Here are a selection of the products of some of my lunchtime walks in February and March 2012, starting with one of my favourite #lookupleeds images, taken in the underused Grand Arcade:
Not strictly a lunchtime walk; this is the end of one of the remaining back to back terraces in East End Park one sunny morning:
More not-taken-on-a-lunchtime, here's a handful of snaps one sunny evening shortly after the clocks when forward. The first two were taken from the ninth-floor canteen in my office block, while the third is the view looking back up Eastgate towards the eveing sun:
The end of the Brotherton Wing of the Leeds General Infirmary always looks a little like a cruise ship to me:
This is one end of the tunnel that takes the A58(M) Leeds Inner Ring Road underneath the LGI:
Solo M/Cs Only:
And here's the view of what becomes of the A58(M) - the A64 to Scarborough starts here as the York Road:
Here is a wall, in Stanningley. I waited here at a bus stop for 45 minutes hoping for a bus to take me back home across the city. The service is supposedly every 20 minutes. Can you tell I was bored:
Shop wall, East End Park:
The Corn Exchange's magnificent:
Finally, here are the lifts at the House of Fraser department store:
So, we've had our house on the market for a little over twelve months. During that time we've had minimal interest. As you most likely know, the UK housing market has been pretty much broken for the last few years.
We were originally with Jane Earl, an Internet-based estate agent who charged a much lower (though up-front) fee than would a traditional agent. Turns out she charged too little, as she announced at the end of last year that she would need to wind up the business due to financial losses. Honourably, she arranged to continue our online listing through another company, Emove.
We had only recently talked about that fact that, despite our twelve months being up, our house was still showing online. Then Gemma had an email from one Beth Rodwell, head of Property Sales at Emove:
Hi Gemma,
Your agreement with Jane Earl expired on 29.03.2012 therefore we have now fulfilled our initial commitment to you. Would you like to renew your listing with us for a further 12 months for a reduced fee of £199?
I have someone who would like to view.
Kind regards,
Beth Rodwell
Mmm. What a pleasant email. It's no-nonsense, to the point, and will you look at that, Beth has only garnered some interest in our house. But blast it to the moon, we must renew our contract before we get to meet the interested party. Gemma replied:
Beth,
We will not be renewing the service at this time, but as we paid for 12 months with the estate agency and had no viewings in that time we would be very grateful if you could send the clients our way.
Gemma
Beth soon wrote back:
Gemma,
I am afraid I cannot do that. Infact we should have removed your listing on 29.03.2012 and if we had of done then we would not have generated the 2 viewing enquiries that we had today. You may have paid Jane Earl a listing fee and had no viewings up until now, however that is neither their fault nor ours, it is down general market conditions. The market has picked up now and I am confident that we can sell your property for you.
We have offered you a service for FREE over the last 4-5 months and we have manually generated you weekly reports and handled a few viewing enquiries which uses the time of our administration charges. I am afraid that unless you are willing to re-list with us at the extremely discounted rate offered then I will have to remove your listing with immediate effect. If you chose to instruct a local agent and you attract the same viewers or any viewer through them I can assure you that you will pay a lot more than £199 for a sale.
Kind regards,
Beth Rodwell
What was wrong with us, thinking that Beth worked for some kind of charity? How selfish of us! And how mean it was to suspect, even for one moment, that Beth might be inventing some interest to entice us into renewing with her company. We are bad people, and I just had to let Beth know how sorry I was:
Hi Beth.
Tom here, Gemma's partner. Gemma kindly forwarded me your email, as I wanted the opportunity to reply.
Thank you everso for clarifying the position regarding the two viewing enquiries you say you have had. I agree this interest is a clear sign that the property market is now picking up. I guess I have been foolish to have listened to the general predictions of a fall in UK house prices of between 2% and 12% in 2012. I am sad that we will now never get to meet these potential buyers; it is such a shame that they foolishly timed their interest badly.
