Mr Daz

The last few weeks I have been receiving numerous calls each and every day from recruitment consultants. I made the mistake of updating my CV on one website, just because it was out of date, and now I’m getting recruitment sharks swimming around me as though I’m clinging to a piece of driftwood while haemorrhaging blood from my leg.

Now I don’t mind so much the odd recruitment consultant calling me as I know they’re only doing their jobs and trying to fill positions – but seriously, some of them haven’t even looked at my CV before calling – if the jobs they’re suggesting are anything to go by. I’ve been asked about positions ranging from an SEO manager in Dublin (interesting, for sure) to a developer role in Bristol – even though I’m not a developer. I’ve been asked about entry level developer positions… I’m 34 (for a few more days at least) and have worked in Internet marketing for the last 11 years!

I’m half expecting to get calls from bakery recruitment or transport recruitment agencies, such is the irrelevance of some of the calls I have been getting.

What makes matters even worse is how some of these recruitment consultants handle being told that I’m not interested. Some of them are fine, and say sorry and wish me a nice day. This is good. Some of them argue, saying that they’ve seen my CV and think the role they have would be very suitable, even though they have already been told I’m not interested.

Some of them, however, decide that the best, and quickest, option is to just hang up on me, which is unacceptable. As anyone who knows me, or reads this website regularly, will testify I am known for remembering infractions such as this and, suffice to say, StuckOn won’t be using recruitment agencies where its staff have behaved in this way.

A little tip there for recruitment consultants; when you phone someone about a job it’s best you’re not rude to them when they say they’re not interested because, just maybe, they could be responsible for recruitment where they are now… setting fire to those bridges isn’t a good idea.

As a side note, I have even been called by BD Recruitment in the last two weeks. I told them to Google BD Recruitment and then never phone me again. A read of this post will explain why.

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Recently I attempted to move house, from Manchester to Ellesmere Port. I planned on moving to be nearer work, as the 70 mile round trip is a bit of a time burner (not to mention heavy on the fuel).

I own my house in Manchester, and have about £17,000 in equity in the house and a mortgage with C&G, who are part of Lloyds TSB – my bank. I wanted to release that equity to use it as a sizable deposit on another house. Now, without going into significant financial details and the particulars of the purchase, and the equity release, I wanted to buy a house in Ellesmere Port for £72,000 – which was significantly cheaper than I’d have been selling my Manchester home for, and port my mortgage across – which this time last year would have been a formality.

Not so now however. After handing out mortgages left, right and centre to people who had no means of paying them back, causing the economy and the housing market to collapse, the banks have now gone the other way and aren’t giving mortgages, even to people who can afford them and are indeed already paying more to them now.

I wanted to reduce my mortgage by about £100 per month, trade up for a bigger (cheaper) house and reduce my liability with the bank – reducing the amount they had loaned to me. Basically I wanted to pay THEM money back, reducing my mortgage – and they said, after careful consideration, no – it was too much of a risk. You see, every mortgage application is treated as a new one, even though I would have been porting my mortgage, rather than getting a new one. Even though I’d be giving them money – they still couldn’t see the wood for the trees.

What really annoys me about this isn’t the fact that I’ve lost the house I wanted to buy, or that I’ve been turned down for a mortgage for the first time ever – no, it’s the fact that it’s the banks own stupidity that has caused this financial crisis and now it’s their own stupidity again that is stopping the economy from recovering.

It’s common sense you idiots – if someone already has a mortgage with you and wants to downsize their mortgage, paying you money back, then surely they CAN afford it??? Otherwise they couldn’t afford what they have now.

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As someone who enjoys a pub quiz (for a combination of reasons that include showing how much I know about useless trivia and the opportunity of winning alcohol) I always enjoyed the quiz, every two weeks, at David Lloyd in Ellesmere Port.

Now, some people use this place as a gym, or to play tennis, as I believe it has these facilities. I wouldn’t know – I’ve never made it past the bar area, where the quiz is held. However, this quiz has suffered in quality of late due, it would seem, to management decisions.

Let me explain; in the good old days of a few months ago the quiz was every two weeks on a Wednesday evening. For the people playing the quiz they would also have a special food offer, where outside caterers (this is important) provided a curry or chilli, and there was an offer for a bottle of beer and ‘help yourself’ to the food.

This was great, as you can imagine.

The quiz itself also offered some worthwhile prizes. Every team member paid a pound, which went into a pot and would roll over to the next quiz if nobody won it – the first pot went to around £500 before it was won. Teams were no more than six players (at least, there were supposed to be) and the winning team at the end of the quiz would receive either a crate of lager or five bottles of wine. Not too shabby.

