This Is My…2nd Open Letter To Vodafone

Subtitle, genuine dumbfoundedness.

For the first parts please read here, but really there’s probably no need as this is totally unrelated save to say it’s not the first time I’ve wanted to hurl a brick through the vodafone shop window.

So, couple of days ago I got a call from an unknown number, 0141 something-or-other. Missed the call (probably because I was feeding/changing/entertaining a small person, or just plain old, my phone was on silent) thought nothing more of it.
Then a couple of days later I wake up to find a missed call on my phone.
That same number had phoned me at 2am.
Righty.
Phoned it back to be told it was vodafone sales team and they’d phone me back at a later date.
Didn’t do anything about it there and then (you can’t just call them back on that number, oh no, they give you another number to ring) so forgot about it, had a few more missed calls over the next few days, all at stupid times.
So finally today, decided I’d had enough of jumping to answer my phone, missing it, only to find it’s them anyway, so I phoned them back on the landline number they gave only to be asked what my vodafone number is.
Er, I don’t have one. After that last debacle with my contract phone, I told them where they could shove their contract renewal and went with Orange.
So after going through all their options about 20 times and being hung up on more than once, I decided to save money and try their online chat.
This is how the conversation went (with annotations):

info: at 11:47:08
Welcome to Vodafone! You will now be connected with a service adviser. Your approximate wait time is 0 minute(s) and 9 seconds. . We’re looking forward to assisting you today.
info: at 11:49:08
Thanks for your patience – your approximate wait time is 0 minute(s) and 52 seconds. (Looks like vodafone work on computer time)
info: at 11:49:40
You are now connected with Maulin.
Maulin: at 11:49:44
Hello, you’re chatting with Maulin, one of Vodafone’s online customer service specialists. How may I help you today?
Sorrel: at 11:51:59
Hi, I’ve been getting calls on my mobile at all times night and day, & I keep missing them. When I ring them back it says it’s from vodafone and they’ll call me back again later. This has been happening for a few days now, always phoning at silly times. Firstly, can I confirm this is actually from vodafone, then if it is, can I find out what you want please.
Sorrel: at 11:52:38
01414194380 is the number
Maulin: at 11:53:12
I am sorry to hear about this first of all.
Maulin: at 11:53:17
I will surely check this for you (Engrish?)
Maulin: at 11:53:30
May I ask you to please provide us your last name and your number please?
Sorrel: at 11:53:50
Surname is Adams and phone number is 07581356199
Maulin: at 11:54:11
Thanks for the information Sorrel.
Maulin: at 11:54:19
Please bear with me a minute so that I can locate your account.
Maulin: at 11:58:05
Sorry it’s taking a bit longer due to system issue (Yeah, I figure your system was naff, hence the phonecalls)
Maulin: at 11:58:09
please stay connected (Ain’t going nowhere)
Maulin: at 11:58:45
May I ask you to please re-confirm the number please?
Sorrel: at 11:59:14
07581356199. If it helps, I’m not with vodafone, I’m with Orange. Which is why I’m trying to find out what vodafone want with me. (Bomb has been dropped)
Maulin: at 12:01:01
Okay.
Maulin: at 12:01:05
I understand (Good, cos I don’t)
Maulin: at 12:02:23
This looks like a sales or marketing call from us to provide you the better deals
Maulin: at 12:02:36
Would you be interested to know the sales deals please? (HELL NO)
Sorrel: at 12:03:37
No, I’m happy with Orange, what I want is to know how you got my number, why you think I’m a vodafone customer and to get you to stop phoning me.
Maulin: at 12:04:49
Okay. We are sorry for the inconvenience caused to you. Please bear with me a minute while I escalate the case to the relevant team.
Sorrel: at 12:05:21
Thank you
Maulin: at 12:07:33
Thanks for your patience
Maulin: at 12:08:39
I have escalated the case to our sales team so you would not be getting such calls any more. Sorry for the inconvenience caused to you Sorrel. (You better hope I don’t or it’s your ladyballs on the line)
Sorrel: at 12:09:03
Thank you.
Maulin: at 12:09:03
My pleasure serving you today. and sorry once again. (Me love you long time)
Maulin: at 12:09:05
Is there anything else I can help you with?
Sorrel: at 12:09:40
No, that’s all thank you. Goodbye.
Maulin: at 12:09:38
Thanks for chatting with me today. Have a lovely day ahead! (When it starts like this, it can’t get worse)
info: at 12:09:41
This chat has been ended by your Vodafone Representative

So, I think I played quite nice, and lets face it I didn’t even say the bits in italics, and even those (for me) are still polite.
Just have to wait and see if I do get any more calls from them, and I suspect I will.

