Poundbury, oh Poundbury

I've been wishing to visit this urban extension of Dorchester for some time now and did so last week, mid-week, mid-day.  My initial reaction was one which used to be common to people who encountered Milton Keynes, who having driven right through the new city, found it eerily devoid of people. In the case of Milton Keynes, their experience was to be expected due to the explicit separation of people and traffic by the design. In the case of Poundbury however, I was on foot and hoping to discover the hub of the place; where people would meet; the heart of the development. I didn't.

We walked from one end to the other, from one side to the other and passed at the most six other people. My husband remarked that he felt rather as if we were on a film set; that the place wasn't quite real.

I have a keen interest in what makes retail spaces work and their interaction with the public realm.  Well, Poundbury isn't short of public realm. The wide roads, the interesting spaces and juxtaposition of the buildings all contrive to give lots of opportunity for humans to interact.  But where are the humans?  Presumably those who live in Poundbury mainly work elsewhere. Those who work in the sprinkling of retail and commercial units designed around the public squares were obviously hard at it behind the large windows of their large units. Solicitors, care organisations, bridal shops, kitchen companies - I'm sure there are other categories, but this was my impression of unit occupants. I longed to turn a corner and find a little greengrocer in a tiny shop, with vegetables piled up outside (it was a sunny day) or that I might stumble over some cafe culture or even a pub, where real people were spilling out into the sunshine. 

I was told later on, when discussing the lack of people in Poundbury with someone who knows the place, that the social life there is excellent and that it's a Marmite town; people either love it or they don't. I guess that's one other thing that it has in common with Milton Keynes.

When Her Majesty visits next week she will be unveiling a statue in Queen Mother Square and I'm sure she'll be impressed with the truly majestic buildings close by and with her son's rather splendid achievement. What I'm also sure of is that Poundbury will on that day be full of bustling humanity and hundreds of people, so let's hope some of that street-level vitality lasts after she's left the square.

Why I'm for 'Out'

The EU's inability to deal with the mess it has created with the inequity of nation state economies is appalling. Its complete failure to handle effectively asylum seekers and refugees to provide safe sanctuary is scandalous. I want my country to open its doors to those escaping war and torture. And if to do that we have to say to the rest of Europe, sorry but you can't migrate here for the time being - then so be it. While we're in the EU we can't do that.

We have a Europe that is meddling where it shouldn't, flexing its military muscles (reg. the EU exercise on Salisbury Plain recently), selling its soul to multinationals (TTIP) while at the same time failing on tests of basic humanity. It doesn't represent me in any way, shape or form and it doesn't represent a lot of those in the countries it purports to represent.

People have taken to the streets in frustration all over Europe in the past few years and they don't do so to applaud a superb EU government. It's too big; you can't standardise life to the extent that it wants to. The inevitable result of EU mismanagement will be, I'm afraid, social unrest. And none of us wants to see bloody revolutions again in Europe.

That's why I'm out. It's nothing to do with celebrities or politicians. It's my own observation, reading and investigation that have led me to this conclusion.

90, and working to pay her rent

I've spent a lot of time recently with a lady who has just turned 90.  She lives in a house rented from a trust.  It is in basically the same state that it was in the 1960s. Very little has been done to modernise it, it's a single skin brick Victorian house with single glazing and faces north. It's cold, dark and cheerless.

The occupant was a teacher when she wasn't bringing up her two children.  Because she worked part time for many years her pension is a pittance. Her husband, also a teacher - a head - should have left her well-provided for when he died over thirty years ago. He invested his superannuation and at normal interest rates this would have left his wife in a comfortable situation. When I say comfortable, I don't mean foreign holidays or expensive living, I mean comfortable in that she wouldn't have had to worry about where the next penny was coming from. I mean she might occasionally have been able to buy herself new, as opposed to second-hand, clothes.

Along came the banking crisis and the economic slump.  Down went interest rates and with them this lady's income. Now her investment income doesn't really cover her living expenses, so she's eating into the capital and has been for some years.  The trust, from which she rents the property, put up the rent although it did the minimum to repair the property.

This lady has to paint watercolours in order to earn enough money to pay her rent. She buys second-hand frames and gets the picture framer to cut them down for her. She worries that she's not going to have enough money at the end of the month. She denies herself little treats. She's cut her charitable giving, something she enjoyed doing, to practically nothing. She doesn't partake in events or outings which are going to cost money. She's poor in the extreme.

