Blacknight's Customer Support is Excellent!

There's a bit of chatter floating around the blogsphere that started from a post of Tom Raftery's the other day.

I personally don't like to see dirty linen aired in public (unless it's Twink's - that voicemail was hilarious!), but Tom seems to think otherwise. The problem with these kind of issues is that readers are left feeling that they only have half the story as each side is putting forward their own case.

As you know, I'm off to BarCamp tomorrow, so instead of driving down from Dublin in the morning, we decided to break the journey with a night at my future-in-laws in Laois. So I've been spending the day camped in Blacknight's offices after Michele kindly invited me to.

I'm sitting in their conference room right now and the customer support staff are just outside the door and I've been half-listening in to their calls this morning (not on purpose now!). I have to say that it's a long time since I've heard such polite and well-informed support staff, going out of their way to help people. They even spent 30 mins this morning working with me trying to get my laptop onto their network as my VPN wasn't too keen to talk to theirs!

Maybe I'm biased in my opinions though, as most of the support calls I've placed recently have been to NTL! But the whole office seems like a lovely environment to work and they all have a great rapport. I haven't been listening in to the sales team, but I'm sure my hubbie is whipping them into even better shape as I type...

(Disclosure: I'm marrying Blacknight's Sales Manager later this year)

Class cartoon...

I get my cartoons delivered by mail each day each day from mycomicspage.com - this one came through at the weekend, it's a Joel Pett classic!

No wonder we swear so much in this country...

Alternatively, this could also be titled: The difference between good customer service and bad...

Today the Hubbie and I decided to pop out to the hotel where we are having our wedding for a spot of lunch and to see if the wedding coordinator was available. When we arrived we asked for Claire, the wedding coordinator, who also happens to be the General Manager and were told that she was starting work in 10 mins, so we went off for a lovely carvery lunch in their bar. We also chatted to the Catering Manager and he promised us as much time as we needed.

After lunch we found Claire, who was just getting settled into her work day and asked if she had a few minutes - bear in mind that we turned up out of the blue and had made no appointment. She readily agreed to spend time with us and sat for the next hour working through her checklist, noting down details and helping us to come to decisions. She walked us around the hotel, showing us rooms and available areas and was generally wonderful in every way. Not only that, but she took our e-mail addresses and planned to send us on a load more info that we had requested. I much prefer to plan projects by mail rather than over the phone because you have a written trail and can refer back to it at any time. As a final touch she sent us away with quarter bottles of their house wines so that we could taste them and decide if we wanted them for the wedding reception.

We then headed out and drove to Argos at Liffey Valley. I had reserved some bedlinen as I wanted to get a change of linen for our winter king-size quilt, it's just become too much hassle to strip the bed and get it washed, dried and back on within the one day. Argos was busy when we got there and our ticket promised our goods would be available in around 9 minutes so we settled in for the short wait. It was less comfortable that usual as they've removed all the chairs from the waiting area of the store. We stood for over 20 minutes as did most other people, as very small amounts of goods trickled down. The Hubbie surmised that the warehouse staff must have all gone on a break as it was just 4pm, and after a while I began to agree with them.

Finally our goods arrived, and the duvet cover was a completely different colour from the one shown in the catalogue! I pointed out to the girl who had passed them over to us that the duvet was icky brown rather than orange and she simply shrugged and said "we've had problems with that one before". She eventually called the manager over who took the duvet cover and went to phone the stockroom to see if the wrong stock had been pulled, but apparently not - "it was a misprint in the catalogue - do you wanna keep it or get a refund?". Not a hint of an apology from anyone. Bear in mind that we had been standing in store for over 30 mins now, between waiting to pay and waiting for the goods.

I can understand how a printing error can appear in Argos' printed catalogue and they can't change that, but I researched and reserved the item online - surely if they've had a misprint they can change either the picture or the description quite easily on the website? Or even remove the item in question... I also had 2 interactions with Argos before seeing the goods (internet reservation and paying for it), could they not set a trigger on their computerised till system to warn the staff to tell the customer that the colour may differ from that shown? And to not even offer a word of apology when someone has been standing waiting for a long time and the goods are wrong - it's just basic bad customer service - and that's why Argos won't be getting any more custom from me!

Nominations are open for the 2007 Irish Blog Awards

Nominations are now open for the 2007 Irish Blog Awards. The field is strong this year, and I doubt that I'll get nominated for anything, but you never know.

Twenty is bound to be a shoo in for a few awards again - how he keeps up his phenomenal content in such a prolific fashion is beyond me...

I hope that Beaut.ie does well, the girls have really found a gap in the Irish blogosphere and have gathered a large crowd of admirers already - not bad for a few months work.

Another noob (in the blog sense only!) is Grandad over at HeadRambles - someone who rarely fails to put a smile on my face on a daily basis! And having checked out his Testimonials page, it seems a lot of people agree with me, including my mother!!!

Stunning...

Class video from Blip.tv user Eagle of Microsoft taking over the fountains at the Bellagio in Las Vegas. It's a bit slow to get started, so bear with it...

