rants...Moan, moan, moan. That's all I do. Perhaps if there wasn't so much incompetence and careless people in the world then I wouldn't have to. :)
crapcards...
Monday, 22 December 2008
Beware you don't get slapped with some festive incompetence from www.coolcards.co.uk. I ordered two different cards. They sent me three of one design and one other that was completely wrong. Today they give me some bull about being out of stock, even though their site says different. The staff are cards alright, and are cool how they take your money and send you a different item. To be fair they have let me keep the two spare cards, so as well sending one to my wife I can also send one to my mother-in-law and maybe the neighbour, telling them how I can't wait to get them under the mistletoe. Erk. posted by jpa @ 2:54 PM
ikea...
Saturday, 23 June 2007
So I stock check all the furniture I need to build the cupboardy shelf thing for the lounge. I take a day off and go to Ikea with my brother in his estate car. In the showroom they confirm that all my items are in stock, and advise which aisle to collect it from. I go to the aisle, and the shelves are empty. Abso-bloody-useless! They've now ordered 50 more in which will be another 11 days. Hell, what's a two hour thirty minute round trip anyway ffs. posted by jpa @ 9:11 AM
old rants...
Sunday, 17 June 2007
I've decided to turn the rants into a blog feed. Should make updating it easier and therefore more frequent. After all, I've always got something to moan about. Below is all the old whinging from years ago.
hp live support...
My HP2210 Ipaq's been pissing about recently. I charge it at work everyday, expecting it to last the weekend switched off, and so far the last two Saturdays I go to switch it on and it's completely dead! FFS! All its drivers are up to date, and there's hardly any third party software on there, so in a vain attempt to entertain myself I give HP's online technical support service a go. Basically you chat realtime to someone who apparently knows about HP stuff...
hp gimp :: [ Tue, Jul 20, 2004 6:53 PM] -- Hello James , thank you for contacting HP and for your interest in our Instant Support program. My name is John and I see you have a question with regard to your iPAQ. I’m going to take a few moments to review the information provided by your device and will message you back, right here, very soon. Please add this page to your favorites, in case you get disconnected or you close your browser, so you may come back to this conversation. Is there any third party software installed on the iPAQ?
me :: [ Tue, Jul 20, 2004 6:54 PM] -- you may not be able to see my device as it connects to Activesync over bluetooth. The cradle is at work. It's an HP2210 running firmware version v1.10. Yes, but only OmegaOne's journal bar and Battery Bar. I return to my switched off pda to find it completely drained. My reason for this chat is to determine whether the SD card power drain fix is the same one as included in the v1.10 ROM update.
hp gimp :: [ Tue, Jul 20, 2004 6:56 PM] -- How often does the issue occur?
me :: [ Tue, Jul 20, 2004 6:57 PM] -- so far two weekends running. The OmegaOne sw has been stable as far as I know.
hp gimp :: [ Tue, Jul 20, 2004 6:58 PM] -- Give me a few minutes.
me :: [ Tue, Jul 20, 2004 6:58 PM] -- k. I was going to install this --> http://h18007.www1.hp.com/support/files/HandheldiPAQ/us/download/20674.html but not if it's in the v1.10 ROM
hp gimp :: [ Tue, Jul 20, 2004 7:02 PM] -- Please log into : http://h18007.www1.hp.com/support/files/HandheldiPAQ/us/download/20498.html , perform the ROM update according to the onscreen instructions, and this should fix the issue.
me :: [ Tue, Jul 20, 2004 7:02 PM] -- I have, like I've already mentioned. [Tue, Jul 20, 2004 6:54 PM] -- you may not be able to see my device as it connects to Activesync over bluetooth. The cradle is at work. It's an HP2210 running firmware version v1.10.
hp gimp :: [ Tue, Jul 20, 2004 7:05 PM] -- Are you using any SD card?
me :: [ Tue, Jul 20, 2004 7:06 PM] -- yes, hence asking about sd card draining.
hp gimp :: [ Tue, Jul 20, 2004 7:07 PM] -- Let's go ahead and perform the update that you had mentioned earlier.
me :: [ Tue, Jul 20, 2004 7:07 PM] -- no forget it, stop wasting my time. Go back to your script. You're not answering my questions. An irc bot could do better.
He didn't reply after that. Big girl's blouse!
gio's, Burlington Hotel, Worthing...
