Parcel Farce....

Where to begin... At the beginning...

An on-line retailer was selling something that I wanted so I decided to purchase it. Nothing special going on there. I've being using a variety of on-line retailers for some time now and no problems to report. Till now...

The retailer duly logged the purchase, and let me know when it had been dispatched. The money was debited and I sat back thinking that soon I'd have the goods I'd purchased. Ah, how wrong can you be?!

I had failed to take into account who was doing the delivery of said package. Yes the one delivery organisation that I've never had to use before and would never recommend to anyone else. Parcel Farce....

So having waited six days for a 24 hours delivery service I thought I'd get in touch. One of the wonderful things about this organisation is that there's almost no way at all to contact a human being. So first step, put a message in via their website to wonder WTF the parcel was....

Automated reply popped back to say they'd aim to respond in two days.

Three days later I tried to call up to speak to a human (though there are some that would debate that description of their staff). Not having had any luck other than to go around in circles on their clever call system I went for the "Complain" link on the website. Much the same as the "Contact us" form apart from a bit of colour. Net response was after yet another day I was asked to provide more detail.

Now this is what really makes you realise what a tin pot, half arsed organisation you're dealing with....

Having had to use the tracking number to put the initial e-mail in, and having it clearly listed as the subject of the automated e-mails I was curious as to why I was being asked what my tracking number was.

To add to the beauty of the situation, they even asked me, the person wondering WTF the parcel was, NOT the person who sent it, what service it was sent on. Well hey presto, back onto their own f*cking website to get that bit of information and paste it right back at them....

I've done some investigating on this organisation and it sounds like there are many people out there with similar stories to mine. The missing parcels to the ones that were opened, tried out and then delivered.....

I for one am writing this for these simple reasons:

• I'm mightily hacked off with them for being unable to do their job,


• I want as many people out there to know how crap they are and avoid them like the plague


• They have no customer services to speak of (replying after four days when the service is supposed to be 24 hours is a sweet irony...).

No doubt I will be one of the lucky ones in the next few days who has to report the situation to the credit card company and the vendor. My advice will be passed on to all and sundry. They are a force to be reckoned with, like gravity is a force to be reckoned with when you try to fly...

Parcel Farce, no damn good...

Brief addition I think I've found a useful link out there....

http://www.postwatch.co.uk/

Update - Dec:

Well they continue to demonstrate why I'm recommending that this vendor finds an alternative delivery company. They eventually replied to say they would investigate further and the depot would call within 24 hours. They even gave me the depot phone number "just in case":'

'You can contact your local depot on 08700 844 502 directly, in the unlikely event you have not had a reply within 24 hours.'

So that was ten days ago... Any response? Not a damn thing. I've tried calling twice and twice ended up re-directed to their central call centre. At least the guy who answered to-day was reasonably honest, "Yeah it looks like it's lost".

On going council crapiness....

Well I know I've written before about this same subject but I figured I'd provide a brief update.....

My local council is my landlord, this unfortunately means that they have to do maintenance.

Quite honestly I can't be bothered, they're useless and despite never replying to any questions regarding bills expect to be paid. I've been waiting YEARS for them to deal with issues and they think they're getting money from me.....

Sorry fuckwits... You don't do the job you don't get the money....

Run fatty run......

Ah well, so long as it's someone else's fault......

To-day it's been announced that:

" Obesity 'not individuals' fault' "

Yes that's right, it's not their fault for how much food they cram into their mouths or how little exercise they take. Well that's ok then isn't it. It's good to know that there's a study out there from all sorts of scientific types that can put the blame somewhere else. Now the clinically obese can rest at ease, heart disease, join pain what ever your condition it's not your fault.

Yet another example where modern society has found a clever way to not tell people to do anything to address the problems they face. Not particularly surprising from a society that has in some instances banned sports day from schools (ooooh we can't let them do sports some of the unfit ones won't be much good at sports) and where people can't not fail exams anymore, they can just have their "pass deferred".

The one bright spot on the horizon in all this is the absolute slating that most people are giving this report. This includes people who open with lines like "I'm fat, it's my fault". Good on you chubby and good luck with continuing to lose that weight.

For all those who think it's not their fault may your decline into clinical obesity along with all the associate issues open your eyes.

Dear Valued Customer.....

Sometimes you have to wonder how some companies stay in business. Sometimes you wonder why they bother to post their junk mail or brochures out to people. I still receive post for the previous owner of my property from time to time. Hey it's only been four and a half years so it's perfectly understandable, well it's not but I being "understanding" for once (like f*ck!).

One particular company has impressed me in particular recently. Not only is it a company that I would never have anything to do with (dealing in particularly cheesy holiday camp style holidays) but they addressed the envelope to:

Dear Valued Customer,

It can't be just me who found this hilarious. You're looking for extra business, you look through a list of past customers, you find their address, and send it to "Dear Valued Customer". Are you fucking kidding me????

It says it all about companies these days, not a lot of common sense....

What you see ain't what you get....

IBM advert....
Sleek, efficient, knowledgeable.
"Consultants".....

Can I make an official complaint to the advertising watchdog? I really think I should....

