First Great Western and the flooding. Not a problem.

November 23, 2012 By Leave a Comment

Come hell and high water, First Great Western gets me home – again.

For the last 5 years I’ve been travelling weekly between London and Plymouth. No matter what the weather or fate has thrown at them, First Great Western has never failed to get me to where I was going. When things beyond the company’s control happen – like snow, floods or even someone determined to commit suicide under one of it’s trains – FGW responds by honouring its commitment to get people to the final station they were originally heading. In some cases, in the snowy dead of night, FGW has taken me right to the front door.

Tonight, as the ‘cancelled’ signs started popping up on the departure board at Paddington, instead of joining the baying mob pressing around the long-suffering advisors at the ‘Information’ desk, I went straight to Twitter and my ‘old mate’ Ollie who, on certain days, is ‘@First_GW’ or ‘@FGW’. It was obvious that Ollie was – and had been for some time – dealing with thousands of panicked people, all wondering how they were going to get home.  With a Tweet rate in the hundreds-per-minute, he was responding to a barrage of questions with information and reassurance, explaining to each individual what their options were. This was great great customer service: immediate and specific to the customer’s situation.

Ollie told me that I could get to Taunton on the 19.45. He couldn’t confirm if buses would be laid on from there to Plymouth but the departure board and station announcer at Paddington could. The train took me to Taunton where I got on a coach to Exeter. At Exeter, a train was waiting to take me to Plymouth.

I’m home again thanks to everyone at FGW.

Filed Under: mukau reputation boost

B&B in Wolverhampton? I recommend Holly Bank House

June 16, 2012 By Leave a Comment

If you’re looking for a B&B in Wolverhampton, I warmly recommend Holly Bank House in Essington

I don’t usually take time out to recommend hotels on my blog as I always make a point of giving them feedback both face-t0-face and on Tripadvisor. But Holly Bank House in Wolverhampton impressed me so much that I wanted to give them this ‘mukau reputation boost’ – and because they really deserve to be better known than they are.

Located in Essington on the outskirts of Wolverhampton and surrounded by countryside and fields, Holly Bank House is a lovely old house offering a wonderfully warm welcome, great breakfasts, comfortable rooms and old-fashioned peace and quiet. At around £50 a night, Holly Bank House not only offers exceptional hospitality (nothing is too much trouble) but it does it for less than any of the other hotels in the area. Holly Bank House is not to be mistaken with Hollybank House . How confusing is that?

Check out the Tripadvisor reviews for Holly Bank House in Essington (including my ’6 out of 5*’ review). If you’re going to Wolverhampton on business like I did or just going to visit friends and family, do give this place a try. I’m sure you won’t regret it – I didn’t.

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StudioPress WP themes – thank you for great service

November 9, 2011 By Leave a Comment

Tech support at StudioPress got me back up and running quickly – and threw in a free theme too

Out of the blue this site stopped displaying properly the other day. It was based on a premium theme called ‘Venture’ that I’d bought maybe two years ago. Everything had worked well and I had no complaints – until the other day. The first thing I did was make sure that all my content was still intact. Then I switched to another (free) theme in my WP dashboard which worked fine meaning that it was Venture was somehow broken.

I went on a quick search to try to find who I’d bought Venture from and when. The trail led me to StudioPress – along with the name Brian Gardner. That was strange. I’d used a lot of Brian’s themes (free and paid) but I was sure that ‘Venture’ came from a stable called ‘ModThemes’. To be honest, there have been so many of them I’ve lost track.

It turned out that Venture was now under the StudioPress umbrella. I contact tech support (not expecting much) and was really happy to get back an email offering me another theme plus their ‘Genesis’ platform – for free. True to their word, I got another email back today with a link to a download – ‘Agency’.

I’d like to say that this piece of good customer service has won me back as a StudioPress customer – except it seems that I’ve never actually been away. Nice move Brian and the team! Thanks!

Filed Under: feedback, mukau reputation boost

Toyshop in Tavistock? Kaleidoscope deserves reputation boost

October 8, 2011 By Leave a Comment

The owner of Kaleidoscope toyshop in Tavistock helped me out for free

It’s not often that you get something for nothing but today I did. I was walking through Tavistock looking for some small magnets and getting nowhere. Not the hardware store, not the market, not the fancy gift shops. So I called into Kaleidoscope Toys and spoke to the owner.

“Hang on a minute” he said, and disappeared upstairs. When he returned, he had a handful of little magnets from some kind of toy I’d never seen before. “You can have these for nothing” he said.

They were JUST what I needed and they’ll be heading to Glasgow with me to the job I’ll use them for on Monday.

Thank you, Kaleidoscope Toys in Tavistock. I hope that I can return your kind deed some time.

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LG condenser dryer not heating?

