Tag Archives: poor service

Here We Go Again

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Nasturtiums Wilford Mencap Gardens

A few days ago I told you that the solicitor wanted more documents. Well, today she excelled herself. After the 18 day delay, she now leapt into action within hours, to deny that she had ever had copies of my bank statements. I, of course, have no proof one way or the other, though I do know that if the boot were on the other foot there are laws to say when a communication is delivered, even when it hasn’t. This is part of the unlevel playing field on which we operate. What she can’t deny is that she received the other email I sent that day, and that email mentioned the statements being sent. Why she then left it for 18 days when she knows we are on a deadline, I don’t know. You would have thought she would have followed up a lot sooner. As it was, I had to prompt her.

Maple Leaves

However, even better, having had my bank statements, which show exactly what she said she wanted to see, she now needs more information. It seems that she finds the presence of a regular, monthly, modest payment to need explanation.

I get a regular payment every four weeks too. That one is provided by an organisation that is known to sell arms to dictators, isn’t keen on freedom of speech, and is headed up by a lawyer with a love of free gifts. (Do you remember that I had to sign a form to show I wasn’t likely to be taking bribes?) One of the previous heads was even worse. But it seems it’s OK for me to take my pension off the government. It’s my work pension that appears suspicious. Because that’s what it is – past retirement age + regular modest monthly payments = pension to me, you and most people. To a lawyer, it seems suspicious. Of course, if you were looking to increase your billable minutes on this job, you’d find everything suspicious.

OFuchsias

Well, I can’t show her up-to-date pension documents as they are all lost in a box somewhere. I’m not exactly sure where. She can see the 2023 letters, as they were still in Julia’s filing cabinet. The current ones are in a folder, in a box, in a pile, in a bungalow, in a city far, far away . . .

Let’s see what tomorrow brings.

I looked for pictures of vampires and leeches but had to make do with these..

Time, Decluttering, Fish and Chips

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Sorry, time slips by and it’s soon a couple of day since I wrote anything or read anything. I do try to keep up with my comments but that’s all I’ve done, in a blogging sense, for the last few days. I have been to a few charity shops to dispose of various bits of clutter (I can’t believe some of the things we’ve accumulated), we’ve also been down to Peterborough (mainly to see a builder) and today we dropped off at another charity shop, visited Julia’s old base (to drop off craft supplies we don’t need) and spent nearly an hour doing a twenty minute journey to \IKEA, where we once again couldn’t park within a distance I couldn’t walk. I really am going to have to get a Blue Badge.

Yesterday we spent £32 on two lunches at the garden centre nearest to the new bungalow.  It was a fact finding mission and the main fact I found was that I won’t be eating there again. It was fish and chips, which is no longer cheap food for the working classes. The fish, I admit, was very good – nice thick, fresh fillets in crispy batter. The tartare sauce was good. The peas were mediocre, which isn’t good enough for £16. And the chips were excellent, Thick, golden, well cooked – everything you would want from a chip. However, there weren’t many of them. I don’t like it when chip shops pile the chips on to make it look like you are getting plenty for your money, but I like it even less when you get a small portion. I don’t expect to pay £16 and leave the table feeling hungry.

Once we move we will be reviewing more food, so we might go back to check it out again. |On the other hand there are plenty of garden centres in Peterborough with better food and better plants, so we might not.

Pictures are going to be pictures of other fish and chips we have had. I seem to have a lot of fish and chip photos.

Haddock Special at the Dolphin Fish Bar, Sutton on Sea

A Rant About Groceries

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It’s just after midnight. The typing chair is a bit harder than I would like and is becoming uncomfortable, as my recent urological problems are still playing up. They aren’t really recent, it must be five weeks now – I will have to look it up. I will be discussing these problems on Thursday when my appointment at the GP finally comes round.

But first, I will look for a cushion. Self-help is always my first choice.

