Category: General

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A blight on our Royals

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Last week our family experienced the appalling service so many users of Royal Mail are regularly complaining about.

Our daughter, unable to get to see her Mum on Sunday, had posted a Mothers Day Card, including a voucher for a day out in a couple of weeks, from Sheffield City Centre on Thursday afternoon, 1st Class (next day) delivery expecting it to arrive on Friday.

Not only did it not arrive Friday, but it didn’t show up on Saturday either (yes they do claim to do Saturday deliveries still)

This left both parties embarrassed and upset, on what should have been a pleasant start to “Mums Day” and me running round trying to make the best experience I could cobble together

It is notable that our daughter had grumbled to me after posting the card “do you know how much it costs to send a card by post”? I do in fact know as I had recenly had to use Royal Mail myself, I normally only send parcels and most of those via courier, and I too had been staggered at how expensive it was.

It therefore rubs salt into the wound to see in today’s Martins Money Newsletter a notice that stamp prices are about to soar to over a £1 each

Is it any wonder that so many of us have given up sending cards and simply use email or messaging services. You can have a video call halfway around the World easier, without the expense of buying a card, or getting wet finding a post box.

Yet this shambolic system is still called “Royal Mail”, it seems to me that in the year of his Coronation, King Charles II, should ensure that Royal Mail, becomes simply “Postal (lack of) Service”, and at least the Royal Family would be rid of one embarrassment

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Put your card behind the bar ? in the 21st Century?

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We went into one of our favourite local watering holes on Tuesday Night; ordered our usual lock_down“round” and normally it is put onto a “tab” for payment at the end of the visit, however on this occasion Jools was asked to “put her card behind the Bar”. This apparently was a new policy because the establishment has been having an “unpaid bill” problem and decided this was the best way to solve it.

We were assured that there was no reflection on us, that is a policy and everyone would have to do so if they wanted a tab! (there was only one other table in the place at his time, however, subsequently some ladies came in ordered food and drink, and went and sat at a table without paying, so presumably they got a tab!)
Now I remember this being common in wine bars etc. in the 1980’s & 90’s (yes I am that old!), but hang on, this is a another millennium.  Jool’s initial reaction was to simply leave and go elsewhere, but we did reflect that this was a place we frequent and like, (and good places in the “sticks” seem to be getting fewer and further), so after making our feelings known I lodged a card, being mine, it wasn’t worth a lot anyway.
The more we thought about this policy, the more we considered that it was not so much a bad idea as an appalling one, from our view, but even more so from the viewpoint of the establishment, which was, by taking a payment card off customers, making itself liable not just for anything that happened whilst the card was in their possession, but also for anything that went wrong afterwards. Just think if payments were subsequently wrongly deducted, or if the user suffered identity theft the first reaction would be “the card never leaves my sight.., er wait a minute last week when I went to **** they took the card behind the bar”
Our reaction has been that we now pay for stuff here at the point of purchase, meaning that where in the past we might go back and order more, now we don’t. It certainly makes us feel a lot less “warm and cuddly” about the place, we are clearly not “valued regulars” but potential “hit and runners”!  (Trade figures suggest that people on a tab spend 30% – 50% more than those “paying as they go along”)
Discussing this with people since, most have reacted more strongly than we did, one colleague said “nobody other than me gets their hands on my card” and when I consider this I note that, when he is taking card sale from customers he won’t handle their card, getting them to put it into the machine themselves. (this is probably overkill but we see his thinking).
The staff at our local bank branches were insistent  that you should  “never do this”, as it was breaking the terms of your agreement with your card issuer.
barclaycards_view
Talking to Barclaycard they state clearly that  you should never part with your card, and this seems to be the view across all the Card issuers.
The Independent newspaper did an article about this some time ago entitled ” 
So why are they doing this, when it seems so rash?
You can easily understand where they are coming from, this venue has recently extended outside and it is easy to leave without ever coming back into the bar area. In common with many successful establishments they have very busy times when it is simply impossible to “keep an eye on everyone” 
 Whilst this measure will undoubtedly cut down on the problem, anyone seriously planning not to pay will still find a way of doing so (leave a stolen card?) and as for those who are simply distracted and forget, the majority would have sheepishly returned later and made payment – indeed over the years I have twice done this from a pub / restaurant myself, and once drove off from a Petrol Station and got home before realising I hadn’t paid, so I am not a stranger to returning embarrassed and “paying up”.
My thoughts though are they should consider the implications and loss of their business this policy means and come up with a better idea, and I am left wondering if technology cannot come up with a better system ? – any suggestions or ideas welcome!
We have have found quite a lot of restaurant & bar POS systems that have a variety of methods to enter and control bar tabs, however I can see if your existing system does not have that facility, changing it simply to control this is probably uneconomic
Cardsafe is a system of separate visible and lockable drawers into which customers cards can be put at the start of the tab and taken-out at the end of the order re-assuring the customer that “funny-business” is not really possible
There are a number of “apps” for iphone and android, most of these are US based and it is unclear how many of these actually apply to this particular issue, (several look to be more “ordering on-line” than keeping an open tab). there is a good US round-up review here: 
There are also apps like Clip and Dash, again though these seem to be either Antipodean or American, with much less available in Europe and specifically UK.
The one UK based system I found was from ensygnia but again this seems very much based on placing orders, (which I don’t think is the issue here) with payment control as a “bolt-on”, but it may be modular.
Any intrepid developers who want to find a field that is open for useful apps, this might be an idea, indeed why not offer a link-in to one or more of the new on-line payment systems, PAYG / SumUp / iZettle or perhaps the forthcoming Apple Pay?

