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Just trying out writing my own webspace. Publishing to Blogger is a bit tedious.

Hi everyone,

I just updated my website and thought you might want to check it out. To visit, just click on the links below or paste the URLs into your browser.

Site http://web.me.com/mc_dermotts
Games Blog
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Take a look and let me know what you think!

Made on a Mac

The Costa Complaining

Anyone who has read my Twitter Feed will know that I am a little obsessed with Coffee.  Costa is currently my favourite of the big chains.  As a fan of good service, good coffee and contractual consistency, despite having many other things to think about, I have recently become embroiled in a Costa related customer services shambles. You may be amused, and ultimately heartened, by the ensuing email chain……

________________________________________
Dear Customer Service

I currently use the Costa Coffee shop in Chineham near Basingstoke. I have a local 10% discount card that is valid for 1 year (sponsored by destination Basingstoke) and I have been using it for sometime. I recently got the new Coffee Club card in Oxford and decided to use it at the Chineham shop. Some staff have allowed it and some have not, on one occasion the response was quite terse – strange since the card is supposed to engender loyalty I thought – and so I called the customer services number on the card. I was informed that there was no problem with both cards being used simultaneously. When I told the staff at Chineham they did not believe me so I have mostly just ignored the card. This week one of the staff asked if I had the coffee club card and I replied I do but you won’t let me use it, he invited me to hand over my card and applied both the discount and the club card. The next visit this action was stopped by another member of staff, I explained that I really wasn’t bothered whether they scanned the card or not, as a regular customer it is important for me not to fall out with them and feel uncomfortable visiting the branch. I pointed out that I had called the customer services and been told that they can use both cards. Today she told me she had also called customer services and been told that she was correct and they should only accept one discount card. Promptly asking me which one I wish to use – the PERK card is 10% discount and the Coffee Club is 5% - my answer is obvious really. May I ask that you answer in writing which of the advice is correct?

Kind regards

James

Costa Fan

________________________________________

From: Natalie.OHara@Whitbread.com [mailto:Natalie.OHara@Whitbread.com] On Behalf Of Costa.Coffee.Club/Whitbread@Whitbread.com

Sent: 28 April 2010 15:54

To: McDermott, James

Subject: Re: Confusion

Thank you for your email to Costa Coffee. I apologise for a delay in a response.

I can confirm that you are unable to use both discounts together, as per the terms and conditions.

I apologise for any inconvenience.

Kind regards

Natalie O'Hara

Whitbread Guest Relations Team

________________________________________

Thank you Natalie.

May I ask to which clause in the terms and conditions you are referring?

Kind regards

James

________________________________________

Hi Natalie,

I have not received a reply yet to my email. I have reviewed the terms and conditions that are published on the website and I cannot see which clause restricts the use of the card. Can you help?

Kind regards

James

________________________________________

From: Lyn.Rolland@Whitbread.Com [mailto:Lyn.Rolland@Whitbread.Com]

Sent: 26 May 2010 13:41

To: McDermott, James

Subject: LR

Dear Mr Mcdermott,

I would just like to update you on the below. having looked into this in depth. Unbeknown to us, the terms and conditions should have been changed when we launched the card nationwide. I don't know if you were aware that we were trialing it in Scotland for a year, but we never changed the terms and condtions during the trail as we really did not know if the scheme would be a success. I therefore apologise for the confusion that has been caused. You will see now that the terms and conditions have been updated.

I am aware that you therefore lost out on some discount that you may previously been entitled to therefore I would like to add 200 points to your Costa Card if you would be so kind as to forward the full card number.

Regards

Lyn

Guest Relations Costa

________________________________________

From: McDermott, James

Sent: 26 May 2010 14:13

To: 'Lyn.Rolland@Whitbread.Com'

Cc: 'mc_dermotts@me.com'

Subject: RE: LR

Dear Lyn

Thank you for your response. The 200 points is very much appreciated. I was not aware of your trial in Scotland but I am glad Costa has now settled on terms and conditions for this loyalty card scheme that are consistently applied and communicated to all of the branches and franchises.

I do realise that managing the franchises with a central global brand must be a significant undertaking but as a regular user of Costa I am consistently disappointed with the response when I present any of the discount cards. I stopped at the M4 services franchise on Sunday and the response to my polite question about if they took the card was dreadful, in your role as guest relations you would have cringed. Thankfully the coffee was fantastic!

Thank you again for responding to my question.

James

Costa Fan

...and now for the whether

Metoffice

Gone are the days where we can look forward to Michael Fish getting the weather forecast spectacularly wrong as the only point of interest for the weather updates after the news.

We may have to rely on this sort of chart for quite sometime before we choose whether to travel by air – oh I got that from the media so it may be totally wrong. However, it does make you consider what a world without air travel would be like….

No nipping to the US on holiday, no popping to Europe for a long weekend break.  No pointless business meetings that could have been better organised.  Actually, I think it’s a good thing that we are being made to consider our travel plans carefully before committing.

Beware what you wish for...

Taking the BBC results table, which still has one constituency to declare, and using some Exel™ jiggery-pokery you get this table.  That is, taking the popular vote and allocating the proportion of seats dependent on the proportion of the electorate that voted for that party makes interesting reading (don’t forget the rounding!).  Bare in mind that I have not read any papers on how proportional representation actually works, or indeed if people knew that we didn’t have a first past the post mechanism would they vote differently?  I’m sure they would.  So this table is not necessarily representative of a PR Election but it does make you think about the level of negotiation needed to reach agreement.

Swing-o-meter

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/newstopics/politics/2432632/UK-General-Election-2010-political-map.html

Given that we need a 19.5% swing to liberals to get a hung parliament, is there really any chance of electoral reform?

I tried to post this yesterday but forgot to press the go-live button on the blogger dashboard. Less than prophetic in the most depressing way. Don’t try pressing the reset map button, it doesn’t work. Unfortunately we have all voted and the count is coming in. After all the haggling and horse trading is complete the botched government that is left will almost certainly be a travesty to the Popular Vote. Liberal Democrats have 8% of the seats from 23% of the electorate voting for them.

  http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/shared/election2010/results/

Bluebells and chaos

I have spent a large portion of today looking at and photographing
bluebells.
This evening I have edited the photos and I have tried to publish them.
I have 2 applications for managing and editing photos on my Apple,
Apperture and iPhoto. Both seem to communicate with MobileMe but only
one with facebook, meanwhile tweetdeck seems to have used Tweetphoto
not Twitpic and I'm not really sure how I managed this before.
Is it me or has this been overcomplicated?
Sent from my iPhone