I can’t do much self help with the other problem, the lump on my arm. It is probably nothing, but it needs looking at. I lost a friend about 15 years ago. It started off as a small discolouration of the leg and over the course of three years, despite medical attention, it killed him. His wife, who coincidentally had a similar problem, but more advanced, had a more successful intervention and is still alive today. The moral of this is that you never know what is around the corner. I’ve had a couple of biopsies, several chest X-Rays (which are always a knee jerk over-reaction so don’t really count) and some cream to burn off some skin problems. What I haven’t had, so far, is cancer.I’m hoping that the current problem won’t be cancerous, and am hoping they can dig it out under local anaesthetic at the surgery. If it was on the front of my arm I would probably have a go at it myself, but it’s round the back and I can’t see it.

Meanwhile, more annoyingly, I switched from TESCO to ASDA for groceries this week. I have been getting annoyed with TESCO for never having parsnips so I tried ASDA. They are significantly cheaper with both food and delivery costs. Unfortunately they sent me a message this afternoon to say that they were substituting four items and that three were out of stock.

They swapped the lettuce, sent strawberries instead of raspberries, blueberries instead of figs and a full size cucumber instead of the small picnic size ones I ordered for Julia’s lunchbox.  Lettuce I can understand and the swap, and the same goes for the berries. They are all reasonable substitutions. Blue berries for figs, when we already have blueberries in the order? No way are they similar. Same for the cucumbers. I have half a full size one left, I specifically wanted the small ones.

Then there were the peppers – they couldn’t supply them. That is incomprehensible – TESCO has them in so many ways, surely ASDA could have found  a few, or a bag of mixed, or some green ones . . .

And finally – no flowers – which totally spoiled my great romantic gesture.

Then, to add insult to injury, they split the milk container and we found, after the driver had gone, that several cans were damaged. After paying them to deliver groceries we will still have to go out to buy milk.

This is very annoying.

I thought I’d reuse the Bath Inn and Doctor Who photos from Julia last week.

A Pause, Some Thoughts and a Conclusion

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I just finished making three submissions. I wavered between six submissions and two, so three is a compromise.  The three I sent off involved five poems, which were more or less complete when I started looking for poems earlier in the week. The three I didn’t make would involve fifteen tanka, and I have none written, apart from a few that have already been rejected several times. When I was in this position a few months ago I rushed some into existence and got two rejections from the three. It doesn’t seem worth rushing to submit something that makes it look like you can’t write decent poetry. I will wait and apply myself to gradually getting back up to speed.

The truth is that I prefer writing about collectables, even if the results are only seen by a few members of the Numismatic Society on Facebook.

We had breakfast out yesterday. It was partly to avoid doing something else and partly to establish a pattern of me going out. Julia thinks that I need to go out more. I don’t.

Breakfast at Harvester is not the all you can eat blowout it used to be.  I’d been looking forward to a touch of fruit and cereal, a moderate Full English and several slices of  toast with honey. They don’t do it like that now. The big breakfast option (three sausages, three rashers of bacon, two eggs, half a poorly cooked tomato, one watery mushroom, beans, three hash browns, one tiny slice of black pudding  and a couple of slices of toast, was big and, at £9.99 was reasonable value by today’s standards.

In terms of quality it wasn’t as good as it could have been. Same goes for the experience – it used to be quite a leisurely and relaxing way to eat breakfast but now, wit6h no honey or marmalade and the other changes, it isn’t so relaxing.

I could have done with the smaller breakfast option but the only way to get black pudding was to order the larger breakfast. To pay £2 for an extra sausage, extra rasher of bacon, tiny black pudding slice and, I think, an extra hash brown. I just checked – yes you do get an extra hash brown. You are supposed to get two tomatoes and two mushrooms, which I didn’t get. Cheapskates. Though considering the poor cooking of the mushroom and tomato I may not have wanted more.

The moral of the story is that as prices rise quality,  whether of food or service or relaxation, seems to go down.

Note too how they say the toast is free, as if it is a special bonus offer. Sorely it is a normal part of breakfast, as are the preserves to put on it.