I was sorry to learn that you suffered the inconvenience (not to mention the expense) of having to deal with the two recent enquiries, especially as you did us the favour of forgetting to remove our listing at the end of March. This is on top of the cost of the weekly reports, not to mention the 'other viewing enquiries' (we recall only one enquiry, but no viewing came of this; our failing memories must be to blame for our failure to recollect the other buyers you sent our way). This is particularly troubling to my conscience because, as you note in your email, you have generously offered us a service for FREE (your caps) over the last few months. Who says philanthropy is dead? Not I. We regret the disappointment our custom has clearly caused, and I apologise for your decision to take on the remainder of the Jane Earl contract. Why, we didn't even ask you to take us under your wing! I just know that you did it out of the goodness of your collective hearts.
You are correct; if we sold our house through a local estate agent we would for sure pay significantly more than the £199 fee you have proposed. I suppose we must find crumbs of comfort in the fact that the local estate agent will charge their fee only if they successfully sell the property.
Whilst tempted by your kind invitation (Gemma thought it to be a tad passive-aggressive, but I wouldn't hear of it), I feel that we cannot accept the offer to renew for another period of twelve months. We have been such poor customers that I would not wish for a second to jeopardise your company's prosperity. I fear that if we were to renew, you would surely be calling in the receivers within a few short months.
Thank you once again for all of your hard work.
Tom Smith.
I can only hope that we can be forgiven, but I fear that we are surely going to hell.
Thank you for coming back to us on the repair of your Buzz 3.
We are sorry that you feel that your request was not handled as you would have liked. Consumer feedback is always taken onboard though and as such we are currently reviewing our pricing structure and which repairs can be done by consumers across the board taking their confidence levels into account.
As a mother myself, Daddy Pig normally does have the right answers and we must commend you on your ingenuity for processing the repair and we hope that your Quinny will give you many more years rolling along.
Should you require any additional assistance or information please do not hesitate to contact us.
With kind regards,
On behalf of the Quinny team, Estelle Salter
I like and appreciate this reply. Even though it is topped and tailed with standard-feeling response paragraphs, The core of the reply is a personal, humourous, no-hard-feelings message.
Well played Estelle; my faith is partially restored.
The first pram we bought was a Quinny, a Buzz 3 model. Olive has long-since been upgraded to a stroller-style pushchair, and it has recently been on loan to Deb, Neil and Lucas.
Whilst in their custody the mechanism to raise the height of the handle failed. We've now had the Quinny back but plan to loan it out again soon, this time to one of Neeley's expecting friends.
So, we've looked into getting the handle repaired. Gemma found that the manufacturers would charge us £72. But, as Daddy Pig would say, I'm a bit of an expert at fixingthings. So I thought i'd give it a go.
After removing the plastic cladding on the handle I immediately found the cause of the trouble: cable breakage. I also established that I would definitely need to detach the whole handle to gain access to its inner workings, but even this apparently simple procedure proved confounding. It was only when I searched online for help that I stumbled across the following vital assistance:
Handle now removed, I found that the end of the cable featured a bespoke end-piece to secure it in its fixing. So I fired of an email to Quinny, in the hope that they might be willing to sell me a cable in return for money. I received the following miserly reply:
I'm afraid the cables inside the handle on the Quinny Buzz are not available therefore the complete handle will need to be replaced.
As your Buzz is not covered by any warranty there will be a charge of £72 for a full safety inspection and replacement of the handle at our repair centre based in Suffolk which includes the collection of the frame from your home address and also the return. In order to make arrangements for this, please contact our customer care team on 01284 413141 between 8.30am - 4.30pm Monday thru Friday. An advisor will take full details from you and the £72 charge and provide you with a reference number. This needs to be clearly marked on the outside of the box that the unit is being returned in so that when it arrives the engineers can match up your unit with the computer record created and get it inspected, repaired, and dispatched back to your address as promptly as possible.