This is my…Open Letter To Scottish Power

Dear Sirs,

I must admit, before this week, I knew very little about you.

I knew you were one of the “Big Six” gas & electric companies, right up there with the other corporate powers pushing up prices for everyone with the rest of your buddies. But hey, short of going totally independent, I know you’re all as bad as each other so I can’t really hold that against you, and if the Labour Party get their way, you’ll have a nice little ice block hovering over you by the end of 2015.

But what has pushed me to write this letter, is the fact that I have been receiving phone calls on my mobile telephone from you all week.

Now, once or twice I’ll admit, my fault, my phone was either on silent or I was having one of my multiple daily naps, but you weren’t to know this, so you carried on phoning up every day.
This wouldn’t be so bad if you:
a) Phoned up roughly the same time each day
b) Used standard office hours (Though I guess, 9-5 just doesn’t cut it when you have to phone up 63 million people)
c) Let the damn thing ring more than once.
d) Let people ring you back so they can sort it out on their own time.

However despite all of this, I managed to get you on the line this afternoon (28/9/13).

Phone call started off “well” with your agent asking how I was. When I replied busy, he simply responded with “Good” and preceded to launch into his spiel.
I let him finish his first batch of questions on how would I like to save money on my Gas and Electric bills, because even though I was pretty much already fed up with you calling, I was brought up to be polite to people. And having worked in a call center myself, I know this is a pretty crap job at the best of times.
So, I answer simply with I’m not interested and also we are on a card and key meter for our energy, so there’s not much you can probably do from us.
Granted, foolish, as your agent quickly responded with the fact that you can help people even with meters.
So I answer again, not interested and besides, they aren’t even in my name. I don’t even know where you think I live, as I had just moved out of my parents and in with my partner, but either way it’s still not in my name, so speaking to me, a tad pointless.

 

Your agent then informed me that it was actually I who had signed up as interested in hearing more about saving energy prices. But not just through any old website scam, oh no, through a Mum and Baby club.

And this is where I start to go off the rails.

For starters, unless this is in some uber small print of one of only a handful of places I signed up to (and to be honest, they are all e-mail only as far as I’m aware, I don’t remember giving my number to anyone) I would never have stated please call me, because I’m not interested and as previously stated, not in my name anyway.
But even if I had freely given out my mobile number and not checked the tiny writing, what on EARTH makes you think it is a good idea to be phoning heavily pregnant women non-stop then trying every pressure sales technique in the book to get them to sign up to something that is probably the last thing on their mind.
I wonder how many times a day you have ladies threatening to cut certain parts of mens anatomies off, because the last thing you want to do is piss off a ball of hormones. This can’t make for happy workers any more than happy mums-to-be.
I guess you hope that so many of us don’t know what day of the week it is half the time that we’ll just say yes to anything to shut you up and carry on with our lives. Which, if that is true, is despicable.
Do you honestly have any idea exactly how many things goes through a pregnant woman’s head on a daily basis? 99.9% of them are about the baby, and the other 0.01% is about the day to day running of the house. I’d imagine I speak for a hell of a lot of women when I say, we’re glad if we wake up in the morning with enough energy to put a load of washing on, without worrying where the electricity is coming from.

I suppose in some small trying-to-be-admirable way you’re only trying to save us money because with a new arrival most people have to count every penny in and out.
But here’s an idea, wait until the baby is born.
Granted, you’ll then be pissing off mothers with screaming babies, but at least we won’t be so irrational and be thinking more about money and the future with a clear head.
Or better still, don’t phone at all.

And, instead of only being able to offer about 1p difference to all the other 5 big hitters, how about you actually lower your prices independently instead of teaming up to keep prices high so you can pay your bonuses, then maybe, we’ll come to you instead.

