Customer Dis-service

Yesterday I visited a B+Q (a UK Do-It-Yourself) to purchase a couple of lengths of timber which were 2400mm long and hence rather tricky to get inside a family car. So I visited the B+Q timber cutting desk only to be told:

1. The timber was not big enough to be cut (why!?)

2. I could not be given a saw to cut the wood in-case I injured myself (once again heath and safety rules non-sense).

The staff member was very apologetic, as if to say "yes, I know it's crazy, but I don't make these insane rules up, I just work here.."

So zero service satisfaction there.

Next at the check-out we were confronted with high-tech scanning self-service tills. The tone of the computer telling us what to do was very condescending and when we got stuck a girl monitoring four self service tills was abrupt with us because we had done something wrong.

Come on B+Q, the customer comes first! If you cannot be bothered to serve the customer then your customers will not return! As it is, next time I want to do some D.I.Y. I put B+Q at the end of my list of places to visit. Humph!

MP's Expensive Expenses

So the UK's MPs have been told to repay £1.12 million of their expenses after Sir Thomas Legg's audit.  Meanwhile the new Independent Parliamentary Standards Authority (IPSA) has replaced the Commons Fee Office to monitor expenses. IPSA will cost £6.5 million to run to keep MPs honest.

So £6.5 million probably pays for 100+ expensive civil servants, which equates to about one full time civil servant to monitor 6.5 MPs.  That equates to over 5 hours work per week per MP to make sure that the MPs are not stealing tax payers money.

Looks like the UK government has an expensive job creation scheme all because MPs cannot be trusted with it's citizens money.  No representation without expensive taxation creation schemes...