After mentioning previously that Loch Fyne were paying below the national minimum wage, they're now paying their staff the minimum wage. They're very clearly using a form of weasel words in their press release though:
"put in place the small increases necessary"
and
"affects only a relatively small number of our staff"
Firstly, who cares if it affects only one member of your staff? You're still short changing one persn. As for small increase, it might only be 47p an hour, but assuming an average 40hr working week (easily done in Hospitality, and then some!) that's £977 before tax/NI a year that you were short-changing your staff. That's a lot of money to anyone.
Still - at least I can go and eat at your restaurants again!
One minute and twenty five seconds.
That's how long it took, from Virgin Wines answering the phone (no being on hold, no "your call is important to us, we'll get to you sometime soonish" messages, just straight through to an operator!), verifying I was who I say I am, confirming my Discovery Club changes (loose the 6 bottles of red, replace them with the S/Blanc from the previous case) and thanking me for my call. From start to finish it was less than 90 seconds of my time.
That's what Customer Service should be like.
Oh dear, yet another grumble on my part, oh well!
Ordinarily Halifax are pretty damn good, but they've let themselves down with the blurb page that's linked from my "One" card in my online banking. Take a look. So I can save up to 15% on holidays with Butlins in 2005 can I? That's all well and good, but short of getting hold of a Tardis, I'm not going to get very far with that little deal!
Come on, you can do better than that!
It might seem that I've got a little "soap-boxy" of late, and whilst it's not far from the truth, it's because I keep seeing numerous things to get on my soap-box about!
Take this article in The Publican for example; Some crazy woman from the Scottish Campaign against Irresponsible Drivers has decided that it's "irresponsible to offer customers directions to pubs". What!? How would anyone ever find a pub then? In context, it's because Garmin (who my parents swear by as GPS systems go) have dared, yes dared, to allow the Good Pub Guide 2008 to be downloaded to their GPS units. Heaven forbid that you might want to stop at a pub part way through a long journey to take a break, maybe have some food and possibly have a drink too. Of course, a drink for the driver doesn't have to be alcoholic does it.
Don't get me wrong, I agree totally that drinking and driving is irresponsible, dangerous and should not happen. But, unless the quote was taken out of context, it's the most stupid bit of pontificating I've ever seen in my life.
In the news from the BBC today is an article about Loch Fyne. Apparently they are one of the many companies that are coming to public attention for paying their serving staff below the minimum wage. Sadly this isn't illegal as they're allowed to count tips earned towards the NMW.
I've been eating at Loch Fyne fairly regularly since a friend took me there for my birthday last October. No more, sadly. If and when Loch Fyne announce that they'll be paying their staff the minimum wage I'll start to eat there again, and anyone else who frequents the place, I can't suggest strongly enough that you do the same!
... do a very nice toasted panini with the "Bacon Melt" filling. What they don't do is manage a consistent product standard. Sometimes there's a rasher, or two, of bacon in the panini along with the pre-made mix, sometimes there's not. Sometimes there's a small side salad on the plate, sometimes there's not. Sometimes there's a decent amount of filling in the paninin, sometimes there's hardly any. Don't get me wrong, I really do like the food, just not the lack of care and attention given to the product standard. Grr.
Oh, and their "membership system" is supposed to go live in mid July. Guys,... it's now July 22nd, we're past the mid-point now!
A friend of mine has recently put together a website to promotehis artwork and photography. Take a look at Will Hislops site, I have to say that some of his scenic photographs are my faves and I'm deffo going to be trying to blag a freebie on one of them ;-)
I travel, twice a day, on South West Trains and Southern Trains. I was contemplating upgrading to a 1st class season ticket, but after seeing what the 1st class service is like on Southern, I won't be.
South West Trains have sections of the carriages that are door separated, with an improved seating pattern (2-2 vs. 2-3 in standard and 1-2 vs 2-2 in standard, on the "blue" and "white" mainline trains respectively) and, seemingly, nicer seats. Southern on the other hand, simply take a small chunk (at least on the rolling stock that regularly runs the 0731 from Havant to Fareham) of one carriage, stick a head-rest cover over the seat and call it "1st class". Note that this section of the train is "open" to the rest of the carriage, has exactly the same seats and seating pattern and consists of about 16 seats of a 3 carriage train.
The "single" standard class fare for the 0731 from Havant to Fareham is £3.80, the first class fare is £7.30, according to the National Rail website. The question I'd love to pose to Southern is, how do you justify a £3.50 premium for nothing more than a head-rest cover?
More often than not when someone writes a blog post about Customer Service, it's because of *bad* customer service, so I thought it'd make a refreshing change to shout out two examples of GOOD customer service I've received in the past few months.
Marks & Spencer Food
I was shopping in M&S Petersfield a month or so ago and picked up a couple of tins of soup on a 3 for 2 offer. When I got to the checkout, the barcode on one of the tins wasn't recognised so the checkout assistant called over her supervisor. "Oh, here we go" was my first thought, but, the supervisor basically tried one more time to scan it and then said, "well, the gentleman gets it for free then". That, world, is uitterly the right way to deal with this situation for an 80p tin of soup. The store wasn't busy either, so it wasn't dealt with this way due to time. A big shout out to Marks & Spencers for the way their staff dealt with this.
Orange
Much maligned at times, but a "well done" from me for this. For some reason, the "STOP" text message I sent when a £1.50 charge was introduced for itemised paper billing was never processed. When I had my phone upgraded recently I asked the person on the upgrade line to double check and was informed the "Off" marker was there so it should kick in, but to ring back if it didn't on my next bill. It didn't kick in. Grrr.
Yesterday I rang Orange, went through security, explained the issue. Within 30 seconds the marker had been reset (hopefully it'll stick this time) and a credit for the itemised billing charge had been applied to my account.
How do you stay organised?
Submitted by devillibrarian.
Lots of different ways. I'm quite an organised person in general:
- My phone synchronises my calendar and contacts between my Home PC and Work PC, so I always have it up-to-date across all three (phone and two PCs) and thus never miss a meeting/appointment.
- I use a spiral-bound A4 notebook to keep track of To-Do lists and outstanding actions from meetings, each item gets crossed through when completed.
- At home I plan my meals a week ahead and put together a shopping list (yes, another list!) which then goes to the supermarket with me.
- When at work, and writing code, it gets sprinkled with "//TODO:" comments which Visual Studio then aggregates for me as a Task List within itself. Sadly, quite a few of them start off as "//TODO:Reimplement this class as its a BDH". (BDH = Big Dirty Hack)
Organised. To the max ;)
