Monday, October 15, 2012
New and Improved
For some people, it’s ‘Danger: high voltage’; for others, ‘This won’t hurt’, or ‘For the children’. For me, the most threatening three-word combination in the English language is ‘New and Improved’. Usually, it heralds that sinking feeling when you return from your local Giant SupermarketTM to find your favourite korma sauce, scotch eggs or even shower gel suddenly cheap and tasteless, with whatever it was you liked about them jettisoned to cut costs.
After five decent-ish years with Waitrose Broadband, Richard and I returned from Brighton to the new and improved John Lewis Broadband. Can you guess what happened next?
I remember the shopping around we did after several terrible ISPs to find Waitrose Broadband, and it had mostly worked for us since, the odd problem and the odd oh-dear-we’ve-gone-over-our-download-limit-and-it-costs-how-much? aside. But it couldn’t last. They’re winding up the service into a new one. Improved, of course. And who are the new providers for our forced upgrade to an alleged cheaper, faster, unlimited service?
John Lewis Broadband, the epitome of respectable reliability, actually supplied if you look carefully at the small print by Plusnet, which claims to be good, honest broadband from Yorkshire. What could possibly go wrong?
Everyfuckingthing.
Us having made the shift in early September and them having taken a few weeks to action it, despite promises (warning signs there), we got home from Conference to eight days of zero internet and increasingly weary phone calls to find out what the hell was wrong. And they don’t even play Heaven 17 on hold.
As it happened, Richard had become very ill while we were away at Conference in Brighton, and once he’d recovered just enough to drive us home, I came down with it and was, as my rather too frequent saying goes, much more ill than usual. So things were quite fraught to begin with (and not being able to get online to NHS Direct. Obviously).
Imagine, then, the timbre of our phone conversations when we rang them three times on our first day back, for a total of two and a half hours, including the 45 minutes on hold after which they just hung up and made us go back to the start.
Imagine doing that – ringing them every single day for the next week for between one and three hours – each time having to slowly explain the problem all over again to a new munchkin, and do exactly the same tests because obviously it must be us, and not them… Until they admitted that they’d detected 2361 rejected (by their end) attempts by our correctly programmed (by us) router to connect, not all of them manual but by God it felt like it, and that it was in fact their fault after all.
They just couldn’t identify that fault correctly. Worse, they kept making promises. Here are just a few of them that we made a note of:
Imagine my genuine gobsmackery when, at long last, on merely the ninth day, this turned out to be the truth.
We’ve now had a connection back for a week, and I’ve caught up with most of the things I wanted to catch up with; it’s remarkable how something as simple as being internetless makes me feel crazed, depressed and as if I’d been exiled to Flatland. And I’m still physically very washed out, but mostly only as ill as normal.
Now I just need to gather my strength for the bills, and to ask, ‘Shouldn’t you be paying me?’
On the bright side, during our week of never-ending phone lies, at least we weren’t at the Labour Party Conference in which they attempted to rebrand themselves as Nineteenth Century Tories. Well, I can see a direct line in my own party and philosophy from the ones who were opposed to the Tories in the Nineteenth Century and are still, despite everything, far less conservative than Labour, so I can’t say I was impressed. Still less that it wasn’t even genuine Disraeli, who despite being an utter shit at least paid lip service to “One Nation” meaning that everyone had to get on: only the hollow marketing exercise that is today’s Labour Party could rebrand as One Nation founded on class war and hating the rich and not spot the contradiction in that.
But what do you expect, with Ed Balls boasting on the Today Programme that thirteen years of disastrous Labour Government left literally no economic problems at all? Or with Ed Miliband calling the Lib Dems “accomplices”, an accusation so ‘brave’ (as Sir Humphrey would say) that it would be a delight to see Mr Miliband’s face when charged as an accomplice to the Labour Government’s illegal war, illegal war crimes, illegal rendition, illegal collusion with Murdoch, and mostly legal but amazingly stupid total financial collapse. Accomplices? Bring it on, Inspector Knacker.
None of which meant there will ever be any chance of me switching to New and Improved Labour.
This morning, to come briefly up to date, I see that the Tories are out to demonstrate that they have not improved, and that they’re still at their old tricks. With the Conservatives having teamed up with Labour to protect the interests of the Tory Nineteenth Century and stop democracy coming to the Lords, the Lib Dems told them they could go fuck themselves over their preferred changes to Parliamentary Boundaries. This morning, it’s reported that the Tories have a brilliant idea to get the Lib Dems to change our minds: no, not actual democracy. That would be madness.