Hormonally yours,

Miss Adams
36+4 weeks pregnant.

This is my…Weary Wednesday

So yet another day of avoiding politics.

I mean, I follow it to an extent, I’m a paid for member of Labour and I like to know what they’re up to, but I really do draw the line at watching their conference speeches. Not only because they are long and quite uneventful, but all the policies are repeated all day by the news (and Chris).
I’ll take my politics bite-sized.

Anyway, so apart from sleeping through one speech, I managed to convince Chris to drop me in town to meander through the shops at my own leisure.
First stop was Argos to look up new cameras as mum had said she’d give us some money for one. I don’t think I’ve bought one since they had film in them and you had to wind them on for half hour, turns out modern cameras are stupidly expensive so a quick phone call to the mater to see what her upper limit was so I knew what I could afford to put with it and purchase one. Whilst on the phone I had a small epiphany that Granddad might like to buy something for bump too, and it just so happened that he was sitting right next to mum (as he’s round on a Wednesday) and asked him if he’d like to buy a baby monitor. After relaying this through mum, I think the answer was yes (it was actually something like “I think that’s within my means”) so I have both of them bought and in my possession, just need to start rounding up debts!

After a quick (read: nearly fell asleep) detour in Costa for a refuelling tea break, I took a mosey round Boots and Marks and Sparks for some essentials before raiding Pound Land for a metric ton worth of folders to get all my paperwork sorted out once and for all as I’ve had quite a few people wanting information from me that was all safely stored in boxes, never to be seen again.
Well till tomorrow when I’ll sort them out.

One more pit stop, this time at the library cafe, which although their prices are good, the service is a bit bad. Don’t know if it was close to closing time, but she was on the phone to *someone* for about 5 minutes, during which I plonked my backside down only to have two people line up and wait for her to be finished on the phone. Nice if you have the energy. Probably was closing time by the time I actually got to order anything.

Shuffle home, bed.

This is my…36th Week!

For the most part today has been a good day.
We even managed to make £40 on the carboot which considering I hardly sold any of my nice clothes (On a rail that I had to tape together because some vital parts had gone missing) and I didn’t get a pair of nice shoes from the stall opposite when I had the chance then someone else bought them, and, as mentioned yesterday, I forgot the chair, so I had to keep swivelling in and out of the car.
But what really irked me was a guy, came and picked up one of the books we were peddling (just happened to be Tony Blair) and asked how much it was. Replying 50p, he said can’t say fairer than that for a hardback, and coughed up the change.
All fine and dandy, then before I’ve even had a chance to put the money in the tub, he goes “No, not acceptable, it’s water damaged, I want my money back”
Er, what?
“I sell books for a living this isn’t good enough”
I caved in and gave him his sodding 50p back because it wasn’t worth the hassle, but seriously. I have no problem with people buying to re-sell, if you buy it off of me you can burn it for all care, but basically demanding a refund just because you can’t sell it is a bit off. It’d be like Chris picking up a game, paying for it, checking the disc condition then asking for the money back because it was bad.
Check it’s condition before you pay, or just take it as a hit and move on.
It’s a very sad state of affairs when you have to put on the side of you car “No Refunds” or “Sold As Seen”.

Anyway, in other news, I’m 36 weeks today!

Bump is back to his usual hyperactive self, booting my bladder at all hours. Sickness is down to about once a week, sicky feeling about once a day, usually still triggered by smells or overheating. Back pain is getting unbearable, if I even think about having a lie down, or try and move at any point over the night (which is quite a lot as I’m a fidgety pain (Bed sheet removed itself this morning ready for the wash)) really hurts. Worse at night because it fully wakes me up taking me forever to get back to bed.

In official news, his bones should be fully formed by now, other than his skull which has to stay squishy to get out. His muscles have developed including his Ulnar grasp (vice like grip when you put your finger in their hand). My placenta is the size of a dinner plate (nom) and is about 1/8th of bumps weight.

Other than that, just waiting. Waiting. And more waiting.

This is my…Disappointed Face

I haven’t had a rant in a while, but after seeing headlines in newpapers and TV (including one I read and would have thought knew better) all over the place, I feel the need to chip my two penneth in.

Violent video games do not make violent people.

