Am I the only remote worker on the Isle of Wight? Do you work from home and live on the Island? If you work from home and live on the Isle of Wight, feel free to drop me a comment here!
10 tips on doing productive web work with kids in the house
As we’re in the Summer Holidays in the UK I found this article quite fitting. I’ve been working from home for the past 8 years, 2 months before my youngest daughter was born and kids in the house has never really been a problem. Telephone headset on - Dad is in a conference call, iPod headphones on - Dad is concentrating etc. etc. My youngest thinks that most Dads work from home anyway!
A great ‘homage’ to the ZX Spectrum at the BBC website.
Whilst all my friends were playing games on this amazing piece of hardware, I decided to program it instead. However I couldn’t resist the occasional game of Manic Miner, JetPac and Sabre Wulf now and again.
I haven’t blogged for a while. Sorry. Life has been rather busy and stressful but I needed a rant so hang on tight.
You would have thought with the recent press of broadband and MAC codes that some companies might try to start getting it right. However, my experience of Pipex is nothing but complete incompetence with a service that is about as useful as an ass-hat and a customer service about as polite as Saddam Hussein.
Due to their recent somewhat undesirable DSL performance I decided to move to a different provider. But getting a MAC code out of them is a completely different matter altogether. You see, the problem with Pipex is that they are one of those last companies out there in the UK broadband land that decide to give you a 12 month contract. They do this to tie you in, because before you know it you’ll be dialling those 0845 support numbers wondering why things aren’t working. This ‘contract’ gets renewed every time you decide to re-grade your service. Beware. I joined Pipex back in 2004 and was very happy with the service they gave me. 512K was quite some connection if you’re used to dial-up as I was. When 2MB became available in May 2005 I upgraded, and then downgraded in September 2005 to 1MB as the connection was cheaper.
When 8MB became available in 2006, I upgraded but this was when the problems started. I decided to upgrade online using the wonderfully unintuitive Pipex Control panel. I requested the ‘Go’ product as I wanted a capped service. But they rolled out the Max service to me by mistake (as admitted via email to me from them in September 2006) which was £10 a month dearer. So until September I was on a service that I didn’t ask for, or apply for and was still paying for (or at least I thought I was). Which brings me onto their other issue which is their billing department. Pipex want to charge you £2 per month extra if you’re paying by debit card. So when I upgraded Pipex Go/Max/Whatever, I switched my payments to direct debit. Four instances of their direct debit appeared in my online banking area but they never actually took any money from me. From June 2006 until January 2007, they never charged me for their service, but waited until January 2007 to contact me saying there was a problem with the direct debit. I had a bill of £175 waiting to be paid. Kids I’m sorry, there won’t be any McDonalds Happy Meals for you this month etc.
So due to their wonderful ‘contract of service’ offered by Pipex coupled with the bad network performance I had been experiencing, I decided to move to a different provider. I phoned customer support and requested my MAC code. No problem they said, I was put through to their retention department ‘juke box’ which played music at a 8kbps quality down my phone line at 50p per minute. I hung up after 30 minutes. Secondly, I requested my MAC code by email. I never received a reply. And today, I phoned them up asking them for my MAC code, only to be greeted by customer service saying I’m tied in until the September 2007 and will have to pay a cancellation charge. The reason of September 2007 you may ask? Because that was the time a year ago when they ‘regraded their mistake’ they made. Complete fools I tell you. The customer service adviser even had the balls to tell me that when this service was regraded, I was informed that it was a 12 month contract. I can tell you now, when you corrected your mistake, I wasn’t notified via the telephone. You sent me an email apologising. Remember? Naagghhh!11!
So the reasons you shouldn’t go with them?
And the reasons you should?
Cracking line up for the festival this year, albeit looks like a repeat of the Brits but nonetheless great for the weekend. Looking forward to seeing Muse as I haven’t seen them play live yet. I wonder who will play Sunday night?