Where is JT?

A business collegue was recently caught out by the parking ticket happy Gateshead council. He was running the Great North Run for a great charity but failed to realise a Parking Officer was looking to make up his quoter of the day.

See story below:

A Great North Runner’s hit out at Gateshead Council after getting what he says was a completely unreasonable parking ticket on the day of the event.

John Lewins from Peterlee ran the 13 miles dressed as a gorilla for charity.

He parked his car in Heworth but when he got back he’d been given a ticket for being outside the parking bay’s lines.

He says he was on the line and the ticket shouldn’t stand.

Gateshead Council sent a statement saying they can’t comment on individual cases. Gateshead Council are spineless morons who are frightened of letting someone raising money for chairty off one stupid parking ticket. They are rich and greedy civil servants who’s idea of hitting a target is not reducing crime but issuing enough parking tickets.

The bulk of this article has been taken from http://www.metroradio.co.uk/Article.asp?id=933194&spid=25620

JT’s Judgement:- “From the posts and feedback I recieve about parking tickets it seems every council is as spineless as the other. They sneak upto your car when your not around and slap on a parking ticket. They then fail to comment, seriously get a grip! Gateshead Council seem to be making money from people raising money for charity this time, something is very wrong with the world!”

If anyone else experienced parking problems on race day of the Great North Run I would be very interested to hear from you.

Unfortunately I recently had a death in the family and used the Co-op funeral service to deal with the arrangements. The funeral was well organised but the Co-op have done something which I feel is unacceptable and I see as operating unethical business practices. The Co-op sell themselves as being ethically guided but as far as I can tell from this experience they are nothing but modern day grave robbers.

So what happened?
After the family member’s funeral service I received a phone call from the Co-op Legal department. I hate getting sales calls as you can see from my other posts on the blog; this crossed a line. Selling me legal services after a death in the family; what a cheek! I asked the person on the phone how they got my details and was told the Co-op Funeral Service had passed my details on. If this wasn’t bad enough the information I was being told on the phone was incorrect and close to what is allowed by the Solicitors Regulatory Authority. After checking with my solicitor I was quite shocked at the price I was quoted and the incorrect information I was being told as part of the sales process. I think the person doing the selling had been reading a few too many fairy tales or had little / no understanding of the law. How can someone with no legal experience advise correctly on legal matters?

Read the rest of this entry »

I thought I’d write a very short post about a particular Health & Safety situation I had at work. I recently discoved that all employees require fire extinguisher training. I’m not sure if the information I’ve been given is correct but I’ve been told that if we have a fire then an employee could sue the business if they injury themselves using the extingisher.

We have the usual Health and Safety requirements and take it very seriously but I just thought the world is going mad.

JT’s Judgement: ” Is Health and Safety getting beyond a joke? There has to be a line where some risks just can’t be avoided. Where is the line going to be drawn or will it eventually hold businesses back?”

I received a letter from a person called Ron Beadle from the Liberal Democrats which after reading the letter I wondered if he was related to the TV personality Jeremy Beadle. The reason I came to this conclusion is the content of the letter was a joke and it provided me with great entertainment. Not only is he arrogant enough to think he is above the rules of the MPS the letter looked as though it was written by a child!  

As you may have noticed my last blog post was about the rather unethical way the Lib Dems carry out their marketing. Not only do the Liberal Democrats seem to miss understand the TPS (Telephone Preference Service) they also seem to have completely misunderstood the MPS (Mail Preference Service). I have signed myself up to both the TPS and MPS which all commercial companies are following as the number of sales calls and junk mail has greatly reduced.

  Read the rest of this entry »

The other evening I picked up my home phone to get a pre-recorded marketing message from someone called Nick Clegg. After realising that I wasn’t getting a personal message from Cleggy from last of the summer wine I put the phone down. This was in fact from Nick Clegg of the Liberal Democrats trying to poison my brain with his ridiculous weak minded political policies.

This really annoyed me as I’m a member of something called the TPS (Telephone Preference Service) except the Liberal Democrats don’t understand this very simple organisation. No wonder he has know chance with his political career.

The TPS say this on their website: “The Telephone Preference Service (TPS) is the central opt out register on which you can record your preference not to receive unsolicited sales and marketing telephone calls to your home or mobile telephone numbers. It is a legal requirement that all organisations (including charities, voluntary organisations and political parties) do not make such calls to numbers registered on the TPS unless they have your consent to do so.”

As you can probably already tell, I’m not a big fan of the Liberal Democrats and they fail to understand a simple fact that I am a member of the TPS. It clearly states that even political parties have to follow the rules. You may think this is a little over critical but in the world of politics the leader has to stand accountable for every decision and every mistake.

