Lying, cheating, money-grubbing bastards #7 Amazon

Amazon claim they are becoming ‘earth’s most customer-centric company’. I’m not surprised, assuming ‘customer-centric’ means circling the customer like a vulture waiting to pounce even when the poor victim is still alive.
Amazon have taken three payments of £197.99 each for one item priced at £197.99 (a croquet set, since you ask).
One illegally stolen £197.99 has been repaid to a hitherto non-existent Amazon account which means I can only spend the money with this predator.
The other has simply been taken from my credit card and not repaid.
Naturally I have spoken at length to various Amazon operatives who either don’t understand the problem or can’t be arsed to do anything about it or maybe both.
Even when they promise to repay the money they say it will take three to five ‘business days’ for it to be re-credited to my credit card (not that it has been).
That, in itself, is a bloody cheek from this non-taxpaying behemoth given that it takes our money instantaneously and I don’t suppose there will ever be any compensation for their use of my cash since the beginning of May when I they took the first payment of £197.99 and failed to deliver the goods.
One Amazon operative said in an email: ‘On this occasion, I've now escalated this matter to the relevant department for full refund for this payment.’
That was more than a week ago. No sign of the money, of course, though this person did promise: ‘To serve you better I've created a follow up and I will contact you again, once we get an update from our billing team.
‘Please accept my apologies for the inconvenience; I hope you'll understand that we are interdependent and there are some areas that can only be addressed by another department.’
No I don’t understand and to add insult to injury the sign-off to the email declares: ‘Your feedback is helping us build Earth’s Most Customer-Centric Company’ (their capital letters).
It could be that the people at Amazon are from another planet therefore they don’t understand what a customer-centric company looks like here on earth. I presume they’re based in Uranus which is where they can stick their customer-centric service.

Lying, cheating, money-grubbing bastards #6 Apple

I started writing this while listening to some truly abominable musak and waiting for an Apple person to transfer me to another Apple person to sort out why they are refusing my Visa card payment for a renewed subscription to the ‘Express & Star’ newspaper app.

I have already spent half an hour talking to them. They said the problem was with Barclaycard even though I earlier spent half an hour talking to Barclaycard who said there was no problem at their end.

So I then went back to Barclaycard and told them Apple said the problem was at their end. They continued to deny it. Eventually a Barclaycard person, the fourth I spoke to, agreed to call Apple and the Apple person and the Barclaycard person had a conversation while I was hanging on the line.

I was then transferred to the first Apple person and 40 minutes into this call I am waiting to repeat everything all over again to another Apple person who will, as usual, want to know my inside leg measurement, the name of my great-great grandmother and the first concert I ever went to.

This is all so unutterably tedious I could scream. Now, one hour and five minutes into my third call, Apple have admitted there is a block on my card, agree they don’t know why, accept it should be lifted but don’t know how to do it. The Apple person has supposedly agreed to talk to a colleague and one of them will allegedly phone me back. I am not holding my breath.

They did call back. They said the card had been banned three years ago due to some unauthorised transactions. I have been using this card ever since. Suddenly they announce it’s banned. They cannot – that is to say, they will not – un-ban it.

I hate Apple.

Lying, cheating, money-grubbing bastards #5 Barclays Bank

Yes, you have power of attorney. Yes, you have the right to manage the money in this account. But no, you do not have power to conduct telephone banking.
Therefore we cannot stop the two cheques you want stopped, even if they have been stolen and could be cashed in by criminals.
You must go to a branch, if you can find one that’s open and staffed by someone vaguely capable of handling your request to stop a cheque.
That might take you a day or two – our opening times are not advertised widely and of course you can’t just phone up a branch and find out when they are prepared to open their doors to their victims, sorry I mean customers – and the cheques might have been cashed by then.
Hard luck.

 

Lying, cheating, money-grubbing bastards #4 Trip Advisor

Trip Advisor is not there to offer objective reviews of hotels and holiday destinations – it’s there entirely to sell, sell, sell.
Which is why it rejected my review of Nonsuch Bay Resort in Antigua. I made a point of saying we booked our holiday though an independent agency called Tropic Breeze and included a link to their website.
Trip Advisor don’t sell holidays through Tropic Breeze so they don’t get included in the review. In the end, I put up this review instead:

Banned
I wrote a review for This website about how good the hotel was but as I mentioned a travel agency they rejected it. It's a great hotel and we had a good time but trip advisor is crooked.

