21st Birthday / On-line Shopping

21st Birthday
On Saturday the family gathered in the Inn on the Green. Mainly the family, and a few friends. Lunch was unremarkable, the food was mainly alright, but some parts of it were not very nice. IT has apparently been refurbished - it looked to me as though it wasn't finished. The staff were pleasant and friendly, but it isn't enough to make up for the slightly disappointing food. Still the company was good, and I hope that out 21 year-old enjoyed himself. He has now borrowed my Previa and taken his friends to a haunted camp site. Which brings me to ...

On-line Shopping
Its my usual thing fro Christmas, and this year was no exception. However, this year I have to return things, that's not something I've had to do before. Shopping at Amazon(.co.uk) is easy, I wonder what returns are like.

I also purchased, more recently a book, which I downloaded, so that I got it in time. This was from a site called lulu.com. Now registering and paying can be easy or complicated. On lulu it's more towards complicated. The site is designed for people to sell products, so why make it so difficult for the buyer? Surely if it a site for selling then most of the hits will be buyers - the site should be tuned to their requirements - my requirements in this case. When I sign-up, I'd expect to be asked why I came to the site, not told that I can now start my project. Mind you, buying was a bit of a project!

Now to the third, and so far least satisfactory experience. My son wanted to borrow my Previa. To do this the insurance needs to be upgraded. Budget said they'd ring back in 2-3 hours. That was this morning, no call so far. We tried DayCover. An interesting experience - their site will not accept credit card details!!!!!!! Amazing and unbelievable. How do they do business? My son phoned them and got the policy agreed, they said they would send an e-mail. No e-mail. After the start time of the policy he called again, and they claimed to correct the e-mail address (or did they?), but still no e-mail.

Perhaps I should have titled this entry "Where not to buy ...".

The UK used to have a reputation for poor customer service, seems to me its getting worse again.

We should all be proud of what we do, and try to do our best at work, sometimes the systems defeat us. On those occasions we have a duty to do what we can to improve things for our customers. That's just common sense, from my point of view.