Tag Archives: accidents

Tales of Customers . . .

Silver Sovereign from Isle of Man – recently sold on eBay

We had a display card returned today. It is about the size of a paperback book, about an inch thick, and when full holds 26 £1 coins. It’s moderately heavy to hold (about 4 ounces) and made from heavy duty card. If you had one in your pocket, you would realise.

Yet someone, according to their return request, ordered one from us “by mistake”.

Whether they ordered the wrong one, despite the exhaustive and accurate description and photographs in our eBay listing, or whether they didn’t mean to order anything, despite the extensive process of button pressing required, isn’t clear. Generally we don’t ask, because you rarely get a sensible answer and because eBay always sides with the idiot. No matter what we do, we are going to end up losing money as part of the process.

Home Guard Bomb Disposal arm badge we sold on eBay

In this case we have lost the postage to the customer and the return postage (the system is designed to make it easy for the customer and difficult for us, so we have to pay the expenses. We have also lost other costs and my time in sorting it out. It’s cost us around £5 or £6 and we have done nothing wrong.

We have another similar item in the post too. This time the customer decided that the folder doesn’t hold the coins firmly enough. They made thousands of them, they are all made by machines and nobody has ever complained before, so this is either a first, or another debatable excuse to cost us money.

One of the best was a parcel we recently sent out. The customer had it delivered to a set of lockers at a shop near him – and didn’t pick it up. It was returned to us. We had to refund the money and lose the postage costs. The customer then got in touch to say he still wanted the stuff and ask if we would send it again . . .

Sold on eBay – souvenir of the American 5th Army entering Naples in 1943. There are several versions, including a British version with “8th Army” on it. Obverse and Reverse.

Then there was the one last week who complained Postage & Packing was too high and left us neutral feedback. It was a high value collectable banknote. The Royal Mail will only pay out if you use Guaranteed Delivery for such items. It was £80 and you don’t want to lose that. He had the choice of whether to pay or not, and he ordered and paid. Then, in the manner of a slimy creeping thing that has white undersides and lives beneath stones, he crept out of hiding and left poor feedback.

Finally, a prince amongst men. We found we had two neutral feedbacks this morning, for slow service. We had posted the items to Singapore on the day they were ordered and they were delivered on the seventh day after that That’s right, delivered halfway round the world in just seven days. According to eBay the delivery window was 27th March 8ntil 4th April. They were delivered on 27th March and on 30th March he posted negative feedback saying “Sorry but slow delivery.” It is tempting to be abusive.

In his short eBay career he has given 21 feedback in two months – including 8 neutral and one negative, all for “slow” delivery.

People like him should be banned from eBay. Then neutered to stop them breeding more idiots . . .

Yes, it’s a Yogi Bear badge.

Pictures are all things we sold on eBay, where people were happy with the transaction and left positive feedback. Just saying . . .

A Rag Bag of Thoughts

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The latest issue of Cattails is out and I appear in it twice – page 89 and page 91. However, they aren’t the best bits of the issue and there are 193 pages of good stuff to read. These two mark the point where I was really struggling to write. Things, as I have said, are looking up again now.

One of my neighbours has just been playing fast and lose with the laws of gravity, but has finally succeeded in putting a bird box in his conifer. It’s at least twelve feet off the ground, and much better than my weedy attempts. I usually chicken out when it gets to eight feet. I have bounced a number of times when falling off ladders and don’t see any point in pushing my luck. The strange thing I find is that if I were writing a novel I would have the fall in slow motion with plenty of time for flashbacks and reminiscence but in real life I often only have time to think “Oh . . .” as the ladder moves, then find myself lying on the floor. In fact, once I merely found myself lying on the floor, without the initial “Oh . . .”

I’ve fallen off four times, which is hardly a great sample, but at no time has my life flashed before me. That might be because I was between six and twelve feet up when it happened. If you fall off from fifty feet it is probably different.

Random Poppy Picture

It was also slightly different the time that I fell off due to the wood-wormed rung. I don’t count that among the four falls, which were all due to my carelessness – over-reaching or setting the ladder up on soft ground (correct, I’m not a fast learner).

On the way up, using a ladder from the shed of a gardening customer, I note the woodworm on the way up and thought “I must be careful on the way down”. However, I was so grateful to be on the way down (it was a tricky trimming operation twenty feet up a pear tree) that I forgot to be careful. The rung collapsed, as did the next one, I began to overbalance, I thought of the concrete slabs that were waiting, and I grabbed a branch, ending up swinging like a monkey. It is funny now, and you have permission to laugh.

I did learn from that. I bought a ladder and never used a customer’s ladder again.

The funniest thing i ever did was cut a dead branch on a tree. It was about twenty feet up (it seems an ominous distance when you read this post. I cut it using my pruning saw on a long pole, and my feet were firmly on the ground. The lesson I learned from this was that branches fall faster than you think so you should never stand directly under one you are cutting. I protected my head by fending it off with my forearm. The impact drove flakes of bark into my arm, which took some cleaning up, and ten years later I still have a lump on my arm where it hit.

I think 500 words is enough for now. If anyone is interested I have another selection of disaster stories, some of which feature electricity.

Bear with tools

An Unusual Day

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Today was a little unusual – we did some gardening at the shop and I had the car serviced. The former required a lot of hacking of brambles and tracking of mud through the shop, as it was a wet day. The car servicing was equally successful and involved leaving it at the garage overnight because they are struggling to get it back together. I was provided with a small Mazda automatic for the night. It is small and automatic and not at all comfortable. Apart from the lack of space the automatic transmission means I am continually on edge in case I forget myself and put my left foot on the “clutch”. I did that years ago in a borrowed automatic. The “clutch” is, of course, the brake in an automatic and the car tends to come to a rapid and inconvenient halt.

So far, so good. I got home without major incident, squeezed myself out of the car and worked out how to lock it.

I’m sure tomorrow will be equally memorable when I get the bill for my car. The cost of bus tickets has gone up too and Julia is looking at ways of economising. It now costs £3.78 a day.which, considering the time taken, the timetable and the number of drunks and idiots on the bus, makes the expense of a car seem worthwhile. I know it’s better for the planet to use public transport, but cars are so much more convenient.

We had several interesting customers today too, including one who was recently awarded an MBE and one who is recovering from breaking both arms in a cycling accident. He’s recently had the cast off one arm and revealed the scar from the operation – it’s well over a foot long. This is another reason to stick to cars.

Not Quite What I Expected

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It’s a good thing I took the frost photos yesterday because there was no frost today. We had a few drops of frozen rain, but so far no snow. I’m happy with that. Winter is dragging a bit, even if the weather has been unusually good this time.

There’s still time for snow – it’s not unusual in March and April – but I don’t mind it when things are warmer.

Nothing else of any importance occurred in my life. I’ve been lucky, other people haven’t been as fortunate.

In other news, the M3 motorway is closed by snow and Basingstoke is cut off. I hope all my blogging friends are safe and warm.

At the roundabout at the bottom of our road a car missed the curve and went through the fence, ending up in the High School Playing Fields. It could have been a lot worse.

Jeremy Hardy, a well-known comedian, died from cancer today. He was three years younger than me. Clive Swift also died. He was famous for playing a hen-pecked husband – you can see why I identify with him. He was the father of Joe Swift, the garden designer on Gardeners’ World. I didn’t know that, but it’s easy to see the resemblance once you know.

Time, I think, for a nice cup of tea, some warmth and some sandwich making. I have pickled shallots for tomorrow – they are likely to be the best bit of the day.

The importance of being accurate

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Life after the Care Farm