Category Archives: Complaints

Complaints

Callvalue complaint

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I just had a call from some idiots at a company called Callvalue. This was annoying as I’m on the TPS and shouldn’t be getting calls like this, they broke the law. After the automated message I asked for the company’s details so I could report them, at which point I received a mumbled collection of swear words, followed by the rude sod hanging up on me.

A quick Google found this thread where it seems Callvalue don’t care about the TPS and insist on calling people regardless.

As you know I record all of my calls so will look forward to the next call from Callvalue, then we can have some real fun with them.

I have reported them to the TPS as well, despite not having all of their details. I’m sure the TPS are already aware of Callvalue.

Complaints, General

My new sofa from CSL

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After my complaint against DFS some time ago, I swore I’d never used them again. True enough, when I needed to order a new sofa for my new house I went everywhere EXCEPT DFS, and finally settled on this one from CSL. It’s a damn fine sofa, and I’ve even bought the ‘cuddler’ chair to go with it, which is a chair big enough for two (or someone and a dog) to sit in, and it swivels!

It should be arriving on Wednesday, after I was assured I would get a phone call tomorrow to confirm the delivery. Can CSL do any better than DFS, or will they be as bad? Only time will tell, and so will I 😉

hugo-chair

Complaints

Computeach try to curb free speech

18 Comments

Last night I received an email from Karl Parkinson, the owner of Computeach, wanting to put up a post on my site about his company. He wanted to address comments on this site that exist for Computeach here, and here. I replied, saying it probably wouldn’t help them much as any obviously positive post would stand out as suspect.

I did ask if he had any other suggestions, but he never replied. Then today I received an email from Greg Hartigan, head of HR and Legal at Computeach. He sent me this email.

Dear Sir/Madam
Can I draw your attention to your statements on the following link: http://www.mrdaz.com/computeach-reviews/(entitled “Computeach Reviews?”, Posted on September 28th, 2008).

Your statements imply that Computeach is wrongly trying to pass off the positive reviews contained in www.computeach-reviews.co.uk as independent. In fact the opposite is true: the website is entitled “Welcome to the official Computeach Reviews website” and also states “We have a selection of Computeach reviews from students about their experiences with Computeach…All these reviews are from genuine students and clients”. It also includes Computeach’s logo and branding. So in our opinion any reasonable person would form the impression that the website in question was in fact owned by Computeach. Our website is therefore very clear about the source and purpose of the reviews.

Indeed the 2 responses to your posting (i.e. SirBigWig dated Sep 29, 2008 at 9:44am and JamesW dated Sep 30, 2008 at 7:50pm) make it very clear that the impression created by your posting is that Computeach has acted disingenuously (albeit unsuccessfully).

We think that your statements are unfair to our company. Therefore we respectfully request that you remove these statements from your website with immediate effect and we would appreciate confirmation that you have done so.

Thank you in advance for your cooperation.

Yours faithfully
Greg

So Computeach are trying to say that they weren’t attempting to pass off their site as a reviews website? Why would any company setup a reviews website for their own company? It just doesn’t make any sense. The URL (computeach-reviews.co.uk) was obviously an attempt to rank for ‘computeach reviews‘ in Google, which is what anyone considering taking one of their courses would search for. When you do search for that in Google, you find 8 out of the 10 results on the first page feature hordes of negative comments, and the other two results are computeach.co.uk.

Doesn’t bode well for them does it? It looks very much like Computeach were trying to rank on that page for a search on ‘Computeach Reviews’, but as their computeach-reviews.co.uk website didn’t rank, they paid for it to rank using PPC.

So, what do you think, should I remove the posts or should I leave them as they are and allow people to have their own say on what they think?

Should I remove the Computeach post?

