| lesley153
|
I hope you can play if you want to, although I still think the chat is more important than the number-crunching.
Number one niece went to visit this evening, and sent a round robin text. The op was successful, which is probably all we need to know. The first few days will be rough, she said, but healing after a major repair is always rough. Just hope this is the one that does the trick. |
Reply #5341. Jan 30 13, 4:05 PM
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satguru 
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Sounds promising, fingers crossed. The real blogs were actually a quite new arrival, before then everyone hung out in the forums and played quizzes and there were only a few timed quizzes a day till about 2004.
Reply #5342. Jan 30 13, 5:28 PM
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| lesley153
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Thanks, David, we all have everything crossed!
I don't know what it was like before 2007. The real blogs were here and the blog button on profiles connected everything neatly. We can click names and look at profiles, but that's nothing like clicking names and blog buttons, and seeing what people are writing. |
Reply #5343. Jan 30 13, 8:23 PM
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satguru
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It did bring an entirely new level here, and gave everyone a chance to get to know members personally rather than a set of opinions and stories. But the forums used to be a small and busy community back when there were a few thousand members there and a band of regulars, and some turned over at least as fast as the chat boards do now. Of course when the blogs arrived I was one of the first to make the most of them (if you arrived in 2007 then I think they'd been there a few years already from the archives yesterday) so would have been pretty much at their peak. To me I'm always amazed with the memory they mop up- the text is trifling but the photos are quite heavy times hundreds of users, but space there was. I'd like to have thought of an alternative site we could link here but blogger doesn't do collective blogs, the others are pretty muck alike, so the format here was unique.
I suppose if people did use these more they'd have the potential to grow, but not updating on the homepage or having dedicated comments and photos has taken the edges off what was a specialized corner and I was amazed to see not a niche as had the majority of regulars posting their own sooner or later, so was clearly very popular. If they were happy to there maybe we could encourage a few back here, even without my photos etc at least the stories and speeches are always going to be the same for us all. I may add (or suggest) an appeal in general to start some more having seen how incredibly popular they were. I'd totally forgotten that till yesterday and would like to see it again somehow.
Reply #5344. Jan 30 13, 10:22 PM
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satguru
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Oh heck, spot the typo...
Reply #5345. Jan 30 13, 10:23 PM
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| lesley153
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There were lots of people keeping a Real Blog, far more than are bothering now, and these Virtual ones are perfunctory by comparison.
There is nothing to match the joy GarrySouders derived from his photographs, paintings, prose and poetry, or the tour de force that was Yaarbiriah's journal. It's a travesty that their creations were expunged.
I spotted the typo. Took me a few reads to spot it, perhaps because it's Freudian. |
Reply #5346. Jan 31 13, 3:40 PM
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Professer
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Agree with everything you said bout real Blogs Lesley, There were so many intresting and varied ones
Reply #5347. Jan 31 13, 3:59 PM
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| lesley153
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| Look on the bright side - we still have innumerable posts with the word "favourite" in the title. |
Reply #5348. Jan 31 13, 6:01 PM
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satguru
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Oy a broch..., or possibly feh!
Reply #5349. Jan 31 13, 8:30 PM
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| lesley153
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Both of those, David. :D
Waiting for my shopping to be delivered, 22 hours late. Booked for between ten and eleven o'clock yesterday evening. Phone call at 10.30.
"This is Chris, your driver."
Are you stuck?
"No, but I won't be able to get to you this evening."
What's happened?
"There's been a software failure, it's affected everyone, and I won't be able to get to you before my delivery time finishes, at 10.45."
Where are you?
"Bedford."
Huh? You've got all my stuff on your van, and you're going to take it back to the depot? How long will it take to drop mine off? Three minutes? And isn't the delivery slot 10 till 11, not 10 till 10.45?
"I won't have time."
If you were stuck in a snowdrift in Hertfordshire, I could understand, but you're Actually. In. Bedford?
"I won't have time. Sorry. Can you phone the call centre to arrange another delivery time."
So I wished him a safe journey home, an hour away, and rang the call centre.
Five minutes moving up the queue in the call centre. Said I'd just had a bizarre call from my driver, and couldn't understand why he won't get here. Call centre man put me on hold while he rang the driver and spoke to a manager.
