DREWspective

So yesterday I headed back to Pets at Home to claim the plant that the nice staff person forgot to put in my bag. As mentioned in my last post, I thought it would be a good test of their customer service, which up until now wasn’t anything to talk out loud about.

So I approached the counter, armed with a pack of goldfish pellets that I thought would be more useful for the fish than flakes. Having been straight ignored by one of the staff, I was eventually seen to by another. I explained the situation.

Apparently I was supposed to check the contents of the bag before leaving the store first of all. Fair enough, but a little difficult when carrying two live fish in a brown paper bag.

Failing that, the "correct" action to take, according to the staff member, was to call the store and tell them the plant was missing.
Am I the only person here who wouldn’t have thought of that? After all, if the staff were just standing around, ignoring potential customers and taking an age to give people service, what do you think would happen over the phone?
And besides, what would you do if you had to travel for two hours via public transport, only realising an item was missing when you were well on your way? Chances are, you’d go back the next day.

Luckily, because this staff member had seen me standing in anxiety around the store several times, he made a gesture of goodwill. As a result, I received two plants for the price of one.

Unfortunately I was dismissed straight afterwards, so I didn’t bother with the fish food.

From the aquarium across the road from where I work at the moment, I had been sold a shit, expensive gravel cleaner. It’s the kind that requires pumping of the large tube rather than squeezing.

I’d tried on two occasions to get it working properly, doing as best as I could to follow the poorly-worded instructions on the back of the box. It didn’t work. All I ended up doing was removing water.

So I’m going to opt for one of those squeezy gravel cleaners instead, and hopefully I can sell that piece of shit on.

And before I end this post:

To all those smug, arrongant goldfish keepers around the Internet, who’ve exercised their ALL CAPS fetishes and have bullied and verbally beaten up newcomers and question-askers, because they say 10 gallons of water per goldfish is a supposed MINIMUM requirement:

F*** YOU.

Okay, I’ve managed to track down a 30 gallon tank (which I will probably have a nightmare getting home tonight) which should be enough to house the fish. But the hours of anxiety and stress about getting a bigger tank are entirely down to these people. I wish I could find every single one of them and smack them across the face with a small but inexpensive glass tank.

Go and read some of the comments made about goldfish and minimum tank sizes. I guarantee, you never see me being that way over video editing, or illustration, for example.

Anxiety on two levels.

Last week I’d bought two goldfish, yet to be named. I’d decided to buy another two—much smaller ones—just yesterday; their names are Snipes and Tiger.

The first hit of anxiety occured on Friday, when I was looking for information on goldfish. A couple of places insisted that goldfish have at least 10 gallons of water each in a tank! So if you wanted 3 goldfish, a 30 gallon tank is apparently the bare minimum,

I panicked, because the tank I have right now is 21 litres, or 4.6 gallons. I searched around for affordable, larger tanks, almost forgetting that I have very limited room. In theory I could fit a 3×1x1.5 foot tank in my room

But having talked to a staff member of a small pet store, there should be no problem at the moment. Besides, even a high profile store like Pets at Home sold tanks this "small" (and even smaller!) apparently for goldfish.
It clearly says somewhere in the ; packaging for my tank that four fish cold be kept in it, as long as they were the right size.  According to the new knowledge, it wouldn’t even be big enough for one!

But you know, Pets at Home are supposed to be knowledgable about fish. If the tank was barlely big enough for one fish, why would they sell it? Coincidentally, neither they nor the other place (Maidenhead Aquatics, a great place) asked how big the tank was they were only concerned about water quality (some more than others!).

The second bit of anxiety came when actually buying the fish. As we’ve hinted at before, customer service is one area where Pets at Home falls flat on its face.

It took a while before I’d decided which (and what size) fancy goldfish to get. But a small bunch of people had gathered around the tanks, making life as difficult for anyone else as your typical UK citizen does.
I kid you not when I say it took ten to fifteen minutes to be served, during which I was ignored by staff or frustrated because the people who did get served made their minds up on the spot. Just when it looked like I was getting somewhere, one smarmy bastard (who’d already been served) wanted a gold loach; one of the hardest fish to catch, as it was among regular goldfish.

It was almost like around the 1920s, when white (or lighter-coloured) people got served before black pople, no matter how late they arrived.

The waiting, and worry that someone would take "my fish", made me very anxious. It generally is not a good idea to keep me waiting, and an even worse idea to serve someone who arrived later than me. Had it not been for the voucher I’d gotten for buying the tank, I’d have almost no reason to go back.

But now there’s another problem: they didn’t pack a potted plant that I’d paid for, so now I have to go back! We shall see how good or the customer service at Pets at Home really is.

I begin DREWspective with a tale of a blessing…

I was on vacation in Spain just last week. While I was on the beach, minding my own business and taking a few candid photographs, I dropped my camera into the sand. It shouldn’t have gotten any sand in it whatsoever from the way it landed, but just to make sure I decided to check if it was still working.

The camera turned on, but immediately turned back off again. From the outset there was a problem with the zoom lens; initially it was stuck, so I had to manually press it in while turning the camera on and off.

After a few knocks and shakes, the camera began to function again. Except now it wouldn’t zoom in or out at all; if you tried to, the LED would flash green and red, before the camera automatically switched itself off.

It wasn’t a battery problem either, as I’d first thought, because the problem remained after trying fresh and old batteries. There went my zoom lens, but at least I had my new cameraphone to take pictures with.

What could I do?

Luckily I had been using some poor soul’s unsecure wireless connection throughout the vacation, so I sent a support request to the manufacturer. I got a reply the next day, with details for arranging with DHL to have the camera sent to their repair factory. As I was still out of the country, I had to wait until yesterday before I could have it sent.

Little did I know that a package had been waiting for me when I got home. It was a DHL package, and from the looks of things it was the camera.

In fact, I’d been sent a replacement camera—a brand spanking new one at that—as a goodwill gesture. (I don’t have a camera strap though; for some reason the one that came in the package had been cut.) Maybe not that impressive, except the camera was bought one and a half years ago!

What can I say, apart from this: that is what I call good customer service. Not just a replacement camera, but the very next day too. DHL sure works fast!

The Dixons Group could learn a few things from that experience.