Here's the original review, rejected by Trip Advisor:

Don’t worry, be happy

We booked this hotel through Tropic Breeze who were really good, charged us less than we expected and secured us a room up-grade so if you're looking to travel to the Windies I highly recommend them.
As for the hotel, it was fab. Our room overlooking the beach was marvellous. It was a suite with its own sitting room, kitchen and balcony as well as large bedroom and big bathroom.
The food was exceptionally good for an all-inclusive hotel (plus you don't have to wear a hateful wristband).
The staff were among the friendliest and most helpful we have met anywhere, plus they had a sense of humour.
We particularly enjoyed the sailing, which is suitable for anyone from absolute beginners onwards. The water is warm if you capsize so don't be too anxious. And the instructors are exceptional: patient, helpful and concerned about safety.
Nonsuch Bay is not the poshest place in Antigua and it is somewhat cut off so you may need to hire a car if you want to explore. It also faces south-east so darkness descends early and there are none of the stunning sunsets to be had on the other side of the island.
But don't let that put you off. We really enjoyed our holiday and hope to return.
Several hotel staff said to us during our ten days at Nonsuch Bay: 'If you're happy, I'm happy.' It sounds a bit corny and they may be encouraged to use this phrase by the hotel management but we felt they really meant it.

Lying, cheating, money-grubbing bastards #3 BT

I knew it was a mistake. The moment I decided to ring BT to tell them how slow my superfast broadband was, I knew I would regret it.
Call me brave, call me foolhardy, I rang them anyway. Inspired by the latest attack on BT by a committee of MPs complaining about its terrible ‘broadbad’ service, I thought it was time to tackle the issue head-on.
Using BT’s own test on my computer I find I am enjoying a service of 5.09 Megabits per second (Mbps) though I am paying for somewhere between 27 to 36 Mbps.
So I call them and the first bloke I speak to says (and I quote): ‘You are not on superfast, it’s a basic copper connection you have there and 5 Mbps is the expected speed for your connection.’
He says superfast fibre optic broadband is actually available; I just haven’t got it. I point out I only switched to BT because I was promised superfast broadband so he says he’ll talk to a colleague.
‘You are on copper,’ he says again. ‘You are definitely not on superfast.’
Several minutes later I am transferred to a woman and I have to explain the whole thing once again. She listens and asks if we’re talking about a business line. I say we’re not so she tells me she can’t deal with it and I am transferred one more.
After a lengthy pause I have the pleasure of explaining the situation for a third time. I spend the next 36 minutes, followed by a brief pause to test the line, and a second bout of 23 minutes, in conversation with a woman whose English is not all that clear. This may have something to do with being based in Bombay.
Her first announcement comes as a shock as it completely contradicts her colleague. She says: ‘You are already connected to fibre optic.’
At this point I may have lost my sense of humour.
While I am waiting for her to carry out various tests and listening to something which would once have been called music but which is just a hiss and crackle down the line from India, I have time to reflect on the MPs’ report.
A couple of BT goons got into trouble for laughing at the report but with luck the Government will do something about the plan to separate BT from BT Openreach, the company which owns the nation’s broadband infrastructure. When 121 MPs agree the service is ‘dire’ surely someone will do something.
Breaking BT’s monopoly would be welcome to thousands of people whose lives are made a misery by the company’s bureaucratic indifference.
A self-employed friend spent weeks without any broadband as BT failed to effect repairs. She almost went out of business.
My hairdresser says when she complained about the slowness of her ‘superfast’ broadband she was told it was probably caused by the neighbour’s Christmas tree lights.
Worse still, another friend was visited three times by BT Openreach engineers after he complained about his ‘poor to atrocious’ broadband.
The third engineer declared the problem was the copper wires down the road being aged and fairly useless.
‘He told me to call BT Openreach,’ says my friend. ‘Even though he was from BT Openreach he couldn’t do anything about it himself.
‘I called BT and they said go to BT Openreach, which is part of the same company. Openreach said “You have got to speak to BT – only the provider of the line can talk to us”. I went back to BT who said they couldn’t help, I needed to go to Openreach.
‘This has gone on for six months. Ultimately a lady from Madras rang to ask, “Can we close this case now?” I have given up.’
BT says superfast broadband is available to 95 per cent of us and splitting up the company would leave less money for investment. It also says we’re ahead of most other countries.
If it’s so good, how come it’s so bad?
Ofcom is investigating the idea of splitting up BT but we can be pretty sure it will do whatever the telecoms giant tells it to do.
Meanwhile my friend in Bombay is back on the line saying she can’t find anything wrong so she will have to send out an engineer. If the fault is on my premises, rather than out in the road, I will have £129.99 taken from my bank account.
I balk at this so she offers yet another test which involves unscrewing the cover of the connector which brings BT into the house and plugging the router directly into the socket inside. Yet again the speed is tested.
The good news is it’s now 16.88 Mbps. Not exactly superfast but better than superslow. At the end of it all, Miss Bombay tells me: ‘You have been very patient and cooperative.’
Which makes me wonder how mad her other customers must get.

