Jimmy Page’s Trousers

I’m off to Tom Waits on Friday.  Great.  My ticket purchases and my attendance at the show are subject to some pretty stringent anti-touting measures.

• Tickets strictly limited to two(2) per person.
• Ensure that the credit card used to purchase tickets belongs to the person who is attending the show.
• On entry all patrons MUST present a valid I.D. (Passport or Driving Licence) matching name on the ticket(s) in order to gain entry. Failure to provide matching valid I.D will result in you not gaining access to the event.
• If you purchase 2 tickets, both patrons must be present at time of entry. All tickets will be scanned for validation on entry.
• Any tickets resold will be refused entry. No resale allowed under any circumstances.
• Only tickets purchased from official Ticketmaster outlets will be valid.
• Tickets are non-transferable.
• Tickets will not be dispatched until 2 weeks before the event.

Now, I believe that these measures were insisted upon by Tom’s management and there’s not much that can make me unhappy when I’m going to get to see Tom Waits at the end of it. Why, therefore, am I calling Ticketmaster an Awful Bastard?  Well, it seems that Ticketmaster are extremely pleased that this measure seemed to ‘work’ last night and are therefore considering implementing it for future events.  Brilliant, just brilliant.

I would like to see some information on how much of a problem touting really is.  Ticket purchases are limited anyway so how many legitimate tickets go to touts?  Some information regarding how many tickets go to touts versus how many tickets Ticketmaster hold back for corporate or VIP use/sale would be nice.  I’d like to see some information that provides a proper reason to inconvenience legitimate concert-goers through these anti-touting measures.

Ticketmaster’s anti-touting drive is made all the more ironic and annoying by the fact that their site now offers an ‘auction’ for tickets to shows.  Didn’t manage to buy a ticket at face value?  No problem, just go and bid a ridiculous amount through Ticketmaster themselves.  Ticketmaster are effectively touting their own tickets.  What a shower of hard-necked bastards.

For inconveniencing real people to prevent 3rd party touts from cutting into Ticketmaster’s own touting, Ticketmaster are Awful Bastards.

Regular readers may remember my mentioning that, for a period, a Google (Ireland) search for Mary Harney (Minister for Health) found my own humble site listed in the top ten hits. This was made especially heartening for me, as it was the post in which I awarded her my Awful Bastard Award for the sterling work she was doing in shirking all responsibility for the dismal mess for which she was appointed Minister Responsible.

Buoyed by such a showing, but in reality needing little encouragement, I went on to award the Awful Bastard to a number of others. Despite bragging of my political power and Google-prowess to Mrs. Jimmy Page’s Trousers, who barely humoured me, I thought little more of my Google-slap in Harney’s face.

Then I noticed that a few visitors were finding my site, and in particular the Awful Bastard Award given to B&Q, through a Google search for B&Q. I clicked the referring link and there I was, shining and resplendent at the top of the list. Numero uno of the B&Q search (pages from Ireland) was me. Or, more accurately, me calling B&Q Awful Bastards and telling of how shite they were. A week or so later, I had slipped from pole-position but, for a time, Irish people looking for B&Q found my whinge at the top of the list.

But there’s more. The awesome power of the Awful Bastard Award, the Oscar of complaining gits, has, once again, shown itself. Top of the heap for a Google of UPS Couriers is… Yep, it’s my tale of woe, misfortune and bad service at the hands of UPS.

“Hurrah for complainers,” I say. Beware all ye companies, politicians, and proles. Cross me not, lest ye feel the fearsome power of the Awful Bastard.

A warning: This post contains geeky talk of wireless networks and such. If you’re the type of person that hates such geekery, you might want to skip it. Just scroll down where I slag something else off instead.

Netgear (or as they prefer to shout it, NETGEAR) are a company that makes, among other things, wireless network routers and adapters. These devices, in theory, allow one to connect, wirelessly, to one’s broadband service from around the house. Pretty much everybody knows that these days; it’s no longer arcane knowledge, known only to geeky types with thick glasses. Also, as the wireless home networking has become more popular, these devices have become more simple to allow non-geeky types the ability to install them in their homes. All good so far?

