We are all working harder – well most of us….

The general theme that comes across when I talk to people in business is that we all appear to be working harder than ever (generally for lower fees), this is not a complaint (that comes later) – it is a fact of life. The economy is in a bad way so we have to ‘dig in’ and work through it, or at least most of us do – but not it seems the Royal Mail…..

courtesy of Viz…

I will admit to not being one of the Royal Mails biggest fans, I have blogged various times before about them and can’t recall any of them being positive, and this one isn’t either!

I accept that if I am not in the Royal Mail can’t deliver packages to me, and I have asked them not to deliver them to my 85 year old neighbour. Previously the card left asks me to wait 24 hours for the package to return to the sorting office – around 2 miles away. That is fine, I really don’t have an issue with this.

However, it now appears that it takes 48 hours to do this – why?

All I can assume is that the package is placed back into the Royal Mails own post – as we all know everything (even first class post) takes at least 48 hours these days……

 

A case of ‘cart before the horse’?

What happens when you put a package delivery service together with a mobile phone operator? Chaos!

Over the last few weeks I have been intrigued by the actions of the delivery company Yodel – they tried to deliver a package to me – but I wasn’t expecting anything and it wasn’t anyone’s birthday for months. So what could it be…….

I decided to wait until it had been attempted to be delivered three times, so that I could then collect it from the depot (in Loughborough). Unfortunately the third delivery attempt was not notified to us by a failed delivery card (although according to the Yodel website it occurred when we were in the house!). So the package ended up being returned to the sender.

A call to Yodel confirmed the sender was Virgin Media – I am a Virgin customer so I rang them to ask what they had been trying to send to me – and why I had not been notified! I was told that nothing had been sent and that they would have advised me if they were sending something out to me.

Fair enough – this was a few days ago, and I decided to let it rest. And then today I received the attached email saying they had sent something to me. It is also related to a safety recall. It appears that my current modem power supply could overheat and catch fire (as confirmed in the link they sent me).

So I am not impressed with Virgin for a number of reasons;

1. They didn’t tell me the item was on its way to me

2. This is a safety recall – surely it should be dealt with in a more professional manner?

3. A text? really the best way to deal with it?

And as far as Yodel are concerned – next time you ‘deliver’ at 8.30 in the evening perhaps it would be worth actually coming to the house? I might even be in!

 

Phone networks – friend or foe?

The mobile phone is a part of everyday life now – the smart phone is rapidly getting to the same position – how many people do you know who haven’t got one?

The mobile phone operators are all keen to land us as clients – they make great offers to lure you over to them, but how is the service then? At work we received some interesting ‘care’ from Orange before we had even signed up with them – because of this we didn’t move to them from Vodafone – perhaps this should have made me think before going with T-Mobile for my daughters iPhone!

The deal was (is) good, and the network is great. But, once things go wrong the care becomes rather less ‘impressive’.

Daughters iPhone was stolen this weekend (second time – not good, but not her fault). So a replacement SIM card was required – not a massive ask you would think as we have a contract – but there is a £10 charge! They give them away free to new customers! Also the opening times on the EE website (which has recently been updated) were wrong for the Nottingham stores – but that is another story!

And it gets better, we needed a ‘fill in’ phone while we sorted out the insurance, so a cheap pay as you go was required. But, and there is always ‘a but’ – we had to add £10 airtime to a sim we didn’t want. I asked the question – “can’t you wave that on the basis that we have just paid £10 for a sim anyway” – apparently not!

So we went to Carphone Warehouse who were very helpful and let us use a pay as you go number on another network to do an upgrade and therefore pay only for the phone.

So brilliant service (and advise) from Carphone Warehouse, but money grabbing and greed from T-Mobile, Orange, EE or what ever they call themselves today. If I need another mobile who will I be going to do you think?

 

Street View is back!

You would have had to have been on a deserted island not to have seen the details of the Apple Maps debacle in recent months. Apple sent Google packing – they had previously had a close relationship with them over many things in iOS (the iPhone operating system). But, in IOS 6 they finally got rid of Google maps with its amazing detail and street view and replaced it with their own Map App – which was (and is) rather poor by their standards (actually by anyones standards!).

