Complaining To WH Smith, Is There Any Point?

Before Xmas our family flew to Barcelona, and we departed from Gatwick Airport. Normally this is quite straightforward, so we weren't expecting to discover that the Gatwick North WH Smith is so much worse a shopping experience than the ones in Gatwick South that we normally visit.

When we got back from Barcelona, we submitted the following complaint via the WH Smith website.

My partner is a wheelchair user and attempted to use your air-side shop at Gatwick's North terminal on Friday 3rd December at approximately 6am.

Having selected her items for purchase she queued for over 10 mins before getting to the entrance to the till area. At this point she was unable to proceed as the barriers were too narrow to allow wheelchair access and too heavy for her to move. Neither member of till staff offered her any assistance, and despite her attempts to get around the back of the barriers, she was unable to complete her purchase. When she then moved out of the shop to get my assistance, the staff member moving the newspaper trolleys towards the shop pushed them into her and pushed her backwards into the shop.

She was extremely upset and hurt by this. She finds leaving the house to be stressful enough and this was supposed to be the start of a relaxing trip to Barcelona. Suffice to say, this was not the way in which we wished it to proceed.

When I went back into the shop to ask why the barriers were not wide enough to allow wheelchair access, the "manager" said that she'd had no other complaints about them and told me that she "didn't design the layout" of the shop. Not exactly the ideal attitude for a representative of your organisation, I would suggest, nor particularly
aware of the present Disability legislation.

Could you please confirm whether the queue barriers in all of your stores are wide enough for a wheelchair to navigate easily, or is the Gatwick North store something of a novelty? Could you also please confirm whether your staff receive any training on how to deal with disabled customers or whether the "manager" I spoke to an aberration on an otherwise exemplary staff training policy?

Any information or comments you have would be gratefully received.

We received the obligatory auto-response thanking us for our email; "We appreciate the time you have taken to contact us. We take all of our customer comments seriously and want to make sure we fully investigate your concerns before responding to you."

Ominously, the last line said "Thank you for your patience."

So I waited three weeks, during which time we heard not a peep out of them, and then sent them this:

Any possibility of an actual response to my complaint? I feel three weeks would give you sufficient time to speak to any and all staff concerned, so I am disappointed not to receive anything from you apart from this auto response.

Quite surprisingly, I got a reply two days later, and not just an auto-response. Although they did thank me for my email.

"I'm sorry that you have not recived a reply from us. Please can you reply to this email, detailing your enquiry again, and we will endeavour to reply as quickly as possible."

So I replied with the text of the original mail and got this reply three days after that. Twenty-four days after the complaint was first submitted, if you're keeping count.

Thank you for your email of 28 December 2010, expressing your disappointment with the level of service you received at our Gatwick North store.

I sincerely regret this situation and can confirm that all aisles should be wide enough to be easily accessible for wheelchair users. I have immediately passed your feedback to the Gatwick site so this can be addressed

We are committed to offering excellent customer service so it is always a great disappointment when we hear that we are not achieving this. Rest assured our Store Manager has addressed this matter as an urgent training issue with all members of staff and we will take any steps necessary to ensure that this standard of service is never repeated.

I am very sorry that we have let you down on this occasion. I do, however, appreciate the time you have taken to bring this matter to my attention and if I can be of any assistance to you in the future, please feel welcome to contact me.

You may note the lack of actual answers to my question about any training the staff receive on how to interact with disabled customers. And I'm delighted that the aisles are wide enough for a wheelchair. Unfortunately, I asked about the checkout queue barriers. And mentioning you'll "take any steps" to a wheelchair user is surely taking the piss, no?

I have replied to their email and if I get anything back, I'll post it here.

Did I Miss Anything?

*blinks twice*

Wow. It's been about 18 months since I last blogged. That is quite incredible. There are many reasons why I've not blogged - some of which I may go into at a later date - although I think it can be summed up with "Meh".