Now, I am a geeky type (sans thick glasses though). I have considerable experience in things IT. I have wrestled with many, seemingly inscrutable, technical problems over the years but none have made me as angry and caused me as much stress as setting up a Netgear router and USB wireless adapter did last week.

So convinced was I that it was going to be as easy as the many other home-networking routers I’ve installed for friends, family, and self, that I cockily decided to do it at 10PM one evening over the Christmas holidays. “It’ll be easy, plug and play,” I thought. Plug and play, my arse.

The Netgear router first. As it was replacing an existing router, I swapped them and then made my first mistake: I tried to follow the instructions and used Netgear’s auto-install CD thing. Shouldn’t have done that. Not only was it painfully slow to run, it bore only a slight resemblance to the printed instructions that Netgear wanted me to follow. Options stipulated by the printed instructions were not available, or were called something else on screen. Sometimes the required on-screen instructions were available but in completely different places to those the printed Netgear instructions suggested. After about three-quarters of an hour, I gave up on Netgear’s unhelpful ‘auto-install’ thing and went and did the thing manually. Right. That’s the router sorted. At least the network adapter should be easy.

Ha!

Once bitten, I decided to install the adapter manually and eschew Netgear’s auto-install. This proved impossible to do as the drivers for the adapter were, helpfully, not evident on the CD. Nope, they seemed to be buried somewhere within the bowels of the install program’s files and were impossible to install manually. The adapter install application had the same, annoyingly preventable, issues as the routers. I eventually struggled through only to have Windows baulk at the Netgear adapter and tell me that it didn’t like it. A number of other attempts gave the same result.

Off to a different computer (the Macbook, which connected perfectly as it is brilliant) to check out Netgear’s support online. Jesus, it’s shit. Netgear make some pretty big claims on their ‘Search Tips’ page, namely that it’s ‘better than Google’. It’s not. Netgear’s search page is shit. It tries to be clever but it fails miserably.

Anyway, long story already, but to cut it slightly shorter, I spent four hours arsing about with the Netgear wireless adapter before I managed to make it work. When I did, the reception with the super-duper ‘RangeMAX’ technology was worse than my old cheapie adapter. Also, every time the PC booted or woke up, NetGear’s oxymoronic ‘Smart Wizard’ pops up and won’t go away until you click to close it. What a pathetic piece of programming. Took another twenty minutes to get rid of that.

So then, with my apologies to non-geeky readers for the geeky post, I hereby name Netgear, Awful Bastards. Their software is shite and poorly thought out, their hardware seems only moderately better than cheap crap from three years ago and their support site is awful beyond words.

Netgear seem to have set out to do their best to make their products as unfriendly and useless as they can (and in this, at least, they have succeeded). If you’re looking to wireless up your home, my advice is to buy something other than Netgear kit.

If you haven’t already read the start of this story, you can take a look just two posts down.

Have UPS Courier Service improved and made right their cock-ups of the last few days? Have they fuck.

A driver called today at about lunchtime. He had a package. I was excited until I took it from him. Pretty light. Ah, that’ll be the bag that I ordered with the MacBook. That’s grand. I signed for that and asked him where the other package was. He stared blankly.

“I’ve only got the one for you,” he said.

I opened the package while he was there and showed him the bag. “There’s supposed to be a computer that goes in here,” I said.

He shrugged. In fairness, he wasn’t even a UPS person and was just some bloke that had been subcontracted out. I couldn’t blame him for this latest fuck-up. Nope, the blame for this fuck-up, and all of the other fuck-ups in a long line of fuck-ups, lies squarely with UPS Courier Service who continue to astound with the high levels of incompetence and low levels of customer service. I’ve spoken with more people there, going as high up the management chain as I can get and while I’m being assured of frantic levels of activity to get this sorted, I’m not all that confident.

UPS Courier Service are very, very bad. UPS Courier Services are awful bastards.

.

UPDATE:

Well, after a lot of hassling and a lot of phone calls I finally managed to get this sorted.  I was still hassling people in their warehouse until after 7PM.  It paid off though and I succeeded in annoying and shaming them sufficiently that they had some poor guy who happened to live in my area drop the package off on his way home that night (as the couriers had all buggered off for the day).  So, just after nine, some guy who works in their accounts department or something called and dropped it off.  Very nice of him too, although he did stand about after he delivered it as if he was waiting for a tip.  Sorry mate, not after the day I had.