That Tory plan in full: ‘We’ll slip you a few million quid, and you change your vote. Deal?’
That’s not new (and certainly not improved). It’s exactly the way the crooked Tory Government in the Nineties – and the crooked Labour Government in the Noughties – were open for business, but unlike the other two, Lib Dems have never been for sale. If we move an inch on this, I’ll eat my blog.
After five decent-ish years with Waitrose Broadband, Richard and I returned from Brighton to the new and improved John Lewis Broadband. Can you guess what happened next?
John Lewis Broadband Plus Plusnet Equals No Internet
I remember the shopping around we did after several terrible ISPs to find Waitrose Broadband, and it had mostly worked for us since, the odd problem and the odd oh-dear-we’ve-gone-over-our-download-limit-and-it-costs-how-much? aside. But it couldn’t last. They’re winding up the service into a new one. Improved, of course. And who are the new providers for our forced upgrade to an alleged cheaper, faster, unlimited service?
John Lewis Broadband, the epitome of respectable reliability, actually supplied if you look carefully at the small print by Plusnet, which claims to be good, honest broadband from Yorkshire. What could possibly go wrong?
Everyfuckingthing.
Us having made the shift in early September and them having taken a few weeks to action it, despite promises (warning signs there), we got home from Conference to eight days of zero internet and increasingly weary phone calls to find out what the hell was wrong. And they don’t even play Heaven 17 on hold.
As it happened, Richard had become very ill while we were away at Conference in Brighton, and once he’d recovered just enough to drive us home, I came down with it and was, as my rather too frequent saying goes, much more ill than usual. So things were quite fraught to begin with (and not being able to get online to NHS Direct. Obviously).
Imagine, then, the timbre of our phone conversations when we rang them three times on our first day back, for a total of two and a half hours, including the 45 minutes on hold after which they just hung up and made us go back to the start.
Imagine doing that – ringing them every single day for the next week for between one and three hours – each time having to slowly explain the problem all over again to a new munchkin, and do exactly the same tests because obviously it must be us, and not them… Until they admitted that they’d detected 2361 rejected (by their end) attempts by our correctly programmed (by us) router to connect, not all of them manual but by God it felt like it, and that it was in fact their fault after all.
They just couldn’t identify that fault correctly. Worse, they kept making promises. Here are just a few of them that we made a note of:
- Switch your router off for 65 minutes and it will reset, after which you will be able to connect. No, that was a lie.
- We have reset your details at our end and it will be ready in the morning. No, that was a lie.
- Our faults team has identified the fault and I have actioned a modify order that will apply the fix and have you fully online in exactly 24 hours. No, that was a lie.
- That modify order was incorrect, but I have actioned a new modify order that will have you online in the morning. No, that was a lie.
- It is your fault after all – our faults team has identified that you can’t receive Broadband on your number. In that case, can we have a full refund for all the money we spent on what was therefore imaginary Broadband from you for the past five years? No, because that was a lie.
- We will ring you within 24 hours because I have personally made sure it will be corrected with the faults team and my line manager. No, that was a lie.
- I apologise that you’ve had to ring because we failed to call you back, and I won’t lie to you, I can’t fix it myself because I can see that they’ve been making the change you need on our server and for some reason our server won’t accept it, but I will call our faults team if you will wait on hold for just two minutes. Seventeen minutes later: no, that was yet another lie, probably not best for our blood pressures after using the words “I won’t lie to you”. At least on that particular day we were only on the phone for 47 minutes, because we were weary and fatalistic rather than icily polite in a furious way.
- And, of course, when I staggered out to our local library (which, being a Labour-and-Labour-Splitters Council, randomly blocks most of the sites I read) in a vain attempt to plough through hundreds of emails that were backing up, finding daily “Your broadband service is ready” emails from John Lewis Broadband. No, that was, very demonstrably and supremely aggravatingly, a lie.
Imagine my genuine gobsmackery when, at long last, on merely the ninth day, this turned out to be the truth.
We’ve now had a connection back for a week, and I’ve caught up with most of the things I wanted to catch up with; it’s remarkable how something as simple as being internetless makes me feel crazed, depressed and as if I’d been exiled to Flatland. And I’m still physically very washed out, but mostly only as ill as normal.
Now I just need to gather my strength for the bills, and to ask, ‘Shouldn’t you be paying me?’
