Category: Automattic

Let’s set the scene – my mum is in her 60’s, retired and, due to health reasons, often has to use a walking stick or mobility scooter.

She orders a bed from Dreams. Not any old bed, but a top of the range, £2000 adjustable bed. Bearing in mind most people probably spend a couple of hundred, you’d think they’d be tripping over themselves to look after her.

Sadly not.

She visited her local store and placed the order. The bed, in due course, turned up. Unfortunately, due to a narrow hallway it wouldn’t fit¹, no matter what the delivery people tried (including the window). It was only at this point she found out about a 20% charge for returning it (it hadn’t been mentioned to her before and she only found it printed on the back of the receipt) – which they say is because “it’s no longer new”. It’s still in its plastic and hasn’t been used but, for whatever, reason they say they can’t see it as new anymore.

Only after agreeing to buy an alternative bed with a slimmer base did they knock this charge down to 10% (although they say they’ll have to charge 20% if they don’t order a replacement). So how can she make sure that this one will fit? Well, she can’t. She rang Dreams and said it wasn’t up to them.

So, she’s stuck. Pay 20% and go elsewhere or pay 10% and stick with Dreams, in the hope that the next bed will fit.

I checked the website and found that this 20% is now shown in their Terms & Conditions, so I rang them. It appears that this is because, due to the Distance Selling Regulations, if you order online or via the phone they can’t charge to refund the item – hence its now shown on their website (so beware of checking website for T&Cs before ordering from a store – they may not match!). Which is interesting. My mum is going to look into this further but it’s likely if she orders online, the store will charge her first refund at 20%.

During all of this, my mum has been met with disdain and generally poor attitudes from Dreams.

Sadly, she’s not the only one with problems. And there’s more.

1. she wasn’t expecting this as the bed was smaller than the hallway – the issue was angling it through the door ↩︎

Last Christmas I bought my eldest daughter a Samsung Tocco Lite mobile phone. I bought it from Phones4U, as they were also providing a free Samsung 8GB Micro SD card.

4 months of use later and the card has failed. And I don’t mean the data has gone – it appears the controller has stopped working and, hence, the card is totally inaccessible. Unfortunately, my daughter didn’t backup her myriad of photos, videos and music.

But… seriously? 4 months?

I’ve contacted Phones4u and, with no quibble, said they’d send out a replacement card.

I thought I’d also contact Samsung to see if there’s anything they can do about recovering the data. Or at least query why their card lasted so little amount of time. Unfortunately, Samsung UK only offer support via phone or post – no twitter or email support. I tried the phone option but it appears to be an Indian-based Helpdesk and I gave up.

I’ll try sending a letter and see how that goes – Phones4u haven’t asked for the faulty card back so I can hold onto that in case Samsung are able to do anything about the contents.

There are companies that will remove the memory chip and recover the contents, but it’s an expensive process.

So, top marks to Phones4u and a wooden spoon to Samsung. So far. Can they redeem themselves?

Since getting my HTC Hero (sorry, T-Mobile G2 Touch), I’ve been plagued with poor reception problems at home. T-Mobiles map shows a very good signal strength for my area, but I’m often without ANY reception when indoors (and it’s a 70’s build semi, not a Victorian terrace with thick walls).

It was never bad enough an issue (I don’t get many calls at home!) that it was worth returning the phone, but I contacted T-Mobile.

First of all, there was their description of what the signal map meant…

it looks like the coverage is ‘good’ the description of ‘good’ explains outdoor only guaranteed.

Now, maybe it’s just me, but not being able to get a signal when inside your house does not indicate “good” to me. That’s poor.I’m not talking about the 3G signal either – there isn’t one. This is the basic 2G/able to make a phone call signal.

When pushed a little further, their response was…

ahh, sadly there’s nothing we can do re the network. another phone may have better radio reception, failing that we have to accept it 🙂

Nice.

Maybe the merger of T-Mobile and Orange will mean that they’ll start sharing transmitters – my wife is on Orange and has no such signal problems. Indeed, I never had problems with my previous phone, which was on O2 and my SatNav, which uses Vodafone, is fine. My Three broadband dongle has no signal though, so they’re also best avoided by me.

I love my Hero, but there are lots of good looking Android phones appearing on the market at the moment. Come my contract renewal in 15 months time, I’ll be seriously looking elsewhere.

Signal strength is a big issue when buying mobile phones, as few networks will do anything if you get home with your shiny new phone and find you have no signal.

I was therefore quite intrigued to hear of Vodafone’s solution to this – their Mobile Phone Signal Booster. This connects to your home broadband and provides a Vodafone 3G network in your home.

Their network maps show me as having an excellent 2G signal (so I can at least receive phone calls when at home) and a reasonable 3G signal, possibly only working outside. So a single payment of £50 will get me their Signal Booster, ensuring I get a strong 3G signal, even at home. If they have the phone I’m after next year, it may be a winner for me!

Hmmm, TomTom service is certainly not appearing to be up-to-scratch. I mentioned it before, and it now appears to be worse that I suspected.

A few weeks ago I came across a problem with my TomTom Go and its voice control system – when navigating to an address, it displays a list of possibilities on the screen and you state the number. It correctly identifies this number but then appears to plot a route to a different address. If you don’t realise this, you could end up going a whole different route!

Anyway, I sent a query to TomTom, as well as posting on a popular SatNav forum. The forum got back first, stating that this was a known bug – the answer is simply to state the number before it (it plots to the next one along, and hence the correct one). If you put a dummy address in at the top of your list, you will always be able to state one number before.

Afterwards, TomTom got back to me. Their suggestion was to re-install the voices. Not sure how this is supposed to correct what is obviously a software bug and, no, I haven’t followed their advice.

Next, since swapping my devices I’ve had a map update stuck at the top of my TomTom Home update list – I think it was due for my previous device and hence why it won’t let me download it. I sent a support request about this to TomTom a few weeks ago and so far they’ve not deigned to reply. Yesterday, though, they emailed me to say that I had a new update waiting for me. Great. Except I don’t. And clicking on the “Latest Map Guarantee” option states that my subscription to this has expired. This is the quarterly payment I make to ensure I have the latest maps – which they’d said in an earlier support request that they’d transferred across devices.

So, I’ve updated my earlier call with this. Maybe it will prompt them to respond.

My TomTom 540 Live is a really good device. It’s such a shame that my experience is being let down by these annoying issues and a really poor customer service.