Everything is crap
I don't think I'm paranoid, but sometimes I feel everyone really is out to get me. Why is it so hard to get products and services that just work and do what they are supposed to do? Some examples:
Ikea. I won't say any more for now about my own recent experience while it's still with the lawyers, but watch this space for all the details in due course. I'm sure you know what they're like anyway.
Zanussi. See my recent post about my fridge. Since then, we've had 5 visits from Zanussi's repair man, and the fridge still isn't working. I sometimes wonder if there is an annual incompetence award that people like that work very hard towards winning, against some stiff competition.
Delivery men. Our office is on the first floor or our building. From the fuss that some delivery men make, you would think that it's at the top of Mount Everest. We recently had a portable air-conditioner delivered to our office (actually a replacement, to replace the first one which was broken on arrival), and the delivery man (from UPS) refused to bring it in unless I helped him to carry it. Did it never occur to him when he took the job that he might have to carry things? Do UPS really not have any trolleys or similar that they could provide to their drivers? Sadly, this is not an isolated incident. Some companies have refused to deliver to us at all as their drivers are apparently not insured to walk up a flight of stairs.
Merton Council. We are in the London Borough of Merton. We pay them to take our rubbish away every week. And do you think they actually turn up and take it away every week? After a great deal of fuss on our part, we were promised a refund several months ago for all the weeks they hadn't turned up, but still haven't had a penny back. I only wish I had the time to take legal action over this one.
Plumbers. One of the toilets in our office has just become blocked. The plumber turned up this morning to fix it, and explained that it would be a fixed price to complete the job, no matter whether it was a simple thing that took him 5 minutes or whether it turned out to be far more complicated and kept him here all day. 2 hours later he came back into my office to say that it was more complicated than he thought so he'd have to charge an extra £120 on top of what had already been agreed. I had to speak to his manager back at his office before I finally managed to explain to them the meaning of "fixed price".
I even bought a new pair of shoelaces earlier this week, which are already broken, less than 24 hours after I first took them out of their packet.
What really annoys me about all these things and more is the time it takes to deal with them. I shouldn't have to spend my time endlessly hassling people to do what they should have done in the first place. Seriously, why is everything so crap these days?
Adam, have you thought of moving to Peterborough? Thought not!
I have just had a new kitchen fitted plus minor building work done (alteration to doorway and removal of extremely dodgy bar, fake beams and stone brick fireplace) and without exception everyone (builders, fitters, plumbers, electricians, decorators, tilers) turned up on the day they said and didn't make gratuitous mess. Tiler was slight thorn in side as he could talk for England and didn't like my choice of wall tiles or grout (all purchased from a shop that he didn't have accounts with) so charged me an extra £150.
On Tuesday the door of my new oven (Bosch) came mysteriously partly adrift so I phoned the manufacturers, and in the absence of an invoice which the builder had hung onto, arranged for an engineer to call the next day between 8 and 4. The following day the doorbell rang at 8.00am, and there was said engineer.
And our rubbish is always collected on time (admittedly fortnightly alternating weekly between waste and recycling/compostables) but has not been a problem.
Should I post the names of some estate agents?
The plumber should be able to answer your question.
Oh Shirley, how ironic! Turns out that the head office of the plumbers we used is in Peterborough!
I feel your pain with Ikea, Adam. I am still traumatised by my dealings with them last year: too boring to go into details, but I seriously can't believe that they manage to stay in business despite the non-existent customer service!
On the shoulders of giants! This is my current effort, perhaps inspired by your good self!
http://direm37.wordpress.com
Spot on, we share a common nightmare! The one when you pinch yourself and you find you're awake and living in Merton. AAAAAAAAARRRRRRRRRRRRRRGGGGGGGGGHHHHHHH (!)
Adam (and Kate, Shirley, Mike et all), Don't move (house) (crikey, just looked at the dates - this is distant memory stuff now anyway).
I moved..... and worked quite hard to update as many addresses on as many systems and address books as possible (I know a lot of people don't) with my new address.
Vodafone, (whose almighty c@ck-up of everything my mobile account had any contact with), Royal Mail, Parcelforce, HSBC and quite a few others summarily did their level best to make sure that, despite numerous phone calls and filling-in of online forms, stuff already in the pipeline (and quite a lot of stuff not already in the pipeline) still gets delivered to our old address. (even now, two months on) You can notify change addresses and pay Royal Mail for re-direction all you like, these guys are going to deliver stuff (and many vendors are going to ship stuff) to where they want it to go to, no matter what !
I think the crappiness is to do with a lot of things, not all of it money (although the economy sure isn't helping); there's quite a bit of general malaise around which was there pre-'08 and just grew worse ever since.
Ikea, and I'm not defending them here, set out their stall many years ago as cheap. If you want a table you're going to have to do some of the work yourself, if you want a bag you're gonna have to pay for it, wanna use a credit card ? that extra 5% will do nicely sir, if you want surly attitude then please come right on in, because their mantra always was cheap, and if you don't like it, tough. I hope you got some sort of resolution to your issue with them, but, unless you can carry it out of the store, don't bother. Their delivery service is, I think, well known for being utterly appalling.
I get quite a bit of flak for being pro-American. I do spend quite a bit of time 'over there' and the experience is, more often than not, quite different. For good or bad, a culture that truly embraces capitalism does at least acknowledge that, if your going to pay for something it does have to be right. There's faults, yes sure, but customer service is by and large better. Their sincerity, no doubt completely false, is, at least better than "huh, what d'you want me to do 'bout it ?"
Meanwhile in organisations across our grey nation, indeed as we read, 'customer service' are apologising, some are even offering limp compensation when things go wrong and then, once we've slunk back to Suburbiasville in a hurrumphing black cloud they wilfully ignore us, only to reset the mousetrap of corporate ineptitude ready to catch the next unwitting 'customer' (victim).