New and Improved Labour
On the bright side, during our week of never-ending phone lies, at least we weren’t at the Labour Party Conference in which they attempted to rebrand themselves as Nineteenth Century Tories. Well, I can see a direct line in my own party and philosophy from the ones who were opposed to the Tories in the Nineteenth Century and are still, despite everything, far less conservative than Labour, so I can’t say I was impressed. Still less that it wasn’t even genuine Disraeli, who despite being an utter shit at least paid lip service to “One Nation” meaning that everyone had to get on: only the hollow marketing exercise that is today’s Labour Party could rebrand as One Nation founded on class war and hating the rich and not spot the contradiction in that.
But what do you expect, with Ed Balls boasting on the Today Programme that thirteen years of disastrous Labour Government left literally no economic problems at all? Or with Ed Miliband calling the Lib Dems “accomplices”, an accusation so ‘brave’ (as Sir Humphrey would say) that it would be a delight to see Mr Miliband’s face when charged as an accomplice to the Labour Government’s illegal war, illegal war crimes, illegal rendition, illegal collusion with Murdoch, and mostly legal but amazingly stupid total financial collapse. Accomplices? Bring it on, Inspector Knacker.
None of which meant there will ever be any chance of me switching to New and Improved Labour.
This morning, to come briefly up to date, I see that the Tories are out to demonstrate that they have not improved, and that they’re still at their old tricks. With the Conservatives having teamed up with Labour to protect the interests of the Tory Nineteenth Century and stop democracy coming to the Lords, the Lib Dems told them they could go fuck themselves over their preferred changes to Parliamentary Boundaries. This morning, it’s reported that the Tories have a brilliant idea to get the Lib Dems to change our minds: no, not actual democracy. That would be madness.
That Tory plan in full: ‘We’ll slip you a few million quid, and you change your vote. Deal?’
That’s not new (and certainly not improved). It’s exactly the way the crooked Tory Government in the Nineties – and the crooked Labour Government in the Noughties – were open for business, but unlike the other two, Lib Dems have never been for sale. If we move an inch on this, I’ll eat my blog.
Labels: Conservatives, Corruption, Customer Service, Labour, Lords, Personal, Technology
Thursday, September 29, 2011
The Hyatt Regency Birmingham – Or the Tony Blair Hotel?
Were you at Liberal Democrat Conference last week? What did you make of your hotel? And particularly if you were staying at the officially designated “Conference Hotel” – are they all that? In the absence of the Hyatt Regency Birmingham offering a feedback form on checking out, I’ve been having a think about it this morning, now that I’ve more or less recovered from Conference a week later. Does competition keep these massive hotels to good service and prices? Or do they know we’ll block-book and charge us through the nose…? Yes, you’re right, it’s not a toughie, is it?
Lib Dem Conference is always a strange time of year for me. Sometimes I get to make a speech, sometimes I don’t; sometimes I get to meet up with lots of old friends, sometimes not. I used to be hyperactive at these, crashing on floors and getting by on little sleep or food; my ill-health these days means I’m more likely just to get to the bits I can and collapse in our hotel room for most of it (most days I usually don’t get out at all, let alone feel I should be out all the time at Conference). So I felt a bit embarrassed when friends would occasionally tell me how well I was looking: I couldn’t help wondering how low a bar I’d set in their expectations. Does ‘looking healthy’ mean ‘fat, and not about to throw myself out of the window’? Ironically, I wasn’t well enough to totter over to the next-door Conference Centre for George Potter’s outstanding debate on the crapulent ATOS Work Capability Assessments that I’m stressing about waiting for. But being able to keel over in a hotel room all day is one of the endless things for which I’m grateful to Richard: it’s our one week a year at a ridiculously expensive hotel, and being unconscious in it at any time of day is a vital perk.
Or trying to be unconscious in it at any time of day, at least. I don’t know what you made of it, but while there are many things to admire about the Hyatt Regency Birmingham, having your door knocked on five times a day isn’t one of them. Or, in several case, not knocked on and just barged in. It’s not the staff’s fault, but hotel policy; make your bed? Vacuum your room? Measure your mini-bar? Turn your bed down? Clearly, some manager decided that customers would want solicitude, and to prove it must be interrupted every five minutes. But it comes across less as care than as intrusively frantic box-ticking whether we want it or not.
On the bright side, the hotel room itself was a good one – nice to look at, spacious (I won’t say airy, as it was the ninth floor and the windows were sealed), plenty of furniture and even (always the thing you notice) easy to get the shower to the right temperature. And a proper gush rather than a feeble dribble, too. Its biggest idiosyncrasy was the speaker in the bathroom, which whenever you turned on the telly would activate at a constant volume, whatever you did to the TV itself, and ironically had much clearer sound quality than the TV’s own speakers. Which meant that you could hear most programmes better when you couldn’t see them.