I've spent most of my life wondering what the hell is going on with everybody and why no-one else is doing anything about the sheer stupidity of Government/business/cyclists and I'm sure you're delighted to learn I've spent the past 18 months doing pretty much the same thing with Government/business/NHS/cyclists/taxis etc.

Here's something. If you live in London and have the misfortune to be a car driver you will already be aware of the utter idiocy that is Cycle Superhighways. There's one on a road I travel down twice a day. Since its introduction, the lane width for cars, buses and trucks has gone down. Doesn't stop cyclists from still being in the middle of the road, you understand, but does increase the chance of people in vehicles having to swerve to avoid crashing into other vehicles. So I am now MORE likely to drive into a cyclist. Yay!

I say more likely, given the number of them who seem to think red lights don't apply to them, go straight through the junction then look daggers at me when they nearly drive into me (and I'm the one going through on green rememeber), then my chances of killing them hasn't gone up too much.

And they don't like it when you open your door when they're going past, do they? Some of them have even stopped talking on their phones or changing their iPod track to gesticulate at me. Probably. Not that I've even bothered looking.

So yeah, cyclists. Bastards. Taxi drivers however, utter utter bastards. My contempt for them has gone up now I see so many of them driving round with sat navs. What's the point of doing the knowledge if you're just going to use a fucking sat nav? Grr. Bus drivers, I will kill one of you very very soon. And you know the reason why.

But my main gripe is the complete morons who ring me up at all hours of the day and night to tell me there is now legislation in place that means I can get money back on all my debts. Or that my PC is apparently sending them messages telling them how slowly it's running. Or that they're not based in India (despite the accent and dialling code). I will definitely be killing each and every single one of those motherfuckers.

Still angry, still Silas. And now blogging again.

Peace, I'm out.

Flying

Having spent rather a long time on planes in the past month, I read with some interest that Ryanair are planning to install coin slots on the toilets. Not entirely sure if the bloke being interviewed was being serious, but it seems that the good folk of B3ta have gone one further.

Blank Passports Going Cheap!

The BBC are reporting that a batch of 3000 blank passports has been snatched during their delivery from Manchester to London.

The Foreign Office admitted a serious breach of security over the loss of the passports and visa stickers, which were being sent to embassies overseas.

However, the passport service said the stolen documents could not be used by thieves because of their hi-tech embedded chip security features. The passports were the new electronic variety which contain a chip replicating the data printed on the document itself.

Well that's a relief. Because obviously no-one has shown the flaws in the new e-passport, have they? So it must be "secure" in a sense I'm not familiar with.

And correct me if I'm wrong here, but not every country in the world is going to have the necessary equipment for reading the passports anyway. So if you're travelling to say, Australian Samoa by boat, how high exactly are the odds of your passport being checked using the e-passport reader?

Ah, I've worked out the meaning of "secure". It means that we in the UK are, while the rest of the world who can't afford the e-passport reader are now open to 3000 potential terrorists. Well that makes me feel a whole load safer.

TFL And Their Version Of Time



Click image to embiggen it.

Heathrow Ban Man For T-Shirt

Okay, in a 'crimes against fashion' type moment, Heathrow Airport made a man change his t-shirt before he was allowed to board a flight. The man had been wearing a Transformers t-shirt (and yes, he does work in IT) with a picture of Optimus Prime holding a gun on it.


IT consultant Brad Jayakody, 30, was shocked when he was told to change his top if he wanted to catch his flight from Heathrow’s Terminal 5. He asked to see the security chief, thinking the boss would "see sense" — but he backed up the decision and threatened him with ARREST. For wearing a t-shirt. For fuck's sake.

Perhaps I missed the memo about it now being illegal to travel if you happen to be dressed a bit funny. I mean if they'd said he couldn't travel because he was Australian, then I could understand it, but for a fucking t-shirt? Are you insane? As he himself said "What was I going to do, use the shirt to pretend I have a gun?"