There was a special lucky losers prize of another bottle of wine, drawn randomly from the teams who didn’t win. Finally there was the matter of the money, where everyone who had paid their pound entry received a raffle ticket, and the winning ticket drawn following the quiz gave its holder the chance to draw one of a dozen or so envelopes, containing prizes such as a banana, a meal for two and the prize pot (which got quite large). Whether you won anything on the draw or not, you still received a bottle of wine for having the winning ticket – so David Lloyd gave away seven bottles of wine each quiz.

So, for your pound entry you had the chance to win either nothing, some fruit, a few other small prizes, some lager, wine or a prize pot of cash. All sounds excellent doesn’t it? At least it did before management tinkered with the formula.

Following some changes the chap doing the quiz was replaced and someone else took over, the prizes were severely reduced and the quality of the quiz plummeted.

Now, there is no prize pot – no raffle draw and no chance to win any money; although everyone still has to pay a pound each. Where does this pound go? David Lloyd pockets the money, that’s where.

The prize for the winning team (a team of six remember) is now just three bottles of wine, not five. As there is no draw, there is no money prize, and no bottle of wine for having the winning ticket. There is still a bottle for the lucky losing team (small mercies I guess) but, and this is the biggest issue, the first quiz under this new ‘management’ was a recycled quiz we’d had before!

As one of two teams who’d been to almost every quiz, it became more of a memory test between us and another team as to who could correctly remember the answers from having taken the quiz previously.

We won – and won the THREE bottles of wine.

So, in short, David Lloyd has taken what was a great fortnightly quiz where they gave away seven bottles of wine, and had a prize pot that grew each time nobody won it and transformed (or destroyed it) into a quiz that still costs us, the punters, the same to enter, has no cash prize, is held monthly (so long as the person doing it isn’t ‘off sick’, which she has been in the past and the quiz was cancelled) and they’re only giving away four bottles of wine – AND they recycled an old quiz in the process.

Oh yes – they’ve also stopped the outside caterers, so no decent food with the quiz either. What great decisions they’ve made.

Bring back the old quiz master and the old ways; we don’t like change.

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When I was in Florida last October I attended a ‘Pirates Dinner Adventure’, as I’d wanted to try out one of the themed dinner events I’d heard so much about. The show was actually free, for reasons I won’t go into, otherwise I may have opted for one of the other dinner themed nights I’d seen advertised such as the murder mystery dinners or the comedy dinner shows.

Anyhow, the Pirates Dinner Show it was, located just off I-Drive in Orlando. The dinner was situated in a building decked out like a pirate ship in the middle of a row of buildings – it looked as though the ship had been dropped there during a hurricane storm (of which there has been a few in Orlando).

So, the building was impressive – and when we got inside we were greeted by pirates, English naval officers and what can only be described as wenches, carrying out an elaborate play that involved sword fights, rope swings and battles. The area where you ate your dinner was located around a giant lagoon, in the middle of the building, where sat another pirate ship – this time a full ship, on the water. It was visually very impressive.

Why am I gushing about this when I usually complain? Well, here comes the complaint. The dinner and show was free, and the dinner included 1 drink – a ‘lite’ beer, as the Americans call it. When it came to ordering more drinks… well, let’s just say that London prices have nothing on this. One lager, and a Coors at that, plus a cocktail came to roughly $29. At the exchange rate at the time, that was around £20… for TWO drinks!

I’ve never paid so much for a drink in my life, AND it was a crap, lite beer.

Next time I’ll try the murder mystery.

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This site has featured a number of posts about HDNL, also known as Home Delivery Network, now known as YODEL. Initially I posted about how a delivery of mine was tossed over a gate and left in the rain, and that post alone has generated nearly 500 comments from equally annoyed customers and also from HDNL drivers. Some of the drivers come to defend their employer, some come to admit that there’s a problem, some come to abuse people – all of which of course helps the website to rank even better in Google for HDNL, so thanks for that!

One driver however has been particularly fervent in his postings. Sometimes he uses the name ‘Matty’, sometimes he uses the name ‘Dan’, but he always uses the email address bigtreewitheyes@talk21.com and he says he works for HDNL in Newton Abbot, in the Heathfield depot. Dan, Matty, whatever he calls himself, has been posting comments on this site since December 30th 2009, so he’s obviously a big fan.

In that time he has made over 40 comments, most of which containing abuse of some form. Let’s have a look at some of the things that Matty, Dan, bigtreewitheyes@talk21.com, the guy who works for HDNL, or rather YODEL, at Newton Abbot, has said:

In response to one customer who complained via this website, Matty (or Dan) commented in January 2010:

What an idiot!

How do you know it was the same driver?

Plenty of rounds have 2, 3, or 4 vans.

By your posting, you sound like a real ignorant prick.

