addison lee

Maybe Addison Lee is too easy a target for my first London post, but they make it too hard not to give them a mention. When I first arrived in London I was immediately warned off using Addison Lee at all costs. I was told to only use London Black Cabs for value of money and service and to simply be astounded by the renowned Knowledge of Black Cab drivers.

There is only one drawback with this approach though. Black Cabs are nigh impossible to find on weekends at night in the West End. You could spend 30 minutes to an hour trying to hail one. This was the predicament I found myself in a couple of weeks ago on Friday night, after I had seen a show at the Soho Theatre. Of course, it was pouring with rain. As it was about 1.30 in the morning we didn’t have much prospect of hailing a taxi anytime soon and the thought of jumping into a random minicab loitering by seedy clubs in the early hours of Saturday morning did not appeal.

My friend put in a call to Addison Lee for two cabs, one for South West London, the other for East London, which was to be mine. The way Addison Lee works is that a text message will be sent to you, with the driver’s number, letting you know that the cab driver has left base to pick you up. A second text message is sent when the driver has arrived at your pick up destination. I was given a quote for about £25.

My friend’s driver turned up after about 15 minutes of us registering the request. Mine never arrived. About 15 minutes after my friend had left, I gave the driver a call who promised he was very close and would be able to pick me up within ten minutes. Feeling slightly assured (and absolutely drenched from knee down from the rain) I thought I would give him a chance and wait a little while longer. Fifteen minutes later, I call the driver again who said he was only around the corner and asked me to confirm exactly where I was. I said I was by the McDonald’s near Tottenham Court Road Station. By this point I’d been leered at by some less than savoury people and it hadn’t stopped raining, so I put my efforts into hailing down a Black Cab. I managed to find one after 10 minutes willing to take me home in East London at a cost of £30. It was warm, clean, comfortable and the driver was friendly, even at 2.30 in the morning. The extra £5 was well-spent in my honest opinion.

On the way home, I got a call from the Addison Lee driver complaining that I hadn’t shown up at the pick-up point. I’m probably on Addison Lee’s black-list now.

London town

So … my apologies for the incredibly long sabbatical. Between the last post and today, we’ve uprooted ourselves from Adelaide and relocated to London and typically time has flown by so we’re now about 18 months into our new lives. As soon as we got here, it really struck me how Londoners seem to expect and get a different standard of service to what we expect in Australia. Rather than there being a better quality of service as dictated by a larger market and demand, there is quite the opposite. It seems that retailers take the attitude that because there are enough patrons to go around and enough money to be made, why bother with investing in customer service? I have horrifying customer service stories to tell, so watch this space!

Listen to this Story

When I was a kid, I was completely enthralled by Jim Henson’s The Storyteller. I don’t remember much of it now, but I do remember it being a tv series (sadly cut short) which enticed with dark and wondrous stories of lesser-known fairytales, drawing on the magic and horror promulgated by the Brothers Grimm. For whatever reason, I suddenly remembered having watched the series, and having enjoyed them. I would really like to see them again.

Amazon sell them but with Region 1 encoding, and there’s no guarantee that my ‘multi region’ DVD player will be able to play it. So I went for a hunt around – I’ve discovered that Borders (Rundle Mall) have Jim Henson’s The Storyteller: Greek Myths in stock, but not the original series. I’ve never seen Greek Myths, but I surmised that they would be just as good so I placed an order then and there. My hunt for the original series continued.

Enter JB Hi-Fi. Or rather, I entered JB Hi-Fi in Rundle Mall and asked one assistant something to the effect of: ‘Do you have Jim Henson’s The Storyteller on DVD – not the one on Greek Myths, but simply ‘The Storyteller’?’. The reasonable person might have thought, ok, this customer wants The Storyteller but not the one on Greek Myths, so I shall confine my search as requested. Instead, once the search was done, I was asked if I wanted to place an order for ‘The Storyteller’, and when I peered over onto the screen, the title was also emblazoned with ‘Greek Myths!!!!’ I politely said thanks but no thanks, I was looking for the original series as I had initially requested. I didn’t particularly mind that she either didn’t listen, or misheard me, because no harm was done, but with other customers, you cannot really afford to appear as if you didn’t listen.

