Curry's - why is their customer service so awful?

If you remember, Bev tried to get a pair of Dr Dre headphones in Curry's but all they would sell her was a sealed box.  She finally bought a pair in HMV after being served by a very competent sales person who let her try the headphones with her iPod.  Anyway, you would think she would know better than to give Curry's a second chance, but that is what she did at the weekend.  They had the Asus Transformer Prime tablet, but when she asked if it was in stock, she was informed that it was not, though if she fancied a drive to Oxford, they would probably have one in that store!
Does Bev look stupid?  Why would she drive to Oxford to get one when she can order one online with no delivery charges?  Do you know how much diesel costs these days?  So, Curry's lost yet another sale - this time to Amazon, who delivered it promptly and for free.
OK Curry's, don't blame the loss of sales on online stores like Amazon - look at the poor service you offer your customers and ask yourselves what you can do to improve it.  It's not rocket science - be knowledgeable about your products and stock, don't just say "if it's not on the shelf, we don't have it", and offer to get product from other branches to satisfy a customer request.  Be proactive!
And is Bev loving her shiny new gadget?  Do bears poo in the woods?  Of course she loves it - it looks gorgeous in its subtle champagne colour, it is functional in that it is a tablet but with a keyboar / docking station, which turns it into a 10-inch notebook, and it is fun!

Dr Dre Studio headphones - in bright orange!

Ok, as I've mentioned before, Bev really is a gadget girl and drools over the latest technologies.  Last Christmas she bought an eReader, and this Christmas she instantly fell in love with nephew Ashley's bright green Dr Dre's Studio headphones.  They looked gorgeous and the sound was to die for.  So, the first opportunity she got, she headed off to the shops to look for a pair of Dr Dre's shiny headphones in a bright colour.  And several hours later she returned from her terrible shopping experience (more of that later) with a pair of beautiful orange headphones.

So, having listened to hours and hours of music through her new headphones, what is Bev's verdict?  Are they an expensive gimmick, as some people suggest or are they as good as Dr Dre says they are?
The good points:

• these headphones have a very punchy bass, with rich overall sound which is ideal for all types of music.  Paul said he felt the headphones were too bassy, but that can be fixed by changing the settings on your iPod.  
• the headphones fold up and fit in a case, which is part of the kit you get when you buy the headphones
• the headphones claim to be noise-cancelling - well, they're not completely noise-cancelling like the Sennheiser portable headphones that Bev already has, but they are not bad
• the colours, which are beautiful - the limited range comes in a bright green, orange, purple, pink, white, silver, black and blue.

The bad points:

• cost - these are not cheap, but we think they are worth the money, especially when you can get them in such groovy colours!
• there is quite a bit of sound leakage, so Bev couldn't listen to them at work unless all her co-workers want to listen to Biffy Clyro too :-)
• batteries - some people might be irritated by the fact that you need 2 x AAA batteries to make these headphones work, but they are needed for amplification and noise cancellation.  Since most noise-cancellation phones use batteries, Bev isn't put off by this at all, though she is off to the shops to bulk-buy AAA batteries!
• the build - some people say they think the build quality is a bit flimsy, however they seem fairly robust to us, but who knows how they'll stand up to use by a group of bears with long claws and no opposable thumbs!

So, to sum up, Bev would give these headphones a 9/10 for sound quality, portability and colour!  She's reserving judgement on the build quality until she's used them more.

Mrs MacGadget does it again!

Yup, Mrs MacGadget strikes again - with the VAT increase due to hit in January 2011, she decided to outfox the government and purchase a Sony eReader.  Not only did the she get a great gadget, but she is getting all her VAT back courtesy of Sony.

So, what is an eReader?  Well, it's like an iPod for books - you download ebooks in various formats and store them on the Reader.  The eReader is about the size of a slim paperback, and displays the text (and pictures) on a clear, non-reflective screen.  The beauty of using the eReader is that you can change the size of the text and it bookmarks the last page you were reading.  It also does fancy stuff like having embedded dictionaries in different languages - if you come across a word you don't understand, you can tap on the word and the dictionary pops up with the definition. 