I quite liked the desk, too – handy for your laptop. But no points at all, Hyatt Regency Birmingham, for the wi-fi. Yes, it worked – albeit by having to ring down every day for a new multi-part special code – but when you’re a hotel that’s already charging such a ridiculous daily rate, £15 a day on top for wi-fi is taking the piss. Why do we put up with it?
And then there was the food. The hotel lobby looks elegant enough when you go in in the middle of the day… But try it in the evening, when it’s a badly-designed bottleneck, a seething crush with the restaurant plonked in the middle of it. Whoever thought of that one?
The first night, we arrived late and knackered after much traffic, and checked out the hotel menu online. And didn’t it sound good? You can see it yourself. Seared Hand Dive Scallops with Cauliflower Puree and Smoked Bacon… Flaked Ham Hock Roulade with a Pea Panna Cotta… Duo of Welsh Lamb, Mini Roast Rack, Slow Braised Shoulder with Bombay Potato, Humus and Tzatziki… Pan-Fried Breast of Free Range Chicken with Root Vegetable Dauphinoise, Creamed Savoy Cabbage, Black Pudding Puree… Well, we thought, it all looks pricey but sounds very good. We’d like to try several of those. Such a pity that, on going downstairs to the restaurant itself, we were presented with a much more limited menu that had precisely none of the dishes we’d picked out upstairs. So we both settled for the pork belly, which was rather nice, and almost (but not quite) what the online menu promised. Going back a course, though, Richard wasn’t impressed with his tiny starter – and both of us laughed when they generously presented us with complimentary samples of the soup of the day. Now, it was nice enough, but rather difficult to get at: hilariously, the spoons – teaspoons, not dessert spoons! – were larger than the tiny serving thimbles. And as we’d arrived late, the friend we called up had already eaten, so he just joined us for a drink – and after he only ordered wine, the waiter pointedly ignored him. Not even a thimble. And they did their best to chase all of us out as swiftly as possible, pouncing and removing plates and glasses the second we’d finished (even if we’d wanted to scrape them). Now, it wasn’t that late, and they were three-quarters empty – so there was no excuse of needing the tables, nor of waiting for us to be the last to leave. It was just rude. Other people might have complained; I’m afraid we’re British enough that Richard just tutted and didn’t leave a tip (the bill being outrageous enough). We didn’t eat there any other evening.
Then there was the breakfast. Not the best buffet breakfast I’ve ever had, but not the worst; the sausages were good, which was handy as there was a choice of only one type, but I quite like different types of egg for variety. No, it was just the same mound of uninspiring scrambled egg all week. Well, I say all week; we stayed an extra night to recuperate, and discovered that the Lib Dems had it good with the egg. The morning after, with barely a tenth the number of people down to breakfast, it was clear how milk-based the “egg” really was (at home I make it only with butter), and that they’d added more egg to it to meet demand through the week. On Thursday morning, it looked vaguely the same, but was clearly the starting batch and tasted of nothing but milk. I prefer my scrambled egg to taste of scrambled egg, not rice pudding, thank you.
So what was your experience of your Conference hotel? And if it was the Conference Hotel, why do we let them get away with it? Expensive, intrusive, finding a hundred little ways to charge you extra, replacing customer service with box-ticking that treats us all as ‘throughput’ to be discharged rather than the people who pay their wages… That all sounds very familiar. The Hyatt Regency Birmingham felt less like a hotel, and more like a New Labour theme park.
‹Older
Lib Dem Conference is always a strange time of year for me. Sometimes I get to make a speech, sometimes I don’t; sometimes I get to meet up with lots of old friends, sometimes not. I used to be hyperactive at these, crashing on floors and getting by on little sleep or food; my ill-health these days means I’m more likely just to get to the bits I can and collapse in our hotel room for most of it (most days I usually don’t get out at all, let alone feel I should be out all the time at Conference). So I felt a bit embarrassed when friends would occasionally tell me how well I was looking: I couldn’t help wondering how low a bar I’d set in their expectations. Does ‘looking healthy’ mean ‘fat, and not about to throw myself out of the window’? Ironically, I wasn’t well enough to totter over to the next-door Conference Centre for George Potter’s outstanding debate on the crapulent ATOS Work Capability Assessments that I’m stressing about waiting for. But being able to keel over in a hotel room all day is one of the endless things for which I’m grateful to Richard: it’s our one week a year at a ridiculously expensive hotel, and being unconscious in it at any time of day is a vital perk.