You let people travel in tracksuits or dressed as a Moomin, but a t-shirt with a PICTURE of a PRETEND GUN on it is now a no-go?

What the fuck is going on in this fucking country?

I am the Revolution, I'm keeping this t-shirt on, and I'd like my bastard country back you fucking cunts.

Lying Bastards

Not content with being a general shower of bastards (as mentioned below) the Government have endeared themselves to me even more by this splendid bit of double-speak with regard to the current truckers' protest.

A Treasury spokesman said the government understood business and families were "feeling the pressure from high fuel prices". But they said the "immediate priority" was to encourage oil-producing countries to increase output, that a 2p-per-litre fuel duty increase had been put back from April to October and fuel duty was "still 11% below its 1999 level, in real terms".

Hmm. Really? Do you have, you know, figures to back that up? And what difference exactly would increasing output actually achieve? The majority of the cost of petrol and diesel at the pumps is Duty. And the Government sets the level of Duty. Instead of hand-wringing to OPEC, how about doing something constructive that would benefit the country?

Justice Secretary Jack Straw told the BBC he "fully understood" the hauliers' concerns, but "government revenues have to come from somewhere".

Ah, and that would be the real reason why the Government are more than happy to keep Duty at the present levels. Rather than doing what they're forcing the entire fucking country to do - cut expenditure because income is low - the Government are insisting that they can't control their spending, so we have to keep bailing the bastards out.

The Tories propose anyone under 21 who is unemployed for three months would be sent for an intensive programme of work-related activity. If they were still jobless after a year they would be moved to a full-time 12-month community work programme, with those who turn down a job losing their benefits. Which would be a start, eh?

Or maybe cutting down on profligacy in Government, as more than £325m a year is being wasted by government departments through inefficient use of office space, MPs have said. The Commons public accounts committee (as in MPs themselves, never the harshest critics of their own white elephants) recommended more civil servants should be relocated from London to cut costs. Amusingly, the committee said the Treasury was spending the most on employees' workspace and urged it to "set a better example".

Yet the Government take the "we need more money, so fuck you all" approach instead. And by doing this, show the short termist mentality you'd normally find in investment banks. By not reducing fuel duty for hauliers, the Government risks losing all tax income from that industry. Foreign hauliers, buying fuel on mainland Europe, can come over to the UK and offer their services at a greatly reduced price. No income tax, no VAT, as the theme tune to Only Fools & Horses says, failing to add, no fuel duty, no vehicle excise duty etc, etc, etc.

Fuck the Government, before they fuck you. Join the Revolution.

I am the Revolution, and I want my fucking country back.

Well You've Convinced Me

The BBC are reporting on the trial of an alleged head of a terrorist cell. If you bother clicking the link, the headline is

"Suspect 'checked air timetables'"

Fuck me, he's obviously guilty then, the shifty looking cunt! What other heinous crimes was he committing?

Woolwich Crown Court heard he also talked "in hushed tones" on his mobile.

Makes a pleasant change, someone actually talking quietly while on their mobile in a public place - this bloke should be stuffed and mounted. I wonder what exactly made this behaviour so suspicious?

Prosecutor Richard Whittam said Mr Ali was observed speaking in "hushed tones in a foreign language" on a mobile phone.

That would be Mr Abdulla Ahmed Ali. I'm guessing here that English may not be his first language. If it is, there's a good chance it wasn't the first language of the person he was speaking to.

Mr Ali was then seen looking at an American Airlines page marked "timetable notepad". He then highlighted sections of numbers on the screen. Mr Ali was seen looking at the BAA Heathrow website showing "some sort" of timetable, before visiting a flight-booking website.

Blimey, I can't imagine a scenario where I would need to do that. Apart from booking flights and seeing which flights I wanted to take, obviously. He's blatantly a bomber! We should just hang the fucker now.

It gets better though.

