26.point.1

Piracy

// June 13th, 2010 // No Comments » // FURY!

Why is it that whenever I go to the cinema this prize twat dares to warn me about not tolerating piracy?

It frankly fucking annoys me. Everyone knows that most pirated movies out there are DVD rips from screeners - people no longer (according to those I know who do watch pirated movies) tolerate grainy theatre shot movies with bobbing heads and spotty teenagers throwing popcorn in the shot - and so why oh why are FACT (or whoever else) paying good money to “stars” to wag their fingers at me? Fuck off “Gavin” with your stupid floppy hair and twatty lisp. I don’t pirate movies, I don’t want to pirate movies, and I find your words of warning offensive. Twat.

Buskers!

// June 13th, 2010 // No Comments » // FURY!

So, I live in Leeds, and Leeds has its fair share of vagabonds and busking types… There really are some very good singers, and some half decent niche acts including men on stilts and idiots with footballs… However, why the hell do the singing buskers of Leeds never sing happy songs? I know we live in a time of strife where people are being shot and stabbed every day; I know that deadly virus’ and other medical conditions ravage the world constantly leaving hundreds of thousands dead every year; I know that people are raped and beaten every hour; I know that footballers wages continue to go up… All of these things are reason enough to celebrate life and be happy that we’re still in it - so why the hell do buskers feel the need to sing depressing songs to make life that much worse? Is it too much to ask that they’d sing a good foot tapper, “come on Eileen” maybe, instead of dross the likes of which genuinely want me make to want to kill myself.

My Email to Sky

// February 25th, 2010 // 1 Comment » // FURY!, Random Stuff

Sky have really annoyed me. So much so that I’ve complained.

—

I have been a Sky subscriber for a couple of years now, and in May last year I upgraded to Sky HD. At the time I was charged what I considered to be an extortionate amount of money for an engineer to essentially come out and plug a new box into my existing cabling.

Since that happened I have only been able to record things intermittently, the Sky planner has only worked for a few hours after the box has been rebooted, and Sky Anytime has been unavailable since pretty much day one. All of these things I put down to only having one input signal - something that I was never told about when I ordered Sky+ HD that I would need. But being in a flat I couldn’t put a second line in and I just lived with the fact that I was getting a degraded service because of this.

Then about 3 weeks ago I returned home to find the message “Your sky card is not made for this box” - with an error code 7. This occurred on the Monday, and like everything else with the Sky service I receive I just presumed if I left it it would come back on. On the Thursday it hadn’t come back on and I gave your customer services people a call.

They had me read my viewing card numbers, software numbers, and other assorted details from the systems page of my Sky box and “sent a signal” which was supposed to pair up my card and box. But this could take 24 hours. I waited.

And then 24 hours later when it was still not working I called up again. And I read out all the numbers again, and was told that a signal was being sent. And it would take up to 24 hours. I waited.

And then 24 hours later when it was still not working I called up again. And I read out all the numbers again, and was told that a signal was being sent. And it would take upto 24 hours. I waited.

The next time I called I was informed that my case needed to be referred to a higher department, and that they would contact me ASAP and definitely get the service working. I waited some more, and then 4 days later I gave customer services another call.

And read out the same numbers again. And the man on the end of the phone talked me through pressing a number of buttons on my set top box, he was polite, knew what he was talking about, and after a 5 minute call my Sky was up and running and working.

However, in the process of making me press these buttons I also noticed that my Sky box was not set to single LNB mode (which I was informed to set it to by the helpful customer services guy) and this has since corrected the issues I had with the planner, with recording, with Anytime.

So my complaint now that everything is working? It turns out that I paid extortionate money for “installation” of my new Sky+ HD box that was never installed correctly AND it seems that most of the staff in your “something is broken” department only know how to take the details of a persons Sky box and press the “send signal” button on their terminal, and if this doesn’t work then they just keep doing the same thing over and over again.

I appreciate that time and time again I was told that money would be removed from my bill for the time I didn’t get Sky, that’s hardly the point though, I pay for a service which could have been restored when I first called up if you had well trained engineers there to answer calls.

As a very minimum I would like my installation fee refunding as it’s clear now that the service was never fully installed, and I have been paying for a service that I have been unable to take advantage of because of this.

At every level of my Sky experience from sales (where I was mis-sold), through to installation (which wasn’t completed), and now customer services in the service (where I was given the run around for over a week) I have to say that I would score you 1/10.

I look forward to your response and hope that in itself it is better than the previous touch points I’ve had with you.

I am not a geek.

