*OFFICIAL* UKFF RANT thread

[Jaffa]

Yes it is the Mala.

 

You're right about waiting times - it took the waiter 10 minutes to bring the drinks over to us and it wasn't because he was busy - he was standing at the bar talking on the phone about where he was going out later in the evening.

 

I should also point out that charging

[JamesTyler]

I really hope my shit arrives in the next couple of days or I'm fucked, I called Royal Mail to see if I could find out what's going on but they had a recorded message saying we're too busy to talk to you, go to our website.

 

I hate getting directed to the website, especially as it's not targetted towards complaints.

 

Saying that, the mails been pretty good around here until the past week. Almost everything I orderd came in record time and it's the first time in years I've seen the mail being delivered before 9am.

 

BUT.... I did order stuff weeks ago and it;s fucked me off that it's no arrived. It's not a gift, so I'm not too concerned, I just get irritated that it's taken so long when things bought at the same time, or later, from other countries and that's been here for ages.

 

And the train services, wha the fuck? They're a heap of shit at the best of times but as soon as a predictable thing as snow or rain, a bit of wind, if someone sneezes near a train line, the whole system descends into chaos wth cancellations, trains running three days late and announcements after half an hour of waiting to 'make our own arrangements'.

 

If I could make other arrangements, I wouldn't be getting the fucking train in the first place.

[JLM]

4.

 

Abbey.

 

Fucking Abbey.

 

So yesterday I went to Starbucks after work to try one of these gingerbread latte dealies (could it be as good as the dark cherry mocha? I was willing to find out), where my debit card was declined. Odd, I thought, so I went to the cash machine next door. Said cash machine told me that my bank had refused my transaction. Brilliant.

 

So I phone the number on my card. The guy's English was appalling. It's not even an Indian call centre thing. I usually think people are over-dramatic about this because I can always understand them and they can usually understand me. Also I have Mauritian relatives with thick accents and I never have such a major problem there. I presume this guy was new though, because I was on the phone to him for 50 minutes. During this time he put me on hold at random when he got flustered, answered every question with an unhelpful and barely related response and left me with about 10 more questions than when I first called.

 

He said the fraud department had stopped my card because of suspicious activity with my account. So I was a bit concerned. I asked for my balance. He gave me it. I asked for my available balance, and he started running through transactions from early November. I asked again for my available balance, which he finally gave me. I then asked him to account for the difference between the two for me (i.e. what money is in holding and where that money is going).

 

He then started running through the early November transactions again. I asked for more recent transactions, so I then got my October transactions and was told exactly how much I had in holding. I tried to zero in on that figure and ask WHERE THAT MONEY IS GOING to confirm that it's all payments I made and that they were all going through OK (one of them is my rent for the month!). He confirmed the amount again, told me my current balance, then told me my available balance. I asked him yet again where the money in holding was going and he just told me how much money was in holding and what that meant. I had to hang up eventually because I didn't want to start hurling abuse at the guy.

 

Phoned again, got a different guy. He was able to tell me how much was in witholding and exactly where it was going. Straight away. Understood the question, spoke good English etc. He was another Indian guy but it's totally irrelevant because his English was nearly flawless. It's all about ability to communicate with the customer. If you can't do that then you really aren't suited for telephone work. Gah.

 

So he says I can call the fraud department in the morning because they stop taking calls at 5PM. Nice. The department with the authority to put a stop on your card at a moment's notice and not lift it until you contact them are the only department to stop taking calls at 5. Brilliant. So I call the card admin people and ask if they can put me through to fraud internally. Guy says he's given my details to them and that they'll call by 7PM.

 

They don't. Obviously.

 

Called up this morning at 9. "There is a problem with the connection, please dial again". ARGH. ARRRRGH. ARRRRGH.

 

Finally got through.

 

Was told that an online transaction I made was deemed suspicious and thus they put a stop on my card. It was a Paypal payment I made about a week ago to get 12 months of XBL gold. That was it. I used my Paypal account, as I've done countless times before. The payment went through, the code was sent, there was literally no issue whatsoever with this transaction.

 

I asked the fraud lady if it's their policy to put a stop on my card without, y'know, telling me about it. Turns out they use an automated service to send you a telephone message. I asked what number this was sent to because I have no missed calls or voicemails on my old or new phones. Turns out they had phoned my house in Blackburn. That was three house moves ago. Three. I have moved to Liverpool, Hemel Hempstead and Leeds since then. I have filled in change of address/circumstances forms each time (though each one has taken waaay longer to process than they're supposed to). So the department with the power to stop my card closes at 5PM and has ludicrously outdated contact details for me so I have no way of finding out about it aside from phoning the Abbey support line of HELL.

 

I didn't get my latte.

 

Fucking fucks.

 

I am done with Abbey, does anyone here use a good bank? I'm open to suggestions.

 

EDIT: This was typed up yesterday morning but our internet connection at work went down for the day, making "yesterday" in the story refer to Tuesday. I did get my latte yesterday at lunchtime as documented elsewhere. Otherwise I may well have put a 5 on this.

 

4 - Abbey!

 

Hello again!

 

Guess what happened to me yesterday!

 

I'll tell you what happened.