Tempted to leave it there, but if you feel the need for justification here goes.

1. Quite simply, I have played most of these violent games over the years and I’ve never killed anyone. And guess what, I’m not in the minority. These games have sold millions. MILLIONS. And these killings that are “related” to the games are still very much less than that.
2. People have been killing other people for years. It’s very much a human defect. We have killed for superiority, love, food, shelter, mind altering drugs, or just sheer unhingedness.
3. Before games, films were blamed. Before films, I suspect risqué vaudevillian actresses with their legs uncovered were probably blamed. People need to find justification for actions that just sometimes have none.
4. If games really had any influence on us as humans, people who play FIFA all day and night would be pro-footballers, people who played Trauma Center would be doctors and people who played Mario would be plumbers.

In a more specific point relating to this case, where a man was stabbed for his copy of GTAV, they took his wallet & watch too so how can you just say it’s just for the game. In my opinion they were looking for someone nerdy and rich to steal from, and what better than a carpark at night and a person that can clearly afford to buy a game at brand spanking new price.

This one, about the guy who shot up an American Naval base, however, is what’s made my blood boil.
Granted, doing anything for 18 hours a day must have some effect on the back of your mind, but before you even get to that he “told psychiatrists he heard voices in his head long before he went on the rampage” and had already been “in trouble with the police on gun crimes”, yet was never declared mentally unstable and never had his gun licence revoked.
How can someone who has been in trouble for gun crimes not only be left with a guns & gun licence but left his pass to what should have been a high-security Naval area? And a drinker?

Basically past the headline there’s nothing in that article that suggests anything other than an unhinged man who was not only failed by health authorities but overlooked by police authorities. This was preventable, and not by banning video games, but by picking up on peoples problems when presented.

Best bit though was the picture that’s on that article and in the paper, of him enjoying his violent video games, actually shows an NFL game.
Real violent.

I could go on, but I feel the need to play Final Fantasy then go cast some spells over the local village monsters.

This is my…Technological Breakdown

You know how they say things go in threes?
Not in this house, they tend to go on mass just to make sure as much goes wrong at once.
This week, Phone has got the loudest interference I have ever heard, to the point that a couple of questions the woman asked on the phone were borderline hilarious like, “Do you have a dial tone” No idea can’t hear it. Or “Are you phoning from the problem line?” Of course, that’s why I said 10 seconds ago it was unusable.
Sigh. I guess they are paid to ask stupid questions as most people who phone them up are that stupid.
So, engineer is all booked up for tomorrow with a whole heap of provisos, like if we don’t answer the door to him, it’ll cost us £106 and if he comes and he finds out it’s an internal fault (Aka the phone was at fault, not the line) then it would cost us £130.
So, lemme get this straight, that fee is if it’s our fault and we’ve “wasted the engineers time” so he’ll still get paid. But if it’s their fault then we don’t get charged at all, so…he doesn’t get paid? *Ish confused*

Anyway, on top of that (though more than likely related) the internet is wobbly at best and phoning up AOL the other day did less than nothing, because they couldn’t get it out of their heads that we were trying to set up a wireless network for the first time. Er, no we’ve been on the internet (Read: paying their bills) for ages, d’you really think we’d not have set it up yet? So hopefully if this is a line fault getting the phone man out will cure it without having to phone them again because it’s worse than drawing blood out of a stone.

Toaster is also pretty much out of commission as it wont pop when done. Nearly set the house on fire the other night because I put some toast in then let Chris dish up his food, thinking my toast would let me know when it was done.
Nope. Just quite happily sat their burning till I manually popped it out.

And the TV signal keeps dropping. And making weird beeping noises at me.

Let’s just keep everything crossed that nothing else blows up in the mean time. I’m looking at you washing machine…

This is my…Dodgy Joint Pain

After I got so much done yesterday I was feeling really good about myself.

I haven’t been sick, or even feeling that sick so much lately (other than when the heat hits me like a ton of bricks) but it was raining for the most part today so I thought I’d be safe to venture outside the house for a bit.

Pretty much never going to do that again, at least until bump is here.