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Complaints, Internet

BD Recruitment send email ccing every SEO in the North West

8 Comments

Anyone who sends bulk emails to customers knows the importance of the ‘BCC’ field. It means Blind Carbon Copy, when you use it, everyone who receives the email doesn’t see everyone else’s email address. However, occasionally, you get idiots who send emails in bulk, and forget to use the BCC field, or in some cases don’t even know what it means.

One such idiot was Sandra Wong of BD Recruitment, who last week emailed every SEO in the North West area touting for people looking for a job, and visibly cc’d everyone in. So, we could all see which companies they emailed, who they emailed and, in the case of this particular peice of spam, the replies from the not so happy recipients.

Sandra Wong, from BD Recruitment, sent the following spam email to me, and many others:

Hi

I’m just checking to see if you are looking for a new career opportunity at the moment.

If you’re not, and know of anybody with a similar skill set to yourself then please refer them to me because if they secure a position through us we will give you a £15 HMV voucher.

This offer will be running until the end of this year so please save this message in your email account because for example if you recommend just 3 friends who all secure positions with us that’s £45 of vouchers for yourself, the more you recommend the more likely they will secure positions and the more vouchers you will get as a result.

I deal with online marketing but if you know of anybody in the technical department i.e. web developers or creative i.e. web designers. Any referrals who secure jobs with these departments also guarantees you £15 worth of HMV vouchers per candidate placed.

I look forward to your reply.

Sandra Wong
Specialist Online Marketing Recruitment Consultant
BD Recruitment Ltd

Consequently, dozens of people replied and slated Sandra Wong for her error, and demanded that they be removed from BD Recruitment’s database. Myself included. I imagine that BD Recruitment made a lot of enemies because of this, and lost an awful lot of potential clients.

That is of course, IF they removed the people who requested it. I wouldn’t be surprised to see an email from BD Recruitment again soon, as anyone stupid enough to CC in their entire mailing list also would have the bad taste to email everyone again when they think the heat has died down.

Complaints

Messy people at work

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Some people just can’t help leaving their rubbish everywhere. I just popped into the kitchen and found that there’s a load of drinks cans just dumped in a cardboard box. How messy is that? Furthermore, whoever put the box there can’t even spell ‘bicycle’ – it doesn’t start with the letter ‘R’!!!

Though why there’s a box full of cans and the attempt at the word bicycle on the side in the kitchen I don’t know.

Suffice to say I threw them in the bin, where they should be.

Complaints, CSA

CSA lie about receiving my complaint letter

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I’m astonished, truly astonished. I telephoned the CSA today to find out why they hadn’t contacted me to discuss my complaint letter, as their letter stated, and why it had been over 15 days since the date of their letter and they hadn’t resolved it, or contacted me to arrange an extension, again as their letter stated.

Guess what they said?

That’s right, they’ve no record of ever receiving a complaint letter from me! Despite not only receiving it, they’ve actually replied to confirm receipt of it, they say they haven’t got any record of me sending them a complaint.

Is it any wonder this is considered the most incompetent, corrupt government organisation ever created?

I’ve now been told by Paul Gratton from the child support agency’s Birkenhead office that he’s passing my telephone complaint onto someone, who he refused to identify, and requesting that she (he did say SHE) calls me back tomorrow. He did not confirm that she would call me back however, as I doubt she will.

So, if I’ve been told that I cannot speak to the CSA over the phone, and they lie about receiving my letters despite replying to me confirming receipt of them, how am I supposed to contact them?

Perhaps I should try a fucking carrier pigeon, or maybe conduct a séance? Whatever I try, the lying bastards will no doubt refuse to accept that they’ve heard from me.

This is why I record everything and keep copies of everything. They can lie all they want, but I have the proof of their lies and incompetence both in writing, and as MP3 files.

Complaints, Michael Jackson, Rants

Event Travel Complaint

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This weekend I was sorting through some old boxes and came across one of the very first complaint letters I’d ever written. It was such a moving experience, like finding an original Picasso or something. While the letter was rough round the edges, and lacked any real venom, you could see the formings of what would become MrDaz right there.