Anyway, there you go. Went to Harvester. had a late breakfast, didn’t need to eat again until we had soup and a sandwich in the evening. Probably good value by modern standards but too much food for me as I try to lose weight, and deficient in far too many ways. Will be giving it a miss in future, unless I am seized by a sudden desire for boiled mushrooms and half a lightly warmed tomato.

I just looked at my emails – I already have an acceptance. It took 34 minutes and is a new record. I am now officially feeling more enthusiastic about writing poetry.

This is Julia’s breakfast – I had scrambled eggs. It is, however, my elbow that you can see across the table.

Same Old . . .

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I’ve been looking into all this security and stuff that goes on these days when you try to give some of your own money to your children.

First, Number One Son was told he was on a list of people with suspected terrorist links. This was  bit of surprise as he couldn’t remember any terrorist links. However, it wasn’t a problem, as all he needed to do was write and sign a note saying that it wasn’t him, just someone with the same name. That’s a really robust anti-terrorist system isn’t it? I said that when the solicitor submits the bill he should send it back with a note saying it wasn’t him.

Now I have been sorted out by the use of technology. I’m told I appear on  register of bankruptcies and need to address this problem. I have asked why I need to do anything, as it clearly isn’t me, just a coincidence of a couple of parts of my name with that of someone else. I’ve already covered that. Just to keep things going, I have signed the obligatory letter saying it isn’t me, though it did take three attempts for them to send me the correct link. I actually hate myself for doing it, but I have better things to do with my time. Roughing out an official letter of complaint for one thing.

It’s a heaven-sent opportunity for lawyers – some vague guidance from government and the liberty to make things up as they go along. There is clearly no law enforcement benefit involved, (as the “it isn’t me” letters show) just a whole new industry for lawyers, which involves creating work for me, ticking a few boxes and submitting a bill.

The Power of the Lawyer is in the Uncertainty of the Law.

Jeremy Bentham.

Pathetic Shambles

17 Replies

Julia went down to pick up some dressings for my leg. There were none, and the pharmacy denied all knowledge of them.

Rewind for a moment – a couple of posts ago I referred to having an argument and informing the GP’s reception that I considered their actions unacceptable.

It took me about half an hour on Friday and I left it that the pharmacy would order the dressings (if the doctor could be bothered to process the prescription) and have them ready for either Tuesday or Wednesday. I told them that I needed them for Tuesday, so it was urgent.

On Tuesday I queued, was told they had no dressings for me. Went to the nurse, who found some bandages in the back of a cupboard (GPs no longer carry stocks of dressings because they don’t want to pay for them out of their budget) and then went back to the pharmacy to queue again and listen to other people complaining about the service. I was given various excuses but told that they would be ready for me this afternoon.

And so Julia went down to pick them up (as mentioned in the first sentence). It took her two hours to sort it out. Yes, two hours.

There was no prescription, so I don’t know what we had discussed in the pharmacy the day before. Julia had to collect one from the GP. She took it to the pharmacy, queued, and discovered that it was addressed to another supply company (that’s the second time the doctor has done that, and unless you have the paper in your hand you can’t tell). Back to the doctor. Back to the pharmacy queue. They don’t stock them (which we had already discovered – they don’t stock any dressings due to space constraints) and they will have them tomorrow afternoon. I have an appointment for new dressings tomorrow morning but the surgery searched round and say they have enough in the cupboard to change the dressing.

Some of the dressings I have had over the last week have been pathetic. No wonder it isn’t healing. I could do better myself, but they won’t give me the name of the things I need. I am, however, going to search Amazon tonight as this is getting past a joke.

So, in case you got lost in the detail –

Pharmacy, pathetic shambles.

GP surgery, equally pathetic shambles.

The sad thing is that they are both staffed by people who are generally friendly and helpful, but trapped in some sort of system that encourages failure.