Hell's kitchen! No, not that crappy programme on ITV, but the absolutely useless restaurant known as Gio's at the Burlington Hotel, Worthing, which P and I wasted our evening at on Saturday. After the dizzy waitress served us the wrong wine (with no tasting, no apology), she went on to serve us completely the wrong main courses (no apology, no brain).
P's medium! steak was slowly crawling across the plate leaving a trail of blood, only to be stopped by the fries that we're meant to be rosemary potatoes. After breaking through the custard skin of her brandy sauce, it turned out to be pepper sauce. My chicken was missing the mascarpone, spinach, pine kernels, and had been replaced by ham and cheese. I'm still waiting for the spinach.
On the bint's return she questioned how the meal was, to which I replied "Absolutely shite!" before explaining every incompetent error they had made. Apparently the chef was confused. Hmmm, professional blaming there! We left soon after without paying for the main courses and only half the wine. Absolutely f@cking useless!
Avoid at all costs unless you fancy a badly cooked surprise meal, with a measure of the rusty fire water the next day.
debenhams and silentnight...
DON'T order furniture from these jokers. Well actually don't let me stop you, especially if you're short of firewood! ;) We ordered a double and a triple wardrobe and a chest of drawers, and when it arrives it's a pile of cheap tat! And they expect me to pay £750 for that? Riiiight! Basically you don't get to see before you buy from the catalogue and so have to go from their nice picture. Shame it didn't show the cheap laminated chipboard that wasn't even finished properly on the edges. Closing the door was a very careful process as to not have the unit collapse on you. A bit like it was made from playing cards maybe?! Heh, anyway, so we ask for them to be sent back and fine, they refunded the cash straight away but said it would be up to a month for collection. We must have been very mellow ;) at this point and we went along with the wait...
Hooray, it's wardobe collection day. Nice and early (a bit of an anti-social time actually) at 7:30am there's a knock on the door and it's Mr SilentNight, the company that Debenham's get their furniture? from. "Can't collect 'em today!" he says. "Ain't any room in the lorry as no-one's answering their doors to receive their furniture." Not surprised at 7:30am in the morning FFS! "I tried ringing ya, but there was no answer!" (They weren't our numbers he had). So he said we had to call the office to arrange another time. So we did. And they said another month. And we we thought f**k that!
The next day a letter arrived on the doormats of Mr Debenhams and Mr Silentnight. Either pick up the wardrobes in ten days or a house clearance company will. Smoke on that!
The next day we received a letter (with typo's!) from SilentNight apologising for the bad service..yadda yadda yadda and that a lorry would be coming the next week. Next week comes (still no response from Debenhams) I have to take a day off to sit in all day to wait for the van. Eventually it arrives and they take their crap away!
A week later (01/08/02) my girlfriend gets a very apologetic phone call from someone at Debenhams apologising for the bad service we'd had kissy kissy brown nose, and that we would be receiving some vouchers to make up for it. Hmmmm....I won't be buying any SilentNight stuff with them, that's for sure. 08/08/02-no sign of the vouchers. 09/08/02-we recieve a kissy kissy letter from Debenhams saying something on the lines of "we're professional, honest and still very sorry!" No sign of any vouchers, so my girlfriend phones them and it turns out they can't even get apologies right! 'kin useless! 20/08/02-came home to find a card on the mat saying SilentNight tried to collect their wardrobes! LOL! I'd already told them they'd collected them. Called them to tell them again but I might as well have told next door's dog for what it's worth!
sony...
They used to be good, and from first impressions they still are, but it seems that Sony have got their fingers into too many pies and it's now all quantity instead of quality. The first CD player I had lasted 6 months before breaking down (laser went) and after kicking up in the shop about it, (with the wonderful help from my law-degree-girlfriend) I received a brand new replacement. Don't forget your statutory rights, kids!! Use the line "so you're telling me that Sony only guarantee that their goods will last for 6 months?" Or something like that. Just make sure it's a busy Saturday morning, when lots of possible buyers are ear wagging. 2 years later and after playing about 6 CD's on it, the replacement packs up. Again, the laser! Out of warranty now though so it's been banished to the kitchen.
Oh, and the new Sony speakers I've bought for the home cinema set-up? They don't fit last year's Sony stands! AAARRRRGGH!
ntl...
...or NTHell as most people would say! Moved house and thankfully left behind the piss-poor dial up connection that was due to BT making the phone lines out of lead...well aluminium, but they might as well had done! So, as to not wanting a big ugly satellite dish on the front of our new house I decided on cable, complete with the tv service, phone line and 512k BROADBAND! Woooh! Race those packets, as Benny would say! All was going well until I decided to change my username. This had the effect of completely screwing up my ftp login ID, so niether my old or new ID would work! 30 minutes of hold music and I finally get through to someone at their help(less) desk to sort it. Hooray, I can access my ftp account again...