Read the rest of this entry »

One of my colleagues at work was expecting a delivery from City Link which he had arranged to have delivered to our work village as he knew he wouldn’t be home. Our office has a manned reception from 8am to 5:30pm and as it happened we both didn’t leave the office until 6:30pm. When returning home he looked at the parcel tracking service to discover the message “Delivery Failed at 10:49am”. How does a courier fail to deliver to a office unit with a fully managed reception and a buzz directly into our office unit?

I have also had similar problems with City Link and think it’s time they sort there act out! I’ve had numerous deliveries going missing but two in particular come to mind which I’ll quickly share with you.

City Link Delivery No. 1:One of my clients ordered some promotional literature which we were printing. Unfortunately, the client was unable to pick the literature up in time before the conference they were attending. Therefore, as a business with good customer service I arranged the literature to be delivered to the conference via City Link for a pre 9am delivery. To my horror City Link didn’t deliver the parcel until 5pm after the conference had finished although I paid for this special pre 9am service. Therefore my client went through out the entire conference without leaflets and business cards. So what did City Link do to compensate my client you might ask? Absolutely nothing!!

City Link Delivery No. 2: We were dispatching a set of flyers to one of our client’s which hadn’t arrived on the day expected. After checking their online tracking system I discovered the parcel apparently had been delivered. To cut a long story short, we discovered the flyers had been delivered to the wrong address and to the wrong company. City Link’s reaction was the most interesting I’ve ever experienced, they said because the flyers had been signed for they were considered delivered and out of their control. After much arguing and slagging off a dozen City Link employees they reluctantly recollected the flyers. As a result my client refused to pay for the flyers as the whole job was delivered a week late. To make matters worse, again City Link refused to accept the mistake and nothing was offered to myself or my client; not even an apology.

After some investigation and conversations we have discovered numerous businesses in the region have been experiencing similar problems. As a result our business has been moved to FedEx and TNT which seems to be working very well.

JT’s Judgement: “City Link are incompetence idiots who fail to deliver every time which is bad considering they are a courier company!”

I’d be interested in hearing from anyone having similar problems. Lets see if we can get the message through!

Today has seen Gordon Brown begging with oil industry leaders to try and improve supplies in the Uk and ease prices.

Based on Gordon Brown’s track record so far the outcome will no doubt be less than satisfactory. How does this bumbling idiot expect to make a difference to money hungry oil leaders. Unfortunately what “Bumbling Bad Boy Brown” fails to remember is that a market is led by profit not by ethics. The oil industry doesn’t care what it is doing to the market or the environment; only how much profit they will make.

Why is Gordon Brown the lap dog to the oil leaders? He seems to come begging at their every beck and call.

After all Gordon Brown has had some hits this year with his 10p tax band, the handling of Northern Rock and the mortgage crisis. Mr Brown is use to being the lap dog after his begging and grovelling with the banking industry earlier this year. That session on his knees resulted in nothing serious being done apart from £50bn being drained out of the Uk’s already stretched economy into the pockets of banks.

JT’s Judgement on this: “Gordon Brown is a bumbling idiot who seems to be the lap dog for every industry. Get him out!”

Why aren’t we being provided alternatives to fossil fuel or why isn’t this even being discussed by the government?

Hey JT

Good blog, it’s about time there was a site to let people have a rant at the increasingly crazy way our country is being run. My beef tends to be about the outrageous waste of money of local councils and national government. These people don’t earn a penny doing anything useful but exist by leeching off the rest of us through taxes. England must surely now rank as one of the highest taxed countries in the world.

I could do a whole series on politicians – European, UK and local; but for today I want to get just one aspect off my chest – National Government Advertising. Can anybody tell me what the current annual spend of GB UK is on TV, radio, poster and print advertising? The last accurate figures I could find left me speechless: Read the rest of this entry »

I have recently been contacted by one of my readers to discuss the incompetence of one of the UK’s cheap and cheerful airlines.

The airline in question is Jet2.com and the shocking way they handle their customers via the telephone customer service system. After looking carefully at my reader’s email I have investigated what Jet2.com is doing to upset their customers and written some hard hitting facts below:

Read the rest of this entry »

I quite often get asked about the best way to complain when things have gone badly wrong. This could be with banks, tradesmen, noisy neighbours, suppliers, faulty goods, etc just to name a few.

It is most peoples’ nature not to make a fuss and to suffer in silence. What I would say to these people is that they shouldn’t just suffer in silence. Quite often the problem is quickly and easily resolved via a polite letter explaining the problem.

The Consumer Direct Website is an excellent place to start as they have a number of complaint template letters and information about handling complaints in a professional manner. click this link to find out more http://www.consumerdirect.gov.uk/after_you_buy/making-complaint/

If you had success from complaining please let our visitors know.

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