I'd got a text at about five o'clock to tell me that he was on his way, with one substituted item. Apparently the software had failed later, so nobody knew what they had on the vans or who it was for. On top of that, my driver's SatNav had died, so he was having to find all the addresses manually, and navigate himself, which was making him later and later for each call.
Take comfort, the call centre man said, in the fact that you weren't the only person he missed - there were three or four other people: and look on the bright side, the item that was substituted will be available tomorrow. So you see, it's not all bad! There are no delivery slots available for booking tomorrow, but there are a few kept by for emergencies, like this. The earliest I can deliver is 8pm. And I'll give you a £25 voucher off your next shop, as compensation. (A £25 discount off this shop would have been nice, but I suppose they're not entirely stupid.)
My immediate response was "I don't want compensation. I. Want. My. SHOPPING!" That was probably a mistake. I won't say that again.
So it's on its way, with not one, but four substitutes, none of which I want. One of them is the Italian clementines that would have been on the van last night - but not today. They're sweet, juicy, delicious, and the peel falls off as you look at them. Instead they're sending me Spanish ones. I accepted them once before. They're fresh, juicy, and completely tasteless, and you need a chisel to get the peel off. They're about a quarter of the price of the Italian ones - there's a reason for that. I wrote a review in which I called them pointless, and said you'd be better off saving your money and having a glass of water. :(
And the item that was substituted yesterday? Still substituted. |
Reply #5350. Feb 01 13, 2:11 PM
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Professer
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Thats not right Lesley, you need to complain higher and sort them out
Reply #5351. Feb 01 13, 2:50 PM
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nasty_liar
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Who are you using? Are we allowed to expose their incompetence on here? Well don't worry you can personal message me instead.
We used 'a particular supermarket' for our shops for a long time and used to suffer, late deliveries, breakages substitutions with EVERY single delivery, bags missing, additional bags! (woohoo - I like that mistake).
Anyway, we finally decided enough is enough we'll try someone else. Since changing, our new deliverer has only ever substituted once in countless deliveries and has only delivered a broken item twice. They have never, ever been late. They have never given me the wrong bags and they have never given ours to someone else.
Drawback... they are more expensive, but we feel it's worth it for the hassle free experience.
Reply #5352. Feb 01 13, 2:51 PM
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| lesley153
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It's Ocado, the only one I've ever used.
I accepted one of the substitutions. I didn't keep the clementines, which were half the size they were last time I made the mistake of accepting them, didn't smell of anything, and had been packed at the bottom of the bag, under four glass jars...
Not only do I have the deferred reward of £25 off my next shop, I also have a bottle of wine. I don't know what it is, except it's red, and it's from Chile. It's a thank you for shopping with them!
Years ago, I went to a semi-public meeting with Tesco management, and was given a bottle of Chilean red as a thank you for coming. Jonathan and I had a mouthful each. It went down the sink. Sorry if that's sacrilege.
I still don't know why the last slot of the day finishes 15 minutes after last night's driver was prepared to work. I shall get round to asking, but may not hold my breath for an answer. |
Reply #5353. Feb 01 13, 5:04 PM
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| lesley153
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I got lots of food in in mid-December so I wouldn't have to fight Christmas shoppers, but I noticed that Ocado roughly doubled their delivery charges for about ten days before Christmas and, I think, till after the new year. Nobody else did that. I thought it was rather sharp.
Who shall I try next? |
Reply #5354. Feb 01 13, 5:10 PM
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nasty_liar
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I'm really surprised by that. Just goes to show, it's not neccessarily the company itself but who's running the local stores, depot or whatever.
We used to use Tesco, but they were useless. So the one we use now, and they've always been excellent, is Ocado!
Reply #5355. Feb 01 13, 6:29 PM
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| lesley153
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Oh dear - I thought you were going to say that! According to Wiki, everything comes from Hatfield, which suggests that everything is packed by the same Hatfield people, who don't understand that some foods are hard and some are soft: some are light and some are heavy: customers prefer not to have eggs and bread in the same bag as smelly detergents; and eggs do better if they're in boxes that are 1. upright and 2. closed.
