Iain @ Internet

Iain to Sixt

Hi there, on average I rent about 12 vehicles per year. In about 95% of cases the fuel tank is full when I collect the vehicle. In every single case where the tank is not full, other than the rental I refer to, the fact that it is not full has been made clear to me – overtly pointed out by the person handing over the vehicle.

This did not happen in the case of this rental, so my view is that you can point to whatever policies you like – your processes at point of rental are flawed; being based on a ‘ideal’ which rarely reflect the reality of the vehicle pick up experience.

You’ve just lost a customer – one whose life time spend with Sixt would have far outweighed the £20 you have extracted from me through poor processes.

Thanks for nothing.

Iain

On 13 Jul 2007, at 16:27, customer-service-uk@sixt.com wrote:

Dear Mr Henderson,

thank you for your e-mail to Sixt and for forwarding the documentation.The
Pre-Rental Inspection sheet which was completed and given to you with the
vehicle clearly shows that the vehicle was 7/8 full. It is vitally
important that customers to check this document prior to taking the vehicle
to ensure no disputes will occur further down the line.

A vehicle is always to be returned with the same amount of fuel as it is
received to ensure that no refuelling charge will apply.

Unfortunately we are unable to reimburse for any additional fuel which you
have chosen to put in the vehicle prior to it’s return.

I am sincerley sorry for any inconvenience caused and do hope that this
experience will not deter you from renting with us again in the future.

Kind regards
Sixt Kenning Ltd.
t/a Sixt rent a car

Lisbeth-Faye Strutt
Customer Relations
Durrant House 47 Hollywell Street
Chesterfield S41 7JN
Great Britain

I was trying to renew one of my domain names that was bought originally through this lot. Despite sending me e-mails regularly, their customer log-in (which uses e-mail) refused to recognise my e-mail address so I could not get in to renew.

So….I had to then phone them up at a cost of 10p per minute. After 40 minutes on hold I got through to Peter – he said that he had to look up some information and that he’d call me back after 2 the next day – by which point I had one day left before the domain expired. From our discussion, I had very little confidence that this call-back was in fact going to happen – so I checked with Peter who re-assured me that he would indeed call back the following day to progress.

……guess what…..no call back. Thankfully I then found a way to renew the domain through the reseller I use who have an account with 123reg.

Needless to say, any business I have with 123reg is now about to be shifted.

This ongoing court case over bank charges looks set to rumble on for a while – although I don’t see how any can doubt that the bank charge regime quoted was based on excessive profits.

The much bigger issue, I suspect, will be this – the UK Information Commissioners investigation into practicies within Barclays call centres. There must be a lot of call centre managers panicking at present – Barclays are unlikely to be the only ones whose practices merit investigation.

This story about TK Maxx is one of many, at the moment there is no legal obligation on companies in the UK to notify their customers of a data breach. In California, and soon across USA, this right of notification is mandatory. And I thought European privacy laws were supposed to be advanced……?

TK Maxx owner hit by card breach

Stores in the US, UK, Canada, Ireland and Puerto Rico are affected
Hackers have stolen information from at least 45.7 million payment cards used by customers of US retailer TJX, which owns TJ Maxx, and UK outlet TKMaxx.
In a statement to US watchdogs the firm said it did not know the full extent of the theft and its effect on customers.

TJX added that the security breach may also have involved TK Maxx customers in the UK and Ireland.

But the company did add that at least three-quarters of the affected cards had expired or data had been masked.

The company also told the BBC that 100 files were moved from its UK computer system in 2003, and two files were later stolen.

Question marks

However, a spokesperson admitted that the firm may never know what was in those files.

“We don’t know what was in those files – the technology the hacker used prevents TJX from knowing, and also the fact that TJX system routinely deletes files,” the spokesperson added.

The data was accessed on TJX’s systems in Watford, Hertfordshire, and Massachusetts over a 16-month period from July 2005 and covers transactions made by credit and debit card dating as far back as December 2002.

I see that they plan to recoup some of the cost of ID cards by selling identity checks to industry.

That’s fine – I assume there will be an accompanying service through which the individual can use their own identity for free – or get a cut of the action?

I just tried to log on to my First Direct online bank account only to get this message:

important information
sorry, first direct is currently unable to support access to our internet banking service through the Safari browser. We are working hard to fix this.

We apologise for any inconvenience this may cause and appreciate your patience.

I read on silicon.com that this was an un-anticipated issue emerging from a identity/ security upgrade that affects 3% of their 700k customers. That is probably the same identity/ security upgrade that caused me to put the phone down on the tech support person I spoke to last week about not being able to access my business bank account, despite having been able to do so for the last 5 years without any problem.

Anyway – not noticing that 21,000 First Direct customers were using Safari seems pretty naive to me. I used to be a strong advocate of First Direct, but over the last year I just get the sense they are getting dragged back into ‘business as usual’ for HSBC, i.e. just the same poor service and lack of interest in customer needs as all the other major banks.

One can only hope that this comes back to haunt them.

£4.50 – I can’t see how they arrived at that charge, seems way to high. I’d like to think the government will clamp down on this practice before consumers have to do it themselves (as they did with exhorbitant bank charges).

3 weeks ago I went in to Niketown in San Francisco to buy a new pair of running shoes – in a desperate bid to motivate myself i’ve bought one of those Nike Plus gadgets that plugs into my iPod.

I can’t stand running, but it is the only thing that makes a difference to my fitness levels (don’t suggest eating less junk!!!!!), so I thought that injecting a new gadget into the equation I may notice the running aspect a bit less.

Anyway – I gave up in Niketown SF as there were far too few sales assistants for the number of people wanting to try or buy something. So, I went in to the London one today, and guess what……far too few sales assistants for the number of people trying and buying.

This time I persevered, because I figured that as it is a Nike specific gadget I was buying, if anything went wrong i’d get better advice or service from Nike themselves. So, after ten minutes hanging around looking as if I wanted to buy something, a sales guy finally wandered over and that part of things went fine – I decided to buy a pair for about £65 (they would have been much cheaper in SF!!!!).

I then went to pay for them, guess what – 7 people in front of me at the payment desk and only two tills open.

So Nike – what am I missing? With the amount of people in buying you must be coining in the money – so what’s wrong with spending some of it to stop your customers having to hang around and waste time? Is it poor management, deliberate cost cutting, or deliberately hoping if we have to hang around we’ll buy more stuff. I’m voting for poor management ……

In gthe next installment……did the new shoes and gadget make any difference?

…well that’s me just back from another trip to the Post Office to send back a broken gadget; that makes 5 in the last 2 months:

- my Palm Treo 650
- my wife’s Palm Treo 650
- my GPS gadget
- my heart rate monitor
- digital camera

Must be something about those of us prone to buying gadgets, but we certainly are becoming The Post Office’s and Telco’s best friends; each of these has meant a trip to The Post Office, and multiple long phone conversations….just to get what I had paid for in the first place.

In any case, i’ve had enough – no more gadgets for me for 18 months, i’ll live without them and no doubt feel better for it.

I’ll keep this short and not so sweet – the Parc 55 hotel in San Francisco is vastly over-rated and not worth staying in at present.

Apparently it used to be a Marriot but has just been taken over, I can only assume that the good staff left.

Dingy rooms and 25 minutes to get my car back from when I gave the ticket to the valet man – not good enough. That said, my overall experience of San Francisco hotels has never been that great – time to look for some new options I think.