Of the two models available, Bev chose the one with the larger, touch screen and the expandable memory.

Bev has added lots of her favourite books to her eReader, along with a PDF copy of the latest Prince2 manual to help her study for her exam.  So, if you see someone with their head buried in an eReader, you know it will be Bev!  All we ask is that she add Winnie the Pooh stories for us to read.

We have seen the future.....and it is the BBC iPlayer!

Having missed Casualty 1907 on Sunday night because they were faffing, Bev and Paul decided to watch it on the BBC iPlayer. Bev downloaded the software, installed it on her shiny computer, and then downloaded the program, which took about an hour. After tea, they sat down in her computer room to watch the program - with her 22" widescreen monitor and Logitech sound system, it was like being at the cinema though no-one brought round any ice cream or popcorn!

It was brilliant! The picture quality was superb, the sound was awesome and the program was pretty good too. Afterwards, they watched an episode of Top Gear as streaming video rather than downloading it, and it was also very good though the picture quality wasn't quite as sharp.

With the BBC iPlayer, you can watch any program that was shown in the last 7 days either by downloading it or streaming it directly to your PC. If you choose to download a program onto your PC, it will be automatically deleted after 30 days or 6 days after you first watch it.

This is the future! Choose what you want to watch when you want to watch it.

Ok bears and Mr Chimp, what do we want to watch today? And where is that popcorn maker?

Techno Bear

Ok, I like to consider myself as a techno-savvy bear who delights in new technologies and follows the latest trends - after all, I have an email address and blog.

The latest trend that is making my fur stand on end with excitement is downloading TV programs - we are going to download the BBC iPlayer software so that we can catch up with BBC programs that we miss each week, and even more exciting is the fact that you can now download BBC programs to your computer and iPod for the reasonable sum of £1.89 per episode! And that's not all - up-and-coming Project Kangaroo will hopefully enable techno-savvy bears to download TV programs from the BBC, ITV and Channel 4. Downloading them to your iPod means that we can take the programs with us and watch them on any TV at our convenience.

However, there are two serious problem with all this exciting technology - firstly, most of the programs on TV are mindless rubbish, and secondly, poor Paul is a bit of a techno-phobe, so has only just got the hang of DVDs! He's now panicking about DVDs being abandoned in favour of Blu-Ray, but Bev and I are already one step ahead and thinking about downloading TV programs. Hopefully the 1 Terrabyte hard drive on the computer is going to be big enough if downloading TV to your computer is the way forward!

Oh, and lastly, I have a message for the TV program makers - make more and better documentaries and dramas, and stop filling up the TV schedules with crap soaps and reality shows! You have been warned! If we don't see an improvement, Tony will be round to kick the crap out of you!

Inky fingers

Bev's lovely A3 printer, which is about 5 years old, has suddenly died a death and will not talk to the computer. After discussions with a very helpful printer repair man, she discovered that there is a pad inside the printer that collects all the dribbles of ink when you clean the heads - this pad has now become saturated and has to be fixed by a technician. The man on the phone gave Bev a quote for the repair, which came to slightly less than the cost of a new A3 printer - yikes, no Christmas presents for us! But Practical Paul decided he could do it himself (and therefore get a Christmas present), so pulled the printer apart, dabbed out the excess ink (getting very black hands in the process) and put the printer back together again, but all to no avail - the printer is still not working. However, Bev found a web page with instructions for fixing this problem - apparently you need to wash and dry the pads, not just dab off the excess ink. Oh no, Mr Practical needs to take the printer apart again! So, how dirty will he get this time? Does he need a protective suit and gloves? Should he just tell Bev to do it herself and then laugh at her inky fingers? And will Paul's customers let him into their nice clean houses with those black hands?

