SWT Fail

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Nightmare journey home this evening – a trip that usually takes 45 mins took me 2hrs 30mins!!! It turned out that there was person hit by a train at Wimbledon, which is very sad I agree, but the cluelessness of the staff at Waterloo was a little maddening. To be fair they did probably know as much as I did, but what does that say about the communication issues between the controllers and the platform staff? I can only imagine (with dread) how this will be handled during the Olympics as I am sure a similar situation is likely to come up.

I was sat on a train for 20mins before being told that it was cancelled, how frustrating!

Anyways, I am home at last and now time for bed.

Holy Crap Lovefilm – cancel means cancel!

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I called Lovefilm to cancel my account this morning, which I expected would be a pretty straight forward affair…far from it. It went something like this:

Me: I would like to cancel my account.

Lovefilm: Ok, sir – can i ask you why.

Me: I dont use the service at all.

Lovefilm: Fair enough – as you don’t have time to use the service we could downgrade you to the £4.99 package which allows you…

Me: Thanks, but i would like to cancel.

Lovefilm: Ok, sir – what we could do is put you on a price plan for £2.99…

Me: I just want to cancel.

Lovefilm: Ok sir – we could give you a month free and then put you on a…

Me: Can i just cancel please – this is ridiculous.

Lovefilm: Ok sir I will process that – can i ask you if you have enjoyed the service?

Me: I had up until this call…

Now, that changed a calm and easy morning into a frustrating one in a matter of a few minutes. It changed my perception of Lovefilm completely and now i would not consider going back to them, where i would have before.

If a customer wants to cancel, its fair enough to try to do a member save once, but when the customer says “No thanks”, listen to them!

Unreliability is a frustrating and rotten thing…

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The past few days I have come across quite a few unreliable people, and that has really annoyed me something crazy.

First a tiler who arranges to come and do some work at 8am today doesn’t turn up, and when I call him it turns out that he has forgotten, but tries to make up an excuse o. The phone…yeah bye bye job for you you time waster!

Then I have people who deflect requests and issues with delay techniques at work such as, let’s discuss your high level plan and then get down to what you need….uuuuummmm I send you explicit details of what I need 3 weeks ago! I hate that.

If something cannot be done, due to lack of wanting or scarce resources, carrying on and not mentioning this is a terrible thing to do. Be honest and people will respect you, ignoring the issue will not make it go away, it will just cause bad feeling….learn people!

Bye Bye News of the World

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It’s what people called for, but was it done for the right reasons? Probably not. Was it done to punish those who have been using underhand and immoral reporting methods? Probably not. Was it done to try and take the scent of the independent enquiry away? I think so!

Will it work? I hope not…

I feel sorry for the 200 (mostly) innocent journalists that now find themselves out of work (you should join huffpo!). After all the people (person) who is ultimately responsible is still in her job. I hear that Brooks has tried to resign twice, but Murdoch has refused it…what a fool. The public want the ones responsible punished, not just those in the general area.

I have never been a huge fan of the NUJ, but I truly hope that they nail Murdoch to the wall over this one.

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HuffPoUK Lands!

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Following on from my last post (quite some time ago) – today marks the launch of the huffingtonpost in the UK and what a day and story to launch with!

The phone hacking scandal that has heightened public interest into the dodgy dealings of the traditional news press at last…the Murdoch empire cannot and should not simply get away with this and some heads seriously need to roll – preferably Rebecca Brooks.

I read with interest that the defence to the act thus far has been that she was ooto when the hacking took place…lame or what? If I was out of the office and something I agreed to (or knew about) went down the toilet I would still be (righly) accountable surely?

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Huffington Post

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Great news today that AOL has acquired the huffington post. Its great to add Arianna Huffington to the AOL family, hopefully the success of the site will only spread and dare I say it, beak out to international destinations, like the UK.

A pipe dream maybe, but it’s always a shame that with the US Market being so big, that countries outside the US don’t benefit from the great things they have going on over there.

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Eurovision – your country needs you

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Just watching the eurovision tv programme on the BBC and I am horrified how badly structured the programme actually is. Firstly they didn’t explain how the contest will work until after the first act finished, then the flow didn’t make any sense at all, I mean what was the point of all the contestents singing together????

Let’s just say that the BBC is blown out of the water by ITV on live events..hands down.

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Social Search

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Read a great article by Brian Solis: 10 Steps for Optimizing the Brand for Social Search. Really does bring it home how important social search is.

When I first starting hearing about social search, I immediately started thinking about just people searching for people, etc, but its so much more than that! The killer is the way that people share their links to the stories that they like, etc – I for one how come across news reports and stories, I certainly would not have found my browsing, through facebook and twitter streams…

These are exciting times…

Application after application…

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So at the moment I am investigating the immigrataion process to Australia and boy is it involved! Seems i need to pass a skills assesment from the Australian Computer Society to prove I qualify under the IT Manager section and then I have to take an English test! The English test is really money for old rope, as after 31 years of speaking English, I think I have got the hang of it! Not sure why they dont just check to see the medium used in my education and then be able to award the highest level of points based on that!

So toting up the total amount needed to pass the immigration tests and checks it unbelievably comes to £3000 minimum! Australian life better be worth it!

iPad arrives…

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So the wait is over and the iPad has arrived! The device does look very impressive for the price, and it will definetly be the tech that the cool kids get, but I do wish that they would have:

1) Added a camera – especially for Skype video calls

2) Called it a better name, i liked iSlate or iCanvas

3) Made it look slightly different than a large iTouch

I am sure that the next iteration of the product will have the camera and probably a 16×9 ratio for widescreen use, and I am pretty sure that I will end up getting it at some point. I will just have to go and play with it in the apple store first i think. Still don’t know if i would like to read a book on it though – those LED backlit screen do make your eyes tired after a while – so will probably stick to the Kindle for that. I like the fact that apple have created iBooks though, especially if they are using the ePub format and it would be great if this started publishers dropping the prices a little. I would then definitely buy from iBooks and convert using Calibre :)