Monthly Archives: December 2011

What happened to Westcombe Park Police Station?

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Occupants moved out, boards moved in.

Been meaning to post this for a while, but only just found time now.  I posted earlier this year about the state of the old Westcombe Park Police Station, and from that learned that it was still being used as a neighbourhood watch outpost, among other things.

Sometime in the autumn this year (I think) some boards went up in the windows and all police-related paraphernalia has been removed or obscured.  By night we see some lights left on, but that’s about it – no other sign of life.  Still, this state is an improvement on the ongoing water leaks that were patched up earlier this summer!

Anyone know what happened?

Facebook, Timeline and a new insight?

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Yeah-yeah, so I quit Facebook an age ago.  And I still make a point of asking “What’s Facebook?” whenever friends talk about it at parties and such.  But some family and friends are still getting useful things from it, so I get to hear different bits and bobs about it from time to time.  So far I’ve yet to have a compelling reason to go back, and the forthcoming new Timeline feature seems as if it’ll push more people away from Facebook when they realise how much of their privacy they’ve (knowingly or not) surrendered for the sake of “connecting online”.  More at Slashgear here.

An interesting comment under that article hit a nerve, and I wonder what others reading this might think of it:
They’ll update everyone to Timeline and have no option to switch back. What are you going to do? Stop using Facebook? HAHAHAHAHAFacebook has long been reminiscent of an abusive relationship. No matter what terrible thing they do, the victim stays with them anyway.
My bold – I mention it here because the sentiment resonates with so many behaviour patterns I see in the friends and family around me, especially in their relations with companies where they have a choice on whether to do business with them.

DHL collections: A special type of customer service fail

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So here’s a new customer service policy.

I had an expensive widget break down – a heavy widget.  So I sought help from the manufacturer who says “okay, we’ll repair it – and we’ll have someone collect it from you”.  Great.

So a couple of days later a DHL shipping label and a box arrive.  Dutifully, I put the widget in the box, then printed and attach shipping label to said box, waiting for courier to turn up.

Here’s where the wheels fall off the process:

Part of the process of the manufacturer booking the collection means that a weight for the package is printed on the shipping label. BUT: that data does not get transferred to the courier in the booking process.

So what happens is, the driver turns up, takes one look at the package and the weight, then says something like “too heavy. Someone will come round tomorrow”.  Except that nobody in our office remembers anyone doing that and the first I knew about it was a phone call that came in late yesterday to tell me what had happened.

So, rather than just calling me or a colleague to help with getting the heavy parcel into the van (about a 5 min job), they instead drive off to the next location, call it into base as too heavy, have someone call me to explain the situation, rebook after I get (hopefully not too) annoyed at them and insist it was picked up same-day, then someone else fails to turn up to do that job, then I end up spending most of my day trying to talk to someone about why things failed and how the heck we’re gonna get this thing outta my office today.  About 8 man-hours lost, along with lots more CO2 and a complaint made against a driver for not turning up.

Think it’s time DHL and other couriers get their act together to stop us wasting so much of our lives – and obvious flaws as crucial information not being fed through the data chain such as size and weight of the package really does need fixing. Surely this whole saga is costing DHL far more to sort out than it has me so far?