40 litre Miracle Grow, and 7 x 20 litre Wetland, so 60 litres more than we ordered (not a problem) and about £10 more (not great, but as we had more compost, we weren't overly bothered). However, for some unknown reason they also added a bag of Evergreen, admittedly discounted, but even then it was £10.50 and I already have half a huge sack left in the shed - - notwithstanding that at the moment, I have hay rather than grass . So, I fired off an email to their customer service, politely asking the logic behind adding the Evergreen and asking if I would be able to give it to the driver on our next delivery to get a refund, as I had no other way of getting quite a heavy bag to the store. The silence was deafening. A week later, I lost the rag and took to Twitter (something I have barely used in the five years I have been registered) - initially no response. On my second tweet, I added Tesco and asked how long they took to respond..... Lo and behold, within minutes I had a reply from Sainsburys. Once chatting to a human, it was all resolved quite easily by them giving me a £15 voucher and telling me to keep the Evergreen with their compliments.

More to follow........

 

Next up was Amazon - usually excellent I have to say, but this time....

On Prime Day, brother in law asked if he could buy some fancy computer speakers using our account as he doesn't have one - no problem. They were out for delivery on Thursday, then there was a message saying they were delayed due to 'external factors' - fair enough, vans break down, traffic around here can be shocking, drivers go sick.... I am probably more aware than most as to just how many things can go wrong.

Friday morning, message to say that the parcel was out for delivery again, then half an hour later another alert saying it was delayed due to 'external factors' - then a couple of hours later, it was out for delivery again - - forty mins later, it was delayed due to 'external factors'. Now, to put things in perspective the delivery hub where the parcel was is within five miles from me, and about three from the delivery address.

Reading between the lines, it appeared to me that the carrier were putting the box out to be loaded onto a van and the drivers were taking one look at it and refusing to take responsibility for it - I reckoned it was damaged, and emailed Amazon to this effect. The item was still in stock, and if I ordered at the time of sending the email, would have been delivered the next day, so I asked Amazon to send another one and we would either reject or return the other one as appropriate. Really nice email back, apologised and said they would contact the carrier and monitor the delivery, but not send out another one. Oh, and they extended our Prime membership by 28 days as a goodwill gesture.

Saturday came, message to say that the parcel was out for delivery, then half hour later....... You guessed it, delayed due to external factors. I fired a reply email back to Amazon, thanking them but telling them.thst it had failed again, and asking why they couldn't just send a replacement out to keep us as the happy customers we had been for over a decade. That brought a phone call from the US (via Dublin), and despite trying to reason with the woman on the phone, it was again 'we will get onto the carrier and get it sent out this afternoon'. True to their word, they did - and when it arrived with brother in law it was refused at the doorstep as it was mashed to bits.

So, ANOTHER reply to Amazon, brought another phone call, in which they agreed to send another one and issue a fiver credit as an apology. However, as it was now getting late on Saturday, it wouldn't be dispatched until Sunday and not arrive until Monday. After having arranged to stay in for three consecutive days, you can imagine that brother in law was not impressed.

It was finally delivered on Monday.

And there is more.......

 

Then, on Friday night we started to messages 'this channel is changing'on our Virgin box. Checking it out further on Saturday.morning, we learned that V weirgin were pulling all the UKTV channels as of the Saturday night. Whist some of those channels are available on Freebies, not all of them are - and Virgin charge everyone to watch those channels as part of their packages, even the ones that are free elsewhere.

So, good old Twitter again, which was alive with people seriously unhappy with Virgin fir losing the channels, only being made worse by Virgin's copy and paste responses. UKTV to their credit were at least answering with human responses. A bit of digging soon discovered that Virgin wanted to charge UKTV to host the free channels only, despite charging customers for both. OR they would take the pay channels if they could pay UKTV 50% less for them. Needless to say the channels disappeared at midnight on Sunday, and the replacement channels were a mixture of duplicates found elsewhere on their TV guide, free to air channels, and pure garbage (and I do mean garbage).

Then I log on to our account only to find that our monthly payment was going UP by £10 a month (give or take some pennies). Given that the box in Little Controllers room spends most of its life unplugged because it sounds like a demented motorbike (noisy hard drive that I could fix it f I were allowed to open the box), and the fact that we had lost channels we actually watched, plus the increase in price...... Well, I tried phoning Virgin as I wasn't a happy chappy. Couldn't get through.

Gave Sky a quick call, very helpful, very friendly (well, they would be in the new customer department), and gave us an offer that was significantly cheaper each month than Virgin.

Sunday morning, early, got through to Virgin and the guy agreed that it was a bit rough losing the channels, and the price increase, but all they could offer was £3 a month off for 6 months, so I terminated the contract. The guy at Virgin was really nice, and even thanked me at the end of the call for not being nasty or aggressive with him, as apparently many people were being.

And now this is where I cannot moan anymore, as it finally gets good from here...

Brother in law gave us a code (recommend a friend deal as he is a customer) which gets us and him each a £50 prepaid MasterCard - plus the Sky deal included a box for both bedrooms, not just one, at no extra cost each month. We don't watch much TV in our bedroom, but with my recent problems it is handy, even if just for an hour or so.

We placed our order on Sunday, and we're given an installation day of today, which we were a bit sceptical about as it was so quick.

Yesterday, we got a call from the engineer to confirm an appointment between 10 and 12 today. Half past ten this morning, two engineers arrived and installed our three boxes, a new dish, and showed us how to work it. When demonstrating it, he realised that we hadn't gone for the 'box sets' so made a call and got us those for 2 months as a free trial.

The job was good and tidy, they took care to clean up after themselves, we're thoroughly nice guys and even took time to make friends with our wee dog.

The new Sky Q is a great bit of kit (the voice search is brilliant, as is the ability to pause something downstairs and carry on watching it upstairs), and although there was a cost to getting it installed, we have lucked out as we have a couple of old mobile phones to sell to Mazuma that will cover it.

 

Good morning everyone now Woo doesn't usually moan,but at Folkstone this morning there are 1000's of cars waiting to board the euro train going on there holidays and they have been waiting 4 to 5 hours stuck in a jam and many young children are really struggling with the heat,with many symptoms and all one woman was concerned about was would she get a refund
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Unprecedented" high temperatures have been blamed for delays to cross-Channel rail services leaving customers waiting for more than five hours in 30C heat.

Air conditioning problems meant some carriages could not be used, which led to the delays, Eurotunnel said.

 

I feel sorry for the kids although they did put out a warning yesterday that it would be a problem today.

I don't know why people are complaining. After all, why should you expect the air conditioning to work in hot weather! I wouldn't work in this heat

 

We were way past the minimum contract period, so all we had to give was 30 days notice.

We've stuck with them for broadband as they are by far the best for it - BUT, we have not used their Superhub for Wi-Fi for many years, as they are all but useless. The best thing to do is to buy a decent router of your own, connect it to the Superhub with an ethernet cable and then put the Superhub into modem only mode. All your Wi-Fi woes will disappear

Edit - we are on cable here, so broadband is 200mb rock solid. If you are not on cable, then Sky would be a better option all round

 

Their engineers, by default, will not admit that the Superhubs are rubbish - you will likely bevtold he has fixed the problem, but it will definitely come back - been there, done that and ended up fixing it myself.

One other thing - no Wi-Fi router likes to be near the base unit/charger for a cordless phone; if your hub is anywhere near your phone base, move it away