However whatever solution may be best, it is certainly NOT sticking card in a wallet, behind a busy bar!

 

 

 

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A Golden Age? Methinks not!

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Northern Rail Clowns ?

On Sunday 4th May our fourteen year old daughter got on the 10:46am Northern Rail train at Whaley Bridge after a sleepover at a friends, coming to meet us at Heaton Chapel, the station after Stockport. She purchased a single ticket from the guard on the train to Heaton Chapel and paid the child’s single fare of £3:30.

As we arrived at Heaton Chapel to meet her we get a frantic phone call to say “the train hasn’t stopped”, we agree to meet her at Levenshulme and set of in pursuit. We discuss if the train will stop there, and as we are deciding we get a second call to say, “it’s not stopped at Levenshulme either”. We tell her that it won’t probably stop now until Piccadilly and say she should get off there and get the next train back that stops at either Heaton Chapel or Stockport.
Firstly she is evidently told there isn’t a train back till 3;15pm (what nonsense!) and phones me to say she is going to the ticket office to buy a ticket. I say “no-way, you’ve already paid to travel to Heaton Chapel, and that’s all your trying to do, get on a train back!”
 
Forty minutes or so later we collect her from Stockport Station, only to discover that, when she got off the

 

Ticket to ride
Ticket to ride

train at Piccadilly, and tried to find how to get back, she was stopped by a ticket collector, who couldn’t speak English properly and was too dim to understand anything about the fact that here he had a customer, a child, who was not where she wanted (and had paid) to be but at a major City Station where she had never been before, and somewhat upset and distressed.

 
Instead of assisting her and getting on to the correct train back this idiot made her pay for a ticket from Heaton Chapel to Piccadilly and then left her off the platform!! (and charged it at the Adult rate £2:30)
 
What about the guard who had sold her the ticket in the first place? surely he knew that the train did not stop at Heaton Chapel, shouldn’t some part of that ticket sale have included “this train doesn’t stop at Heaton Chapel, you’ll have to change at Stockport“?
 
At this point I escorted her back to the ticket office at Stockport Station, to “give them a piece of my mind”, only to be met by “Kate”, the hardest faced, least customer friendly, employee (at least I hope they haven’t any less empathetic people!) of, evidently, Virgin Rail, who told me I needed to address Northern Rail, not Virgin. Apparently Virgin take no responsibility for matters at Stockport (they’ll sell you a train ticket, but I suppose you’ll have to go home and print out a platform ticket or boarding pass on-line!). She supplied us with a prepaid “complaint form” for Northern Rail but was totally unable smile, be concerned, or helpful. Apparently Northern Rail have no local representatives, or possibly don’t work on Sundays, or maybe they can’t speak very much English, I don’t know?
 
This happened on the day Ed Milliband was urged by prospective Labour MPs to re-nationalise the Railways (YAY!) and left Julie and I reminiscing about when we were younger and traveled widely by rail, and always were fussed over and looked after by the railway staff (is that why they were called Guards?)
all_aboard
Romance ? or neglect and inefficiency ?
Where here was any sort of “duty of care”, basic human kindness, customer service ? It was not a major incident or any real danger to anyone, but had it been, would any of the people and organisations concerned been up to it, or perhaps even interested in helping rather than saying “its not my job”
You then get to think about all of the industries and companies that the Thatcher Tories “privatised”, The Railways, the Gas and Electric and Water industries, Nationalised Banks, Postal Services.  Competition would mean they would serve their customers better, become  more efficient (i.e cheaper!!), Well have they done? or in fact are these not the industries that have all been in crisis ever since?, rising prices, less employees, less service and no profit for anyone (even in many cases the shareholders have taken a beating?), sorry that is of course excluding the senior management who have managed to see their payments swell massively whilst the average Joe’s have gone downhill?