We only had a few bits to do in town but as the shops were spread out it meant a bit of a walk/waddle for me. I was fine for, oh lets say, 10 seconds before I would have killed for a sit down. Seriously, my legs just went “nope”, my head then followed suit by making me feel dizzy.
After the first shop I made myself keep going, Chris ran (walked at a normal speed) ahead to Poundland leaving me just to waddle to the one after. I did stop quickly in WH Smiths to pick up a bottle of water (I felt like a Marathon runner doing a pit stop at the drinks table) and carried on to the destination, only to find that Chris had been to Poundland, & been waiting for ages.
Clearly a lot slower than I look.

Just about managed to make it back, only by persuading Chris that we really REALLY didn’t need to go round the Supermarket as well, and opted to pick a takeaway sandwich up at a local cafe instead, where at least I could sit down whilst I waited.

Didn’t really get much done in the afternoon, but when dinner time came round, realised that we still hadn’t been to the shop and I had nothing to eat.
Back out to the shops.
And this is where I found out what my major problem is. Getting in and out of the car.
It’s something to do with twisting my hip joint as I swivel out, I nearly blacked out from the pain. It was all I could do not to scream (I opted for a loud whimper). It was recommended, when I saw the physio, that I keep my legs together and swivel my whole body to help, but that just buggers up my back instead, and it’s hard to break a habit of a lifetime of getting in and out of cars, I just don’t think until it hits me, then I wish I was back in bed.
Really not aided by the stupid self service checkouts in Morrisons being the most useless things on the planet. I’ve said it before but I seriously am never using them again. Where the bags are is too low so my back is twisted getting to them, they ALWAYS throw a hissy fit at things being the wrong weight and yesterday just for fun, it wouldn’t even let one of the shop assistants sort it out just sat there in froze mode for ages. I hate technology.

Oh and coupled with yesterdays fun of getting in and out of the bath (I reiterate my plea, if anyone local has a shower I could borrow for the next 7 or so weeks, that’d be grand, I’ll give you some money for the water if needs be) I’m really considering staying in bed till bump arrives.
Oh and I can’t wait to see how the whole hospital side of things plays out with everything aching this much already.
7 weeks and counting.

This is my…Almost Organised House

As I mentioned yesterday we’ve had the electrician in the past few days sorting out the lack of power upstairs and whilst it’s been a bit of chaos having carpets ripped up and all my cupboards emptied (and no lights Monday night) we’re almost back to normal and with a lot more fixed than I though we’d get for (the landlords) money.

Because we didn’t see him leave yesterday, I didn’t know if he’d finished, as everything that I thought was being done, had been done, but he’d left the carpet up in one place and some of his cable still in one corner, however this was quickly sorted by finding out that the boiler wasn’t working (no electric going to it) and we were without hot water.

I was all ready to jump down his throat thinking he’d finished, left the house in a bit of a tip, and not noticed he’d broken the boiler. However he answered the phone and said he wasn’t feeling very well, but would still come in and have a look, even though he hadn’t touched the boiler. And in all fairness to him, he did and got it fixed in about half an hour, and as he was leaving I noticed he’d got a bit of cotton wool on his arm like he’d been for a blood test, so I felt really REALLY bad for dragging him out.

He then at least said he’d be back Friday or Monday to just to the last bits and fix one in the kitchen that I thought couldn’t even be fixed.
Good bloke.

After that, dad should be back to put the last of the shelves up at the weekend, then I’ll get my backside on to painting them next week, just leaving the windows to be done (I hope this side of Christmas) and we’ll be sorted.

In other news, I’ve found a love for passive aggressively talking through bump to people who annoy me. Started off with making Chris feel guilty about not doing things by telling bump how mean daddy was, but today progressed to telling bump how disgusting people who spit in the street are. He glared but maybe he’ll think twice before spitting right on the ground in front of someone.

Doubt it, but I felt better.

This is my…Rant Of The Day

Too many idiots about today to condense into a facebook status so, lucky them, they get a whole blog ranted at them.

