June 2006
You are currently browsing the articles from United By Yucca written in the month of June 2006.
I found this slightly bizarre website extolling the virtues of salt. It’s a bit Simpsonsesk.
Saltworks.us
My favourite is:
Keeping milk fresh - Adding a pinch of salt to milk will keep it fresh longer.
Great. Fresh, salty milk. Just as nature intended.
Read the health section as well - they stop just short of saying salt actually decreases the risk of heart disease. I guess the pro-salt lobby in the US is pretty powerful. And salty.
Written by exmonkey on June 30th, 2006 with no comments.
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I’m sure I got this email when I first wrote to them….
Dear Marc,
Thank you for contacting O2 Online Business Customer Service.
We do appreciate all comments, ideas and suggestions from our website users and we will use this information to help us improve your website experience.
If you have a Customer Service issue which needs a response, please reply to this email.
If you need any more help, please reply to this email or visit our online help service at http://www.o2.co.uk/help
Kind regards,
Richa Agarwal
O2 Customer Service
My reply:
Thank you for yet another robot mail.
I would like someone in customer services to: a)admit that your customer service responses are formulaic and often completely irrelevant and
b)communicate to me, in a meaningful manner, what changes O2 are going to make to actually provide the kind of customer service Sean Bean’s voice constantly touts on your television adverts.
Our contract is up for renewal in September, and I want to know that your customer service is not simply a small number of bland brush off emails, but actually something that provides SERVICE for you CUSTOMERS.
Regards
Written by exmonkey on June 29th, 2006 with 3 comments.
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Just quickly…
How little self respect or how little money must Anthony Worrell Thompson and Gary Rhodes have to do that appalling Fairy Chemical Burst (warning may cause blindness, seek medical advice) advert with Ainsley Harriott.
Tossers.
Written by exmonkey on June 27th, 2006 with 3 comments.
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Shirley Conran once famously said “Life’s to short to stuff a mushroom”.
I would argue that life is to short not to.
We find ourselves in a situation where lifestyle type adverts are telling us that 70 second microwave burgers are a meal and that pouring a bottle of Uncle Ben’s gloop on some chicken pieces is cooking.
Any European visitor to this country may be forgiven for thinking that we (the British) hate food. II think this notional visitor would be right. Take, for example, spaghetti.
In this country, it was for many years received wisdom that the way you tested whether spaghetti was cooked (or not) was by throwing is against the wall. If it stuck, the wisdom said, it was cooked.
Compare this to the Italians. These backward peasants actually taste it to see if it’s cooked. Yuk.
So basically, we throw our food at a wall to see if it’s edible. That’s how much we love food.
I did a quick search for “How to see if spaghetti is cooked” on Google. Here is a transcript of a short conversation on the subject I found at this forum
jonski: Help please, my mam and dad are on holiday and my g/f aint answering her phone and i cba to get a chinese, again! All there is to eat is spaghetti but i dunno how to cook it, do i juts leave it in a pan full of boiling water till it goes soft or sumthin? Plz help before i starve!
gazmannus: Spaghetti’s easy. Boil a pan of water. Put spaghetti in. Wait a bit. To test if spaghetti is cooked, take a strand and throw it at the wall. If it’s cooked, it will stick. Throw a bit of salt in too, for flavouring.
No really.
We are all doomed.
Written by exmonkey on June 27th, 2006 with 4 comments.
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The latest….
Dear Marc,
Thank you for contacting O2 Online Business Customer Service.
I am sorry for any inconvenience that may have been caused.
Your original email sent on 19 June 2006 did not have any query other than the feedback regarding our website. If you have any query regarding O2 online product or services, please reply to this email with your query. Which will then be passed to the relevant department and dealt with accordingly.
If you need any more help, please reply to this email or visit our online help service at http://www.o2.co.uk/help
Kind regards,
Divya Bhushan
Eh?
I think they are just going through their templates now.
My reply.
If that is the case, why then did you send me a long email telling me how to reduce the security level of my browser and delete all my cookies?
Also, can you stop apologising for any inconvenience you may have caused.
Marc
Written by exmonkey on June 26th, 2006 with 1 comment.
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The first of the first earlies. The fast is over!
We had our first ‘full’ allotment meal; Broad beans and boiled new potatoes tossed in butter and flat leafed parsley.
That small bag (you only dig earlies up when you want to use them) was two plants worth.
Written by exmonkey on June 25th, 2006 with 2 comments.
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We went house hunting today - this is the workshop/utility room in a classic 50’s ex council house in Matfield.
I wish I taken more photos, but the vendor was there, so it may have been a bit insensitive.
The house was an untouched example of 1970’s living. There was a parlor, a larder and a small kitchen - all original fittings. Every ceiling was encased in foam tiles, and every wall a riot of faded colour, clashing with the mad carpets.