Bev & Dell Computers

Last month Bev came up with the bright idea of buying a new desktop PC for herself and a laptop for Paul, and as she uses Dell computers at work and is impressed with them, she decided to order her new PCs over the internet. Big mistake! Firstly, Dell lost part of her order, then they phoned her up to say they had cancelled the rest of the order, but they never gave her an explanation on why they were cancelling it. Doh! A word of warning, Dell - don't piss off Mrs MacGadget when she wants a new gadget or two!

After some very irate phone calls and being passed back and forth between Sales and Customer Support (Bev was beginning to think this was a bit of a misnomer, just like the Ford Style), Bev finally managed to speak to a very sensible and helpful salesman, who sorted things out and got the machines dispatched pronto. Big sigh of relief!

So, we are now the proud owners of a beautiful Inspiron laptop and a beast of a desktop PC - Bev wanted something bigger and better than her old PC, but she has gone over the top with this one! It is so big it dwarfs everything else on her desk and is too tall to sit under her desk. Plus it has so many lights it looks like an alien spacecraft! But is it fast, with tons of grunt under the bonnet and a gadget worth drooling over? It certainly is that and more - the PC along with a 22" screen and surround sound speakers (plus subwoofer) make it a bear's entertainment centre - we can watch DVDs with cinema-quality sound and can party to loud music while the humans are out at work paying for all these gadgets. So, if you hear lots of loud rave-style music or see lots of bright lights, it's probably us bears partying hundreds of miles away!

Lots of exciting developments

No, this post has nothing to do with the postmen's strike, unfortunately - Bill is still out there in his jim jams supporting the local posties (this is partly because of his Postman Pat jim jams and partly because Bev used to work as a postwoman many, many years ago in sunny Glasgow when she was a student).

This post is about some exciting developments at Mynott manor, namely a new garden "shed" and new computers (note computers plural, not singular!).

So, firstly to the "shed" that Paul has finally finished building, which he is calling a "barn". We bears don't really care what the distinction is between a shed and a barn, but we do care that this is a warm and dry place for us to hide, play in and do what bears do in warm, dry places and woods! It will smell a bit, but I am sure Paul can cope with that. Bev made Paul a very smart copper name plate for his barn door - it says "Paul's Barn". Photographs to follow.....

And the other exciting developement is that Bev has purchased 2 new computers - one for herself and a laptop for Paul. Her existing computer is so old that her iPod had more disk space than her computer, and her computer is so slow that she could make a coffee and go to the loo in the time it takes to boot-up the PC! Anyway, the new PC should be a lot faster (postively supersonic) by comparison - after all, it is called a "warrior machine" - and Mrs MacGadget is very excited about it! All we are allowed to reveal at this stage is that it has a 22" flat-screen monitor and a 1-terrabyte hard drive (drool, drool). Just think of all those dodgy images of female bearesses (or is that images of dodgy bearesses?) Bill and I can keep on that computer! No Phoebe, it is just an expression, we are not actually going to put any dodgy photographs on the computer (phew, hopefully she believed us).

iPod cable

The car was back in the garage to have the iPod cable reconfigured / reinstalled, so Paul was driving a Peugeot 107 this morning (he he - not quite up to the standard of the 307 sport, but a fun little car to drive nonetheless). After the car being in the garage all afternoon, Bev finally got a call to say the iPod cable was working, so they drove back to the garage, collected the new car and drove back listening to music on the iPod. Bliss! Bet the guys at the garage thought Bev had strange music taste, which ranges from early classical music to Nirvana and House Music - strange girl :-)
Bev is now busy copying loads of music onto her iPod so that they have lots to listen to in the car!

New Gadgets Continued.....

Broadband is now up and running, though we had to suffer a very grumpy BT man installing the new phone line – I was going to bite his ankles so that he had something to be really grumpy about, but Bill held me back and Bev gave me a warning look! And here was Paul thinking he could be grumpy – he’s an amateur in comparison with the BT man! But on this occasion, Paul did actually have something to be grouchy about – the extra 3 meters of telephone cable stapled all over the front of the house by Mr Grumpy! But, the very helpful and competent lady on the Help Desk improved our low opinion of BT - she was excellent and not in the least grumpy. Anyway, the broadband is excellent and I have been surfing to my little heart’s content, but I haven’t been doing much blogging because Bev has been hogging the computer while studying (at least that’s what she called it – I thought she was just pottering).
The car still hasn't turned up yet (sob sob), but we hope it arrives this weekend. We’re already getting bored with broadband – we NEED a new gadget to play with!