Heads have rolled at Apple and they have made a public apology about the Maps – a rare event from Apple. There is talk about them buying TomTom who provide the data to enable a faster solving of issues – time will tell.

But now we have Google Maps back on iOS (iPhone at least) in the form of a new app – and it looks great (much as it did before – but better).

It will be interesting to see what Apples response will be – the pressure is on!

 

Trying to find a positive spin?

It was pointed out to me a few weeks ago that blogging ‘negative’ stories was not such a good idea (thanks John), perhaps that is true, and if I am honest I do try not to go into ‘grumpy old man mode’ if I can help it – but sometimes I just can’t help it!

So in an effort to put a positive spin on something that drives me to the verge of insanity please read on;

Morrison’s self scanning tills – one of life’s more trying experiences! I have blogged about them before (so won’t say anymore). A recent visit confirmed my previous experiences and I do wonder just how much trade this loses Morrison’s – particularly from the casual ‘small purchase’ market. That is something only they can quantify, and if the lack of activity on improving their scanners is anything to go by they haven’t considered it!

However, after giving up on the self scan I went to a ‘real’ till with a young lady (showing my age here) who was both pleasant and swift. I mentioned to her my problems (with the scanners) and she said she hated them as well – but it did make me realise that it also protected her job – which is a good (and positive) thing.

There you go – not always grumpy after all!

 

Possibly predictable – but interesting!

I have had various comments about how numerous my ‘Apple’ blogs are from people I know, I make no apology – although it would be nice to get the same effect as my colleague Tim Garratt and his Jaguar blog! I still believe that the retail world can learn a lot from Apple and how they run their stores and staff them – they are universally seen as ‘the way to do it’, but recent data further supports that by showing just how efficient they are at selling!

Apple Stores are the possibly the envy of every other retailer on the planet. From their wonderful design to the constant stream of customers, they are all but universally a success. But, how much better do Apple Stores do than the competition? According to a new American study (and one assumes this would be the same the World over), they bring in twice as much in sales per square foot as anyone else in the market.

The research by RetailSales shows that Apple top the list of chain store productivity, pulling in $6,050 in sales per square foot of store. Tiffany the jewellery store come in second place, at $3,017.

The numbers were generated it appears simply by taking the brick-and-mortar sales numbers from the companies, and splitting it among the square footage of store space they occupy.

Apple is the only tech company to break the top ten, a section otherwise dominated by luxury and clothing products. Interestingly there are plenty of other retail chains that sell more than Apple on a per store basis, they just tend to be physically much, much larger. Apple stores are also often in very prime retail locations – so the rents are likely to reflect the footfall. So the data is not as clear as it first looks – but it makes a nice story…..

 

Another ‘winner’ from Royal Mail – the delivery to neighbour service!

I received a card through my door from Royal Mail last week, not the usual ‘you weren’t in’ card that I love so much, but one relating to that service. Now correct me if I am wrong, but the Post Office is supposed to be a trustworthy service – part of the backbone of British Society. If you can’t trust your postman, who can you trust – or words to that effect.

I have been noting a decline in the post office over the last few years and have blogged to that effect on many occasions. Most recently it related to the failure to deliver a package and then losing it at the sorting office when I went to claim it! So, anything purporting to improve this service is a good thing in my opinion. This however is nothing of the sort…..

Their proposal – the delivery to neighbour service – is to get your agreement to allow the postman to leave your package with any of your neighbours if you aren’t in. Now in my view this allows the post office to side step one of their main responsibilities, and something we pay for – ensuring the post gets to the correct address. As a scheme it also has various large holes in it and appears poorly thought out;

• You can’t state which neighbour to be used.
• You can’t ask them to avoid troubling an old neighbour – we have one who is in her late 80′s
• There is an option to opt out – but to do this you have to put up a sticker (they provide) which might as well say ‘I don’t trust my neighbours’!

We are forced to opt out due to the age of our neighbour, it would be wrong to have her disturbed for our post. I cannot believe we are alone in this and find it amazing that this hasn’t occured to the Post Office when they came up with this daft scheme. I believe this is yet another step towards the demise of our postal system as there is now no way of guaranteeing the delivery of ‘normal’ mail once this system starts.