The best bit though, was the work room. Her late husband was obviously into motor sports - There were cars from the 70’s cutout from magazines covering the entire ceiling and a couple of walls. He must have died then, because nothing had been touched. The woman who lived there said she never goes in the work room.
We won’t be buying the house, it needs complete renovation. I think it should be preserved as a museum of how we used to live.
Written by exmonkey on June 23rd, 2006 with 4 comments.
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Brilliant -they replied to my last email with instructions on how to empty my cache!
Dear Marc,
Thank you for contacting O2 Customer Service.
I am sorry for any inconvenience that may have been caused by our website.
Problems viewing your online bill can sometimes be caused by settings within your Internet browser itself.
Please follow this simple procedure to ensure that this is not causing you a problem:
- Open Internet Explorer.
- Click TOOLS from the top menu bar. A dropdown list should appear.
- Select INTERNET OPTIONS from this list. A new window will open.
- Across the top of this window will be several tabs with headings such as GENERAL and SECURITY, select the GENERAL tab.
- Click DELETE FILES. Another small window will open.
- Click the small check box titled DELETE ALL OFFLINE CONTENT.
- Click OK. This window will close. Your offline content will now be deleted. This process can take up to 2 minutes.
- You may also have an option DELETE COOKIES next to DELETE FILES, if so, click this also.
- Click the SECURITY tab.
- Ensure that your security level is set to either MEDIUM-LOW or LOW.
- Click OK, this window will now close.
- Close all Internet Explorer windows.
Now, go to the O2 home page at http://www.o2.co.uk and attempt to log in using your username and password.
If you are unsure of these log in details please reply to this email and we will reset these for you.
Once logged in, please select the link “View My Bill”, you will then be presented with a screen containing a number of different options relating to your account. Amongst these options you will see a link entitled “Online Bill”, clicking this will take you directly to your current online bill.
If you need any more help, please reply to this email or visit our online help service at:
http://www.o2.co.uk/help
Kind regards,
Sanjay Rawat
O2 Customer Service.
WHAT THE FUCK? I have no idea why they thought that I needed to know that!
Here is my reply (CC’d to their communications director and media affairs director)
Dear Sanjay Rawat,
You have not read either of the original emails I sent. You have simply pasted a load of irrelevant instructions in to a form email.
This has nothing to do with either my ability to see the my account details page or my cache needing refreshing.
Please read through the previous emails then come back to me if you like - but DO NOT - I repeat DO NOT simply cut and paste some rubbish that you use to brush off the feeble minded every time you get a support enquiry.
All you and your colleagues are doing by responding to my email in such an obviously contemptuous and slavishly machine-like way is proving my point and showing your company for the frauds (in customer service terms) they clearly are.
Regards
Marc
Written by exmonkey on June 22nd, 2006 with 4 comments.
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Almost home after my daily cycle ride through London’s keen streets and I have to stop at some temporary traffic lights on Lee High Road.
I waited until the lights changed and raced off at top speed; mostly because I wanted to sprint the last little bit home and work off what little energy I had left and partly to stay in front of the cyclist who waiting next to me on his more expensive looking road bike. I like racing road bikes, because they often underestimate how quick you can be on a fixed gear bike - plus I could see he was in the wrong gear to get going properly.
Anyway… I sped off, and he probably spent a few seconds looking and the dwindling sight of my arse disappearing into the distance. Eventually I indicated that I was turning right and moved across into the filter to turn into Manor Park.
As I was waiting, the other cyclist zipped past and shouted “Wanker!”.
All I had time to shout back was - “Why?”
I feel a bit aggrieved. Unresolved anger can really knaw at you - so I am trying to remember what he looks like, so I can ask him why he thought I needed to know that I was wanker. I’m not disagreeing with him. I just want to know why he thinks I am.
He even did the universal hand motion.
Written by exmonkey on June 21st, 2006 with 2 comments.
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Dear Marc,
Thank you for contacting O2 Online Business Customer Service.
I am sorry for the inconvenience that may have been caused to you.
We need feedback such as yours to help us identify any area of our service which our customers feel is in need of review. Changes are then made on a regular basis, which reflect what our customers are telling us.
Please reply to this email with all your queries.
If you need any more help, please reply to this email or visit our online help service at http://www.o2.co.uk/help
Kind regards,
Richa Agarwal
O2 Customer Service
Nicely generic, whilst completely missing the point. Clearly they haven’t been making regular changes, as the current site has not been updated (other some minor CSS mods) in over 3 years.
My reply:
Did you even write this letter? Did you even read mine?
Written by exmonkey on June 20th, 2006 with 1 comment.
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