The Lemon Fool

Every time I buy something or pay for some sort of service these days I seem to be chased to tell the company concerned how good I thought they were.

If I ignore the request then another email or text seems to come the next day asking for the same thing. While I am OK with just perhaps giving a score out of five to them, for some they seem to require a full questionnaire detailing my experience. Life is just too short.

Today following a trip to the local BMW garage I got the following message:

Thank you again for choosing BMW of Hampshire, and please do not hesitate to reach out if you have any questions or concerns in the future.

Kind regards

J Bloggs
Service Manager

I choose that garage because it is the closest one to me and for no other reason. They could be totally rubbish and I would still have very little option but to use them.

What a waste of my time cluttering my inbox with this, especially when the above message include a large photo of a portly middle aged gentleman in a suit smiling at me.

Arrrrgh!

Seconded. I buy a fair bit of stuff from ebay and amazon and every purchase generates multiple emails such as, but not restricted to the following borderline-but-not-quite spam:

Thank you for your order
Your order has been dispatched and here's a tracking number
Your order will be delivered on <whenever>
Your order has been delivered
Please rate your delivery driver
Do you like your <whatever you bought>

My inbox has several thousand of these now and I am thinking of learning how to have them automatically deleted on arrival.

Except that if something fails to arrive, I'll need that tracking number!

Seconded. And also the email(s) you get after you've already made your purchase from Amabay:

'we've found these assless chaps that you may like'

I just bought a pair. Like yesterday. From you. You know that because you asked me to rate my purchase even before they had got to me. Does your purchasing bot talk to your email advertising bot?

redsturgeon wrote:Every time I buy something or pay for some sort of service these days I seem to be chased to tell the company concerned how good I thought they were.

And another thing...!

Buying stuff is becoming more and more of a stressful and irritating experience - as technology and business practise 'advances'.

Only this morning I was mulling over these reported increases in shoplifting. Sure! It's likely due to more people being unable or unwilling to pay higher and higher prices, but could there be another reason? I have been starting to wonder if it these shoplifters are on to something. Never mind being able to pay or not, it seems increasingly possible that shoplifting is simply the easiest, simplest and most 'efficient' way of getting stuff out of a shop these days. There are increasingly irritating complexities involved.

BOGOFF used to just irritate me: If I wanted two, OK. But what if I only want one? Then I ended up feeling ripped off, as I was been 'charged double'. So I wouldn't buy even one.

That now has gone, but its current, even more irritating, replacement is multi-level pricing: "What does this cost?" Oh, I see. It depends...

Just "Grab it and Run!" It's the future...

redsturgeon wrote:Every time I buy something or pay for some sort of service these days I seem to be chased to tell the company concerned how good I thought they were.

If I ignore the request then another email or text seems to come the next day asking for the same thing. While I am OK with just perhaps giving a score out of five to them, for some they seem to require a full questionnaire detailing my experience. Life is just too short.

Today following a trip to the local BMW garage I got the following message:

Thank you again for choosing BMW of Hampshire, and please do not hesitate to reach out if you have any questions or concerns in the future.

Kind regards

J Bloggs
Service Manager

I choose that garage because it is the closest one to me and for no other reason. They could be totally rubbish and I would still have very little option but to use them.

What a waste of my time cluttering my inbox with this, especially when the above message include a large photo of a portly middle aged gentleman in a suit smiling at me.

Arrrrgh!

My local Suzuki dealer always warns me that I will get a survey about their service from Suzuki. They ask if I would be so kind as to give them a favourable review, as it affects their standing with Suzuki.

I always do, as they and their predecessors have served us well for the last 25 years.

Regarding the other type of follow up questionnaires, they never seem to allow for the situation where you have bought the item as a present for someone else.

TJH

XFool wrote:
Only this morning I was mulling over these reported increases in shoplifting. Sure! It's likely due to more people being unable or unwilling to pay higher and higher prices, but could there be another reason?

Of course there is. The Police have stopped bothering investigating or even attending theft from shops apparently. Team Scrote has finally noticed they can walk into a shop, fill a rucksack with stuff from the shelves and walk out without paying and naff-all happens.

Even if totally caught on CCTV and identified, Team Fuzz does nothing. Apparently there is a limit of £100 value of good stolen below which they refuse to do anything at all. So Team Scrote is now taking full advantage of this unofficial policy and stealing food by the tonne to sell in pubs, one rucksack-full at a time, all according to the phone-in on the BBC R5 a few weeks ago.

And it all rings true to me anyway.

I thought you spelt Oil wrong.

Gerry557 wrote:I thought you spelt Oil wrong.

....wrongly

I usually ignore these feedback requests. However, my next job is to take advantage of such a feedback request from Toolstation. For the second time in three days, (on Saturday), I tried to buy an item using their app, which they like you to use. All is fine adding the item to the basket, but when you try to log in, it just comes round and asks you to log in again. When you try again, it asks you again, and so on until you get bored and give up.

After I ordered using the website on my PC, I went in to collect the item, and told the young man serving me that their app is rubbish, to which he responded "Yes, I know. Was it a problem logging in?"

Corporate Toolstation, please note and fix.

Oh yes. "Do you like your fire extinguisher? Please rate it for functionality and ease of use." FFS, I don't ever intend to have an answer to that one, so bog off, will you?

