Not Rocket Science, Surely?

Sigh.

I do get annoyed with with bloody utility companies. I got home this evening to find a letter from my Gas & Electricity Company, who were writing to tell me that they have noticed my bill was quite high so have decided to increase my direct debit.

Now, the payment plan I have is that I pay a fixed amount each month, rather than a variable amount based on the amount of fuel actually used, which works for me because it allows me to budget. Obviously, it also means that some months you overpay, and some you underpay, the idea being that the direct debit is reviewed from time to time and adjusted if you are building up a substantial credit or debit balance.

At the end of the last quarter, my statement showed I'd paid for more than I'd used, and had built up a credit balance of about £150. Scottish Power's suggestion was that I should pay a bit less for a while to use this up.
My suggestion, having down some sums and worked out that on their figures, they would get to keep my money for about 14 months til it was used up, was that they should give me my money back, and then set a new regular payment at a more realistic level.

After a bit of pressure, they agreed.

Today, they wrote to point out that (quelle surprise) the amount I'd paid for December-Jan was less than the cost of the fuel used, so "to help you to avoid building up a debt", they propose to increase the monthly payments. Because, obviously using the 3 coldest months of the year (in the worst winter for a decade) as representative and working out a payment schedule on the assumption that I will be using the same amount of gas and electricity in every other month as I did in January makes perfect sense.

Cannot help but notice that it only takes them 3 months to try to change things when the balance is in my favour, and 12 months when it's in theirs.

After holding on the phone for 10 minutes and explaining several times that yes, I understand that I might end up with a bigger bill later, yes, I understand that I will have to pay for the fule I use, plus pointing out that it's fairly likely that I will be using rather less gas and elecricity in (say) April & May than I did in January, things will even out, I eventually managed to convince them to change it back to the original payment.

But honestly, they couldn't work out for themselves that January is colder than June? Or that their own selling point for this plan is that you get to average the costs out, over the year?

(Yes, I know, I could change suppliers. But I doubt any of the rest are any better, and as I have pretty low bills (one of the few advantages of living in a terrced house and only having central heating in half of it) the possible savings are not worth all the faffing about to research and change)

In more cheerful news, the organisers of OctoCon have finally fixed the dates of the Con, so I have registered, and will be going to Dublin in October, and meeting up with Fabulous Lorraine and SpacedLawyer, and no doubt seeing RavenBooks too, all of which should be fun.

Of course, this may involve flying with RyanAir, which takes the gloss off a little, but such is life.

And it turns out my library books are due back tomorrow, not, as I thought, yesterday, so no fines for me after all!

In Which There is Shopping (or not)

I've been doing a fair proportion of my Christmas shopping online. (no change there, I do a fair bit of my non-christmas shopping online, too) So far, virtually all has gone smoothly - the stuff from Etsy sellers arrived promptly, looking just like they did in the pictures, as did various books and so on.

Then we get to WHSmith. I had actually been to my local branch, but they didn't have the particular items I wanted. Nor did the independent stationery shop I normally buy from. Or Waterstones. So, I decided to order online instead. I mean, big retailer, should be fine...

In hindsight, this was my first mistake.

WHSmith's website didn't look terribly impressive, but as I already knew exactly what I wanted that didn't seem to much of a problem.

It was fun to discover that adding a second item to the basket automatically emptied it. As did hitting 'go to check out'

I probably should have given up at that point.

But I didn't. I tried again. This time, I got as far as the checkout. Filled in the details. Pressed 'submit'. And got an error message, apologising that my tranction had not gone through.

I definitely should have given up at that point.

I did. for a bit.

A day later, having failed to find an alternative supplier, I went back. Oh, I was careful. I double checked that the order hadn't gone through despite the message. No confirmation e-mail, nothing showing in orders.

So, I tried again. This time the order went through sucessfully. Confirmation e-mail arrived, all good.