If I was cynical I might think that they are just trying to force us to use the more expensive premium services that guarantee delivery? If so the couriers will step in and out price them.

Time for a re-think Royal Mail?

 

How was your visit?

I am all for customer service feedback, as a grumpy old man it gives me the ability to complain at their request! I also feel it is important to give feedback – how can a business improve its service without? So, if I see a feedback form or similar I will invariably fill it in – both positively and negatively – I am happy to give credit where it is due!

So this weekend at Caffe Nero on Foreman St in Nottingham when my wife picked up a ‘how was your visit’ card I felt honour bound to reply! An added incentive to respond is the fact that they are offering to enter any replies into a draw for free coffee for a month, or an iPad (I like coffee, but the iPad would be the one!)

The card has a web address to go to and a survey entrance code – so should be simple to do. But sadly the codes (both the wife and I tried) do not work which is not a great way to impress your clients! We were able to give feedback using our reciept and a store code. But that is not the point, if you have a system it should work – especially if it is for customer feedback!

So, Caffe Nero, I claim my iPad!

 

An uncharacteristic slip?

I am an Apple fan – no one would dispute that, and I would always describe their customer care and retail experience as second to none. however, I have finally caught them out – not in a big way – but they have finally made a mistake!

I have an old MacBook at home, one of the black early Intel chip ones. It is lovely, runs like a dream (far faster on Snow Leopard than my much younger Windows 7 laptop) and it is a family favourite now. It was the reason for my recent dealings with Apple.

My step daughter is the lucky owner of a new MacBook Pro on account of her A level results and imminent move to Loughborough University (well done Star). Setting this up and playing with it set me hankering after Lion on my MacBook (it won’t run Mountain Lion). Now upgrading should be easy, just visit the Mac App store and download it, except for the fact that Apple have removed Lion and replaced it with Mountain Lion.

I am sure I am not the only person who didn’t upgrade when they could have, so how was I to progress this? My initial call was to Jigsaw24 in Nottingham who were really helpful (thanks John) and confirmed that there was no way they could get me a copy of Lion, but that they would raise a case with Apple for me so that I could try to get it.

And this is where I finally get to catch out Apple! The case setup by Jigsaw24 worked and I was able to order a copy of Lion – I was told it was a download version so I would get two emails (just like the current Mountain Lion update) – but no emails arrived apart from an invoice and a ‘how did we do’ customer service email. This was strange I thought, so I left it 24 hours just incase it was an issue with mail. Still nothing!

So a call back to Apple care, who were again amazingly helpful, was made from which it transpired that I was being sent a disc copy of Lion. Strange because to the best of my knowledge it was always download only! This is not a problem, I will get my software, and being on a disc actually suites me (it’s an age thing).

This is not the end tot he story – two days later I actually received the download emails as originally informed – so it was a download after all!

But it feels good to have finally found just a tiny error in the Apple system – they must be human after all!

 

Our ‘wonderful’ post office – (sorry that should be Royal Mail)

This is pet hate of mine – some businesses never fail to let you down, and the Royal Mail are one such business. I have not had issue with them for a while, more due to not using them (I don’t trust them) rather than them getting better.

And now in the space of a week they have excelled themselves – twice;

Firstly it was my stepdaughter Star’s 18th Birthday, so numerous cards were sent to her. My brother lives near Swindon in Wiltshire (not exactly the back of beyond). He sent his card first class on the day before Star’s birthday – his expectation being that it would arrive the next day – this is why he paid for first class mail!

Unsurprisingly the Royal Mail excelled themselves in their level of incompetence – a poor service would have been two days to deliver, rubbish service would be 3 or 4 days – but no – we did far worse than that.

SEVEN DAYS! That is totally useless and I am sorry to say just sums up our once great Post Office (now Royal Mail) - no wonder they are losing all of their business. So in future I assume we all need to send things at least one week before the deadline you are working to. Also why pay extra for first class?

Best get the Xmas cards ready now then!

As far as the other ‘cock up’ goes – that is a far greater one and actually has really made me consider never using the parcels service ever again – I think that deserves it’s own blog entry, so more on that tomorrow!

UPDATE-

Post altered to reflect Royal Mail rather than the Post Office as I have been informed by the Post Office via Twitter that they have nothing to do with Royal Mail now!