Archive for the ‘Consumerism’ Category
Tiscali Dumps Homechoice
In this competitive internet world, what happens when your ISP (and your long-established email address) gets taken over or merged into another organisation?
In a market where there are no prizes for customer service at all, what can you expect from a provider who already has a reputation as the blackest of the black sheep?
When Tiscali took over Homechoice about a year ago, the Homechoice website continued up until early this month. Last year there was a downtime of far too many days on the Homechoice POP servers and all sorts of problems with trying to administer email accounts. There was no explanation at all, let alone any apology.
Early this month everything went down again for several days. When the POP server came back up the website had disappeared leaving just a re-direct to the Tiscali homepage.
Then last week everything stopped again. Emails to Homechoice support were returned as undeliverable and those to Tiscali went unanswered. I went to Tiscali’s PR agency and then direct to the Tiscali’s Chief of PR and my own email address started working again.
I discovered today that Tiscali has dumped Homechoice. Apparently “legacy” Homechoice email addresses have been ported over to Tiscali’s own servers but it’s quite clear that there will be noi more support for creating or deleting email accounts or changing passwords.
The Tiscali insider I spoke to said himself “You’d think they could have sent out a letter or an email or something”.
Unfortunately, of course, this is just par for the course for this industry and Tiscali’s reputation is such that it seems to set the standards for abysmal and irresponsible customer service.
No explanation. No communication. No apology.
WANTED DEAD OR ALIVE – Bankers On The Run
It is infuriating to see them now scurrying and rushing to reduce their interest rates after the outcry at their dilatory and greedy response to the Bank Of England’s massive rate cut.
We are going to to have to drag the w**ker bankers every greasy step of the way to a place where they start behaving responsibly and fulfilling their obligations to us as major shareholders. We are going to have to watch their dishonest and deceitful efforts to snaffle huge bonuses, in shares if not cash, and we are going to have to treat them as the completely untrustworthy spivs that they are.
What is clear that some of them are already getting away with it because the government has been so weak in stipulating the conditions and “mechanisms”, as Gordon Brown put it, that will control their greed and thievery.
It is time to start naming names and for the work to be done that will uncover and expose those who have manipulated the system for their own ends.
The first candidate for the WANTED DEAD OR ALIVE poster is Bob Diamond of Barclays.
Bob Diamond, Barclays
It is generally agreed that he has spurned the government’s rescue package in favour of the Arabs so that he can hang on to his outrageous, undeserved multimillion pound bonus. I will be researching his record in more detail.
Please submit your nominations for WANTED DEAD OR ALIVE bankers with as much evidence as you can.
The Number ONE Show
Whoever said “It’s Blue Peter for grown ups” hit the spot perfectly. Perhaps it’s because I’m hopelessly besotted with Christine but no, it’s much more than that.
I admit, openly, without regret or embarrassment that on Facebook I am a member of the “When I grow up, I want to marry Christine Bleakley from ‘The One Show'” and the “Christine Bleakley: the sexiest TV presenter in the world” groups.
http://www.facebook.com/home.php?ref=home#/profile.php?id=578616094&ref=profile
The One Show is a masterpiece. It crams so much information and entertainment in. It rivets me, not least because every day now I look for the slightest reference to Christine’s “Strictly” life. (Yes, I am obsessed).
I think the secret is that it’s live and that many of the features are made under pressure within very tight timeframes. These are the circumstances that bring out the best in many creative people when the adrenalin kicks in and the job just has to be finished.
I think The One Show has all the makings of a BBC classic. It could even be around for as long as Blue Peter.
Behaving Like Mad Geordie Crackheads
So is this to be pattern that our rescue of the w**ker bankers will follow?
Northern Rock is now owned by you and me. Not by Gordon, Alistair and their cronies but by British taxpayers. Do we want them throwing people out of their homes onto the streets so that we then have to pick up the bill for re-housing and supporting them?
Now that the “new” management has got its greedy hands back on the tiller they’re heading straight for deep water where they can pillage, plunder and overfish yet again.
I say get rid of all the w**ker bankers and put some real business people in charge. We don’t want the “experience” of those that have mismanaged banks already. We want new blood, fresh ideas, people who know the reality of business, not the fantasy world of banking.
I hope and pray that our rescue of these organisations will prove successful based on root and branch reform of the way they do business. We don’t want a few token sacrifices. We want all the dead and rotten wood cut out.
Let’s remember that these scoundrels still owe most of us many thousands of pounds in illegal bank charges they have stolen from us. Perhaps as much as £50 billion over the last six years. The sooner the OFT gets its finger out and resolves this outstanding matter the better.
Now Is The Time For Recrimination – Before They Get Away!
I am delighted to see that The Times and now, this morning, Andrew Marr, are joining me in calling for bankers to be brought to account. The “Thunderer” even said that “heads must roll”. Roll they must, many of them, until the baskets are full and the streets of the City are running with blood. The executions should take place in public so that the greedy thieves and scoundrels who have pillaged our economy can be subject to public humiliation and villification as they meet their doom.
