Simon Rumble’s blog

Holly and I have been hunting around for a new place to live for the last couple of weeks. We've decided it's time to live on our own, adult-like, the already-noisy road outside our bedroom window is about to become a boundary road to Ken Livingstone's new Congestion Charge, giving drivers a five pound incentive to drive past our place instead of into Central London, and my one hour each way commute was wearing me down.

So we've been hunting around for a one bedroom flat at a reasonable price. No easy feat in London, believe me. We've seen a lot of squalid, dark flats in dodgy areas and even been mislead by dodgy estate agents and shown bedsits (sorry, "studio flats" in the lingo).

We made an offer on an excellent property last week but our offer was rejected -- it was well below the asking price but as much as we could afford. Finally on Saturday we found a nice place.

The flat is really large, bright and clean. See the photo above to see the lounge room. The only down side is that it's in Zone 3 and an Australian ghetto. That means we'll have ready access to Tim Tams, Vegemite and Twisties but will also mean we have even less chance of meeting locals.

Still, the reason so many Aussies live in this area is the reasonable prices and relatively good transport links. For me it's incredibly convenient to work: a short three kilometre ride. For Holly it's about five clicks, so closer for her too.

Good news for those of your outside London is the large lounge room with fold-out bed. Yes, we'll have room for dossers.

Feel like shit. Holly brought home the gift that keeps on giving: a cold. Yucko. Off work today and about to go back to bed.

I thought globalisation was supposed to mean prices were the same around the world. No more of these ridiculous price inequalities. Well not in electronics, they certainly aren't!

I'm looking to a digitial camera and a work colleague showed me the one he just bought in Malayia for the equivalent of £350. Beautiful camera! Of course, the price in the UK at the cheapest available price, it's £500!

Australia isn't looking much better. Even at wholesale prices, the similar Canon camera is more than it costs in the UK even! Insane.

The problem, of course, is tarrifs. Now I don't have a problem with tarrifs, per-se. The problem is that they're applied differently to different importers.

If you're Canon, you import at well below wholesale price, and pay taxes accordingly. Then your "local distributor" (a division of your company) takes their profit cut. Then they sell it.

If you're Joe Net User buying it from the US and having it posted to you, customs apply a 20% "lift" to the price on the invoice because they assume you got it at wholesale prices. Then the shipping company charges you a fee for processing the import duties. Ends up you pay the same price as you'd pay locally, which is just how they price it in the shops.

So how about some equal application of tarrifs? Hell, get the Amazons of the world to collect it for the EU as a whole, but they'll be sourcing from a lower initial price. That sounds like the kind of globalisation I'd like!

Well after weeks of dicking us around, the landlord of the flat we intended to move into next weekend has finally given us no option but to not go ahead with it. Every communication with him has seen a week or more pass before we get any response. He tried to stiff us with a £250 "professional cleaning" fee while sticking us with a six month lease, when we specifically wanted twelve months. Grrr. If someone takes two weeks to get back to you on something that is in their interest, can you imagine what they'd be like when the boiler stops working?

So we're gonna be homeless in a couple of weeks. I've managed to negotiate an extra week with our current flat, and then we'll stay with John and Anne for a week. We're then in Australia for three weeks, and will find a new place to live when we get back to London.

It was a nice flat, but not worth the hassle. It was also at the very top of our price range, and we weren't going to be there for the first three weeks of the habitation anyway. So really, we're saving quite a bit of money this way.

The sucky part is that we'll have to live out of boxes for a while, and move house twice. Better than moving once, then having to move again in six months, though.

Last night I went shoe shopping. I normally buy shoes in outdoor stores. They tend to stock hiking-type shoes which suit my lifestyle, plus I don't wear bright white shoes. Ugh.

Anyway, I'm going through all the stock and the sales guy is telling me why some pairs were worth £80 or more. Oh yeah, such-and-such high-tech feature. Of course you read the blurbs on these high-tech features, and it's just marketing bullshit. "x technology means we design for maximum durability and performance using space-age materials and..." wank wank wank.

The daggy thing I ended up doing was this: I bought the same shoes I'd walked in with. I tried on heaps of these high-tech new designs, but none was as comfortable as the ones I'd already owned, and I know they're durable and good for long hikes! They were also cheaper. Daggy huh?

This address, i8pte1u02@sneakemail.com, is for special purposes so don't email it. It's a spam trap. I'm doing some tests to see how spammers harvest their email addresses, using Sneakemail which provides revocable email addresses.