Or trying to be unconscious in it at any time of day, at least. I don’t know what you made of it, but while there are many things to admire about the Hyatt Regency Birmingham, having your door knocked on five times a day isn’t one of them. Or, in several case, not knocked on and just barged in. It’s not the staff’s fault, but hotel policy; make your bed? Vacuum your room? Measure your mini-bar? Turn your bed down? Clearly, some manager decided that customers would want solicitude, and to prove it must be interrupted every five minutes. But it comes across less as care than as intrusively frantic box-ticking whether we want it or not.
On the bright side, the hotel room itself was a good one – nice to look at, spacious (I won’t say airy, as it was the ninth floor and the windows were sealed), plenty of furniture and even (always the thing you notice) easy to get the shower to the right temperature. And a proper gush rather than a feeble dribble, too. Its biggest idiosyncrasy was the speaker in the bathroom, which whenever you turned on the telly would activate at a constant volume, whatever you did to the TV itself, and ironically had much clearer sound quality than the TV’s own speakers. Which meant that you could hear most programmes better when you couldn’t see them.
I quite liked the desk, too – handy for your laptop. But no points at all, Hyatt Regency Birmingham, for the wi-fi. Yes, it worked – albeit by having to ring down every day for a new multi-part special code – but when you’re a hotel that’s already charging such a ridiculous daily rate, £15 a day on top for wi-fi is taking the piss. Why do we put up with it?
And then there was the food. The hotel lobby looks elegant enough when you go in in the middle of the day… But try it in the evening, when it’s a badly-designed bottleneck, a seething crush with the restaurant plonked in the middle of it. Whoever thought of that one?
The first night, we arrived late and knackered after much traffic, and checked out the hotel menu online. And didn’t it sound good? You can see it yourself. Seared Hand Dive Scallops with Cauliflower Puree and Smoked Bacon… Flaked Ham Hock Roulade with a Pea Panna Cotta… Duo of Welsh Lamb, Mini Roast Rack, Slow Braised Shoulder with Bombay Potato, Humus and Tzatziki… Pan-Fried Breast of Free Range Chicken with Root Vegetable Dauphinoise, Creamed Savoy Cabbage, Black Pudding Puree… Well, we thought, it all looks pricey but sounds very good. We’d like to try several of those. Such a pity that, on going downstairs to the restaurant itself, we were presented with a much more limited menu that had precisely none of the dishes we’d picked out upstairs. So we both settled for the pork belly, which was rather nice, and almost (but not quite) what the online menu promised. Going back a course, though, Richard wasn’t impressed with his tiny starter – and both of us laughed when they generously presented us with complimentary samples of the soup of the day. Now, it was nice enough, but rather difficult to get at: hilariously, the spoons – teaspoons, not dessert spoons! – were larger than the tiny serving thimbles. And as we’d arrived late, the friend we called up had already eaten, so he just joined us for a drink – and after he only ordered wine, the waiter pointedly ignored him. Not even a thimble. And they did their best to chase all of us out as swiftly as possible, pouncing and removing plates and glasses the second we’d finished (even if we’d wanted to scrape them). Now, it wasn’t that late, and they were three-quarters empty – so there was no excuse of needing the tables, nor of waiting for us to be the last to leave. It was just rude. Other people might have complained; I’m afraid we’re British enough that Richard just tutted and didn’t leave a tip (the bill being outrageous enough). We didn’t eat there any other evening.
Then there was the breakfast. Not the best buffet breakfast I’ve ever had, but not the worst; the sausages were good, which was handy as there was a choice of only one type, but I quite like different types of egg for variety. No, it was just the same mound of uninspiring scrambled egg all week. Well, I say all week; we stayed an extra night to recuperate, and discovered that the Lib Dems had it good with the egg. The morning after, with barely a tenth the number of people down to breakfast, it was clear how milk-based the “egg” really was (at home I make it only with butter), and that they’d added more egg to it to meet demand through the week. On Thursday morning, it looked vaguely the same, but was clearly the starting batch and tasted of nothing but milk. I prefer my scrambled egg to taste of scrambled egg, not rice pudding, thank you.
So what was your experience of your Conference hotel? And if it was the Conference Hotel, why do we let them get away with it? Expensive, intrusive, finding a hundred little ways to charge you extra, replacing customer service with box-ticking that treats us all as ‘throughput’ to be discharged rather than the people who pay their wages… That all sounds very familiar. The Hyatt Regency Birmingham felt less like a hotel, and more like a New Labour theme park.
Labels: Customer Service, Food, Liberal Democrat Conferences, Reviews, The Golden Dozen