To give you some idea of what I do at work – I pack about 150 parcels a month and once every two or three months I get one wrong. Even if you say I only do 100 parcels and get one wrong every month the defect rate is 1%.

In the last eighteen months I have had about 40 interactions with the surgery and pharmacy. The surgery had let me down at least eight times and the pharmacy about the same. It’s a little difficult to remember as I don’t actually keep notes. Defect rate 40%.

 

 

 

 

 

Cup a Soup Chronicles III – Bachelor’s Oxtail

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Cup a Soup Chronicles III (25.02.21)

Batchelor’s Oxtail – TESCO 79p for four sachets

That’s right, it’s 4p more than ASDA. If that was the only bad thing I had to say about TESCO it wouldn’t be too bad, but it isn’t. They rang this evening, at around 4.30 to tell me they had cancelled my delivery due to driver absences, but they would arrange for me to pick it up at the Click and Collect bay if I still wanted it. I have just come back from doing that, which is why  I am publishing another soup review so soon.

I sympathise with TESCO and their driver problems, but, to be blunt, that is their problem, not mine. They are a massive company and they should do better. If all else fails, send it by taxi. And don’t leave it some poor lad from Customer Services to ring me, make the duty manager at the store ring me. I think he’d have a different view of things if he needed to listen to the customers and their views about his store, which has now cancelled deliveries twice at short notice.

They have, to be fair, sent me a £10 voucher for my inconvenience, but part of that is a refund for the delivery that they didn’t make. They must think I’m stupid not to notice that half the voucher is just a refund.

Anyway, the soup…

It’s another variation on the theme of grey, this time with a hint of reddish brown.

Oxtail Soup and a free mug we were given by a local scrap merchant

It looks slightly chocolatey, but it has a pleasant spicy flavour, albeit with  a slight aftertaste of glue. However, I haven’t had oxtail soup from a can recently, so it’s possible I might detect that in a canned soup if I tried hard. There is a lot of cartilage in an ox tail, as I recall from when I have seen them offered for sale, and it’s quite likely there is a taste of glue from that.

There were some small songy bits left in the bottom of the cup when I finished – possibly bits of ox? Freeze-dried and reconstituted ox…hmm, lovely.

It was spicy, warming and not totally revolting, but if was having company to dinner I don’t think I’d select this as the soup course.

It looks quite healthy until the end

 

How many shades of grey?

I posted this in “Uncategorised”. I was going to post in “Food” but it didn’t seem appropriate.

 

Fun with ASDA

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I ordered a red rose and a Valentine card from ASDA. They were in stock when I ordered last night. Now they are out of stock. I am in trouble. Could they not at least have substituted the card for another?

I ordered parsnips – they are sending diced carrot/swede. You can’t roast them quite the same and swede is a very different thing to parsnips.

I ordered Lemon Cheesecake, they are sending ES Pudding. I don’t even know what that is.

I ordered Stilton, they are sending St Agur. One is made within 30 miles of here, the other is made in France. One is the King of Cheeses, the other is French. I think you get my drift.

I ordered bake at home baguettes, they are sending sandwich thins. In other terms that is like ordering a shark and getting a goldfish. same family but completely different. I still haven’t forgiven them for sending gluten free baguettes last time. That’s like ordering bread and getting cotton wool. Exactly like ordering bread and getting cotton wool.

I ordered ASDA Indian tonic Water. They are sending ASDA Soda Water. They could send somebody else’s tonic water but that would cost them money. So they send me something I don’t want. I would rather pay extra for something I want, rather than be foisted off with something I don’t.

I ordered Jam Doughnuts. They are sending Custard Doughnuts. Custard? Are they mad. Apart from the fact they look like a bursting boil, does anyone over the age of six actually eat them?

The only acceptable substitution is the pasties and I’m not convinced about that.

I would love  a return to those carefree pre-Covid days when all you needed to do to get a week’s shopping was to walk round a shop with a trolley, brushing up against fellow shoppers and greeting neighbours as you walked down the aisles.