// July 30th, 2009 // 10 Comments » // FURY!, Random Stuff

Tonight has been a special evening. One in which I have taken part in PowerPoint Karaoke, once in which I have heckled a lot, one in which I have drank a little, one in which I have been told “the group wants me to leave”, and one in which I’ve met a cool girl.

But it’s also been a night where all that has come together in an epiphany moment where I realised that the group of people I’ve spent 2 years socialing with once a month really aren’t people that I’m that interested in socialising with at all.

Yes, there are people amongst them who I find interesting, and those who I genuinely like and maybe even love as friends and who I could sit with in a pub for large amounts of time and drink until merriment was not an issue. But then there are the rest of the people who are either a) too intelligent for me to have a meaningful conversation with, or b) they think they’re too intelligent for me to have a meaninful conversation with (in all but 1 case the latter). In either case I am now going to choose to not care. The truth is that one “easily offended” young lady has tonight led “the group” to want me to leave - either really, or jokingly - and that has annoyed me. And then I met a cool girl.

The cool girl was Mercedes who I have now known for weeks and has red hair and is awesome. And I feel completely good talking to her. I feel completely at ease and I don’t have to try with her. And then I realise that I don’t have to try with Gav, or Kirsty, or James, or Erica, or anyone else… And then I realise that the people at GeekUp are completely on the flip side of that, and apart from 2 people I really don’t know why I go… and then I realise that the fine line that I think I’ve done a good job of treading the last two years (between geeks and real people) is one I don’t want to tread any more.

So, I’m deciding right now, tipsy, that GeekUp is not for me anymore. And that while I’ll be sending out emails asking if people fancy a drink every now and then, the majority of GeekUp will be benefitting from not seeing my face again.

On the plus side, my Powerpoint Karaoke rocked again. I’m not really bad at the whole ad-libbing thing it seems. Wish I could pull it out of the bag in real presentations now.

A response from Cahoot…

// June 27th, 2009 // No Comments » // FURY!, Money

So having sent my letter to Cahoot about their shitty customer service and inability to treat people like people, unless the people were on the “Process” stream I got a response about 70 minutes later that read…

“Dear Mr Pallatt,

I’m contacting you in response to your email in relation to your debit card.

I understand that you have had an issue with a debit card that had been sent, and as a result a new card had been ordered out for you.

As the first card was faulty, in order to enable you to have access to your funds we offered you a free of charge CHAPS transfer, which in your email you stated was of no use to you as you didn’t have access to another account.

With CHAPS transfers there is a cut off time of 11am, as it is a real time payment we have to process these payments by a certain time to ensure that all the payments are completed and sent off.

When you received your new card, it is necessary to activate your card, if done online you can use this immediately; however if you would like us to activate your card this can be done for you here but there is a wait of 24 hours before you can use the card as our system needs to update overnight.

Although we are a division of Abbey, Abbey accounts and cahoot accounts are dealt separately as a result when you requested a staff member from Abbey to activate your card this would not have been possible as they have different systems to ours.

In addition to this you would not be able to withdraw funds from Abbey either, as cahoot is an internet bank and also as stated previously cahoot and Abbey accounts are managed separately.

Please be assured I have carried out a full investigation for you. I hope you feel I have offered a fair response to all of the issues you raised. If you remain unhappy, you may refer your concerns to the Abbey Central Complaints Team within 8 weeks, the address to contact is:

Complaints
Abbey
PO Box 5129
Milton Keynes
MK9 2YN

You can find details of how to take your complaint further with Abbey at http://www.cahoot.com/legal/legal.html#importantInfo under the heading ‘Complaints policy which explains how we deal with complaints and, the role of the Financial Ombudsman Service. “

Which I thought pretty much just ignored every point I’d made - instead going for the old “it’s the process” tack that I’d got used to. So I sent a reply of my own…

“I’m not sure what I really expected in terns of a response, however the fact that this response took less than 60 minutes to arrive goes to the fact that nobody actually thought about my original email and you are simply trying to placate me by telling me the process again - your processes don’t work when things go wrong!

You have:

- not addressed my concerns and suggestions regarding the wording on replacement cards which are dispatched

- not addressed my concerns regarding your ability to fast track cards to people who you have failed by sending faulty cards

- completely misunderstood aspects such as a member of Abbey should be able and more importantly WILLING to give me access to a PC so that I can activate my card - I don’t want them to give me access to Abbey accounts, just a web browser!

- failed to convince me on CHAP transfers being real time - that kinda implies that they can be real time at any point in the day, not just before 11 - otherwise they’re not really that real time.