You sound just the sort of ignorant twat that would shout abuse at somebody.

Im surprised anybody delivers to you.

Asshole

Please forgive the spelling too, as this guy’s not the brightest.

In the same month, this bastion of HDNL’s employment directed these comments at me:

My god, you are a petty, misserable excuse of a little man.

Its a bottle of wine, get over it you idiot!

You must be a real joy to live with, if of course, anybody actually does live with you!

Pathetic!

Im sure Laithwaites will be so upet losing an absolute cock of a customer like you!

This post wasn’t even about HDNL, but our Matty/Dan thought he’d offer his opinions anyway.

When this post was added, where another HDNL driver labelled all of their customers morons, Matty/Dan chipped in with this comment:

Morons is abit lite….
Dickheads is a bit better!

So one driver with YODEL brands all of their customers ‘morons’ and Matty/Dan thinks that’s not strong enough, insisting their actually ‘dick heads’.

Matty/Dan got straight to the point with this comment:

Mr Daz shut the fuck up you pathetic piece of toilet scum.

Before following up with the rather polite in comparison:

I take it your a traffic warden!!

Wanker!!

Bullied at school were you?

The HDNL employee then decided that going on a personal offensive was the best option, as his defence of Home Delivery Network wasn’t really cutting much ice with the dissatisfied customers on the site. He went on to add:

You need to do yourself a favour, get your ugly head away from the computer, pull back the curtains, and see some day light.
Theres a whole world out there you know!

Loser.

Matty/Dan then turned his attention to some of the many customers who had posted on the blog, offending them too:

Lisa,
As an employee of hdnl, and knowing the policies as I do, I can honestly say I dont beleive a word you had just typed!

Maybe you had a late delivery and thats why your whining.

Get a grip woman!

After this Matty/Dan was pulled up his comments by a HDNL customer called Kate, whom he set about insulting with a frenzied vigour:

KATE you sound like a horrible person.

As for your rubbish about consulting a solicitor and QC (samething different job) about a non delivered parcel, your making your self look rather silly.

And:

Your address doesnt sound very rural to me!
You are full of crap Kate.

End.

And again:

You dont get it do you Kate.
I bet you have caused a fuss at the depot before, over your unreasonable demands havent you?
I dont get paid to put up with rude, abusive, mouthy, and threatening people like you, and if I have prior experience with a customer behaving like that, I wont take the parcel.
So maybe you should look at your attitude towards people, you obviously see hard working delivery drivers as a bit of scum that you can abuse.
Ive got news for you love!!
And its all bad!!!

Although Matty/Dan did find time to have a swipe at me in the same comment, he can multitask like that:

Mr Daz (wanker) I hate to break it to you, but out of the MILLIONS of parcels delivered every year, a few hundred complaints, whilst regretable, are just a tiny tiny percentage, with alot being made up of pathetic, the world owes me everything, type of people like yourself and bignosekate.

After his sideswipe at me, the Home Delivery Network driver went on the full offensive, abusing me for my job, no less.

Building websires = lonely nerds
You hide away from the world slagging off everybody, and everything.

Your a horrible little man, with no life.

‘losers’ like me ‘flock’ to your pathetic site to have a laugh at the pathetic complaints that people like you make.
It really is very sad.

The only public service I would like to see you involved with, is a flogging in the town square!

Matty/Dan followed this up with another abusive tirade:

I must say, being abused by a loser from behind a computer screen is really hurting my feelings!

I bet you hog the middle lane of the motorway, and refuse to give way to other motorists also.

As I said, a sad man, that feels powerful when hes hidden from the world, either locked in his car, or hidden in his bedroom.

Sad.

There are of course many more comments on this site from Matty/Dan, and other employees of Home Delivery Network (or YODEL, as they are now) but I think this should suffice for the time being. This HDNL driver was also one of the more respectful and polite drivers who have commented on here, as at least he didn’t threaten to ‘knock ya wrag-head off…..u dick’ to someone with an Asian name.

What do you think about Home Delivery Network?

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For the last eight months I have been trying to sell my house through Main & Main estate agents. I know this isn’t the best time to sell, but needs must. Now, even though the housing market is pretty repressed at the moment, you’d still expect viewings – where the perspective buyers would plead poverty, say they didn’t like the house or just generally waste your time. Yet in those eight months I have had just two viewings.

TWO viewings.

Both of these viewings however, led to offers. This may seem like a very high strike rate, especially when the second viewing actually offered before the viewing. Sadly, both offers turned out to be time-wasters. The first of which waited for a few days before the exchange date to reveal their position of timewasters, costing me several hundred pounds in solicitor’s fees, mortgage fees and search fees on another property.