For many of us we will live long enough to see interest rates rise; I'm sure we will experience a re-balancing and those with savings will to some extent re-establish their wealth. But for this lady there will be no good financial news - she won't live long enough to see that.

So if you're a banker on a very good salary, just doing your job and anticipating a hefty bonus into the bargain, I hope you will stop and think about the consequences of your actions. When your profession acted recklessly and went gambling with our money and got it so terribly wrong, you condemned this little old lady to live in poverty for the rest of her life.

She doesn't sleep well at night; do you?

And always keep a-hold of nurse for fear of finding something worse

I had the most appalling service from BT when my broadband kept dropping at my one-person one-room business, their One Bill system failed to draw on my direct debit for the telephone element and they failed to notify me until I was six months in arrears. It is unsurprising therefore that I picked an alternative supplier when I planed to move office.

I won’t go into the details but suffice it to say that it’s not a good idea to ask Utility Warehouse to help you move seamlessly, for they have no procedures whatsoever for being able to set up a line with broadband and transfer a number from elsewhere, all on the same day. They cannot even instigate the orders for the number or the broadband until the line is in their possession. Whether that’s their fault - and I’m inclined to think it’s not - doesn’t really matter. What matters is that they didn’t tell me until it was nearly too late and seemed to think that their business service, which would leave me up to five days without any telephone line and up to 10 days without broadband, was acceptable for a business. I cancelled in high dudgeon just one day before calamity. Utility Warehouse - or UW Club as it prefers to be known - has a great deal to learn about business customer service.

So with my move fast approaching and in desperation I rang BT and said I was sorry, I did love them after all and could they do the move for me? No problem, they responded. You can have the line and the broadband transferred on one day and that can take place in five days time. I was ecstatic, my joy knew no bounds. The stress fell away now that I was firmly in Nurse BT’s hands once again - how reassuring.

My delight was however short-lived. It turns out that British Telecommunications couldn’t do the job in five days as the salesman said - but seven. OK, I’m a reasonable person and bearing in mind that I had committed the dreadful sin of unfaithfulness and a contrite heart was now mine, I resolved to be patient.

All the emails that followed were very reassuring. I presumed an engineer would call me to arrange a time for the installation. He hasn't and there's been no call, so since tomorrow is a very long day and I’m unable to be at my new office, I called the Business Movers Team this morning. Could they give me a time? No, absolutely not. The only thing they could do was assure me that the job would be done between 8 am and 6 pm - and even the person on the phone agreed that time span for an appointment was hardly reasonable. After I kicked up a fuss she did agree to try and contact the installation team. I'm not holding my breath.

What I find amazing is that I’ve just turned my PC on and I’ve received another reassuring email from BT in which is states that my appointment is .......... wait for it ..............”Provisionally appointed for 01/07/2010 00:00:00” Ah, so BT you do actually have a system with a slot for the hour, but you’re just not prepared to tell me what that time is. Instead I am expected to ensure someone is in my one-room office for a total of 10 hours.

BT, I call this totally unreasonable - a bit like the totally unreasonable fact that I have one telephone line with broadband on it and had to set up TWO direct debit accounts. Totally unreasonable like when my broadband failed and I was bounced between “wholesale” and the broadband team, neither of whom wanted to take responsibility for me. It was only my email to the chairman of BT that put me in touch with the most charming Scottish BT Escalation Team who did have the right buttons to push and did eventually sort out the problem.

One thing that is quite clear to me is that if you are a small business and you use BT you will be treated like a domestic customer. A line with broadband on it is in their minds a domestic affair and despite the fact that as a business you are fleeced for a service just because you’re a business you get the same flakey service you would if you were just a householder.

BT - and I really do hope you and hundreds of others are reading this - such lack of understanding of your customers simply isn’t good enough. The majority of the businesses in this country are small businesses and many of those are micro businesses like me. Just try looking at the service you are giving and ask yourselves, would you wait in 10 hours for someone who is only booked to attend your premises “provisionally”?

BT - again

It's difficult to believe how bad BT can get. Maybe you have read earlier in the month how the line rental and calls element of my one BT telephone line with broadband have necessitated me setting up two separate direct debits.

Well it turns out it's not just the billing that's an admin shambles. It's engineering as well. My broadband drops several times a day - OK only for a few seconds - but I have to wait for it to reconnect. BT has now replaced the source of the box on the wall and the hub. Still the line drops.

Apparent BT's Wholesale arm cannot trace a fault. Not our problem, gov!

So I now have to open up an entirely new fault with the other section, the line people, because only they can look at the line. Come on - my broadband doesn't work and I contract with you BT so it's up to you to fix it. It's an easy concept in common law. I should haven't to bounce from pillar to post through your strange internal department structure to get the line fixed. What's more the service cost - inflated because it's a business line - is double what I'd have to pay from a competitor supplier.

British Telecommnications, you really need to get your act together, now!

..and I even have shares in BT

I run a small business. When I needed broadband I decided to return to BT (after a very satisfactory relationship with Utility Warehouse) and put my calls, line rental and the broadband in their hands and on one line. I stopped the second line which I'd originally had for fax.

For many years since I'd opted for one bill, I'd been receiving about 8 sheets of paper each quarter. Now added to these was the broadband bill, a completely separate account it appeared invoiced entirely separately.

Imagine my delight, given my green leaning, when BT announced that I could have an online account and administer all my BT services there, have one login, set up a direct debit and never worry again. That was nine months ago.

Everything seemed to be going well. OK I admit it - I hadn't logged on to check. Why would I? Then out of the blue I received an email to tell me my bill was available. That was new. I'd never had one email about billing before. Better have a look. There's me who had never ever received a red bill, looking at red text telling me that I was overdue by nine months for charges for the phone line and calls.

I won't go the lengthy calls, the shortness of my temper and my eventual capitulation into paying the outstanding amount using a credit card, and then setting up a second direct debit for the line and calls. Suffice it to say that a whole afternoon was taken up with trying to handle BT's clunky and completely unwieldy customer care team. It's not their fault, bless them. They don't have the right buttons. But it would have been helpful if, instead of telling me that she was going to speak to a supervisor, the young lady who received my second call had not put me on everlasting hold which terminated with unobtainable ringtone!

If all the other telecoms providers can deliver amalgamated services with one simple bill that you can understand, why can't BT? Why does BT have to add their £4.50 charges for handling payment, and then deduct it again on the same bill because it's not applicable if you pay by direct debit? BT competitors do it far better.

If Internet Explorer conflicts with BT's pdf download technology say so, don't leave me to deduce it from the "are you using Explorer?" question which three separate customer service operatives asked me. Why not tell me? Then I'd not have wasted so much time trying fruitlessly to access my invoices. (If you've stumbled upon this blog in answer to the question "why can't I download and print my BT invoices" the simple answer is, use Firefox not Explorer.)

So BT - and I do hope you're reading this - please sort it out and sort it out soon while my shares still have some value. I care - the big question is, do you?

P.S. Although another business now uses and pays for my old fax line, BT still sends me automated messages on it to tell me when line problems on my current line have been resolved!

So it's our fault is it?

I often walk down to the Post Officer rather than slap a stamp on a package and post it, because I can never be quite sure that I've got the right postage amount. So I spend a long time standing queues - there's always a queue these days. And that gives me plenty of time to take in the message on the Post Officer poster that says: "4 out of 10 people use the wrong postal service from our range."

Can you believe it? A business has got it so wrong that 40% of its customers are buying the wrong product. Now whose fault is that? Not the customers for a start.

I have tried very hard to keep up with the ever changing services - first and second, large and small, different widths and different sizes, different weights. I'm sure I get it wrong - I'm sure I'm part of that 40%.

Now if 40% of my customers were buying the wrong product for their purposes, would I broadcast the fact to them? Would I slap them in the face with the knowledge that I'm so incompetent I've made my offering so complex that they can't understand it?

Of course not. The idea is ludicrous. I would quietly, with as little fuss as possible, revise my offering to make it perfectly simple and easy the use. I wouldn't just carry on and blame my customers instead.

So come on Royal Mail - I know you're reading this, or you certainly should be if your online monitoring is adequate. Don't blame nearly half your customers for your own inadequacies. Look to your business model, sort it out and then perhaps the queues will be a great deal shorter.