The court also heard how on the same day, co-defendant Assad Sarwar, who was described as the group's "quartermaster", visited an internet cafe in Slough. He was observed as he wrote an email and then made notes as he looked up internet sites related to hydroponics - the process of growing plants without soil. He also looked up information on plant growing and feeding.

Hydroponics? Bomb making! Or growing weed. One or the other. But probably bombs.

In case you're interested, these are the idiots who, it is claimed, were intending to take a liquid bomb onto a plane. Or several planes. Or several bongs onto several planes. Whatever. The reason you can't take more than 100ml of liquid onto a plane is being put on trial here, essentially. Although if this represents the level of evidence they've got against them - oh, apart from them all looking a bit muslim - then I'm thinking there may be an acquittal. I will revise this opinion if there's more serious evidence at some later point.

As I mentioned closer to the time however, The Register explained very carefully why the liquid (or binary) bomb plot would never have worked.

Still, I'm sure BAA have been delighted in the increase in sales of shampoo, conditioner, toothpaste and soft drinks they've had since the introduction of the liquid ban, eh? Helps them pay for the supreme fuck up that is Terminal 5.

Virtual Tube Ride Reduces Paranoia

The BBC is reporting that a "virtual" tube ride can help people overcome their fears that other passengers are 'looking at them a bit funny'. This employs a "virtual reality" type experience (ie not a great deal like reality) that allows people to have more control over their environment than they would in real life, so that they can become used to the situation without feeling quite as threatened.

A similar technique has been used for some time for helping people get over their arachnophobia, and others.

Interestingly, I would have thought given the amount of fights, knife attacks and general chaos that happens on buses nowadays, the researchers would have been better served trying to work out a way of making buses *actually* safer, rather than tubes *virtually* safer.

Fingerprinting At Heathrow. Or Not.

With the opening of Heathrow's Terminal Five, BAA were trying to introduce the compulsory fingerprinting of every single domestic passenger who entered the lounge. They claim that this was to stop someone - presumably a wannabe terrorist - from flying through the airport on an international stop-over and swapping tickets with someone on an internal flight, thereby avoiding some levels of security check.

Let's just ignore the improbability of that for a moment and ask why Heathrow (and other UK airports*) mixes domestic and international passengers at all if there is any chance of a security risk. Well, funnily enough it's to extract money from them for the least possible outlay of cash. Have one shopping area and make sure all passengers have to pass by it, then reap the rewards of making people turn up to an airport three hours before a flight and not let them take any open liquid (or more than 100ml of any other liquid) through the security checks.

The usual method of ensuring that the passengers are who they claim to be isn't the obvious "check the name on the ticket matches the name on the photo ID they need to show before getting on the plane", but by use of CCTV cameras taking a photo of each passenger when they enter the terminal. The passenger then gets a card with a barcode on it, and this barcode is scanned as they leave the terminal and the photo compared to make sure it's still them. While I think this is an over the top way of doing it, the Information Commissioner considers it reasonable.

The IC doesn't consider the taking of fingerprints to be at all reasonable however and BAA have had to delay the start of their biometric checking while the arguments between them go back & forth. BAA do insist that they will take fingerprints in the future though, despite the protestations of the IC and various civil liberty groups.

Note, this is for internal travel within the UK. Where you live and pay taxes. Not for going overseas. This is a separate system to that employed for flights to the US or Japan. Although it would obviously be easy to link the system so that the US gets a nice collection of fingerprints for everyone who travels in the UK by plane via Heathrow Terminal 5.

BAA insist that the data is encrypted and destroyed after 24hours. Which could be entertaining if you get to the airport 24hours before your flight leaves - or your flight is delayed or cancelled due to bad weather, for example - as there'd be no corresponding data showing you are who you were when you arrived.

Not that you'd really want to travel through there anyway, seeing as there's been glitches on their first day. Not an auspicious start to the "building site with its own airport".