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Julie

Arthur Galan – Pt II

I ordered, over the phone, a pair of black AG pants. I was a little apprehensive at first, as I didn’t know whether they would fit or suit, seeing as I would have to pay for them before trying them on, and there is no refund on change of mind (only exchange / credit note). However, considering how much I like AG, I took the risk.

The manager at the South Yarra store was exceptional. She stayed on the phone with me for a good 15 minutes, explaining to me what the clothes looked like, how they fit, and available colours and sizes. Soon after I had placed my order (I had to pay for postage which is fair, but considering how much the clothes had been discounted by I didn’t mind the slightest). I received my package the following day in express post. If I weren’t financially constrained I probably would have ordered a few more items. I’ll certainly be calling back!

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Julie

Arthur Galan

Arthur Galan is one of my favourite labels, so you can imagine how excited I was when I discovered that he had begun to roll out a line of clothing for women when I was in Melbourne about this time last year. Alas, I live in Adelaide, where good labels are hard to come by. I left an online enquiry on the AG website about making orders over the phone. Within the hour (I kid you not!) I’d received a call from the manager of the Chapel Street store, who answered my query (as it had been passed onto her from Head Office) and invited me to peruse the catalogue as many items were discounted. I am still perusing/drooling. Post TBC.

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Julie

Memory Lane

We didn’t want this blog to give restaurant or food reviews, but a review of the retail/service industry as a whole. The reason being is this gripe that we both had – the feeling that we Adelaideans always seem to get sub-standard products, including sub-standard service, in comparison with the other eastern states, and certainly with other comparable cities around the world.

I’ve decided to make exception today though, after Tristram took me to The Lane Vineyard cellar door in Hahndorf for lunch on my birthday about 10 days ago. The flavours that we were exposed to through our mains were incredible. Dessert? that was even better. And the wine? I had the best drop of red I’ve had in a while (in my admittedly limited wine experience). Exceptional food and wine aside, the service was impeccable. We were more assisted through our meal rather than waited upon, with friendly meal and wine suggestions and smiles all round, while managing not to be too overbearing for our gen y tastes. And rather than being too intrusive or hovering annoyingly above our plates, it was as if the waiter had slipped away altogether, while we could enjoy our lunch admiring the sloping, green vineyards in the watery, winter sunlight.

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Julie

Apple of my EyeTV

I’m somewhat of a fan of 24 Heures du Mans, and whilst I’ve never seen a race live, nor attended it, there was something about the race that had me scouring the internet for information up to and during the race for quite a few years now. This year I had an opportunity to watch it live on TV, and owner of a decent laptop, I decided to splash out on an Elgato EyeTV DTT, and record the races, and upload them to my iPod Touch to watch on the bus. The EyeTV DTT made the most sense out of Elgato’s TV tuners, although it was the cheapest, it pretty much had the same functionality as the most expensive model, it can receive SD and HD broadcast TV, the software pretty much remains the same, the different seems to be in the bundled aerials. As I was plugging into a coax cable, there was pretty much no reason to splash out at all.

Well. The first evening after purchasing the EyeTV I spent about an hour trying to work out why the bloody thing wasn’t working. One of the great things about USB devices are the plug and play nature of them, perhaps after installing a piece of software, it really is just plug and play. Except in this case, it was more plug and pray. I contacted Elgato’s software support and after a few days they responded with a series of steps I should take to try and resolve the problem. They didn’t work, and the problem remained unresolved.

The following day I returned to Next Byte in Adelaide CBD, and exchanged the EyeTV for a replacement. That evening I went through the same process, to no avail. This time, to make sure it wasn’t my laptop, I tried another different laptop and again, wasn’t working. It was the morning of raceday, I was starting to get a little worried. I returned again to Next Byte, to try and sort this out, and leave with a working product.