Again, I’m not sure what I expected but I do feel that you have done nothing, this has simply been passed onto a call center agent to “fob me off” with the same words about “process” that I’ve been hearing all week - and my point remains that your processes are wrong and only cater for when things go right. I want to speak to someone about why those processes exist, not just be told that I’m in the wrong because you send me a faulty card and deny me access to funds in my account for 7 days - which is why I wanted “the manager” to reply to me after considering my mail, not someone 30 minutes after I’ve sent the message regurgitating the same I’ve heard all week.

Thank you for the address to use to esculate this. Something right eventually.

Matt”

And then they sent me another little email…

“Dear Mr Pallatt

I am in receipt of your email sent in response to Maya’s email to you on 19th June.

I am sorry if you are unhappy with her response. As stated in my colleague’s email, in this case you need to escalate your complaint to Abbey Stage 2 via one of the following channels:

By post:

Complaints
Stage Two
PO Box 5129
Milton Keynes
MK9 2YN

By phone: 0845 600 6014*

By fax: 0845 600 1378

By e-mail: customerservices@abbey.com

We promise to send our final response within eight weeks of your original complaint to us, or write to you explaining why we haven’t completed our investigations and when we will have done so.

*Calls may be recorded or monitored. The maximum cost of a call for BT customers, from a landline is 4 pence per minute (ppm) (subject to a minimum call charge of 6.5p). The cost of calls for non-BT customers or from mobiles will vary.

kind regards

Richard Buddle “

Yeah, it’s all dull, and it’s all Cahoot giving me the run around over their “Processes” and me being an antagonistic pedantic fucktard - but doesn’t it seem that they could just have forwarded my email onto the new email address? Sooner I get my money out of their bank the better.

My letter to Cahoot.

// June 19th, 2009 // No Comments » // FURY!, Random Stuff

Reads like this…

“Dear Manager (because I would really like this to go to a manager),

I am Matt Pallatt, I live in Leeds, and for the last week I have had more trouble and less help from Cahoot than any other company in my relatively short 32 year life span. On the back of the pretty horrendous experience I’ve had with you over the last week I’d like to make a few suggestions to you.

1. I suggest that you change the wording on your replacement card send outs to “Please check your new card before you destroy your old card” – instead of the lovely blanket and blindly followed “immediately destroy your old card” message.

2. Offers of free transfers to “other accounts” doesn’t help when people in those situations don’t have accessible other accounts – so to be constantly offered it is vaguely like rubbing salt in wounds.

3. 11am is a very early time to cut off such transfers when people eventually manage to make another account available. “There is a process in place…” is a really bad excuse for why it can’t be done too – especially when I’m trying to work around a problem you’ve caused.

4. I suggest that you find a way of fast-tracking new card services – some people who are getting card replacements can wait 5-7 days for their card to arrive after it’s “pressed” because they already have  card – others, who have received faulty cards from yourself and have no access to their money possibly can’t. It would be nice to get those sent out first class post the day that they’re made I’d have thought. “There is no process in place…” is a really bad excuse for why you can’t put it in a mailbox.

5. Not being able to have customer call center agents activate customer cards without a days notice is appalling – You really still run a system which is batched every night?! Do you use punch cards too?!

6. Speak to Abbey, ask them to work more closely with the public to be able to help with requests – when I asked a member of Abbey if I could activate my card in his branch using the internet I was sternly told I could not – they own you apparently, it would be nice if they played nice when their customers by proxy were having trouble.

7. Oh, and let me use my Cahoot card to withdraw money over the counter at Abbey – there is a genius idea. Not “Sorry sir no, but you can open an Abbey account if you want”!

So, in closing I’d like to say that it would be very good if I could get back the opinions on these suggestions from “The Manager” as opposed to another call center agency who purely knows what the processes are as opposed to why the processes are in place. At the moment I’m about 8 months from clearing all my accounts with you, and at the moment I have every intention of moving back to a high street bank – one who can give me help when I need it and one who can transfer cash in and out of my account without 4 days notice – though obviously they will still also put the interest on my current account down at the same time as they’re putting the interest on my credit accounts up… Just like you seemingly do on a monthy basis (oh, and the bank probably won’t be Santander).

This concludes the first letter of complaint that I’ve ever had to send,

I thank you for your time,

Mathew Pallatt

PS. I’m going to send a hard copy of this too, just in case you don’t manage to get it digitally, after all there might not be a process in place to allow an email to be forwarded.”