Progress indeed!

A happy New Year to all the people who give up their valuable time to read these rantings!
Well, the New Year has started with a bang, so to speak - the humans have thrown caution to the wind and gone out and purchased a new car, as well as signing up for Broadband (at last!). How they expected us bears to surf the net using a dial-up connection is anyone's guess, but very soon we should have a very smart new broadband connection to allow us to contact bears all over the world, order bear treats and purchase parts for our stock cars - oh, and Phoebe will be able to get all her girly clothes too.

Anyway, back to the new car. After a few expensive repairs to their existing car, the humans decided it was time to cut their losses and purchase a newer vehicle. So they went along to their friendly Peugeot dealer (what happened to the idea of the Chevrolet Lacetti?) and purchased a new 5-door Peugeot 307 Sports HDi 110, which to us bears is a very acceptable alternative to the Chevvy Lacetti. It will have comfy leather seats, sports pedals, climate control for bears, and cruise control to stop Paul from speeding (Bill and I will switch that off if we get bored doing 70mph on the motorway - he he!). Bill and I will be ordering some 6-point seat harnesses from Demon Tweaks in preparation for the new car arriving - we want to make sure we are safely secured in the vehicle, especially when Paul gets behind the wheel of the car!

Bev has ordered a cable for her iPod so that they can listen to music whilst driving - the iPod is also a new purchase (Bev treated herself to an 80G iPod to store all her music and audiobooks so that she has something to listen to whilst driving to and from work). I told you she was Mrs MacGadget!

So, all in all, not a bad day's retail therapy for the humans, and look at all the new toys us bears will have to play with! Roll on the end of the month when broadband is switched on and the new car arrives - we're quivering with anticipation already.

Gadgets galore!

I don't know if you know, but my humans are gadget-freaks, so much so that Bev used to be called Mrs MacGadget. Well, yesterday they went out and bought 3 gadgets, two useful and one not-so-useful (depending on how sensitive your sense of smell is, that is).
The first gadget is an electronic weather station - this is an early Christmas present for Bev, since her existing weather station has died a death and none of us know what the weather forecast is. This is very important information for us bears, since we need to know when it is dry enough to go hunting or have a picnic or poo in the woods. The weather station is brilliant, with a colour display of the weather forecast, a sensor to tell you how cold it is outside and a snow alarm so that you can get up early to scrape the ice off the car (or in the case of us bears, an alarm to tell you to stay in bed!). A brilliant gadget, and one that we bears will be playing with when the humans go to work. Bill has this excellent idea of putting ice on the outside sensor to make the humans think it is snowing (he he)!
The other gadget is an electric chair - not the sort that you're thinking of, but one that massages your back (or other bits of your body, depending on how adventurous you are, though the instruction book does say only to use it on your back, but hey, where's the fun in that?). We bears have been experimenting with it, and will let you know how much fun you can have with a small furry body and an electric massager!
The other gadget is a Lampe Berger to make the house smell - Bev got it because she said the house smelled horrible after cooking vegetables (as if someone had been farting in the house all day long, which in actual fact, they had - us 3 bears! Well, Phoebe doesn't exactly fart, but Bill and I make up for that). So, we like the smell in the house - we poo and fart all round the house to make it smell like a bear's house should smell, but then Bev goes and gets something to make the house smell like a tart's boudoir (Hamish in disgust)! Bill and Phoebe - so when were you last in a tart's boudoir, Hamish? Perhaps we need to buy some "eau de damp bear parfum" for her lampe berger and see if she likes that instead of the scent of lavender or honeysuckle.