PS Six months later my BT broadband bill has soared to £26 per month and the speed is back at 3.4 Mbps. I ring to discuss the situation and half an hour later take part in an on-line diagnosis with an operative in India which gets us nowhere. Eventually she transfers me to some other department to discuss my extortionate bill and after a few moments the phone goes dead. Naturally they don’t bother to call back even though they certainly have the number.

Lying, cheating, money-grubbing bastards #2 VW

As we all know, those clever chaps at Volkswagen have duped the entire world with their baffling emissions scam so we had to take our Golf into the dealer to have it set right.

At the same time they gave it a check-up and discovered a nail in a tyre. The tyre was perfectly functional until they removed it whereupon the tyre deflated and they declared it impossible to repair.
So far, fair enough I suppose. But they then announced that, because the car has tyre-pressure sensors which only work if the tread on each tyre is the same, it would require not one but two front tyres.
The un-punctured tyre had 5mm of tread (like the punctured one) and was good for many more miles. But it would have to go because otherwise the warning light would come on, stay on and we would somehow be in breach of the warranty. Or some such cobblers.
After much argument, we submitted so we had to buy a pair of tyres and throw away a perfectly good one.
What is the point of an allegedly sophisticated system if it can't cope with something as simple as one tyre with 8mm of tread and one of 5mm. And if it's so wonderful, how come it never noticed the nail in the tyre in the first place?
This comes after VW has tried and failed on several occasions to deal with the Bluetooth phone system which means anyone speaking to the driver hears what they said echoing back to them after they have spoken. This is, apparently, standard on VW cars. So be warned.

Lying, cheating, money-grubbing bastards #1 BUPA

The Government shouldn't be surprised local authorities need more money to look after our growing population of old people. After all, part of the problem is caused by the rise in the minimum wage.
Unfortunately, given how tough their jobs are, many care home workers have to get by on £7.20 an hour rising by 30p in April.
That's not a huge amount of money for the individual but if you add together the 1.6 million care workers in the country and give everyone a 30p-an-hour pay rise, that's virtually £1 billion.
Suddenly the minimum wage starts to look quite expensive and the money has to come from somewhere.
Given that people are living longer, councils can't save the money by cutting the service, assuming we wish to treat our elderly with a modicum of dignity.
So that means it comes either from us as taxpayers, from us as care home customers, or both.
Yet the whole sector seems like a licence to print money. For a start, councils only have to foot the bill for the care of a pensioner when the individual’s assets have been whittled down to £23,250.
Until that point, a pensioner has to find the fees out of their own pocket. That almost certainly means selling their home, if they own one, and any other assets they might possess. It means losing all their hard-earned savings leaving nothing to pass on to their children and grandchildren.
This may be fair enough, I suppose. Why should the taxpayer subsidise someone's old age just so they can hand on a legacy to their family?
But there is something dispiriting about the way a lifetime of work disappears in a matter of months. The price for growing old has never been higher.
I know of one elderly couple, confined to separate care homes 50 miles apart, whose wealth has disappeared completely. No surprise, really – their fees were £10,000 a month.
If you are poor enough for councils to meet the cost of your care, homes will

charge about £25,000 a year. Pay for it yourself and it’s £35,000-plus.
And for anyone who goes private – the majority of old people – once a home has got its claws into you, there is no escape. An elderly relative incarcerated in a BUPA care home has seen her fees soar by £199.36 a week – 25 per cent – in two years. Her fees are £51,667-a-year.
The home is nothing special. A new manager every six months means the turnover in employees is bewildering. It is never fully-staffed.
Many carers are kind, helpful and willing but lack direction and seem forgetful, if not negligent. Bad management is to blame but what can you expect if the boss changes twice a year?
In its latest ransom note, BUPA says if my relative is unhappy about the cost she’s free to go elsewhere.
This nonsense is the vilest insult of all. Where could she go? The upheaval involved would be intolerable for a frail old lady, as BUPA know only too well. That is why they can charge whatever they like. They have a captive clientele.
To make matters worse, the family is now afraid to take up arms on our relative's behalf for fear they would retaliate in some way and make her plight even worse than it is already. It’s risky even to complain when they fit her with hearing aids with flat batteries, which they do with distressing regularity.
No wonder they could afford to pay chief executive Stuart Fletcher over £2 million last year. He’s now left and finance director Evelyn Bourke, who got £1.3 million in 2015, has taken over and no doubt gets a huge pay rise. Even Labour Peer Lord Leitch, BUPA’s non-executive chairman, trousers £385,000 for his part-time job.
BUPA is allegedly a non-profit-making organisation. Yet this disgusting rip-off merchant made £278.3 million profits last year which it stuffs under the mattress to top up its reserves. It has a quite staggering £3.6 billion in the bank and still whinges about the minimum wage.
And if one organisation can be this unscrupulously grasping, no doubt many others are as well.
Luckily local authorities are in a position where collective bargaining can at least deliver better value for money than individuals get.
But it's still a costly business made worse by the fact that a three per cent council tax rise in most parts of the country raises a whole lot less than it does in the rich South East.
So where is the extra money to come from? Local taxpayers will doubtless have to cough up as usual but the Government should take a look at organisations like BUPA.
In the past, Chancellors have imposed ‘windfall’ taxes on oil companies and banks which have exploited their position in the market. If BUPA can get away with imposing fee increases on customers of its don’t-care homes, it’s time the Government did the same on its excessive profits.

