Customer - over the top - service?

Let's continue in the customer service saga, shall we?

British Telecom this time. Now normally I am seriously not a fan of BT's customer service. Minimum of 10 minutes on hold listening to tinny music before you get a call-centre employee with a script that you dare not deviate from. Customer says A - turn to page 2, customer says B - turn to page 3, customer says Z - panic and return to start...

BUT, I have to hand it to them with this new BT fibre optic broadband thingy - BT Infinity. I've had maybe 3 or 4 calls from them now. Would I like to upgrade? Would I like about 27M speed rather than 0.5M for a few quid more per month? Hell, yes. Can I upgrade? Er - no. Not until March 31st in your area. So why are you phoning me then?

Customer - actually pretty damn good - service

In contrast to last post - B&Q, this time, where we just bought a posh Cooke & Lewis shower cubicle, on account of the fact that it was 50% off plus a further 15% last weekend. So we arrange a delivery date and go home, only to realise that it won't fit in the shower room, without banging the door on the loo every time the door is opened. So we phone up B&Q, expecting to be fobbed off but are told very pleasantly that it's no problem at all and of course we can swap it for a different model (corner door), even though the model we now want wasn't actually in the sale catalogue. And of course they can still deliver on the same date. And no extra charge.

Well done, B&Q. You shall retain my custom in the future.

Customer - lack of - service?

Ten levels down customer service’s button-activated telephone helpline system….

• “My washing machine won’t spin.” In depth detail about what I’ve tried to do. 
• Have you tried another full wash?”
• Do I sound stupid? “Er – no. I don’t fancy a machine-load of soggy washing that I can’t get dry.”
• “What type of washing was it?”
• Does it matter? “Towels”
• “How many towels?”
• What make? What colour? “Just a couple.”
• “Ah, it’s the sensors. These modern machines can tell how much of a load there is and if it’s too small, the machine will switch off to preserve the life of the machine.”
• I can tell you’ve never washed towels before. They’re not exactly lightweight. “So can you get an engineer out to fix it?”
• “I can arrange an appointment. But if the engineer can’t find a fault, there will be a charge.”
• Of course there’s a fault. “So how do I spin my towels then?”
• “Have you tried putting something else in with them?”
• That’s not really the point, is it? “I have 2 towels and I want to spin them. It’s spun my very lightweight  handwashing before with no problem.”
• “And what type of washing was that?”
• You want me describe my underwear? Over the phone? From my desk in an open-plan office at work? “Just some tights.”
• “I think it’s probably that the sensors aren’t picking it up.”
• I don’t want a technical report. I want my f***ed washing machine def***ed. It’s only 3 months old. “So can you send an engineer out to fix it, please?”
• “It’s not faulty.”
• “Just give me an appointment. Please.” Before I kill myself.
• “I can arrange one for Friday.”
• “Friday afternoon would be great, thank you.”
• “Oh I can’t guarantee when on Friday.”

So I go home, put a full load of duvet covers and sheets in and it works perfectly.

Sigh.

The Gaudi Key? Keep the door locked.

The Gaudi Key didn’t unlock any doors for me, I’m afraid. Shame. I like these kind of books and can normally lap up Dan Brown and the conspiracy theorists. And I love Gaudi and the art nouveau movement. But this was truly awful. Maybe it suffers from being a translation from (presumably) Spanish? I simply can’t sit and read huge chunks of exposition and back-story and listen to characters telling each other things they already know just to inform the reader. And while I’m all for multiple points-of-view, you can’t jump into a character’s head and have him/her conveniently forget pertinent plot points because it suits the current scene. The author pushes one-dimensional characters around the board like chess pieces lecturing the reader and nobody has enough depth for me to have a clue whether or not their motivations are genuine. And I don’t really care.

But enough of negatives. There’s a lot of history in here, both real and imagined, though its delivery is pompous and dull at times. Gaudi is linked with the templars (isn’t everybody these days?) and the masons and there’s a real depth in the interpretation of his work, particularly the Sagrada Familia. On that level, the book succeeds. But as a novel, it just didn’t do it for me.

Fallen Star

A rare book review - something I read on authonomy a while back and have championed ever since. Fallen Star by Ian Barker and recently published by Rebel e Publishers, although fortunately there's a dead-tree version as well for those of us who haven't yet embraced the e-reader revolution. I bought this recently from Amazon and I wasn't disappointed. Fallen Star is the story of ex-rock-star Karl and ordinary Irish cafe-worker Lizzie. He's famous; she's a nobody. He's used to getting what he wants; she won't play second fiddle to anyone. And he's the son of a war hero while she's the daughter of a terrorist. Can they ever find any common ground?

But this is more than a love story - it's a bird's-eye view of the "cult of the celebrity" that pervades our lives these days. From auditions for porn films to chat shows to reality tv shows, this book covers what it means to be "famous" in the 21st century. And it does it so well, it's scary.

Barker has a real wit. There are some fabulous one-liners in here that made me laugh out loud (and I committed the ultimate sin of turning page corners so I could find them again). "He turned on the smile again and her resistance caved in so far it would have needed an army of potholers to rescue it."  Fabulous! The audition for the blue movie seemed so realistic I'm wondering how Barker did his research. And when Karl and Lizzie get caught in flagrante delicto by a posse of Girl Guides, I practically wet myself laughing.

The ending was predictable but with a nice twist that I didn't see coming. I did feel that the story stopped quite abruptly and I'd have liked to have known more, but that's probably because I was so caught up in these peoples' lives that I didn't want to stop reading. And without spoilers - I think Barker should patent his idea for a reality tv show before anyone else gets hold of it!

This is indie publishing at its best. Buy it. Buy it NOW.

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Crime & Psychology

Today was week 2 (of 10) of my crime & psychology course at the local 6th form college. There are about 16 of us and an odd demographic - mostly women, mostly middle-aged (as expected) but there are 3 young blokes. One I think is still at school/college.

Last week we were looking at the history of criminal profiling - how in the past your physical appearance could have a bearing over whether you might have criminal tendencies. Not much change there, you might say, but certain "scientists" believed that your body shape and even your ears could mean you harboured latent criminal tendencies!

This week, we talked about eyewitness testimony. Fascinating. Let's say you show a group of people a short video of two cars colliding. You ask them what speed they thought one car was doing when the cars collided. Then you repeat the process with a second group but this time you ask them "What speed were the cars doing when they smashed into each other?" The responses from the second group will be higher. It's amazing how much information you can almost subliminally implant by asking leading questions. Or how people make assumptions based on what they see, just to fit in with their "world view" and the brain then thinks this was what actually happened. So the whole purpose of "swearing to tell the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth" becomes fundamentally flawed when everyone has their own version of the truth. I've spent time in court (with work, I might add) and I was always in awe of barristers who could argue black was white - and make you believe it! But then I once spent over 5 hours in the witness box reading out serial numbers, so it wasn't all excitement.

Next week we're doing psychopathy. Serious stuff!