Dianthus Medical Blog Archive

Everything is crap

I don't think I'm paranoid, but sometimes I feel everyone really is out to get me. Why is it so hard to get products and services that just work and do what they are supposed to do? Some examples:

Ikea. I won't say any more for now about my own recent experience while it's still with the lawyers, but watch this space for all the details in due course. I'm sure you know what they're like anyway.

Zanussi. See my recent post about my fridge. Since then, we've had 5 visits from Zanussi's repair man, and the fridge still isn't working. I sometimes wonder if there is an annual incompetence award that people like that work very hard towards winning, against some stiff competition.

Delivery men. Our office is on the first floor or our building. From the fuss that some delivery men make, you would think that it's at the top of Mount Everest. We recently had a portable air-conditioner delivered to our office (actually a replacement, to replace the first one which was broken on arrival), and the delivery man (from UPS) refused to bring it in unless I helped him to carry it. Did it never occur to him when he took the job that he might have to carry things? Do UPS really not have any trolleys or similar that they could provide to their drivers? Sadly, this is not an isolated incident. Some companies have refused to deliver to us at all as their drivers are apparently not insured to walk up a flight of stairs.

Merton Council. We are in the London Borough of Merton. We pay them to take our rubbish away every week. And do you think they actually turn up and take it away every week? After a great deal of fuss on our part, we were promised a refund several months ago for all the weeks they hadn't turned up, but still haven't had a penny back. I only wish I had the time to take legal action over this one.

Plumbers. One of the toilets in our office has just become blocked. The plumber turned up this morning to fix it, and explained that it would be a fixed price to complete the job, no matter whether it was a simple thing that took him 5 minutes or whether it turned out to be far more complicated and kept him here all day. 2 hours later he came back into my office to say that it was more complicated than he thought so he'd have to charge an extra £120 on top of what had already been agreed. I had to speak to his manager back at his office before I finally managed to explain to them the meaning of "fixed price".

I even bought a new pair of shoelaces earlier this week, which are already broken, less than 24 hours after I first took them out of their packet.

What really annoys me about all these things and more is the time it takes to deal with them. I shouldn't have to spend my time endlessly hassling people to do what they should have done in the first place. Seriously, why is everything so crap these days?

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