The next day I find my entire webspace (all 10mb of it!) completely wiped! Thanks guys! So I upload my site again...ONLY TO FIND I'VE ONLY BEEN GIVEN 2MB OF SPACE TO PLAY WITH FFS! This time a 1 hour! phone call, more hold music, and I get through to Darwin's missing link! He got his mate Mr Hat to sort it....
But now I've ditched their webspace all together. 10mb? Don't over do it will you ntl? Jeez. Now with fasthosts and a lovely big 200mb of space to play with! :D
lobsters...
What's all the fuss about these pink crustaceans? "Oooh, lobster! You've just got to try it!" So I did, and I wasn't at all impressed. Once you've spent half an hour picking the smallest piece of meat possible from it's claw, leg, back passage, whatever, you find it tastes of....absolutely nothing!! This piece of gum I've been chomping on for the last three hours has more flavour ffs! Not to be easily dissuaded I recently tried a bowl of Lobster Thermidor. Now this is strange, as instead of it tasting of nothing, it resembles something more along the realms of my own puke! But more fishy! And it smells like a fisherman's jockstrap! Probably! Avoid lobster at all costs unless you get off on paying a fortune for a plate of hairy pink shell!
argos...
This week the highstreet catalogue company Argos failed to meet my expectations when I tried to buy a bookcase from them. After not having it in stock when confirmed it was, they then failed to deliver it within the giant 8 hour window you have to stay in for! So we re-schedule the delivery for Wednesday at a different address, and they decide to ignore that and deliver it when we're out on the Tuesday! Fantastic! At least they didn't just leave it on the door step! Maybe Parcel Force should take a tip from them after leaving my £300 PDA out for anyone to nick! Ffs!
bad drivers...
People that don't indicate at roundabouts...that's bloody annoying! You're sat there waiting to pull out when the car that's coming round from the right takes the next left turn...so you could have driven off ages ago! Well INDICATE then you f@@kers! Usually these people can be seen driving BMW's or cabs. Oh I forgot, you own the road so you don't need to indicate, right? >:(
horsham...
Horsham, West Sussex!! The town where I had to grow up for 24 years of my life before moving to the coast. Unfortunately I still have to visit it far too much as I work there. Apart from that there's not much going for it anymore due to the lack of shops and nightlife. Fine if you want to buy a mobile phone, a mortgage, or some charity clothes, but that's about it! The fun goes deep into the evening too, where the small handful of pubs will make you wish you hadn't bothered coming out for the evening, and if you're looking to eat out in the town's centre, then that's fine, as long as you like pizza, as there are at least four restaurants...all italian in theme!
The bowling alley is shite too! The lanes are narrower than average and when I last went the toilets were all smashed up, and covered in graffitti and puke! Nice!
burger bars...
Why don't Burger King or Mcdonald's actually produce hamburgers that look like they're supposed to like on the menus or on adverts? Instead you're given some pathetic construction that looks like it's been sat on, tastes bland..and is usually cold! Can't they be done for trades description or summit? Pah! And don't think that KFC's getting away with it either! They couldn't wrap a decent chicken twister if they tried. However, this only seems to be the problem in the UK, as all of these places are far better in other countries. Amsterdam, Cyprus, and Majorca all seem get it right!
customer service departments...
Customer services wind me up. Why is it when you're enquiring about your still pending policy or a bill sent to you in error you have no confidence in who you're talking to? Whether it's national gas suppliers who can't calculate your bill correctly (but charge you for someone else's gas!) or certain insurance companies who give a different answer with every call! Incompetence in the UK service industry is scary! Pay peanuts and you get monkeys..........
nightclub dress code...
OK, so I don't mean Ministry, Manumission etc, but why is the dress code at your local town nightclub so out of date? I particularly mean in Worthing, where you STILL can't wear trainers or blue jeans. It IS 2002 you know people! Get with the times! "Dress to Impress!" Pu-leeese! As the fashion changes then so should the club dress-codes! The Assembly, which is only a mere pub, won't allow you to wear trainers on a Friday or Saturday night! You're a pub ffs!! Fine! I'll drink my beer somewhere else then! In my trainers! So there!! posted by jpa @ 6:59 PM