With kind regards,
On behalf of the Quinny team, Becky Smith
Uh-huh. I understand. You're a business, and your model includes making profits from out-of-warranty repairs to your products. Fine. But don't forget, I'm a DIY 12th dan, a repair ninja, with a masters in mending from the University of Recycling, Reconstruction and Restoration.
I sourced a new cable of appropriate thickness and a pack of 'Crimp Connector Butts' (me neither) that I figured I could use to join two cables together; remember, I would need to use the good end of the existing cable.
I took one of the Crimp Connector Butts and threaded the two cables, which I then cut, allowing sufficient spare length at both ends to make adjustments in case of measuring error. When I was happy with the positioning of the cables I squeezed the Connectors with the wire cutters on my pliers. This created a permanent connection between the two cables.
It was only when I put the handle back together that I found my 'new' single cable to be exactly 3mm too short. This tiny error meant that the catch was permanently depressed, and therefore the handle could only be used properly in its lowest position.
I decided that I would need to buy a second new cable and start again the next day. Fast forward 24 hours, and taking a little more care with my measuring, and I was rewarded with a perfect fit.
After testing, I popped the handle back onto the frame of the pram, and adopted the slightly smug glow of a man who has eaten a little too much Ready Brek.
So, £2.99 spent, £72 saved. Net saving: £69.01
And, as a final action, I have sent a link to this post to Becky Smith. If she reads this she might learn that business is a two-way street, where post-purchase customer care and, dare I say, gestures of goodwill, are important. For want of sending me a part that costs no more than a couple of pounds (a price I was happy to pay), she has most likely lost any future custom we may have considered putting in the direction of Quinny.
One evening a couple of weeks ago, we found the washing machine to be in a state of confusion and despair. Full of soapy water, failing to spin, lights flashing, and generally refusing to complete the whites-wash.
It had done this previously, in the summer, but the tried and tested 'turning it off and on again' had been a sufficient repair on that occasion. This time, however, we tried and failed.
Given the prospect of having to call out an engineer, I thought it would be worth checking for a solution on the Internet. After all, you never know. The answer might be a simple fix, within the grasp of my limited technical abilities.
And so it was. It turned out that the particular sequence of flashing lights corresponded to a specific fault. Our machine was suffering form a jammed pressure switch, which was a symptom of a blocked filter. I opened up the Hotpoint WT540 user manual on Gemma's laptop, and decided to give it a go.
Gemma had grave reservations about this; she feared I would get angry and break something. But I kept a cool head, and with some patience and a little elbow grease, managed to drain the machine and remove the filter (shown above, accessible via a removable panel, removable by turning anti-clockwise).
I had to use a baking tray to catch the draining water, which took ages (and filled one-and-a-half standard washing-up bowls), then struggled for some time to free the filter. The cause of the problem is illustrated below:
£1.57 in chemically-scarred coins, a flower button, a label, and (not shown) a significant amount of sodden lint and fluff. As well as recovering the cash, I guess I've saved around £100 in not having to get an engineer.
For five weeks, from mid-November until just before Christmas, the Christkindlmarkt comes to Leeds. The convoy of German and Polish lorries end their long westward journey in Millennium Square, and in no time at all a fully functioning Christmas market, including fairground, food stalls, and cavernous beer tent has been erected and is ready for business.
Me and my friends at work have made it a recent tradition to finish work mid-afternoon on the first or second Friday and spend the evening there, enjoying the German food, drink and music.
As usual, I did most of my Christmas present shopping online. So let me share my experience of the delivery that Amazon entrusted to the new delivery company on the block, Yodel.
One Thursday, a couple of weeks before Christmas, I came home form work to find a delivery card. As we both a work, and the parcel required a signature, it had been taken to the depot. No matter; the card gave me the option of rearranging delivery. As it happened, I had the following Tuesday off, so I set up delivery for then.