I decided to use the photo with the sunset that looks like the end of the world. If you can’t get Stilton Cheese it might as well be the apocalypse.

 

51842

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The GBBO final proceeded according to form. Laura spilt more stuff while Peter and Dave slugged it out for top honours. I won’t say more as it is not the most interesting thing for me to discuss if you haven’t seen it. And also because I’m worried I must be getting old as it’s becoming more interesting as the years go by.

I may be telling people who already know, but if you fancy doing something educational the Open University has a range of free courses available. I’m doing the “What is Poetry?” course in an attempt to educate myself. I have been reading articles for the last few months but decided that it might be good to do a proper course. It’s OK, but not really telling me anything I didn’t know. I’ll probably try a couple of poetry courses but after that it’s time to try the one about critical reading – which is something I do need to know more about. After that there are so many courses offered by so many Universities that the choice it almost endless.

Apart from that there’s nothing much to report. Poor service from the Royal Mail, poor service regarding prescriptions, and a missing parcel which was sent via courier. All stuff I could do without, all stuff that will take time to sort. I really do have better uses for my time.

I sent an article off to a poetry magazine last night (I’m starting to branch out) and found that the on-line form system that it uses  will only accept Word files – it won’t accept files from Apache Open Office. I am on a month’s free trial with Word, so was able to convert it, but it’s a problem for the future. Having decided that I’m going to refuse to pay £80 as year for Microsoft Office I don’t really want to go back to it days after deciding on the alternative.

Life is never simple…

And the title? I forgot to add a title, so the next thing I saw was that two people had liked 51842. At that point I guessed I’d ben in such a hurry to write that I’d forgotten the title again.

 

As One Door Opens Another Door Closes

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I know it’s not the usual saying,but it sums up my situation. One of the problems I have to solve, which I have mentioned only in passing, is that Julia has booked electricians to come in next week and rewire the house. Most people would get it properly cleared first but we are doing it differently…

The only thing I can think of doing is to rent storage space, so I went down to the place where we have our storage locker, intending to change my card details for the existing payment (as my card was replaced recently) and to arrange for short term rental of more space. As they checked my name on the computer everyone started looking shifty and muttering.

It seems I haven’t paid my bill since the beginning of the year.

Fortunately, due to lockdown, they hadn’t got round to selling the contents.

My debit card was renewed by the bank in January and at that time the payments stopped. They sent letters but they were all returned. They were sending them to the PO Box number I used to use when I was in the antiques trade. I’m sure we changed that years ago when they said they needed street addresses for fraud prevention purposes. Even so, it’s not a difficult job to trace the street address, as the Post Office won’t conceal it if asked.

They have never asked me for an email address.

All their phone calls went unanswered. I checked in case they were using an old mobile number, but they were using the home number.

So, despite me informing them by phone that my card number had changed (as I have been doing for the last ten years), they have no record. Despite the fact that the Post Office still occasionally delivers letters via the Box Number, none of their many letters got through. Despite me being constantly at home in lockdown all of their calls seem to have coincided with one of the few times we left the house. We both left the house four or five times during those months – when we went to pick shopping orders up from the supermarket. The rest of the time I was at home apart from blood tests, and JUlia was always at home while I was away.

Instead of clearing the house I’m now engaged in collecting things to prove my ID – the contract was ended when I stopped paying so I have to sign a new contract, which involves providing ID despite the fact they know perfectly well who I am.

If I say “pathetic” I will leave you to add the other words, the volume and the exclamation mark.

So, as the bank provided me with brilliant service yesterday, the storage place took it all back with their pathetic service and a receptionist who was trained by the NHS in the 1980s when harridans were in fashion and customer service was something that the British didn’t really see as necessary.

Meanwhile, I am having to wonder what I did in my past that was so bad I deserve all this misfortune.

Are you getting photographs with my posts? I haven’t had any for a couple of days. They are there as thumbnails, but they don’t seem to be showing when I view the post.