Loki's vision displayed in Las Vegas on 1/8/07 at 6:30 PM

Update: this seems to be linked to http://vanishingpointgame.com/ the url that you can nearly make out at the end of the video. The site says that it's a "puzzle challenge spanning the globe... with prizes that take you beyond it, including a trip to see the ultimate vista".

Update 2: More info surfacing on the vanishing point game, it seems that they are sending puzzle boxes to some bloggers and they have to communicate their findings to the general public for them to solve the clues.... curiouser and curiouser....

Sheriff Video

Very interesting video and good to see a usage of new technology to try and spread a message. Easy to see how it could happen here or anywhere too...



From here: http://video.sheriff.org/psa_cartheft.shtml
With thanks to my safety department at work.

BarCamp SouthEast - details of my talk...

BarCamp SouthEast is taking place in Waterford on Saturday 20th January. If you want to attend, then please sign up on the wiki, or send your name to barcampsoutheast at gmail dot com. You can also follow the planning on the blog. We'll be heading down on the Saturday morning and staying in the Ramada that night - plans are currently being made for dinner and drinks afterward.

The last BarCamp was a ball of fun and as far as I know, everyone thoroughly enjoyed themselves. My talk seemed to be well received, so I've agreed to do another one, entitled 'Death and Divorce in the Digital World'.

Now to avoid confusion, I'm not talking about death of avatars in Second Life or similar - Sabrina Dent is the Second Life expert and she will be talking again to "Second Life and Virtual World opportunities" - her talk was excellent the last time and a lot of people were sorry to have missed it!

My interest area this time is leading a session on how we deal with death of a partner or a divorce in this technological age - how do we decide on how the shared digital information that a couple have accumulated is distributed or shared?

In the case of the sudden death of a partner, how do you access their e-mail accounts and stored online information? What do you do in the case of certain services that are registered in their name, such as Video on demand services?

Alternatively, if a divorce is messy and one partner chooses to lock their ex-partner out of some online information (e.g. a shared e-mail account), how do you go about either preventing or resolving this?

This is really all the planning I have done this far, I'm going to need to flesh this out a bit more in the next few weeks and prep some slides to go with it - here's hoping it will go down as well as the last one!

Vintners back-track in a hurry!!

Apparently we were all wrong. The publicans don't want compensation because of the 'stricter drink driving laws' - hang on, when did the law get stricter, surely it's simply being better enforced! - they want:

"This proposal is not about direct monetary compensation for individual publicans across the board", read a statement from the Federation.

"The fact of life in rural Ireland today is that people feel totally isolated and forgotten. They have lost access to the most basic amenities such as shops, hospitals, neighbours and all that make up a rural society.

"They are no longer confident to drive to do their day to day business on the morning after having a couple of drinks.

"The VFI fully supports all measures to help stop carnage on our roads but communities who have been seriously disadvantaged by the new law cannot be overlooked and left with no alternative but to stay at home.

"The measures suggested by the president for discussion could include special hackney licences, insurance provisions or reduced VRT on people carriers for example. The alternative is to urgently make public transport available in rural Ireland. Rural Ireland cannot be abandoned."

OK, so aside from the horrendous grammar in the red text above, are they implying that Dubliners and other city dwellers do feel more confident about driving the morning after having a skinful?? Or that it is cheaper for city dwellers to take public transport the morning after - well OK, it is for some if they happen to live near a bus route that joins them up with where they work, but for most others it would cost a fortune to pay for a taxi across the city centre, or funnier still, around the M50!

There are simple solutions to this:

1. Don't drink a skinful if you have to drive the next morning.
2. Nominate a designated driver for the night, take turns. If someone in your group doesn't want to take a turn, then they really aren't your friend as they have no respect for your lives.
3. If you don't have friends, then buddy up with someone from your local.
   

Publicans complain about losses due to less drink-driving...

Well, that's basically what they are saying!

BreakingNews.ie has an article this morning entitled "Publicans 'seeking compensation for random breath-testing' ". I can't believe it - the Vintners Association of Ireland are claiming that the new random breath testing measures introduced in July are causing losses in rural pubs so they want to be compensated.

Why on earth should we compensate them? Firstly, I can't see how they can be losing money - if people are going to the pub and drinking more soft drinks instead of alcohol then surely they should be making more money as the margins on soft drinks are higher? I mean we regularly pay €2.50 or more for a coca-cola...

Does this basically not smack of them admitting that they used to serve people knowing full well they were driving? Perhaps we should look at suing them for allowing people to drive when over the limit, demanding compensation to give to the families of innocents who lost their lives due to accidents caused by drink drivers over the years?

Please, Please don't Drink and Drive this Christmas season!

Especially since Coca-Cola is once again running their Designated Driver campaign for 2006 - if you are the designated driver for 2 or more people then Coca-Cola are giving you 3 drinks for free in participating outlets. See the website for details of pubs near you supporting this offer!

And finally, remember: