Sometimes it needs a real person

My browser of choice when I'm on my home PC is definitely Firefox.

I was using it to make a screencast a couple of weeks back and managed to lose not only the navigation bar but also the menu bar (the bit that says File, Edit, View, etc) which made life much harder.

All of a sudden navigation was well-nigh impossible and I was having to bite the bullet and use IE as my browser.

Then this afternoon I got fed up and pinged out a tweet asking if anyone knew how to fix the problem and bring back my menu bar.

Within seconds I got a reply from a friend with the answer - press Alt + F and the menu bar will temporarily reappear so that you can choose View, Menu Bar to turn it back on permanently.

Yay.

Firstly, thanks Patrick.

But there's also a lesson to learn here for customer service.

No matter how good your knowledge base, manual, website or other support documentation is, there are times when you do just want to ask a "real person", a "quick question".

This is why a phone or live chat support helpline is so valuable. Even if the answer to your question is in the support documentation, sometimes you just don't have time to wade through and find it.

And this is also why push-button helplines are a pain. Struggling through all those menus trying to work out which option you need... Oh for "press 1 to speak to a real person".

Or, even better would be, "Press 1 to speak to a real, intelligent person".

Car recovery and hire

Just back from a week's holiday in Northumberland.

Driving over there last Saturday, across a moorland road, a motorcyclist coming the other way lost control of his machine at a bend with nasty adverse camber, swerved over to the wrong side of the road - and went smack into the front of our car.

He ended up with two broken legs, a shattered pelvis, and a brand new motorbike in smithereens.

Thankfully on our side the only casualty was the car (written off). Matt and I were unhurt.

The RAC sent a local company, R S Johnson, to recover our car. The guy who turned up with the recovery truck was so friendly and helpful that we decided to also hire a car from them for the week of our holiday.

Again, great service. National car hire firms have bitten us with charges before now (like the one which charged us for a whole new bumper when all we did was knock off the rubber bumper protector). But these guys charged very reasonable fees and went out of their way to provide great service - including a lift to the station this morning to catch our train home.

In fact, all the local people we met were really helpful when they heard about our accident. The lady at the pub, the lady at the shop and at least one person in the street offered us lifts.

I love the North of England.

Why estate agents have a bad name

Commuting 3-4 days a week from Carlisle to Edinburgh is getting very tiring. I've decided to look for a little flat to rent in Edinburgh.

Arranged to view one this evening. I duly arrived. The agent duly arrived, and as we were climbing the stairs he mentioned that the existing tenant was still in (I knew that), and that he'd been advised we were coming - by e-mail.

Mmm, I thought, not a good idea, I hope the tenant received the e-mail.

Of course he hadn't. And of course he was cross that we'd effectively turned up unannounced. And of course he said it wasn't convenient for us to view the flat.

I wish I knew that poor guy's name so I could apologise to him. He looked like he'd just woken up when he answered the door. Perhaps he was a shift-worker catching up on his sleep.

But I'm seriously unimpressed with that agency. Here's why.

• They should have phoned the tenant to ask if it was convenient for us to visit - not e-mailed him. E-mails can get lost in cyberspace and can take longer than 24 hours to pick up and read.
• Without a reply to their e-mail, they should then have alerted me that they hadn't been able to reach the existing tenant, and asked me if I wanted to go round on the off-chance or leave it.

So I won't be going through that agency. Nice though the flat's location was, if that's an example of the service they provide to their tenants, I don't want to be one.

Virgin put their mistake right - bravo

During the Big January Freeze, Virgin Trains did jolly well in providing any train service at all here in the frozen North.

The trains did suffer delays, but cancellations were remarkably few in number.

The only problem happened on one day when the passenger door at the front of the train froze shut and wouldn't open to let me off at Haymarket.

By the time I'd made my way down the train to the next door, the driver had locked the doors - leaving me no choice but to stay on the train until Edinburgh Waverley.

Thankfully that's only 5 minutes away. But because my train was already a good hour late, rather than do the longer walk to the office from Waverley, I got a taxi.

