Way back in April of this year my girlfriend and I decided to go to the Bestival festival that takes place on the Isle of White each year in September.  It's only been going for a few years so isn't really in the same league as Reading or Glastonbury and so tickets don't normally sell out at any where near the same rate but we decided to get ours early anyway so brought a couple from lastminute.com

So lastminute.com got £244 of our money and we got an email informing us that our tickets would be with us 10 days before the event...

A few months past and it was late August.  The Bestival had sold out long ago and it was now 10 days before it all starts and no tickets had arrived.  I emailed lastminute.com and a few days later received a reply telling me not to worry and that the tickets will be with me within the next few days.  4 days before the event and still no tickets, I email again and this time received an automated response thanking me for my email and informing me that I would receive a reply from a human being within the next 4 working days... not very helpful considering I'm meant to be there ticket in hand in less than 4 days time!

A couple of calls to a computer later shouting YES and NO in all the right places and I finally got to talk to a human being, they said they would look into the problem for me, great I thought, I'm sure they got lost in the post and they can just reissue the tickets.  But then i received an email this morning:

Greetings from lastminute.com

Please note that as per the update from the supplier, there has been a
technical error due to which your booking was not processed. They have
tried their level best to secure tickets for you. However, there are no
more tickets left for the event.

Thus, we have processed a full refund for the booking. The refund of GBP
244.90 will be processed to the original form of payment within the next
7 days.

I apologise for any inconvenience caused, please do not hesitate to
contact us should you require any further assistance.

Regards,

Sylvester Chiu
Customer Services Team
lastminute.com

How disappointing!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

And I think the worst thing is that the email comes from an unmonitored account so the only way to discuss this with them further is to shout YES and NO at a computer again!  This is the problem with internet only companies, They are all too keen to sell you the services/products but they don't have the customer support to back this up.

Rant over...

Technorati Tags: lastminute.com, Bestival

This is something that has bugged me for years.. finally a solution!

1. Hold down Alt + Spacebar
2. Press the M key
3. Use the arrow keys to relocate the window
4. Press the Enter key when you have the Window in the desired location.

I moved house a few weeks ago and I’ve finally unpacked all the boxes and spoken to the various companies I have something to do with to tell them my new address.  Although listening to automated touchtone messages again and again is never that pleasurable most companies (bank, mobile phone, utilities etc) managed to handle my move request with ease.  That was except for one... the dreaded broadband provider; they have been so utterly useless I feel compelled to tell the world!

I’ve had an account with Be (bethere.co.uk) for about a year, their service had been reliable but their quoted 24 meg download speed has been more like a 4 or 5 ever since we signed up.  I gave them a call to let them know I was moving and was surprised when they said they had no procedures in place for moving house… I mean come on; it’s hardly that unusual is it!  Instead I would have to close down my old account (at a cost of £50) and then re-open a brand new account (at a cost of £24) that’s £74 for an existing customer to simply move house, a little on the steep side I think!  On top of this there systems were unable to cope with me using the same email address to sign up for the new account so I’m forced to use my work email address…

Anyway after a week of waiting around I logged onto their website only to be told that there was a problem activating my line, I called the help desk (Bulgaria) and was told that there was no problem and that the website would be updated in a few hours.  The next day the website still showed an issue so I called again and was told there wasn’t a problem.  On the third day, still an issue was flagged so I called only to be told that they have now got a brand new moving house procedure and I was one of their guinea pigs, hurrah!  Then they told me it’s gone horribly wrong and so we will still have to cancel your account and place a new order.. Only you can’t place the new order yet as the line is now unavailable due to them trying to move it over…

Anyway to cut a long story short it’s been 2 weeks since I tried to get broadband at my new place, I’m now told my line should be active in the next 4 weeks, that’s 6 weeks and £74 just to move house… nice service Be!

Rant Over!

Hi, my name is Shaun and I live in Clapham, South London. I specialise in web site design and application development with a particular interest in ASP.NET and C#. I've created this site to showcase some examples of my work as well as host this blog detailing what I'm up to in the world of web development amongst a number of other things such as...

• All things .NET including issues/resolutions that I come across in my day to day work
• Gadget news, including my slightly unhealthy obsession with anything that comes out of apple
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• Anything else I think may be of interest to at least 2 people in the world (including myself)

Just to be different I've decided to ditch the usual WordPress setup and go with BlogEngine.NET, a free, open source blogging engine based on the .NET 2.0 framework. I've decided not to wait and perfect the site locally before releasing it into the wild as I know what I'm like, it will never happen! So please bear with me whilst I tweak/overhaul the design!