• People who ignore the NHS. What do they know.
  So apart from the fog of chavs I had to deal with the other day at the hospital (Fog…Cloud..ASBO? Must work out a collective noun for chavs) I thought it couldn’t get much worse. Wrong.
  A man with his very small baby slung so far over his shoulder in a firemans carry style hold the poor thing was practically upside down.
  Lost count how many times we nearly ran over toddlers who’s parents had crossed a road in front of us (and had pretty much made it to the other side) but forgetting they had a small child running behind them struggling to keep up.
  Finally managed to make it to the pub for lunch only to be presented with a pregnant lady on the table opposite with a pint of beer in hand. Yay. Then another lady came in with buggy full of tiny baby and slightly bigger toddly person, plonked them at a table before going right back outside for a cigarette. I suppose at least she wasn’t smoking in front of the baby (Like I believe she wouldn’t anyway, she probably just needed her hands free) but leaving the toddler in charge? Yeah.
• People crossing the road without looking
  Sorta follows the ones who think their kids have longer legs than they do, but when adults walk off the pavement into the road without even a glance, what do they expect other than for me to tell them exactly what I think of them. Dare to glare at ME like I’m in the wrong and we will speed up.
• People who should have their driving licences revoked
  Apart from all the people who don’t think red lights apply to them, the amount of people who don’t look before pulling out, or pull out slowly thinking you’ll take pity on them but keep going even if you don’t stop, and again glare like you’re in the wrong. You’re not the only one in a hurry. Being let out is a privilege, one that you have not earned.
• People who think I want to hear their conversation/argument
  Was woken up today at half 6 by the local forghorn kicking some man (possibly her kids dad, possibly just someone she met last night) out of her house rather unceremoniously. This was from across the road, with the windows shut. This is not the first time.

I think that’s it for today. But it’s only 4pm, there’s still time for some more annoyance.

EDIT: Told you.

• Facebook
  It ain’t broke. Don’t fix it.
  WHAT IS THIS!?!
  

This is my…Earworm Breakdown (Big When I Was Little)

So, today I’ve decided to rip apart a song that’s been stuck in my head for a while now.

Big When I Was Little – Eliza Doolittle

Now I do like this song, catchy tune, and as Eliza is only a year younger than me, things that where big when she was little were big when I was little too.
Having said that, there’s a few things that have been bugging me timeline wise, so here is a mental breakdown.

Eliza born-1988
Eliza 01-1989
Eliza 02-1990 – End of Cassette Tapes – Nirvana
Eliza 03-1991                                                – Nirvana
Eliza 04-1992                                                – Nirvana – SNES
Eliza 05-1993                                                – Nirvana – SNES
Eliza 06-1994                                                – Nirvana – SNES – Lauren Hill
Eliza 07-1995                                                                      – SNES – Lauren Hill
Eliza 08-1996                                           – Spice Girls – SNES – Lauren Hill
Eliza 09-1997                                           – Spice Girls – SNES
Eliza 10-1998                                           – Spice Girls
Eliza 11-1999
Eliza 12-2000
Eliza 13-2001                                            – Nike TN’s
Eliza 14-2002                                                                  – Malcom In The Middle Started
Eliza 15-2003
Eliza 16-2004
Eliza 17-2005
Eliza 18-2006 – Wembley Arena
Eliza 19-2007
Eliza 20-2008

Spice Girls – 1996/1998 (Wannabe to Geri’s departure)
Polaroid camera – 80s
Cassette tapes – Pretty much replaced by 1990
Malcom in the middle – started in 2001 in UK
Nirvana – 1990/1994 (Big label signing to Kurts death)
Lauren Hill – 1994/1996 (In Fugees)
SNES – 1992/1997 (release to N64 release)
Avirex Jackets (2002 Ali G?)
Strawberry Ribenia – ?!?!?
Nike TN’s – 2001
Wembley Arena re launch – 2006

So in case you can’t be bothered to draw your own conclusion, I think things that were “Big” before her time include Polaroid Cameras & Cassette Tapes.
Things like Nirvana were big when she was very little, even I can’t really claim to have been a fan when Kurt was still alive.
SNES was around when she was just of game playing age, and (even though I know she comes from a stupidly rich family) I can’t really see her having one from launch at that early age. And unless she was some sort of Soothsayer, Wembley Arena shaped dreams would have been when she was 18. Not exactly little!

Well that was fun.
I’m happy to take suggestions of other songs that you’d like ripped apart, I have a few others saved away for rainy (read, boring) days.