Brief review with my line manager: cont.

It went reasonable well :)

It was a civilised meeting with a normal professional standard. I was pleasant surprised.

Brief review with my line manager: 27 Sep 05 @ 16.00-16.30

I am not looking forward to this – at all. I have never had many of these reviews in my career.

I had a meeting with my line manager after my probation period = nasty meeting. I didn’t even know if I had passed the probation or not until the very last minutes of the meeting. There was no advance warning of this meeting, he just walked passed my desk and said “Come here – it won’t take many minutes”. He caught me completely off guard and controlled the whole meeting. Boyfriend was very helpful with his insights. I requested a second meeting and the tones was mellower and “there had been some misunderstand”.

Our department is 4 people in the same room, line manager is a he then there is three “shes”. One is the line manager favourite and boy doesn’t she use it to the max. Y’know she comes and goes as she likes, two faced bitch who writes poison emails behind your back and make out that her jobs is sooo complicated and difficult.
Me and the other she gets along fine and tries to watch each others backs when possible.

Well at least I am more prepared and I will not let him bully as last time.

:(

LOL

Found this in random search. There is a lot of conservatism out in the blog world – especially the Americans (no surprise there). This picture made laugh out load.

And here is the blog is came from:
http://nmyrightmind.blogspot.com/

A bit bored …

… so I started to click on the next blog button to see what random things are out there. The radio (LBC is the station) is on in the background and Iain Lee is moderate funny. Somebody sent a txt in with was happening in Lost Season 2 Episode 1 – he did not like that. UK TV is on episode 16. Iain is obviously not in to bittorent. I have got the episode downloaded but I have not seen it yet.

I would say there is about 50-50 between English written blogs and Spanish written blogs. A few Finnish and Eastern European blogs as well. I know this is more then 100 but you get the idea.

A few seemed interesting and I added them to my bloglines page.

People seem to have so much to say and quite frankly, most things just did not interest me at all. I was skimming through the pages and one the first things I read was the profile. I wanted to see where in the world they were. Added bonus was the photos – all ways fun to have quick look at.

Great blog by the way ...

http://belleinthebigapple.blogspot.com/

02 - aaaaarrrrrhhhhhhhh

The mobile network that I am on is O2 and I have been with them since 2000. All that time, I have been a “Select” customer which has had the benefit of calling the customer service on a free number 0800 0321 1402 and get through fairly quickly to a representative.

Today, I received two letters from O2 today and I said to myself that can’t be a good sign and how right was I.

First letter was normal bill.

Second letter was from Helen Care (I bet there is no such person and I am very tempted to call their switchboard and ask for her) Select Marketing Manager for O2. The letter starts ”Your 12 month Select membership is now coming to an end and we hope you’ve enjoyed the benefits it brought with it, including money off accessories and a dedicated customer service number”

What?? What 12 month Select membership is she on about?? My twelve month contract was renewed in the beginning of 2005.

The letter continues:

“To continue with Select membership you need to meet both of the following two criteria

· Your average bill for each phone must be over £40*

· You need to be up to date with payments

Unfortunately you currently don’t meet one of these criteria however we’d love you to be a member again as soon as you’re eligible.”

This section really, really rubs me the wrong way. Never EVER has these criteria been mentioned – trust me, I am a sado and actually read the terms and condition before I sign. My average bill has never ever been £40 so why did this issue come up now. Normally my bills are around £25-£27 (incl VAT) mark with the odd one higher when I have been abroad.

Then this Helen Care mentioning love as in “we’d love you to be a member again” which means when I spend more money with them. These marketing people think that their customers are stupid and they don’t seem to understand why nobody has any respect for their “profession”. This comment is so damn insulting and superficial. Love is something I feel towards my boyfriend, family and animals especially cats. Love is NOT something I feel towards a business relation. I would go as far as loyalty but certainly not love.

The letter continues:

“Your new customer service number is 08702 410202 and we’re on hand to help if you have any questions about your O2 account. Why not save it to your phone now?”

Right, from calling the customer service being free, I now have to pay “up to 5 pence” if I call from a a landline or if I would call from my mobile then I would have to pay 10 pence. O2 will pocket a few pence and make money when I call their customer service. It will be in their interest keep me on hold and take their time answering the questions.

The letter finishes of with:

We hope to be welcoming you back to elect soon but until then, thank you for your loyalty to O2 and enjoy your mobile.

Best regards,

Helen Cane

Select Marketing Manager

*Based on you average spend over 6 months excluding VAT.

In this letter no dates were mentioned when my Select membership should end.

Time to talk to the Customer Service. I could call the 0800 number from mine landline or I can call free from my mobile. I decided to call from my mobile just take a bit extra network usages. After 8 minutes, a representative answered. I was calm and collect and my objectives were to:

1. Find out the date with my Select membership will end.
2. Find out when my 12 month contract will end and I am then free change network provider.
3. When this new minimum spend were introduced.
4. Spend as much time on the phone as I could. I am sure that they have a time limit of how long to spend on each customer and the can see the queue getting too long.
5. Tell them about how dissatisfied I am as a customer (as long as I possible could).