 

I tried to withdraw money for my housemate because he's lost his card and can't get at his money, only to find my card has been blocked again! My crime? Ordering stuff from Amazon.co.uk! How big and reputable does a retailer need to be for Abbey not to get suspicious? Jesus Christ. Once again, nobody from the fraud department contacted me to tell me my card was being blocked, so once again I had to find out when my card failed in a cash machine and was declined by a chip'n'pin machine.

 

Then I indulged in my favourite pastime: trying to find a Santander employee who can actually help me. Finally sorted it this morning after speaking some guy who wasn't even in the fraud dept. but knows the procedure. I basically had to review every payment that went out of my account since the 10th of January and tell him who/where/what etc. That was surprisingly tricky without a statement to hand.

 

"That's strange, the fraud department should send you an automated message when they note suspicious activity".

 

Yeah, that's the rumour I've heard. I've heard talk of the fabled message that lets you know you're about to be left fucked over and cardless by a department that is open for about half the day and is always engaged. Never heard it though. Never received this wonderful message of forewarning. I gave them my current mobile number yet again but I doubt it'll do any good.

 

The snow and my own laziness have stopped my opening a new account with a better bank until now, but it's at the stage where I'm scared of using my card for anything in case these dickheads decide to block it and not tell me again. Fuckedy fuck fuck.

 

Barclays or RBS then.

[Green]

Pretty much my entire family is with Barclays and we've never had any problems. I'd highly recommend them for stability and, unlike the clueless twats at Abby, their fraud handling is top notch.

[HarmonicGenerator]

Pretty much my entire family is with Barclays and we've never had any problems. I'd highly recommend them for stability and, unlike the clueless twats at Abby, they're fraud handling is top notch.

 

I'll second that. Go with Barclays.

[MerlinsMagique]

Probably about a 2 at the moment, because while I haven't been to work for the past few days, I've been stuck doing boring coursework that's really doing my head in. On a similar note, here's a rant I submitted to the Worksucks.com website a few weeks ago. It's not my best work as I wrote it at about 2am on my return home from a good ol' drinking session. The next day I was kind of hoping that they weren't gonna post it, but it's anonymous so I doubt my employer will ever find out.

 

http://www.worksucks.com/job-rants/its-the-people1

 

With regards to the previous few posts, Barclays are okay but the thing I hate the most about them is if you ring them to ask for help with something on your account, they'll end the call by making an overly pushy sales pitch to you. One time I rang to make a complaint about some fuck-up that they'd made on my account and they still tried to get me to apply for a credit card with them before terminating the call! The purpose of my call was to put their ability to handle the account I already had with them into question - why the hell would I be wanting another one at that particular moment in time? Idiots...

 

I'm now up to 3!

[dopper]

Not a day goes by at work without some no good piece of shit motherfucker walking past my desk and making some comment about the fact that I can type quickly and with more than just my two index fingers.

 

Everyone at this all-male workplace genuinely believes doing such a thing is girly and can only be described as "typing like a woman".

 

It's 2010 for fucks sake.

 

[Van Dammer]

And you havn't switched the keys around on their keyboard yet?

[Surf Digby]

Not a day goes by at work without some no good piece of shit motherfucker walking past my desk and making some comment about the fact that I can type quickly and with more than just my two index fingers.

 

Everyone at this all-male workplace genuinely believes doing such a thing is girly and can only be described as "typing like a woman".

 

It's 2010 for fucks sake.

 

 

Did they never see how fast Mr Scott typed in Star Trek IV?

[Chris B]

Not a day goes by at work without some no good piece of shit motherfucker walking past my desk and making some comment about the fact that I can type quickly and with more than just my two index fingers.

 

Everyone at this all-male workplace genuinely believes doing such a thing is girly and can only be described as "typing like a woman".

 

It's 2010 for fucks sake.

 

 

Bet you typed that post like a girl.

[Chris B]

Joking aside, I never got that attitude with touch typing. I did, however, occasionally get astonishment at the fact that I can type as fast as I can, without looking at the keys. Which was a weird thing for people to be impressed by.

[JLM]

I've taught myself to touch type through repetition. I don't have a particularly textbook technique, but I'm pretty fast and accurate enough to get by. I've had people act all astonished when they've seen me doing it as well, and I try to explain that it's not something I practiced or was taught, it's just muscle memory from routinely using keyboards at school, uni and when wasting my life on the interwebs.

 

I remember showing my uncle some racing game or other at Christmas a few years back and he was saying he didn't know how I could play videogames without having to keep looking down at the buttons as well. I tried to explain that he doesn't look down at the pedals or the gear stick that often when he's driving his car, but was told that it's not the same thing.

[Surf Digby]

I never really learned to type properly, I can just do it at a reasonable speed because I used to do it for most of the day at work. Now that I've not been doing it so much, I can feel myself slowing down, and my accuracy has gone to shit.

 

4 typos corrected whilst typing that passage. And I just wrote "pasasge".

[Kookoocachu]

I can't type for toffee. Seriously I'm like a blindfolded spastic and can actually type better when I'm tipsy.

[thejeffjarrettone]

3. People keep coming to me and telling me how awesome Halo: Reach is, despite me telling them "I don't know how awesome it is, I don't have it yet, I can't afford it". Despite me telling 4 different people, all of whom were within earshot of each other, they EACH insisted on telling me "Oh, the jetpacks are awesome!" "Oh, the multiplayer rocks!" "Oh, the plot is so awesome!" "Don't you love Halo: Reach?" I DON'T FUCKING KNOW! I DON'T HAVE IT YET!!!!