I will carry the metaphor no further but the dread and fear that should now be ruining the weekends of the chief executives and chairmen of the banks should be little different from that of the French aristocrats awaiting the guillotine.
We must insist that those individuals who have taken multi million pound bonuses from banks, funds and all forms of financial institutions that are now insolvent must be able to justify the payments in the same way that a director of a small business that had gone bust might have to explain his drawings to a liquidator. In many instances money will have to be recovered.
Whether guilty of personal wrongdoing or not, the chairmen, chief executives and non-executive directors who have presided over this catastrophe must take responsibility and go! The same sanction must fall on the heads of the regulators.
Lord Adair Turner, Chairman, and Jon Pain, Managing Director Retail Markets, who both accepted poisoned chalices at the FSA only last month may have some excuse but the rest of the board should be summarily dismissed, not even allowed to resign.
Gordon Brown and Alistair Darling have been extraordinarily unequivocal in many of their statements this week. We want to know much, much more detail about the “mechanisms” that will put in place to restrain the banks in future. If the taxpayer has saved your business then in future you will not be gambling on ludicrously complex financial products that only you understand and for which you set the rules. We prefer that you lend £100,000 to a small business rather than £10 million to a virtual roulette wheel.
“There a million stories in the Naked City”. Now is the time for “le dénouement”.
Gypsies, Tramps, Thieves And Estate Agents
The property market is, once again, difficult for everyone. In recent weeks we have even been asked to have some sympathy for that most despised group of parasites, estate agents – but I have none. Truth is that their “profession” is a necessary evil and in good times as in bad it is only those with some standards and, maybe, a little integrity that are worth dealing with.
In the past twelve months I have had comprehensive experience of the estate agents in and around Emsworth, Portsmouth and Chichester. There have been one or two who have been a pleasure to deal with, who have been professional, efficient and helpful. Others have been uninterested and disinterested, unethical, inefficient and some are little short of crooked.
First, the positive. There is one firm that shines out as example to all others – Henry Adams. I have not bought, sold, rented or let a single property from them but I have viewed many and I can truthfully say that every transaction has been smooth, easy and as it should be. If only I could say the same for the rest.
Borland & Bound of Emsworth, Charlotte and Alison in their lettings department are liars. If you stalk the internet property sites, as I know how to do, you can catch the new properties immediately they come to market. If you’re quick on the draw the truth becomes evident. Agents which pick and choose who they sell or let to and at what price. Whether it is their sister’s best friend’s cousin’s daughter or their next door neighbour’s husband who they share a bottle of cheap white wine with every Wednesday afternoon, there are dishonest people out there that you cannot rely on to deal with you properly. Borland & Bound told me for a week that they just couldn’t get hold of the landlord to arrange a viewing. 
Then I met another prospective tenant outside another property who told me that they’d viewed the Borland & Bound property the day before. Borland & Bound then told me they’d had a “bad” reference on me. I ask, from who, on what authority, when did I give you the information or source from which to take a reference? Is that the best bullshit you can come up with? I wonder what the truth is?
Then there was “Zone” of Chichester. What dreadful 1980s-type “brand” is that and can anyone take a firm with such a name seriously? I had to try to because some unsuspecting property owner who had exactly what I wanted in Bosham had made the mistake of hiring this firm and apparently causing it all sorts of problems. After all, business would be so much easier, wouldn’t it, if it wasn’t for those dreadful people we call customers?
It was so much trouble to arrange a viewing. Five or six telephone calls were never returned and eventually produced the reaction that “we might be able to arrange a viewing in a week or so”. “Please don’t pester us. You’re probably not the sort of tenant we want because you’d be on the phone all the time”.
Eventually a viewing was arranged but when I called to ask for directions I was told “I’m far too busy. Ask someone in the street”. Then surprise, surprise, “the landlord has a prior offer”, “the property is now off the market”.
It must be unpleasant to have to demean yourself, to lie, to cheat, to deceive but perhaps some of these estate agents enjoy their work. I can think of no other explanation.
Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall, Eggs and Chickens
I love eggs, particularly lightly scrambled with loads of butter, or lightly boiled. In both cases with lots of salt, black pepper and fresh granary bread (and more butter). I buy into the River Cottage campaign completely on all the bases of animal welfare, taste and nutritional value.
As you will have gathered, I am also a glutton, so I habitually go for the “Very Large Organic Free Range”. Every time I crack one it runs all over the pan and frequently breaks the yolk.
My father, who has not yet achieved enlightenment on this issue buys the cheapest he can get, usually packs of 15 from Sainsbury.
Regrettably, (and please can someone explain?!!) every time I cook breakfast at my parents’, every egg that I crack holds together tight and firm and upright, looks fresh, tastes better…
I don’t want this to be the truth but it is. Not just once but over a period of months. Something is wrong here. There is someone being dishonest about some stage in the egg process.
Can anyone explain?
Peter Reynolds 