The winner of today’s Awful Bastard Award is UPS courier services.

A while ago, I stopped the pretence of requiring a justification for it and bought an Apple MacBook. The only real justification I can muster is that it’s a thing of beauty which, speaking as someone who works with a lot of computers, is something that can be said of them very infrequently. Anyway, as I wanted to change the standard specification a little, I reasoned that buying online was the way to go. I’d recently bought an iPod for Mrs. Jimmy Page’s Trousers (the small one - I’m not made of money) via the online store and it all seemed trouble-free and easy. Indeed, the ordering part of this process was trouble-free and easy.

Then UPS got their hands on it.

According to the tracking thing on their website, it was supposed to be delivered on Thursday last. It wasn’t and there was no update on their tracking thing as to why. Early Friday morning, their site listed it as IN TRANSIT. Yippee. I spent most of the day looking out the door and window to see if the big brown UPS van was outside. As it got towards five in the evening, I was beginning to worry. I had one weak thread to cling to though… Maybe the UPS man lives in my area and is saving my delivery for his last one on the way home. I realise how pathetic this seems but I’m ok with it.

That last thread broke however, when I refreshed the tracking website and read “THE RECEIVER IS NOT LISTED ON THE BUILDING DIRECTORY. UPS IS ATTEMPTING TO OBTAIN THE INFORMATION AND COMPLETE DELIVERY.” Now, I live in a house. It doesn’t have a building directory. Mrs. Jimmy Page’s Trousers and I don’t really see the need, given that there’s just us and Baby Trousers in residence. Also, UPS’s attempts to obtain ‘the information’ didn’t stretch to ringing me. I was quite angry but, after battering my way through their phone menu system, which tries to keep you from humans, I found that they’d all buggered off for the day.

Incidentally, I have discovered the way to speak to a human on the UPS phone menu is to angrily hit the ‘#’ key repeatedly while shouting “CUNTS!” at the top of your voice. You will be diverted.

So, angry but still in some control, I reasoned that they’ll just deliver on Monday instead, as any courier company would do if they failed to deliver on the previous business day. On Saturday evening however, I just happened to refresh the tracking page. It had a new listing stating, once again, “THE RECEIVER IS NOT LISTED ON THE BUILDING DIRECTORY. UPS IS ATTEMPTING TO OBTAIN THE INFORMATION AND COMPLETE DELIVERY.” This time however, it listed a revised delivery date of 21st December. Next Friday. This time I shouted “CUNTS!” at the top of my voice as I punched the wall (not quite so productive as my phone discovery I’ll grant you).

So, on Sunday, I went about grumbling with dirty, thunderous clouds hovering over my head. This morning, first thing, I rang UPS and tried my ’speak to a human’ trick - it still works. I’m waiting to hear back from them but I’m going to go ahead and award them the Awful Bastard Award for their work so far. If they somehow manage to sort this out quickly, I may upgrade them to just Bastard Award status, but I’m not holding out much hope.

For now however, UPS are awful bastards.

UPDATE: Well, they’ve retained the title. As may have been expected, they didn’t get back to me. Three phone calls later, I spoke to someone who told me that it seemed that the driver, on Friday, couldn’t find my address.

“He didn’t ring for directions,” I said.

“No. You see, the drivers don’t actually have UPS company mobiles and most of them won’t use their own mobiles to ring customers,” said the UPS girl.

“So, if they can’t find the delivery address and they won’t ring for directions, how does the package get delivered?” I enquired.

“Oh, usually, if a customer doesn’t get their delivery, they phone us when it hasn’t arrived and we’ll get directions from them,” she said.

Really. Honestly. I’m not making this up. According to the girl I spoke with, that’s UPS’s failed delivery policy. Wait until the customer gets so pissed off that they call UPS and go insane trying to navigate their automated phone thing. Then, finally be told that the driver couldn’t find the address that is on every map of Dublin for at least the last seven years, is certainly available on all of the major GPS maps and that the only communication method open to said driver was to use his own mobile phone to call the customer, which he (rightly) wasn’t willing to do.

