Without any further ado, here’s a selection of our holiday photos from last week in Barbados. (I’m trying out a new gallery for Wordpress, so apologies for any issues found - try here for the normal gallery).
Where are the Concorde pictures I hear you ask? Well, I’m working on a dedicated section for my Concorde “project”…
Catherine has recently started her photography college course. The course is entirely black and white, no digital allowed, so I dusted off the old Zenit EM of 1980 vintage. Not convinced by “it’s the lens that matters” arguments, it was decided she should get a more modern camera. There was no point in getting another cheap SLR, as once the college course finishes, she’ll either keep using it, or I’ll get it! So 1 used EOS-3 complete with power booster was ordered from Adorama in New York. A great bargain for $360 including shipping. Even once the VAT was paid, that’s still a bargain, as the power booster still sells new for over £250.
The VAT was a bit of a surprise on a second hand item - something to do with free circulation in the EU.
However, UPS calculated the VAT on £360, rather than $360! The courier wouldn’t give us the package without handing over the cheque either, so that’s me down about £30 thanks to mistakes by UPS and lack of customer care skills by Manx Independent Carriers (Update 20/10/2008: See Below!). I’m still waiting for the cheque from UPS with the refund too - Funny how that works… Anyway, assuming I do get the money back, it’s a bargain.
I also got a battery grip for the EOS-450D after seeing how it improved the handling of the EOS-3. Price matched from Jessops it was within 10% of the cost from Amazon, and that’s within my “get it now” allowance. Now I’m all set for G-BOAC in Manchester and G-BOAE in Barbados next week, but that’s another story.
And finally, last weekend I went on the Yellow Duckmarine in Liverpool! I’m particularly happy about capturing this image on the Blackberry!
Yellow Duckmarine
Update 20/10/2008
Why did I say “lack of customer care skills by Manx Independant Carriers”? Well, this morning I had a call from one of the directors of M.I.C. to ask this question, after he had found this post on the internet. The fact he called was a big plus to Manx Independant, as I don’t publish my email addess or mobile number on the site. I was actually quite pleased he’d taken the time to track me down and discuss this issue with me.
The root of the issue was the fact I was presented with a choice that, in essense was: pay up or you don’t get your parcel. For the record, I fully accept the fault originated at UPS and M.I.C. were only operating under UPS instructions. When I ordered the package, I estimated costs based on with and without VAT, but the actual cash on delivery value required was so high I was absolutely convinced there was a mistake. The problem was the driver did not have time to call UPS (or to wait for me to call UPS). In real terms the £30 difference was insignificant compared to the 40 mile round trip to pick up the parcel from the depot later, so I paid the money.
However, I was left thinking that if I was in the UK, and a UPS driver turned up at the door with exactly the same issue, he may have been able to contact UPS directly and resolve the issue there and then.
The M.I.C. director did say he would look at providing the drivers with a contact number for UPS, and hopefully this would have prevented this particular issue straight away. When I called UPS, I was speaking to their operator for about 90 seconds before the problem (VAT calculated on £360, rather than $360) was identified. Rather than simply have me write a cheque for the correct amount and keep everybody happy (well, almost. VAT on secondhand goods still seems a bit unfair!), I’ve got to wait another few weeks for UK customs and excise to return the funds to UPS, then another few weeks for them to send a cheque to me. I’m fairly sure the brokerage fee from UPS won’t cover the admin costs for this one anyway,
So what of Manx Independent Carriers. Well, they took the time to A) check on their reputation on the internet. B) track down how to contact me. C) give me a call to discuss the matter. and finally D) investigate a solution to prevent this from happening again. That actually seems like pretty good customer service after all!
This is a test post using the Blackberry Curve. The camera image is emailed to Flickr, which then posts the message and image directly to my site. If this works it should be much better than the previous solution that hacked wordpress to accept Nokia Lifeblog uploads.
As you can hopefully see, I’ve finally merged my old hand coded PHP/CSS site into a 100% Wordpress driven site. Rather than try and update my 6 year old style, which was hacked extensively to support Wordpress a few years ago, I’ve simply taken the standard Wordpress theme, changed the header image and widened the columns to allow 500px wide images.
I’m only moderately happy though, ’cause I really liked my simple menu for the page content. Having all the content in Wordpress is great, but I’ll probably spend a few more hours trying to stuff my menu back in. In the meantime, there’s a nasty “Navigation” menu in the sidebar.
All the Flying content is in place now, with the rest of the stuff offline for updating.
A couple of weeks ago I bought myself a Blackberry Curve, yet it’s taken me this long to write about it - what gives? Well, the first appointment I put in the Blackberry’s calendar was “Brody Vet”.
Brody had a small lump on his chest that had grown 100% in size within one week, and last week we found out it was a tumor, and the vet said it had to come out. This past Tuesday, he went in for his operation to remove it. Because Catherine and I are totally paranoid, he’s been back to the vet twice as he was scratching at the wound, but no damage was done and he’s continuing to recover. Today we finally got the lab results back. It was a benign tumor and he’s been given the all clear. All we need now is to get his stitches out next Friday. Tonight we finally got to relax.
Anyway, the Blackberry is great, and is ideal for what I wanted giving simple, easy to use email facilities, unlimited data for a reasonable fee and it’s not another hopeless Windows Mobile device. And it’s got an appointment “Brody Stitches Out”, which is the best bit.