[Pause for hollow laughing]

Next morning, I checked my credit card. And found that there were two, identical, payments. (Well actually there were 4, as bizarrely, each individual item had been separately charged)

So, my first call to Customer Services. Using Lorraine's patented Be Nice To Customer Services approach (which I have to say, is the route I'd go down anyway, in most cases) I got past person#1, who wanted me to accept that the only possible thing I could do was to wait until eveything was delivered, then send some of it back, and then they would give me a refund (but wouldn't refund the postage back) once they received the good.
Person#2 however, agreed that perhaps she could ring dispatch direct, and get them to manually take the ghost order out of the system, and also that she would in any event process the refund straight away, and would give me a freepost address if she couldn't stop the order going out. she even called me back, a few hours later, to say she had managed to stop one order, so I wouldn't need to send anything back.

"Excellent", I thought. All sorted.

As If.

Next morning I checked my credit card again. Partial refund. (remember the whole, each ite,m billed separately? Yup. Only one refunded. I even gave them the benefit of the doubt and waited 24 hours in case it was just a delay with the admin on the card.

So, 2nd call to Customer Services. After a little delay (because after all, just because I know the order number, billing and delivery address and the name of the last 2 people in customer services I spoke to is no proof I'm me....) I was given an apology and assurances that the rest of the refund would be made.
(of course, when I checked the credit card I found they had refunded the wrong amount, then clearly realised this and corrected it by separately refunding a further 76 pence to correct this, but as they managed to correct that one without me calling them it hardly counts as having made a mistake)

OK. So now it's all sorted.
.
.
.
.
.
On Monday, my order arrived. Well. Sort of. It seems they cancelled half of each of the two orders. And, just to put the cherry on the top, they sent two of the cheaper item so I'd been overcharged, too.

3rd call to customer services. Mangaged to get person#2 again. She was very apologetic, and promised to sort it out.

So, the current position is this.

I have sent back the unwanted duplicate (freepost)
She is reordering the correct one.
They are going, allegedly, to send me a gift card by way of apology (because, obviously, this experience has been so positive I'll be wanting to shop with them again...)

Given the stunning performance they have managed so far I am on tenterhooks waiting to find out what will actually show up with the 'corrected' order.

On a positive note, despite the truly abysmal performance when it comes to actually, y'know, delivering what I ordered, and charging me correctly, the lady in customer services couldn't be nicer in trying to sort things out. Still, I don't think I shall be using their website again any time soon.

Customer Service

You probably haven’t noticed, as I’ve hardly mentioned it, but I took a little trip to Dublin recently, which of course meant getting to, and from, the airport. As I was aiming to go directly back to the office from the airport on my return, getting there by public transport wasn’t an option, so I looked into booking airport parking. I found some (via the airport’s website, but not at the airport) and went online to book. The site set out that they ran a shuttle bus to the airport on the hour and the half hour, but didn’t seem to say how long it took, so I sent them an e-mail to ask.

This was on 24th January.

A week before I was due to go, having had no reply, I sent a follow up.

Still no reply, so I decided to give up, sent them an e-mail to cancel the booking and booked elsewhere, on the basis that the extra £6 was worth it for the peace of mind (after all, if they can’t respond to an e-mail after 3 weeks it doesn’t fill me with confidence about their ability to run buses on time, or indeed collect their customers from the airport. .)

And I would have written it off and forgotten it had it not been for the fact that I received an e-mail this morning. It was responding to mine, and read;

“You need to e-mail us or ring us with your registration number of you car so we can check your booking.”

(Sic.)

Now, this was a response to my original e-mail, in which I had included their booking reference, which you would think would have allowed them to trace my booking, but in any case

(i) Why would they need my booking details to know how far away from the airport their car park is and
(ii) if they had read the original e-mail I sent (and as it was on the bottom of the mail sent back, I’m guessing that they had) they would have known I’d originally wanted parking from 15-18th February, so might have worked out that a response on 25th February was unlikely to be of much use.

So I sent back an e-mail, politely explaining this.

I then got another e-mail.

To tell me that they are about 10 minutes drive from the airport.

I am tempted to write back and suggest that they consider reading the e-mails. But life is too short.

When I decide it’s time to change my car I might go there, though. With that level or organisation I might end up with a whole new car….