4915/17835
I spent most of the afternoon trying to work out what happened with the Yodel driver who was meant to collect my package last Wednesday and Friday who claimed I wasn't in, when I was in all day. I think companies employ complaint departments that will grind you down, so you give up, but I am known for my persistence (where do they think the phrase "persistence of a Herring†comes from?) and so I had no problem with pressing the point, whilst RTing people who had also had the weird experience of Yodel drivers saying they hadn't turned up (or throwing their parcels into gardens etc). To be fair I did also ask for Yodel success stories and one man said that he'd never had a problem with them. So there you go.
Another man told me that he had complained to the executive about a botched or failed delivery and the response had been to sack the driver. Which is not what I want to happen. Clearly with so many cases of failure or ineptitude the problem here lies with the way the company operates, not the people they employ (and one can only guess at the working conditions or pay scale that prompt someone to prefer to pretend to have tried to collect a package that to go and collect it).
I was not really intending to make an enemy of the poor schmuck who works for Yodel, not least because he knows where I live. Not that he's ever been here of course (or she, women can be equally useless as men).
This whole palaver has taken over the best part of three or four weeks now. Had the Early Learning Centre just sent me a replacement leg for my sand and water table (something they couldn't do because they don't have that spare part - though I'd suggest they just keep a few boxes of the product handy and take out bits as and when they're required) then none of this would have happened. Or maybe if I'd followed my initial instinct and assumed that they wouldn't believe that I hadn't broken it myself so I might as well buy a whole new product then it would have been easier for us all.
It's been a bit of a fiasco, slightly fuelled by my mischievous spirit. We still haven't had a replacement product for the dubious reason that although they sent it out immediately it didn't make it to the delivery depot in time to reach us in the promised time frame, so they're couriering us one tomorrow. No one had come out of this well, me included. But it's interesting to use the fact that I have access to a national newspaper to test the customer relations departments of various companies. To give Yodel their due, they don't seem to be treating me any differently than a regular customer, even though they know I plan to write about them, and are just more or less ignoring my requests to work out what went wrong. You have to admire them.
Tonight I did my first night time gig for a week and a bit and took part in the very enjoyable Pappy's Flatshare Slamdown. I had had a bottle and a half of beer and so was consequently seemingly off my face, which helped a bit. Was I playing up to it? Were they laughing with me or at me? As long as they were laughing I don't care. But what self-indulgent silliness transpired. I will let you know when it is out.
This week's retro podcast with Susan Calman is up here -
youtube - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Et9baLgR4GM
vimeo - https://vimeo.com/166919342
itunes - https://itunes.apple.com/gb/podcast/richard-herrings-video-leicester/id922855595?mt=2