I wrote to Virgin Trains explaining what had happened and asking them to reimburse my £8 taxi fare.

Then yesterday, a very polite and apologetic letter arrived in the post, with an £8 cheque attached.

Bravo Virgin, that's what I call good service.

A mistake was made but it was put right and due recompense made. You can't ask more than that.

Of grey suede boots, pigeons, and a very helpful hardware shop

Walking across Edinburgh to the office this morning, I noticed a pigeon had relieved itself on my boot.

That's a new-last-month pale grey suede boot which I'm rather proud of.

Cursing all pigeons, I headed for Home Hardware on Morningside Road, which is the sort of little hardware and household shop that sells everything you can think of and more besides.

This shop not only proved to stock suede brushes, but the gentleman behind the counter proceeded to kneel down and brush the pigeon dropping off my boot, leaving it pristine.

And he was surprised when I said I still wanted to buy the brush.

I figured it was the least I could do after receiving such excellent and thoughtful service.

And I'll also be forearmed if any more pigeons decide to aim for my boots.

There's no seat in that space!

This blog is turning into "M's traveller's tales".

Here's Virgin Trains' latest caper.

Yesterday morning, at Carlisle station ready to travel to Edinburgh, I decided to book a seat in the quiet coach on the 16.57 coming home that evening.

Lady behind the counter: "The 18.16 doesn't have a quiet coach".
M: "No, I said the 16.57 not the 18.16".

She eventually (after several questions to her colleague, checking whether the train was a Virgin Pendolino or Virgin SuperVoyager, and getting stopped by the computer system several times) presented me with a reservation for seat 1 in coach A, the quiet coach.

As the train drew into Haymarket that evening, I was glad I'd reserved a seat. The train was packed.

BUT... when I got into coach A, I discovered that seat 1 was... the wheelchair space.

And unlike on buses, the wheelchair space on trains (well, Virgin Trains anyway) has no seat in it.

Given I'd booked the seat in person and the lady behind the counter could see I wasn't in a wheelchair, I'm bewildered as to why she gave me that space...

Thankfully there were one or two other seats free in the quiet coach so I sat in one of those. Otherwise I'd have been standing for an hour back to Carlisle.

Oh well, it makes a good story for the blog...

Quiet? Who said quiet?

As my Twitter friend Katie Macdonald (a virtual assistant whose niche market is foodie businesses - great idea) says, I don't seem to have much luck with the "quiet" coach on Virgin Trains.

My train journey up to Edinburgh for my job with FreeAgent is part of my working day. So I always make a beeline for the quiet coach, on the basis that I should be able to work more easily there.

But "quiet" is often a misnomer.

In the last few months, I've encountered, in the quiet coach:

• Crying babies
• Shouting children
• People talking loudly to each other
• People talking loudly on mobile phones
• People listening to their iPods so loudly I can hear it at the other end of the coach
  

Now a crying baby I can sympathise with, because if the baby is asleep then the best place for him/her is the quiet coach, so that there's more chance that he/she will stay asleep. And as an auntie of five, I know that babies don't sleep on demand. Also, on a busy train it's just not practical for mum or dad to take the baby out of the quiet coach until he/she goes to sleep.

I guess the same goes for a bored and fractious child. Unless there's a family carriage (which Virgin Trains don't seem to have), there's not really anywhere to take that child to let off steam.

But I'm sorry, if you want to have a loud conversation with your friends (whether they're on the train or at the other end of a mobile), don't sit in the quiet coach. And ditto if you want to play your iPod.

The signs on the trains say "please refrain from using mobile phones and creating unnecessary noise". But in 3 months of using the quiet coach, I've only once heard one of the train staff ask a passenger to turn his/her mobile off or put it on silent.

That's what I do. My mobiles stay firmly on silent when I'm in the quiet coach and if anyone rings, I scuttle out into the corridor.

Perhaps Virgin should put up more detailed guidelines for use of the quiet coach, or police it more zealously. Because noisy people just ruin the quiet coach for those of us who want - well, a bit of quiet.

Sorry folks, rant over :-)