January 15, 2011 By 1 Comment

Has your LG condenser dryer stopped heating?? Read this before you spend another £500

** Online reputation boost due to howtomendit.com and the internet generally!! **

Same happened to us this morning. Can’t live without one. Can’t (frankly) be arsed to start thinking about ‘repair man’ (if such a reliable person can even be found any more?). So started immediately thinking about just buying another. Hell, we’ve had this one running continuously for 4 years – it’s not as if it hasn’t seen good service.

But before spending another £500 I went to our friend Google.

And discovered that if your LG condenser dryer stops heating, you might want to take off the back metal panel (after switching off from the mains, of course) – whereapon you’ll find a little red reset switch.

If you press that little red reset switch, the dryer will start heating again. At least mine has.

I’m not sure it’s a permanent fix (there’s something about the filter sensors increasingly coming on – but no idea of how to get to those sensors to clean them…) – but I’ve just done it and it worked for now.

Thank you Internet. :-) I’m suddenly £500 better off than I was about to be. Nice.

Two other things:

1) LG – why don’t you paste a little note on the machine itself saying “If your heater element should stop working…”

2) LG – why don’t you print your little instruction stickers that you DO have on the machine upside down in future? That way I’ll actually be able to read them when I’m on my hands and knees trying to fix the unit (instead of putting the ‘right’ way up at floor level?)

Filed Under: mukau reputation boost, smile, WOW! Tagged With: , , , ,

RYA Day Skipper Course Plymouth Sailing School

September 21, 2009 By Leave a Comment

Good people, excellent instructors and a great Day Skipper experience from the much under-marketed Plymouth Sailing School!

This post is by way of a ‘thank you’ to the team at Plymouth Sailing School (01752 493377) for a really excellent RYA Day Skipper course. Give those people a ‘mu:kau reputation boost!

About four years ago I got the sailing bug after a couple of Boat Shows and a ridiculously cheap SunSail Competent Crew course in Lanzarote.  I decided to do the next step – the Day Skipper course consisting of a classroom based theory course followed by a practical course.

I chose to do both with Plymouth Sailing School albeit with a nearly 3 year gap in between.  Despite being really worried that I’d forgotten everything that I learned in the classroom, I paid for my practical course in Spring 2008.  Even though it took me until Aug 2009 to actually get started, I was treated as if I’d booked it yesterday.

IMG_4232

The two weekends I’ve done so far have been superb and my instructor, Colin, has built my confidence up to a point where chartering a yacht for holidays and beyond has gone from wishful thinking to a realistic option.

A nicer, more genuine team of sail-training people I’ve yet to meet.  The boats (typically Bavaria 34s) are always stuffed with food and drink; clean, tidy, fully-equipped and comfortable throughout.  Nothing is overlooked and they even lend you waterproofs for free.

A little bird tells me (Jan 1 2011) there’s a website re-fresh in the pipeline – which is excellent news, because up until now, Plymouth Sailing School was in danger of being the region’s best-kept sailing secret. That would be a real shame because whether you’re looking for a day’s sailing with the family or any of the RYA sail training courses, you really won’t find a better school or location.

Look forward to seeing you again this summer, chaps!

Contact Richard on 01752 493377 or visit www.plymouthsailingschool.com


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Amazon.co.uk customer service phone number (and reputation boost)

May 13, 2009 By 176 Comments

Don’t waste your time searching Amazon.co.uk for their well-hidden customer service phone number

You’ll struggle to find it – I did. And so, it seems, do thousands of other people. Well, look no further. Here it is:

0800 496 1081

You can also try this number 0207 084 7911 (listed as for ‘International Customers’) The 0800 number is working as of January 10th 2010. Where did I get it?  www.saynoto0870.com.  Why did I have to go there? Because it’s deliberately buried on the Amazon website so you can’t find it.

Alternatively, why not try Amazon’s best-kept customer service secret: their ‘call back’ service?

To get to this service, you have to log in, specify the order you’re concerned with and then supply a phone number for them to call you back. Great! Well – it would be except that it seems to be designed without any understanding of basic human psychology.

Why? Because there’s nothing about this wonderful, potentially stress-reducing, service on the front of Amazon’s site – you know, the place where an angry customer washes up full of, well, you know – frustration and anger? Amazon’s process then expects that angry, frustrated customer into a process of filling out more information when, in fact, all that customer is looking for is a phone number they can call to speak to a real person. The fact that Amazon is leading them down this winding, un-signposted path to take them to an even better solution is, well, beside the point because the customer doesn’t know this. All they know is that they don’t seem to be getting any closer to what they think is their desired outcome.