The answers were:

1. No conclusive answer. After a fairy long wait I was told the date should be in the letter. I said that no date were in the letter and read out the letter to him. I continue to press him for a date. The best answer he could eventually say was when the bill arrives with the 0870 number I would then be on the lower tier. I told him how ridicules it was of O2 and their marking department of sending out letter and specified what date applied.
2. 3 February 2006 – trust me, I will leaving O2 then
3. He could not / would not answer this
4. In total, I was on the phone for 28 minutes and that felt like I achieved my objective.
5. I was told that the letter’s intention was not to offend their customer which I calmly argued that I had been offended.
   

The guy I was speaking to was, I have to say, good = not stroppy, rude and obnoxious as many call centre staff are when being a challenged.

Customer relationship is mainly one-way street here in the UK. Company dictates the customer but when the customer challenges the company – that is simply not on. It doesn’t matter what industry you are dealing with. Electricity, telephone, banks, airlines, credit card, and insurance companies – the list is endless. Nobody don’t really listen to the customers and we are the one with money to spend in their business.

Summer is slowly fading away

It is getting darker earlier in the day and nights are getting colder as well. I didn’t agree to this!!

Usually at this time of the year, I always wonder what it must be like to live in a place with constant summer – LA, Australia or Asia. But in a month time or so when I got use to the autumn, then I am happy with the different seasons. In fact, I don’t think London has a proper winter season with snow. Mind you, 2 cm of snow and you have total chaos and I can’t help laughing at the Brits.

I don’t mind the cold weather outside. My problem is when I am cold indoors. The Brits and their heating habits are still strange to me and they have one foot still stuck in the 2^nd World War.

Katrina: a very good blog

A very good read!

http://dancingwithkatrina.blogspot.com/

F1: Spa

BAR chief Nick Fry: "Taku couldn't hear what Michael was shouting at him which is probably a good thing."

Sato had no idea what Schumacher had said to him, since the race was still going on. "I could see he was very upset," he said.

Sato needs to learn to drive better! His "move" deprived me from seeing Michael Schumacher driving on a wet SPA (!) track. It has been a miserable season and now this.

The charmers of our neighbourhood

These little fellows (or maybe they are girls…) are charming our neighbourhood. Almost everyone stops and cuddles with them. The cats are almost too friendly.

They happily sneak in our front door when you are not watching and local pub and Thai restaurant

Katrina

Absolutely amasing pictures. And it feels a bit strange saying that when we all know what damage Katrina caused.

This is my favourite picture - love the colours:

Planes breaking the sound barrier

Nokia 6260 and Universeum

I got (locked in with 02 for another 12 months) my new phone couple of months ago. I thought it was ok. Y’know, actually a good phone, easy to use for txt. But the middle button is too flush and it is easy to go wrong in the menu. I do like the twist that you move the screen to get like a mini-handicam.

Boyfriend, I + one more spent a long weekend in Göteborg, Sweden. We went to the most amasing place called Universeum. It is a MUST if you are in town.

Anyway, boyfriends and +1 was taking loads of photos but then the battery ran out for boyfriends. Ops….

I took up my phone and took a picture and it wasn’t that bad! I got really excited and took many more. I have got a 5Mb media card in my phone there was loads of room.

Here is the better ones:

And here is the less better ones (the fish didn’t stay still *tsk*)

And this … is another story all together.

Prison Break

Great show and great actors with great acting. I have seen the two first episodes and I like what I see.

Wentworth Miller, the lead, does a super job. I have always liked Peter Stormare. A big up for both them. The rest of the cast don’t let the show down. The story is not predictable, which is the highest mark that can be given.

Everything that “Just Legal” isn’t - this show is.

Just Legal

The show is weak and not a “must see”. It is full of boring clichés like worried mother, dirty cop, stern judge, young kid with passion gets everything right. Also, there is bad acting from Jay Baruchel – playing opposite Don Johnson.

The most amazing part is that Jerry Buckenhiemer has put his name to it.

Don Johnson is not too bad though. And playing with words in the title is kind of alright.

Katrina

What a devastation the hurricane Katrina has caused! I feel so surprised that America seemed to be so un-prepared. The day after the hurricane I was kind of waiting for the mighty and impressive American logistics to kick-in … but nothing happened. It is day 3 and the organisation is slowly beginning to sort it out. But is it too late for some of the poor people?

The reports with the really, really poor people have been left behind and fight for themselves leave a bad, stinky taste – a modern/free/liberal/fair society should NOT do that.

I am also stunned by the looting and firing shoots on the rescue helicopters.

However – I am sure that the mainstream media is pushing the more shocking and “newsworthy” stories such as looting, breakdown of law ect and is not giving a balance picture of how the situation.

I base this conclusion of how the media treated the mood in London after the bombing on 7 July 05 and the attempted bombing 21 July 05. The media made it look worse that what it really was and have actually helped the terrorists in reaching there goal.

I hope that all the affected people will get help soon!