* On a recent flight from Newcastle to London Gatwick, I was horrified to discover - only when we landed mind, not before we took off so that I could have decided to travel by another method - that photos were taken so you could be compared at a point three hundred yards down the corridor. There's no mention of this on Gatwick's website, so I'm not sure it's entirely legal.

Going To Dubai? Check Your Shoes

Read today about the Radio One DJ Grooverider being sent to prison in the UAE for four years because he carried 2.16g of cannabis in his luggage. Now, that's a pretty stupid thing to do anywhere - despite the relatively small amount of the drug in question - but to carry it into a Muslim country is just asking for trouble.

The UAE have form on this zero tolerance approach. A 43 year old youth worker from the West Midlands was also sentenced to four years in jail for carrying much, much less. By much, much less, I mean "invisible to the naked eye and weighing less than a grain of sugar". And when I say carrying, I mean "had stuck in the tread of his shoe".

Fair Trials International put out a press release earlier this month highlighting the other cases of the past twelve months that have caused them some concern.

Here are some of the more absurd examples:

Tracy Wilkinson, 45 of West Sussex
Arrested at Dubai airport in 2005 for possession of codeine, a common pain relief medication, which she had been using to ease chronic back pain. She was held in custody for 8 weeks before officials accepted proof from her doctor of its use for prescribed medical purposes only.

Robert Dalton, 25 from Kent
Robert travelled to Dubai on 13 November 2007 for a holiday after finishing his economics degree. He was stopped and searched at the airport and arrested after Customs officers alleged they found 0.03g of cannabis in his pockets. He is currently on trial and if convicted, will mostly likely receive a 4 year prison sentence.

20-year old man from West Yorkshire
Arrested at Dubai airport on 16 January 2008 while travelling back to the UK from Pakistan. Currently standing trial in Dubai after Customs officers alleged they found 0.02g cannabis in his pocket.

British resident Cat Le-Huy
Arrested in Dubai for carrying Melatonin jet-lag tablets, which are sold over the counter in the US and Dubai. Mr Le-Huy told BBC News he was forced to sign a document in Arabic and was refused a translator. He said once the tablets were proved to be Melatonin, police took what he described as dirt from his bag and said they were now testing it to see if it was cannabis.

And most bizarrely of all;

A Swiss national currently serving 4 years after 3 poppy seeds were found on his clothes by customs officials at Dubai airport. He had bought and eaten a bread roll at Heathrow before flying to UAE.

So be aware when travelling to the UAE, I'd suggest you buy completely new clothes before travelling. Oh, and make sure any drugs you might have taken have completely passed out of your system, as the UAE government also consider anything in your urine or bloodstream to be "carrying". Just so you know.

US Customs Seize Data

Following on from my predictions of 17th January for what may happen at border control over here, it seems that the Americans have been going through people's data for a while.

The Washington Post is reporting that customs agents are taking mobile phones, mp3 players and, of course, laptops off people arriving into the USA.

The carriers of the laptops (who aren't necessarily the owners) have to give over login and password information at the very minimum, but often the entire laptop. I would suspect that the US then rips all the information off the laptop and then attempts to see why you're a terrorist.

The Electronic Frontier Foundation and Asian Law Caucus (two civil liberties groups in San Francisco) plan to file a lawsuit to force the Government to disclose its policies on border searches, including which rules govern the seizing and copying of the contents of electronic devices.

They also want to know the boundaries for asking travelers about their political views, religious practices and other activities potentially protected by the First Amendment. The question of whether border agents have a right to search electronic devices at all without suspicion of a crime is already under review in the federal courts.

According to the Post, some companies are so wary of laptops being seized for weeks or more that they are now instructing their staff to travel with hard-drives completely empty of data. While there is obviously a risk that their data can be compromised by being collected online (after passing through customs) they assume there's less risk of it falling into the "wrong hands" than if they entrust it to the Government.

So a bit like over here in that respect then.