I’m sure that many of the people who end up here do so because Amazon has failed to anticipate these peoples’ concerns and failed to let them know on the front page (hey, why not??) that a good solution is a couple of clicks away. Might seem like a small detail to Amazon but the grateful people here demonstrate it’s a big one to them.

NOTE: PLEASE DO NOT CALL ME ABOUT YOUR AMAZON ORDERS – I AM NOT AMAZON AND HAVE NO CONNECTION TO AMAZON.

Update: 31.10.11 - It’s not only buried, it’s now non-existent. I searched for it tonight and I got this:

That’s the bad news.

The good news is that I called about my mate’s Harmon Kardon soundsticks that were broken when he got them about 2 months ago.

“Sorry but it’s outside of 30 days” said the friendly operator.

“Well it’s taken me 20 minutes to find your phone number – and only then from ‘saynoto0870.com’” says I by way of return.  “Show me where it is on your website”.

Five minutes later, we finally got there – buried so deep that it’s no wonder my mate gave up long before he ever found it.

“Do you think that’s really fair?” I asked, reasonably “What would be great is if you replaced them for him”

“Hold on one minute Sir…. [pause, music]… yes, Sir, we can do that for you”

Well done Amazon.co.uk.  Bad, bad, bad for hiding your phone number.  Good, good, good for replacing my mate’s faulty soundsticks before incurring a social media slating.  ;-)

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Benugo BFI Southbank: excellent food, great customer service

March 18, 2009 By Leave a Comment

A mukau reputation boost for Benugo BFI Southbank

I went to a Christmas dinner at Benugo restaurant at BFI and it was… ok.  Actually, it was a bit less than ok and one of the party gave them some feedback via their website.

Their response was an apology and £50 in vouchers to compensate.

Tonight we went back to Benugo’s for a second visit.

Going back to a place where you didn’t have the best experience isn’t always easy.  It’s nice to be able to report that coming back to Benugo’s we were not disappointed.  Julian and I both had shin of beef and roasted carrots with spring greens and roast potatoes and it was superb.

The new manager went out of his way to make us welcome and chat with us (despite actor John Hurt and his entourage turning up at the bar at the same time). The service was great too.

A mukau reputation boost to Benugo’s for taking feedback, making amends and going out of their way to keep us as customers and – more importantly – convert us into advocates.  Good move! ;-)

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London Eye pictures prove London’s got ‘an ‘eart

February 17, 2009 By 2 Comments

Pictures courtesy random act of kindness at London Eye

I met my mum at Waterloo this evening to go for a walk along the river.  We came to the London Eye and decided on the spur of the moment to go on it.

I’d never been on it in all those years.  Amazingly, there was no queue at all.  Perfect spontaneous idea!

Until we asked one of the guys on the gate how much it was.  “£15 for adults, £12 for seniors” said the man.  Not originally planning to take a flight on the eye, I’d only brought £25 with me.

“Ah,” I said “I didn’t bring enough money” turning to walk away.

“Come here” said the man, motioning to the gate he was opening “On you go.  Enjoy yourselves”

Just like that.  What what a wonderful gesture.

BA London Eye, if you’re reading this, that man made our evening.  Thank you.


Filed Under: mukau reputation boost, WOW! Tagged With: , ,

First Great Western customer service: going the extra mile in the snow

February 3, 2009 By 4 Comments

A MRB* to First Great Western for their customer service in yesterday’s snow chaos

Train Operators don’t get much praise because most people only ever remember the small percentage of messed up journeys, not the majority of good ones.  And few of us ever stop to consider what a miracle getting from one end of the country to the other actually is.

Well, a mukau Reputation Boost for First Great Western and their customer service is in order for their handling of yesterday’s shock UK snow traffic chaos.  Why? Because they ran trains yesterday when it would have made far better economic sense to cancel them. And the people who ran them were polite, informative, empathetic and helpful.

During the 2 hour delay on the freezing platform at Plymouth, I watched customers venting their anger at First Great Western – for things over which it had no control.  Being able to work with the barely suppressed rage of the Great British Public is, make no mistake, quite an achievement for any company’s customer service department.

Getting aboard a warm train after 2 hours on a freezing platform was, delays aside, a truly wonderful experience.  In addition, the service was good too – the train manager not only kept us informed every step of the way up to Paddington, he also checked with every passenger on the train and co-ordinated their onward travel.

For my measly £13 fare, I not only got to London warm and dry, I also got a £25 taxi ride to my destination – free – with a genuine apology from the Duty Station Manager at Paddington ringing in my ears.

One last thing.  You’re rubbish at taking good feedback, FGW.  I’ve tried several times but you don’t know how to do it. Pity – because you deserve it sometimes. Like yesterday.  Thank you. :-)

*Mukau Reputation Boost: A independent, positive and confidence-inspiring comment about your company high up in the Google search results

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