Come Tuesday, and Royal Mail had delivered two parcels before 11.30am. City Link faired less well, their adolescent driver turning up at 3.30pm in a hired white van and without an apology for the package they were bring (marked 'fragile' in bold white on orange) being stoved-in at one end.
But at least the contents of that parcel arrived, undamaged. What of Yodel? I went to their website, but the package could not be tracked. Instead I was offered another redelivery date, almost as if they weren't planning on bringing it. I called on their 0870 number but a message said the line was busy, and despite the invitation to 'press 5' to arrange a call back, when I did so the facility was 'not available'. I was not-at-all surprised to learn that Yodel were formally known as Home Delivery Network, the outfit of cowboys who once left a parcel in my back garden during a rainy weekend when I was away from home.
I eventually got through to someone at Yodel around 5pm, on an 0844 number I got from their website. I told the lady who answered that I thought I might be through to the wrong department, but explained my situation. Alas, my call was clearly an impediment to her going home, and she told me abruptly that the office I wanted was in another part of the building. 'Can you get me a call back?' I asked. 'We've no outside lines' was the terse reply offered.
Now, I work in a call centre. In 2011. An office without an outside line is a fiction, often employed by staff who cannot be arsed to help a customer. So I told her to get her manager, and she returned after a couple of minutes agreeing to arrange a callback from the correct office in the next half hour.
A call back came there none.
The next evening I called the 0870 number, getting through only after numerous attempts. The hapless staff member who answered told me he could do nothing but rearrange deliveries. He did apologise, and promised a call back by the next evening.
A call back came there none.
So to try to ensure I got my purchases the right side of Christmas I went online and arranged to collect my package from the depot on the next Saturday. The warehouse was in a state of light chaos when we arrived. Around ten angry men were venting their various problems to a short-tempered staff of two women. The customers were not being rude, but the staff (presumably suffering from working for such a joke company) were being short and unhelpful. One man told of how he was promised his redelivery would be left by his bins. 'That's against company policy' barked the ladystaff. 'That may be', replied the man, 'but that is what I was promised'.
I handed my card to another employwoman, who fetched out what was clearly once a box.
The following exchange then took place:
Me: 'Um, I see that this is a little...squashed.' Yodel: 'Yeah, that's because there was a bigger box on top of yours.' Me: 'Right. Is that a good idea, putting bigger, heavier boxes on top of smaller ones?' Yodel: 'It's Amazon's fault, they don't use strong enough boxes.'
I think I may have laughed in her jaded face, before checking the contents. Finding them to be undamaged, I left before violence ensued between the other angry men and the Yodel staff.
Oh. and I'm still waiting for my call back. And a reply to the restricted-to-1,500-characters online complaint I raised.
In October, we ordered a three-bird roast from Wilsons of Crossgates.
Gemma's mum picked it up on the Thursday before Christmas. It looked well ace.
The solid meat required defrosting for two days (the were prepared in advance), and cooking for 3 1/2 hours.
I'm sorry to report that we were disappointed. We could actually only detect two birds, mostly the chicken with a duck minority, and the meat was rather dry. The centre was packed with a gamey stuffing, which presumably was the pheasant. Expectations of a juicy tricolour were not to be.
Wilsons is normally very good, and we'll definitely give them another try, but on this occasion we felt pretty let down.
Sunday is market day in the medieval town of Pollença. So we went.
The town is just how I imagine a small, provincial market town should look. The buildings (at least in the centre of town) mainly date from the 17th and 18th centuries, and crowd together to make narrow streets. There were a generous amount of open squares, but these too were crowded today, with market stalls selling their massive southern-European vegetables and coffee shops spilling tables and chairs in the margins. The town is nestled in the foothills of the Sierra de Tramuntana.
The side streets also had a lining of stalls, and the small shops, all of them seemingly independent, were open for business. We stocked up on fruit and veg, and Gemma haggled herself a bargain on a leather bag. Olive treated herself to a Barney Rubble drum.
