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...

Blow your nose and get stopped by the Police!

The BBC news website is reporting a story of an Ayershire Businessman who was apparently sitting in his stationary car with the handbrake on and was fined for blowing his nose. He was stopped by no less than 4 policeman and given a £60 fixed penalty fine for not being in control of his vehicle. Needless to say he's taking this to court and will plead not guilty. Let's hope sanity applies here and the Police jobsworths are laughed out of court.

UPDATE: Common sense has prevailed. Looks like the Crown Office and Procurator Fiscal Service has decided that no further action is required and the case has been dropped. The BBC has a full report about this case. But how much time and money has gone into resolving this? Perhaps it should be docked from the charging Policeman's pay...

DVLA sells your private data

Apparently private data is being sold by the DVLA according to this article by the register and the Daily Mail.  It has been reported that in the past 5 years 18 million names and addresses have been sold by this UK government agency to companies such as parking firms an private clamping companies.  So much for privacy of your data.  Apparently the data is not sold to dodgy establishments. Hrmm.

Well, apart from that fact that in 2009 the DVLA data was acquired by Castrol via an intermediary and used for some creative marketing according to the the register. Castrol used number plate recognition and data about the owner's car make and model from the DVLA was flashed up on digital billboards.  The data was not provided directly by the DVLA and the DVLA stated such use was inappropriate.  I'd say it's more than inappropriate - it's absolutely scandalous.

Nice to know that the UK government is happy so share the data of it's citizens - any chance of opting out of this scheme Gordon Brown?  Goodness knows how secure my Government owned medical records are...

Private Data is no longer Private.

Oh dear, looks like the communications giant T-Mobile has been a bit too communicative. Today it emerged that staff at T-Mobile have passed data from thousands of it's customers too 3rd party brokers without prior permission, as reported by the BBC.

We can expect several things: One, the Ministry of Justice will get it's teeth into this. Two, some staff of T-Mobile will be charged under the Data Protection Act. Three, the government will get all hot-and-bothered about this and maybe try and react with some extra protections in law.

Will customers get compensation - who knows? One thing for sure is that this is not going to be the last time we see Joe Public's private data up for sale.

It's my seat - now go away!

The other week I had to visit my company's London office which isn't too much of a big deal - it means taking a train up to Victoria. However, currently I'm suffering from a slipped disc in my neck and it's got to the point where it's been pressing on my spine which causes me to get quite wobbly on my feet. Lately I've been using a walking stick to keep my steady as I've fallen over a few times now.

So there I was one late Thursday evening trying to find a seat, hobbling down the carriages with a walking stick. My first surprise was that nobody in 8 carriages was willing to give up a seat, especially the seats which are ear-marked for elderly or disabled people. My second surprise was people tutted when I tried to squeeze down the carriage with a walking stick because I was inconveniencing them. Ho hum. Glad I wasn't in a wheel chair...

Who'd want to be a student?

According to the BBC, 132,000 students have yet to receive their first student loan payments this academic year, and it's almost the middle of November.

OK, so there has been a bigger intake of students this year because of a recession, but the delay of payments to students who have minimal income is inexcusable. It does not take much foresight to see that a recession means that more young people head to higher education rather than sitting on the dole queue - but the managers running the student loads failed to see this. So who is in charge?

Well, the Government isn't, that's for sure. Lord Mandelson told the Lords that "there is no excuse for the service which the company has provided." The fact that he condemns their failure is ironic - is the Government is control? - obviously not. Oh, and by the way, the Governments solution to this crisis is to hire experts to lead a review. So don't expect a solution before 2010...

So what is learnt from this disaster? Well, students will learn that a Labour government is rubbish with finances and is incapable of sorting out any problem in an efficient and prompt way. But we all knew that anyway...