Down stethoscopes and save the NHS

A doctor writes:
Bruvversansisters it’s time to down stethoscopes and show the Capitalist ruling-class bosses who is really running the show. We are sick-an-tired of being taken for granted, treated like mushrooms and forced to work all hours just to scrape a living while the upper toffs swan around in their chauffeur-driven Jaguars enjoying a life of leisure on the backs of the poor, oppressed doctoring classes.
Well, I have a message for you Mister So-called Jeremy Hunt, you can push us around only so far before even the poor, oppressed doctoring worm turns and you are on the receiving end of the full working-class backlash.
One out, all out, you don’t get us, we’re part of the doctors’ union and we aren’t fighting for our rights we are fighting for human rights, for the benefit of every single user of the so-called National Health Service.
We’re fighting to overthrow the capitalist system of privatisation, the Thatcherisation of national ‘elf, Thatcher and her son Cameron. Jeremy Corbyn is right. Why should we fight other people’s wars in far off countries we know nothing about?
What’s Syria got to do with the national ‘elf? This is where the money has to go. We can’t afford to waste billions on a foreign war when we have so many ishoos here at home. Ishoos, sistersanbuvvers, which we can only resolve through a negotiated settlement to the long-standing demands of Britain’s hard-working, oppressed, taken-for-granted doctors.
We’re standing up to this ‘Elf Secretary not for ourselves but for oppressed health workers everywhere – oppressed consultants, oppressed leading surgeons, oppressed staff nurses, oppressed managers, oppressed directors, oppressed chairpersons as well as oppressed former employees who have retired early with oppressively huge payoffs and been re-employed at even more oppressively generous rates of pay.
Not to mention oppressed ‘elf service agency staff everywhere, who fulfil a very real need especially at weekends when every self-respecting doctor is out on the golf course training to become a consultant.
This is where the Government commitment is needed. Not on some far-flung battlefield any more than its money should be wasted on nuclear deterrents when it should be devoted to the crumbling infrastructure of our beloved NHS.
This service is still the envy of the world. Or it would be if it paid its oppressed doctors a living wage and did not demand long, anti-social hours from young men and women who are sometimes so exhausted when we come off a shift that we don’t even have the energy to person the picket lines or write a protest letter to our MPs.
Call this democracy? Call this freedom?
We need to stand up to this so-called elected Government and its so-called election pledges which less than 25 per cent of the population actually voted for, and absolutely no-one in Scotland or London. Or Wales.
So what if more people die at weekends than during the week? Is that our responsibility as doctors? Of course not. It’s because people who go to hospital at the weekend are sicker than Monday-to-Friday patients.
That should be obvious even to stupid Tory politicians. Do they not realise nobody goes to hospital at the weekend if they can help it?
First off, it means not taking any time off work. Who would go to hospital in their own time when they could go at a time when their employer was paying? It might mean missing the football or not going shopping. It certainly means risking poor treatment and very likely a premature death.
So you only go to hospital at the weekend if you’re dying anyway. Which means it can’t be the responsibility of our fellow hard-working doctors if there aren’t many of us actually on the wards on Saturdays and Sundays.
We – the professionals – know our patients and we know those admitted at the weekend will probably die anyway. So why should we be forced to disrupt our social lives just to pretend we could do something about this even though we know we can’t possibly?
The Government thinks more deaths at the weekend is some sort of killer argument. We have to show the boot is on the other foot. Bruvversansisters this is about so much more than pay and conditions – important though they are. This is about the future of the national ‘elf. This is about our children and our children’s children.
If we give in to the demands of this so-called democratically-elected Government we might as well sell off the hospitals, privatise the ambulances and condemn the old, the sick, the disabled, not to mention the transgender community, to a short and brutal life as oppressed, neglected outsiders.
We have to make a stand because this Fascist regime is determined to dismantle the National ‘Elf and sell it off to their friends in the City so a few fat-cat party donors can line their pockets at the expense of the working man and the doctoring classes.
The ‘elf service is great – walking out helps keep it that way.