I was fortunate to return to the same salesperson each time, and when I returned on my third time, we both had a little laugh about the problem, and decided to try out the remaining EyeTV DTT’s in the store to see if any actually worked. None of them did, all were defective!

Not wanting to miss my race, and getting a little worried that I wouldn’t be able to record it, I was more than happy to spend the extra $50 for the next model up (EyeTV Deluxe), but Next Byte kindly offered it at the same price as the EyeTV DTT as a consolation for the trouble. It was a rather nice gesture, one that they didn’t have to make, but one that I’m rather thankful of.

Overall, the service from Next Byte was exceptional. Friendly and apologetic for the problems that were really out of their own control, and willing to try out the other EyeTV DTT sticks to make sure I wouldn’t have to keep going through the same charade, and selling me a more expensive product at a cheaper price.

I did end up watching the race, and boy was it a corker. Better than I thought it could’ve been! Good work Peugeot!

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Tristram

Schloptus

My family have subscribed to Optus products for many, many years now. Telephone, mobiles, internet, petting zoos, you name it. At the moment we’re on some sort of ‘Fusion’ Plan which is a packaged deal that ‘combines’ the home phone and 20MB of internet for approximately $80 to $100 a month, or something to that effect. I think that out of the 10 months that we have been on this plan, I’ve never been able to access the Internets reliably between the 19.00 and 21.00 hours (drops out, no connection at all, etc). This is typically at the time when I’ve returned home from work and want to continue working or do something fun.

I’ve contacted the capable people at Optus named ‘Adam’, ‘Conan’, and ‘Maximillian’ who are located somewhere in South Asia about five times to tell them of my plight. Each time I have done so, I’m asked to do the routine checks of restarting the router, unplugging the phone, getting a different filter etc etc. I’m not sure where the breakdown in communication has occurred, but they do not seem to understand that my Internets still does not work in the way that we were promised. It’s clearly not a problem on my end because if it were, I would never get any Internets at all, rather than just between those particular hours.

If you share my pain, check out #badoptus on Twitter.

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Julie

JB Hifi-ve

Recently after a rather onerous week at work, I found myself in JB Hifi browsing through the console game selection. A title caught my eye, and before I knew it, I was walking out the store, clutching a paper bag close to me, eager in anticipation to get home, unwrap said title and have a play. Upon arriving home, letting the anticipation build, I cracked open the case and…it was empty.

Not happy.

The following day I went back into JB’s, they inserted the disc and the manual. What I did find interesting was that they did it without a fuss. No questioning me, giving me a second degree and having to explain my situation, just a few apologies, I walked away with the disc and manual.

It would’ve been nice to have actually had the game and manual initially, but this reiterates why I don’t mind shopping at JB’s; sure the guys behind the counter all look emo, but service is prompt and efficient without any fuss. There’s no false customer service “how’s your day” nonsense, because they don’t care. And I don’t want to bore them with whatever crap I’ve been up to.

Was the game worth the fuss? I quite enjoy a good RPG with a story, but avoid Eternal Sonata. Nothing new here, it feels more like a Final Fantasy XII clone, even with the Chopin influence pasted awkwardly on top.

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Tristram

No wolf whistles here

Whistles was one of those ‘break through’ stores for Adelaide, where they found a gap in the local market for stylish clothes available at somewhat reasonable prices. I must say Whistles has had its hit and misses for me, but it says a lot that several stores have popped up in its wake in an attempt to mimic its success. I finally found my dress there. Little black, off the shoulder, one (by Ru Mu), of course. One sales assistant was uber helpful, whilst the other looked and acted as if she’d rather be kissing Malcolm Turnbull than be helping customers. I also tried on a white mini-dress by Manning Cartell… what a disaster. Anyway, service, while not impeccable, was helpful while not being too pushy. My main criticism of Whistles is that it has set the standard in Adelaide for so long that so many other copies or variations of it have popped up, so that it is no longer unique. It no longer stands out from the crowd. A solid 7/10 (minus marks for Ms Sour Puss).

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Julie