Phone problems

My company supplied me with an HTC phone when I joined them last year. It had all mod cons such as Internet, email etc and also was supposed to work as a phone. Slight problem was that it muted randomly so that often my calls would end with someone saying "are you there?".

They fixed it with a patch and it continued to mute randomly so they sent me a replacement. The replacement was the exact same model but it had obviously been used (judging by the fingerprints on the touch screen and the scratches on the cover). It too, muted when I tried to use it as a phone, I rang the help desk and had this conversation,
"My phone is muting randomly"
"Which one have you got?"
"The HTC"
"Is it a new one?"
"No second hand"
After checking the serial number...
"Ah yes that one was sent back by the previous user"
"Why?"
"It didn't work"
Doh!
I get a replacement Nokia at my insistence. This decided to wipe out all my contacts for no reason last week. Not to worry I set about rebuilding my list.
One person I wanted to get hold of was my old mate and former colleague Steve who works at Pru.  I rang their switchboard ...
Press1 for new business, 2 for existing business etc. I waited and pushed "5" for all other enquiries.
Another menu with a list of options I pushed 4 for all other enquiries. And yet another menu which said please hold for all other queries. I held and spoke to Ross.
"Can I have your policy number?"
"No I am ringing to speak to Steve in your marketing department"
"I cannot transfer you"
"But he is in the same building as you!"
"Aye but I cannot transfer you, the best I can do is email him for you and tell him to ring you."
I avoided ranting and satisfied myself with giggling and hanging up.

Pru has at least improved since I worked there. I telephoned the switchboard number once having been in the head office one morning. I was directed to Mumbai to their call centre and had this conversation,
"Can I speak to Ian Abernethy?"
"No, there is no one with that name."
"He works in the head office in Stirling"
"No he is not listed so he does not work for us."
"Yes he does - I saw him in the office this morning!!"
"What department is he in?"
"Technical Support"
"No, we have not got a department called Technical Support!"
"YES,WE DO!"
"No we dont!"
"Can I speak to your manager please?"
"No I have not got one!"
"Can I speak to the person who interviewed you for the job?!!"
"No, there is no-one here!"
I drove back to Stirling and spoke to Ian who still worked there, and in a department called technical support.

I feel better for that.

Air Miles - a carthartic blog

Just in case you missed it BA has merged its air miles programme with ILG following their merger. The headlines in the press said that users of BA miles would now have to pay taxes and surcharges when using the air miles. Twaddle! You have had to pay taxes with BA for years. Time for a rant...

I have over 330,000 BA miles which according to their blurb lets me fly my family to Hong Kong and back. Not so! They never release enough seats to let you take a family of four unless ...one of you goes first class, one business and two in economy. I tried booking a simple trip - Edinburgh to Paris - thinking the availability would be better. I was right! But...the taxes were more expensive than flying with Easyjet at their normal price. So perhaps you would think I would switch my allegiance to BMI?

I did. I have over 750,000 BMI miles. The same problem - no bloody seats anywhere you want to go. The best I can do is book Edinburgh to London, which given that is where I fly every bloody week with BMI, I really don't want to go there! So switch to another airline??

I did. FlyBe. Better know to frequent flyers as .. Fly Maybe. They say they have the most generous frequent flyer programme in the UK. Surely I would be on a winner here? I accumulated "Rewards for All" points for a year - fifty of them to be precise. Unlike BA and BMI they have to be used in 12 months or be lost. That means having flown with them fifty times the best I can get is about three return trips all in the UK or two European return trips. I thought "OK, lets take Mrs Blog for a weekend away". Alas...no availability - ON ANY ROUTE ANYWHERE. I even tried Glasgow to Barra in October thinking that surely there would be a spare seat, but no!

A total bloody rip off.

....and relax!

Language difficulties

Went to a dinner with friends on Friday night where a sequence of language difficulties began. Firstly Mrs-Blog's friend Jane, who is from Yorkshire, said she had seen a mutual friend Paul in cow pat. It only took a second to realise it was the accent and she actually meant to say "Car Park". Nonetheless, I was left with the image of Paul standing in cow poo having a conversation with Jane as if nothing was wrong.

Later, after a few glasses of wine, our host told us of his trip to Japan whilst working for a local textile company. The company was called Ballantynes. It would be difficult to think of a harder word for the Japanese hosts to get their tongues around, "Barrantynes" probably being the norm.

So a link with oriental difficulties and Yorkshire; it reminded me that the first non-UK restaurant in the Harry Ramsden chain was opened in Hong Kong. You would have thought they would have changed the name.

Mrs Blog is laughing

Three weeks ago Mrs Blog, without telling me, microwaved some Haddock to poach it. It took until yesterday for the microwave to recover. For nearly three weeks I have had to put up with rotten fishy smells every time I microwaved my porridge.


So, in order to to rectify the shortfall of fishy smells (which I truly detest) Mrs Blog bought salmon pate for lunch today. Son Blog spread a huge lump on his toast and, having noticed my distaste, waved it in my face. (Where did he learn to do things like that?). I was holding a doughnut in my hand at the time and as I recoiled the doughnut broke in half and flew across the room behind me. Straight in front of Muffin (Dog-Blog).

So Muffin tears off to another room to devour the unexpected treat, leaving me with half a doughnut and even more reason to hate fishy smells. Roll on Monday.