Carphone Warehouse employee lies

I’m pretty sure I’ve explained reputation management on this website before. It’s quite simple, it’s about making sure that your business or personal name features positive results in the search engines when someone searches for you.

That’s the basic idea at least. Yet most people don’t understand how this works, and they think that by visiting websites and forums that feature negative comments, and ‘pretending’ to be someone impartial who is posting a positive comment, they’ll redress the balance.

This is of course idiotic. The public aren’t that stupid and anyone who tries this will be found out for the moron that they are.

Take this comment by a ‘Carphone Warehouse customer’ for instance. The post itself ranks on the first page of Google for ‘Carphone Warehouse Complaints’, and has obviously been spotted by Carphone Warehouse themselves, who hoped to convince the 70+ people who had commented on the blog that Carphone Warehouse were in fact a good company, by pretending to be a customer.

Here is the comment in full:

Just thought I’d add, I’ve been a carphone warehouse customer for over 10 years now and have never had a bad experience with them. I have had to put 2 phones in for repair due to faults, I paid my deposit for “loan phone” and within a couple of weeks recieved my phone back working fine and had my deposit refunded within a reasonable time.

Happy customers don’t seem to get so passionate about their experience as unhappy buyers…

Surely we should be getting upset with the manufacturers issuing substandard goods onto the market, then washing their hands of said products, leaving the retailer to pick up the tab.

Sounds a little fishy doesn’t it?

The first line for example, “I’ve been a carphone warehouse customer for over 10 years now and have never had a bad experience with them” – that set the alarm bells ringing straight away. Anyone who claims to have been with Carphone Warehouse for 10 years and has never had a problem with them is clearly delusional, or not to be trusted.

The use of wording too seems a little odd, almost as though it came from a handbook “had my deposit refunded within a reasonable time”. What’s a reasonable time? Couldn’t they commit to a time?

The final paragraph that sided with the retailers clearly shows that this person works for a retailer. Nobody speaks like that otherwise.

Of course all of this is conjecture. I may be reading too much into this and this person may indeed be a genuine customer of Carphone Warehouse with 10 years of nothing but good experiences with them.

Then again, as this idiot used their REAL email address to post the comment, robinsc02@cpwplc.com, perhaps their comment should be taken with a HUGE pinch of salt.

C Robins of Carphone Warehouse; when you attempt to play reputation management online, pretending to be a customer of your own company, at least have the intelligence to NOT use your own business email address!

Muppet.

Cheap bed and dining table for sale

I’m having a final sell off of items from my house in Cwmbran, which includes a sleigh bed and a marble table. These two items represent the two most expensive things I’ve ever bought, not counting houses and cars, which is kinda sad really.

The bed cost around £1,100 in 2005 and the table was £1,600 with six chairs. Anyone interested in buying these two bargains can bid on them on eBay, as they have a 99p starting price and no reserve, so I could sell them both for less than £2!

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Hope not though.

Have a look on eBay and see what you think. The bed can be found here, and the table and chairs can be found here.

When I met Duncan MacLeod, the Highlander

I’ve been sifting through some more images lately and I’ve come across these two photos from several years ago. One is from Collectormania in Milton Keynes and the second is from the London Sci-Fi Film and Comic Con.

At Collectormania I met Beatie Edney, who played Heather MacLeod in the 1986 film Highlander. Here is the photo of the Highlander sword I bought that day, where Heather has signed the blade for me. This was a logistical nightmare actually, as the convention in Milton Keynes was held in the shopping centre, and despite buying the sword at the convention, I wasn’t allowed to just ‘whip it out’ without having security there to oversee it.

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In fact, if I remember correctly the security guards had to remove the sword from the tube for me and I was only allowed to stand by it, without touching it, before they put it back in the tube.

adrian-paulThe second photo is from London a year or so earlier where I met Adrian Paul, who played Duncan MacLeod in the TV series Highlander. He doesn’t seem to have aged either, but then he is immortal, so I guess he wouldn’t have.

I’ve been watching through the Highlander TV series lately and it’s awoken a desire to dig out my long coat, choose one of my swords and head onto the streets for some head lopping action.

I must resist, that is really frowned upon round our way.

Royal British Legion thanks Manchester United for Season long silence for Remembrance Day

The Royal British Legion today thanked football club Manchester United for their fans’ dedication to making Old Trafford a place of solitude for the entire season in aid of Remembrance Day. Where other football teams made do with just a ‘two minutes’ silence, Manchester United knew they could go one better and host a whole season of silence at their ground.

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United’s fans have behaved in an exemplary manner all season in upholding the silence, not uttering a single word during United’s home games. Sir Alex Ferguson paid tribute to his team’s fans in making Old Trafford a Theatre of Silence by saying:

Our fans have been great. They haven’t uttered a sound all season, even when we were losing to Sunderland and needed their support. They stayed silent and just watched.

Former United player and ambassador to football, David Beckham, added:

Yeah like, er, it’s great that the fans are so into Remembrance of the Daleks. It’s one of Brooklyn’s favourite Doctor Who episodes, mine too. It’s ace.