What a complete shambles UPS must be.  That’s just astonishingly poor.  UPS are, indeed, awful bastards.

After a bit of arguing and hassle, they are apparently going to deliver tomorrow.  The girl even took directions from me although, as I don’t know where the driver will be coming from, they are not the most useful.   After dictating direction for the girl to type, I asked her to note that, if the driver is still unable to find me, he should phone and I’ll happily reimburse him the fifty cent for the call.  Apparently, she didn’t have enough room to fit that in.

Helpful.

Mary Harney. I hate Harney with a vitriolic passion that is difficult to put into words. This horrible harridan is, in my opinion, one of the worst and most despicable of the mange-ridden curs that inhabit the halls of power in this country. It’s the hypocrisy, you see. All that shite about voting for the PD’s so they could keep an eye on Fianna Fail to make sure they weren’t being crooks? Yeah, good job Mary.

The cancer balls-up that she’s currently overseeing is awful beyond words, but she continues to squirm her greasy way out of it. Calls to resign? Ha? That vicious bitch will never resign. Never. It’s not in her nature to resign because it’s not in her nature to accept some modicum of responsibility for the pathetic mess that is our health service.

Now, I know that it’s not just Harney that’s responsible for the Irish Health Service being in such a shambles. Bock has explained one of the other issues here and that’s just one of them. However, Harney asked for the job of being the minister ‘responsible’ for Health and Children and talked tough about sorting things out. She was the woman for the job. She was going to get things on track. Allow me to begin to sum-up my debate argument by saying “bollocks”. She’s sorted arse-all, the great bint.

It may be straying into the realms of ad hominem argument if I go on to say that she appears to have been devouring here own body, yet paradoxically growing larger on it, for twenty years but I’m going to say it anyway. Her arsehole and her mouth now seem to be effectively the same thing. Bugger to ad hominem anyway.

If she resigns, I’ll eat one of her feet.

Anyone that reads this from time to time will know that I recently fitted a snazzy new kitchen. You may also remember that, although I had originally intended to just buy a B&Q kitchen to make life easier for me, the rudeness of the kitchen-design team person who, eventually, deigned to speak to me (when she could rearrange the pieces of paper on her desk no longer) made me vote with my feet and buy my kitchen somewhere else (horrible, run-on sentence there - sorry). The fact that B&Q were going to make me wait six to eight weeks for flat-packed stuff and the others could deliver ready made units in a week was a deciding factor.

Anyway, my non-B&Q kitchen looks great now. Except, however, for the omission of a splash-back behind the hob. Not without some trepidation, I headed back to B&Q yesterday. It’s a glass splash-back, I reasoned. No need to think it’ll cause any problems.

Oh dear.

No glass splash-backs on the shelf. I asked a hovering member of their kitchen crew who, turned out to be pleasant and helpful. She must be new.

“Oh, there are none in stock. We’ll need to order one”, she said and led me to the computer. She took my name and address and we noted the part number and keyed it in. At this point, she said, “There’s a €50 delivery charge on this.”

“That’s ok,” I said, “I don’t want it delivered. I’ll collect it here.”

“No. sorry. As it’s not in stock here, we need to order it from the UK. It’s €50 to get it delivered to the store.”

“Riiiiiiggghhht,” I said, “so what you’re telling me is that I need to pay €50 so that you restock this and I can then drive here to buy it?”

That was what she was telling me. She at least seemed somewhat embarrassed to have to tell me, but that didn’t really help me.

“You know that I’m not going to buy this now?” I said. She knew. I am, therefore, still in need of a frosted glass splash-back (600×750mm) if anyone knows where I might get one.

Let me close by saying that B&Q are an awful shower of horrible bastards. How can they justify making me pay what amounts to a restocking fee because they don’t have something, advertised for sale, in stock? Because B&Q are awful bastards, that’s how. Every B&Q experience that I’ve had has left me leaving the store angry. For the benefit of the search engines then, let me just restate; B&Q are awful bastards.