A month or so ago, I tried to hire a car from Easycar. First mistake, of course, with their ridiculous policies and puny (100km/day) mileage allowance. But anyway, I attempted to do it.

I use Mozilla to browse the web, which has no problems with nearly all sites these days. Easycar's site seemed to work fine but, for some reason, at the very last stage of booking, it crashes. So I got that far with my booking, and no further. I hadn't finalised the booking, so I just gave up.

A few days later, I thought I'd try it again, this time booking a longer hire as my parents wanted to drive around England a bit more after our weekend away. The browser crashed again at the last stage, so I gave up and rented from a company without such ridiculous policies for not too much more money.

So a few days later I'm looking at my bank statement online and notice two payments from Easycar. Odd, I think, since I haven't received any emails or anything from them thus far. Going to their site and logging in, however, I discover that there are indeed two bookings under my name. Opening the bookings at this point also seems to trigger the confirmation emails, which are sent at that point.

Not wanting three cars, I decide to cancel the Easycar bookings. Of course Easycar have a policy of not allowing cancellations, despite the fact that they don't have this right under consumer law. So I fill in a problem ticket on their online help system. I'd phone them, but the only number they publish charges 60p/minute for the privilege of sorting out their fuckups!

Two days later, I've still received nothing from them over there online system, nor heard from them. I'm fed up by this point and can see I'm just going to hear nothing and will have to exercise my consumer rights. Digging around, the only fax number I can find is the one you're supposed to use for damage reports. I fax them a formal letter cancelling both bookings, pointing out my right to do so under the EU Distance Selling Directive (which, of course, Easycar are trying to weasel out of), and the fact that the order wasn't actually finalised and there are faults in their system. As a precaution, I also sent it by registered post to the address listed for them at Companies House, so they can have no excuse of not receiving it at the appropriate place.

Of course, I still haven't heard a peep from these clowns. It's the height of rudeness that they don't even bother to respond to ANY communications. If this were to end up in court, I suspect the judge would rule in my favour just due to the fact that I made so many attempts at communication and they ignored them all.

So I sent a fax to my bank, explaining all this. They have summarily refunded my money, put the transactions in dispute and asked Easycar to explain. I know how these things (chargebacks) work from my time working in mail order. Easycar would have to present a pretty damn strong case to get the money back from the banks without resort to the courts.

Regardless, I now have my money back and the ball is in Easycar's court. If their communications with the bank are anything like their communications with their customers, they'll just ignore the chargeback notification and lose the money. Good.

If you're in dispute with Easycar, let me know how you get on. I'm curious.

I'm thinking of getting a driving licence, so I check out this site from the Automobile Association. And they have this little gem of idiocy:

Get a £24 discount when you sign up for lessons online.
Click the special offer icon for more details.
Call us on 0800 587 0087.

Of course, clicking on the link gets the same info and the same exortation to call them for details, and no link to book online. Smart huh?

(first installment of a trilogy in eighty-three parts)

What is it about recruiters that they're uniformly clueless, lying scumbags?

But getting more specific, why are they all terrified of email? Surely those recruiting technical people would have worked out that most of us prefer not to be interrupted from our daily work, prefer not to need to surreptitiously glance over the shoulder to see who's within earshot before you start discussing some job, and mostly prefer not to have to waste real-time communication space dealing with the world's lowest profession.

Case in point is an exchange I just had, here's what I sent the person concerned:
Please give me a call when you can.

And about five minutes later, the phone rings. ARGH!

If anyone from the recruit scum industry is reading this, I'd be happy to consult with you on how to make the ideal IT recruitment company. I warn you that it's not going to be easy, as the first tenet is going to be "don't lie, ever".

London can't let New York edge us out for crappiest infrastructure of a so-called modern city. No, we had our own little power outage this evening.

I was in the tube but fortunately the power cut out just as the train hit Waterloo station, my destination. 20 seconds earlier and I would have been stuck in the tunnel. As it was, we all had to file up to the front carriage to get out, but it wasn't so bad.

So I go along to my play at the Young Vic (Le Costume, directed by Peter Brook -- quite good but a bit pricey at £25 for four actors, even if they are amongst the best) which starts a bit late due to the power cut, but the power came back just in time.

After the play, two hours since the power cut ended, and I wander back to Waterloo to find that all the tubes are still down. Four transport changes and two hours later, I'm finally home. Yeesh!