I've had ridiculous substitutions, like three pints of organic semi-skimmed milk replaced by three quarts of non-organic semi-skimmed milk: the occasional wrong item sent, a tub of chocolates with the tear-off seal torn off, and a bit of a shower of drivers. I like it when the drivers get all my bags ready then stand on the doorstep with them. Less impressed with a couple who parked, rang the bell, and then started getting my purchases out. Not pleased with an early one who put the bags in the crates and got me helping, or the one who complained that he was only doing this, and hated it, since his business failed. Once I got a week's supply of baby food.
On one occasion, I got a cheerful, efficient, punctual driver, and a complete and correct order. One perfect order in a year! |
Reply #5356. Feb 01 13, 6:56 PM
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nasty_liar
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You're describing the type of problems we always had with Tesco!
The difference since we switched to Ocado about 12-18 months ago is like comparing chalk to cheese.
Like I said in my above post, only one substitution in all that time, only two breakages (yoghurts). I find that they usually pack sensibly with toiletries/detergents etc in seperate bags.
The drivers have all been perfectly polite and very efficient, some of them offer to bring the stuff inside! Tesco drivers were almost always surly to the point of being rude and it often felt like they were doing me a favour just to bring it to the door.
Ocado offer hour slots whereas Tesco slots were always 2 hours - that was a pain. Like I said before Ocado have never been late with a delivery.
They always seem to give us fresh produce unlike the stuff we received from tesco (sometimes they would send fruit/veg that was half gone bad!)
All of this leads to my amazement that you have problems with them! Maybe if you speak to them again mention what good service Nasty_Liar receives in Yorkshire and they could obviously learn a thing or too from the staff over here...
Reply #5357. Feb 01 13, 7:12 PM
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satguru
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It almost sounds like sabotage, but don't they make more money from deliveries or they'd let everyone go to the shop instead? My mother's had her second Waitrose delivery (is that the same lot?), clicked the 'no substitutes' box to avoid the inevitable, and both were early or on time and what she asked for besides three items in the shop but not the depot. You have had the worst possible set of potential problems in total, I was taught how to pack a supermarket bag as a teenager and even someone hired from the local institution could follow that routine, and like Gary said I would have made a list and sent it to the managing director (very few underneath take any notice although you may have got a voucher at best). Had you bought a house and found the agents had sold you one with a bedroom fewer in a different road the case would have spent days in court, so doing the same with shopping just because it's just a few quid or a tasteless orange is no different in theory. But as the consequences are far greater the chance of the same type of errors when spending thousands is almost zero compared to tens or a hundred or so. It is no harder to take care for items costing pennies or thousands, but easier not to for items costing pennies or pounds, there lies the real problem.
Reply #5358. Feb 01 13, 7:15 PM
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| lesley153
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Interesting about where the drivers put your purchases - I read that they're supposed to ask you where you want them to put the bags, short of packing the stuff away for you; and they're instructed to put the receipt in your hot little hand, not to tell you it's in a bag, or dump it on the nearest surface.
I'm sure these companies make a killing on deliveries. They're not doing it for love. Ocado have a branded bagged salad for £1.30, that I've seen for 85p down the road in Budgens. They wouldn't get away with such a big mark-up on everything, but a few items here and there must help profits. There was a news item a few months ago about shops making a loss on deliveries, and needing to charge about £15 a time to be worth doing. Haven't heard anything about that since. Probably because it was nonsense, and because the whole delivery market would collapse.
I think Ocado started as the delivery arm of Waitrose. It's now a separate company, but a lot of its stock is from Waitrose. Something I used to buy regularly has disappeared, and they said it's because Waitrose stopped stocking it, but they are looking for other suppliers. (I don't think they're trying very hard.)
I'm going to have a look at Waitrose now. Ocado was appealing because it brought things from Hatfield that you couldn't normally get in the cultural backwater that is Bedford, but you can't get them from Ocado now either, so their advantage is gone. Waitrose opened in Bedford recently so I may as well try them now. If all else fails, I'll buy a car, or move back to London, or both. |
Reply #5359. Feb 01 13, 9:25 PM
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satguru
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I'm thinking Bedford pies, Old Ampthill seed cake, Kempston spinach and carrot soup, Sandy donkey cheese and the special St John's station chocolate, or did I just dream it?
Reply #5360. Feb 01 13, 9:35 PM
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