The second viewing was just a timewaster full stop and he didn’t even seem to know how the whole house buying process worked, making an offer, admitting he didn’t have any money until September and, only then, viewing the house.

Class.

Even the viewing itself was messed up. I stayed home for the viewing, only for nobody to show up. I phoned Main and Main to complain about it and they said they’d look into it. It seems the guy viewing the house had also phoned Main & Main to say he was running late, but Main & Main had no idea what he was on about as they didn’t even know there was a viewing. This despite the fact that they were the ones who arranged it!

Martin Main no less phoned me to ask if I had a viewing at 11:30. He’s asking me? I informed him that no, I hadn’t, it was 11:00am. He informed me that the chap was running late.

What a disorganised way to run an estate agents.

With this second viewing proving a complete waste of time, I had to make the executive decision to put my house up for rent. I decided to use Bridgfords for this because, even though they’re more expensive, they seemed more professional. Sure enough, within a week of Bridgfords listing my property for rent they have arranged five viewings. Not bad. Every viewing they arrange results in me getting a text message conforming the details, and the time and date of the viewing. Main & Main take note.

Now, the fun part comes in Main & Main throwing their hat into the ring for lettings too. They said that I should let them put the house up for rent exclusively for a month and, if they didn’t let it by then, I could use another agent as well. I had no intention of doing this as they’d been fairly useless up until this point; still, I thought I’d use them ‘as well’ as it couldn’t hurt. They said if I dropped the signed terms and conditions into them they’d have the property online for rent within 20 minutes.

Sounds good eh? I dropped the signed Ts&Cs in on Saturday May 14th, where the woman in the office put down her sandwich long enough to say they’d ‘fax it over to the correct office for Monday morning’… hardly 20 minutes.

Then, Monday came and went and still no house for rent online. I checked again Thursday, some FIVE days after I’d handed over the signed Ts&Cs and still there was no property online. At this point Bridgfords were preparing for their third and fourth viewings simultaneously.

Now, Saturday, a full week later I have heard from Main & Main. They have put the house up for rent and in just seven days. God made the heavens and the earth in that time (if you believe that tosh) yet Main & Main can only manage to list a house on a website.

I’m so glad I didn’t use them exclusively. Main and Main over promised and under delivered on their services, taking a week to do what they said would be done in 20 minutes. In that time Bridgfords has arranged five viewings. You get what you pay for I guess.

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Sometimes Microsoft just sets out to piss me off; I know it. Whether it’s changing the way basic functions work from one version of Outlook to the next, or producing incredibly unhelpful error messages that border on the python-esque.

This latest attempt by Microsoft to rupture my spleen was sparked by my old foe, Microsoft Outlook. This useless attempt at an email program managed to error when trying to send an email, offering the pointless message of ‘cannot send this item’. As if this pitiful attempt at an apology weren’t enough, Microsoft, in their infinite wisdom, thought they’d garner some feedback for their endeavours to anger me by further annoying me with the question ‘was this information helpful?’.

Are they deliberately trying to piss me off? ‘Cannot send this item’… ‘was this information helpful?’ – oh yeah, well useful. It’ll come in handy when I have to send another email and know that the reason it hasn’t sent is because it could not send. Thanks Microsoft, you retarded bunch of morons. I now know you’re the ‘go to’ guys for pointless fekking error messages.

Incidentally, if anyone from Microsoft is reading this and they are having trouble understanding sarcasm: no, that error message was not helpful. Did you really think it was when you dreamt it up while trying to evade another bollocking from Bill Gates for the latest cock up within your bug ridden software?

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I’m not usually one to complain, as regular readers will know, but there’s just something that irks me about a product that you receive compared with the picture. This could be anything, whether it’s something from a catalogue that looks decidedly better quality than it does in real life, or in a fast food establishment where the images of the food look much better than the reality.

Yes, I do realise this is a bit of a ‘Falling Down’ complaint as already expressed by Michael Douglas, but this week it did annoy me; not because the food supplied never look like the pictures (because on the whole in Subway, they do) no, this is because this particular sub was a ragged affair as a direct result of the people serving not really giving a monkey’s.

First off, where this rather excellent food photography suggests a packed sandwich with thick bread, my sub was cut, it would appear, by a blind Samurai. The bottom part of the sub was very thick, while the top part was wafer thin. Surely they should have thrown those pieces and started again? But no, they carried on regardless – and weren’t really paying attention either. Despite me telling two different people a total of three times that I didn’t want it toasted, I narrowly managed to save the sub from the fires of the oven – communication wasn’t high on their list of skills.

As the top of the sub was so thin (almost transparent in places) it naturally started to fall apart when picked up too – and didn’t look anything like this picture of a Subway BMT.

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