While IBM continue to off shore their operations the markets continue to adore them. Hey don't knock it, bigger profits, bigger dividends, money for nothing.

Anyone contemplating employing them should be prepared, they will work to the documentation, make them write the documentation that you actually want. It would not be fair to level all the criticism at Big Blue (though Big Black Hole would be more appropriate given the costs involved). When an organisation makes the bright decision to put two thirds parties together to deliver something for them without managing the situation you just know that something bad is going to happen...

Let's be clear on this, all I know is a small subset of the consultancy arm.... There may be consultants working for them that do try to actually consult with their clients with the aim to find out what the client wants. I just never got to deal with any of them....

ITIL, a "BIG" thing.....

ITIL, the IT Infrastructure Library. Over recent years in particular it's become a "BIG" thing in the world of IT. There's nothing particularly amazing about ITIL, it's a framework, a set of guidelines if you like that cover every crucial aspect of IT. I've been lucky enough to work at an organisation that's made a concerted effort to introduce ITIL in some of their key (service) areas. I'm sure it will look great for companies to go down the ITIL route and get the associated BS and ISO badges so they've got something to show to their clients.

However...... Yes, there's always a "But" or a "However" isn't there?

The reasons that organisations like ITIL is that it encourages a focus on customer service. You have to question WTF these places have been doing until now? How did they stay in business, often for years if not decades, if they weren't giving their customers an adequate level of service? Perhaps it's just spin once more to make it possible for them to be part of the band waggon. In my personal experience it certainly feels like it. More than that it seems to provide a certain tier of managers with the ability to congratulate themselves on "Improving customer service". More it seems to be a way to set goals and targets that these same managers can then tick off so that they're able to "earn" their annual bonus. More than this it seems to be a great way to divert money from employing staff to do work, the work that needs to be done to provide the customer service that is the goal of applying the ITIL framework in the first instance.

When things are being so badly managed at a high enough level you have no choice but to wonder what these "managers" are being told to get them to make these decisions. Within the subset of ITIL that deals with the service aspects there are Incident, Problem, Configuration, Asset, Change and Capacity management. All of these are quite closely interwoven, and particularly some of the key information here is the Asset and Configuration data. After all, how do you manage a change if you don't know what you're starting from? How do you get to the route cause of a problem or incident if you don't have detailed information of the system that's failed? How can you plan to increase the capacity of a device when you don't know what its current capacity is? Well those same managers that decided that they needed to jump on the band waggon have in their infinite wisdom decided that all these streams can exist without the fundamental asset and configuration data. Of course having goal posts that are in a constant state of flux always helps when you're implementing something as complex as a configuration database. The data that should be in this CMDB is constantly being changed by the processes that should be dependent on the CMDB. End result? Whether this CMDB is ever fit for release is open to question. Whether the CMDB and Asset databases will actually contain the clean data that they should also appears to be open to question......

It is unlikely that I will still be in a position to know the final answers to these questions. The organisation will continue to stumble on its way, and their customers will continue to accept the service provided, probably because they've never actually had a decent level of service. ITIL is a way to get the organisation to deliver what it should have always delivered, let's see if they can make it happen......

WTF have I been!!!?

Well I don't know what's happened since I last bothered to post something here, it doesn't feel like much has but it's been hectic enough that I've not found the time to write so there's got to be something.

Ah yes..... Everyone one's favourite cheap and Cheerful airline. A long week-end trip to the French pryrennes, started well enough. Check in, boarding, take-off, all fine.
As is normal on these flights I dozed off as there's nothing worth being awake for. The quality of food is appalling and over priced and there's not much else on offer worth contemplating.
As I lay somewhere in a half doze I heard the captain come over the tanoy. He sounded calm as ever but the message wasn't great.

Destination airport closed due to an incident involving another aeroplane.
Destination airport two closed due to snow.
We'll shortly be landing in Bergerac. Well for all you older UK based folk who thought it was just a TV show from the 80s I'd like to inform you that the place really does exist. Those wonderful chaps at Google Maps inform me that it's about 218 km from our original desitnation, Pau. It turned out to be a little further for us as you may read below.

So there we all were sat on a plane on a runway in a small provincial airport wondering what the heck was going to happen, the announcements soon started to come through, I won't bother putting the delays in:

• We're getting our agent on the ground to try and organise coaches (I almost laughed out loud at that one).
• We've been unable to organise coaches for you, if you wish to disembark to continue your onward journey it will be without any further assistance from us, if you wish to remain on the aeroplane we will be heading back to Stanstead where we will see what we can do for you.

Being somewhat cynical I could well imagine what "see what we can do for you" entailed, a voucher to the value of the outbound flight and you would lose the value of the return flight you couldn't make......
Needless to say we soldiered on. Now going back to that 218 km. Well the problem here is that that's by road, quite direct. We had no choice but to get the train. This meant heading west (instead of pretty much south) to Bourdeaux (please avoid eating near the train station, the wine we had was crap, a poor irony in the town that shares its name with such a well know variety).

All in all things got off to a poor start, and rather than being at our destination by around 13:00 we eventually arrived just after 01:00. Still we found a way to entertain ourselves and we all knew that should anything go wrong Ryan Air would abandon us, hell how could they afford not to???