"How would you rate the supplier?" You mean the one who misled me about the size, the brand and the colour of the thing? And who isn't answering the phone, but who refunded my money sharpish after two months when I threatened to come round and practice my golf swings on his kneecaps?

A plague on all their houses.....

BJ

Mike4 wrote:

XFool wrote:
Only this morning I was mulling over these reported increases in shoplifting. Sure! It's likely due to more people being unable or unwilling to pay higher and higher prices, but could there be another reason?

Of course there is. The Police have stopped bothering investigating or even attending theft from shops apparently. Team Scrote has finally noticed they can walk into a shop, fill a rucksack with stuff from the shelves and walk out without paying and naff-all happens.

Even if totally caught on CCTV and identified, Team Fuzz does nothing. Apparently there is a limit of £100 value of good stolen below which they refuse to do anything at all. So Team Scrote is now taking full advantage of this unofficial policy and stealing food by the tonne to sell in pubs, one rucksack-full at a time, all according to the phone-in on the BBC R5 a few weeks ago.

And it all rings true to me anyway.

The Police have stopped bothering investigating or even attending theft from shops apparently.

I wonder what happens if someone simply performs a legal citizen's arrest and detains the thief.

The police never arrive. What do you do?

It reminds me of the old Monty Python sketch where a scantily clad lady lures her milkman into a room and locks the door. He notices other much older milkmen there and a few skeletons.

Maybe the cellars of corner shops everywhere are slowly filling up with shoplifters.

Steve

redsturgeon wrote:Every time I buy something or pay for some sort of service these days I seem to be chased to tell the company concerned how good I thought they were.

If I ignore the request then another email or text seems to come the next day asking for the same thing. While I am OK with just perhaps giving a score out of five to them, for some they seem to require a full questionnaire detailing my experience. Life is just too short.

Today following a trip to the local BMW garage I got the following message:

Thank you again for choosing BMW of Hampshire, and please do not hesitate to reach out if you have any questions or concerns in the future.

Kind regards

J Bloggs
Service Manager

I choose that garage because it is the closest one to me and for no other reason. They could be totally rubbish and I would still have very little option but to use them.

What a waste of my time cluttering my inbox with this, especially when the above message include a large photo of a portly middle aged gentleman in a suit smiling at me.

Arrrrgh!

It's one of my bug bears too. Particularly when they want to know how good their service was but when you savage them in a survey with details of why it was genuinely terrible it doesn't result in any response.

Some of them are just plain ridiculous too. Example is the courier firm who delivered the washing machine I bought from Curry's sent me a survey request...

"How likely are you to recommend us to a friend?"

Well not likely at all because not only would my friend think I'd lost my frickin marbles but I had no part in the choice of delivery company and so nor would my friend. They'd do better asking the CEO of Curry's how likely he'd be to recommend them to another white goods retailer

redsturgeon wrote:Today following a trip to the local BMW garage I got the following message:

Thank you again for choosing BMW of Hampshire, and please do not hesitate to reach out if you have any questions or concerns in the future.
Kind regards
J Bloggs
Service Manager

Reach out? And to whom? How long do they think my arm is?
What is wrong with contact?

Anyone who suggests that I 'reach out' risks having their email immediately discarded.
I must add yet another rule to my email client's rule-set that already picks up the more 'woke' words.

stewamax wrote:

redsturgeon wrote:Today following a trip to the local BMW garage I got the following message:

Reach out? And to whom? How long do they think my arm is?
What is wrong with contact?

It's just par for the course, unfortunately. Touch-feely emotional language from a company that's probably been slower than most of its industry competitors to make the world a better place in any other way.

Still, as George Burns said, all those years ago: “The key to success is sincerity. If you can fake that, you've got it made.”

BJ

Wait until you get several text messages at 3am from your mobile phone network asking you to complete a consuner satisfaction survey.

Then a second batch of texts at the same time the following morning because you didn't complete their effing customer satisfaction survey "well, I was very happy until you kept badgering me at 3am..."

And you can't block the buggers. So far it has been three mornings without a repeat...

Wait until you get several text messages at 3am from your mobile phone network.....

There is a way to stop that.....

Tedx wrote:Wait until you get several text messages at 3am from your mobile phone network.....

There is a way to stop that.....

At 3am???

I use my phone all night to access spotify. I sometimes have trouble getting to sleep but generally fall asleep when listening to an old radio comedy, the earbuds fall out and if I wake up during the night ( I tend to start worrying about stuff), then I stick the earbuds back in on v low volume and am back to sleep very fast.

BUT, I never have messages of any kind at night. I assume it's something in the settings.

About 7am, I check the time on the phone, get up and then all the messages start arriving. No idea how it happens.

If I got texts like that at 3am, I'd go ballistic!

Steve

I go to sleep with streamed music (YT, but previously Spotify).

I stream it through a speaker and the phone is turned off. For about twenty quid, it's a better option. Better sound too.

redsturgeon wrote:What a waste of my time cluttering my inbox with this, especially when the above message include a large photo of a portly middle aged gentleman in a suit smiling at me.

Arrrrgh!

It's a photo of their typical customer.

Ouch! It's getting worse.

The day after arriving from the airport, I receive an email from Ryanair, asking me how they did...etc.

Funny how they never did that back in the days of keeping everyone awake yelling about their bleedin' scratchcards and lying about what priority boarding really meant!


Steve

PS How did I do? Please rate my post.