This letter was from 1997, eleven years ago, before the Internet became what it is today. Not being one to hold a grudge (;)), and someone who lets sleeping dogs lie, it’s time to dig this one up again as these bastards never replied to me!

So, for the guys at Event Travel, who ignored TWO complaint letters of mine, it’s your turn to worry. Before you had to deal, and ignore, Darren Jamieson, student… now you’ve got MrDaz on your ass, and he’s a right bastard when it comes to being ripped off.

In 1997 I attended the opening night of Michael Jackson’s History Tour in Prague, in the Czech Republic. The trip was booked by my girlfriend Lisa, using a company called Event Travel. This was her first mistake, an event with Event Travel is quite an ‘event’ indeed.

We went on the coach from Cardiff, driving through England, France, Belgium and Germany (which took hours) and then, at around 12 midnight, the coach we were travelling in blew a tire. The driver did well to slow down and pull over onto the hard shoulder of the German Autobarn, where we all got off on that freezing September night in Germany.

We waited… and we waited… and we waited.

Eventually, someone turned up to fix the tire and we got underway, at 7:30 am!!!

SEVEN AND A HALF HOURS, throughout the night, we all stood on the side of the road of the German Autobarn in September while very little happened.

What made matters worse is that we were actually travelling with two coaches in tandem, and the second coach stopped to see that everyone was OK, before driving on – arriving at the hotel some 8 hours before us.

So, why did it take 7 1/2 hours for someone to turn up and change the tire?

Why did the second coach drive off, when the services (we found out the next morning) were just a few miles up the road? It could have dropped off its passengers there and turned back for us, so we could have waited in the warmth, before it continued.

Why did Event Travel never, ever reply to me?

Maybe Event Travel will reply to me now? Perhaps Event Travel will explain why they bodged the trip so badly and never even said sorry for the disaster that befell the passengers?

I doubt it, but we’ll try. More importantly though, has anyone else had any experiences with Event Travel? Let me know here.

You could even visit their site and tell them direct.

Complaints

Fairwater leisure centre, Cwmbran, rip me off

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In the Summer of 2006 I started going to gym again. Guess I felt a little out of shape and wanted to do something about it, it happens to us all. My nearest gym was in Fairwater Leisure Centre, Cwmbran. It wasn’t much of a gym, but was cheap and had enough equipment for me to use for the first few months.

However, in September they phoned me on day to say they’d closed the gym for refurbishments, and it would remain closed for about 4 weeks. Now, being a council run gym I knew that ‘4 weeks’ meant at least 6 weeks.

Also, I had just renewed my monthly subscription with them, but they said I’d get a month added to my subscription once they re-opened.

Obviously this wasn’t good enough as I was in a training routine and couldn’t just stop for 6 weeks (or 4 as they claimed) so I joined the gym at Cwmbran Stadium. It cost a bit more, was further away but was a much better gym.

Then, on November 1st, Fairwater Leisure Centre phoned me to say they’d re-opened and I could use the gym again… some 6 weeks later 😉

I explained I’d now joined Cwmbran Stadium and didn’t need their subscription, so could they just reimburse me for the amount I’d spent when the gym was shut, without warning. The woman said she’d speak to the manager and he’d phone me back.

Guess what?

That’s right, nothing. I emailed several times throughout the next few months, with false promises of someone dealing with it.

In December I injured my back in Cwmbran Stadium and had to cancel my subscription, then I moved away from the area entirely in March. This was when I contacted Fairwater Leisure Centre again, only to be told by the manager that I somehow owed money to Cwmbran Stadium so he wasn’t going to reimburse me.

I explained that I didn’t owe them anything, and he should check his facts. He said he would and then call me back.

That was March 2007… 2007!

It is now April 2008… and I phoned them back, only this time, I recorded it. Tomorrow I’ll post up the phonecall and a summary of events since last week.

20 months to get back less than £20? Could only happen to me!