Strictly for the birds

In the first week of June I signed up for an online account with CJ Bird food and the products they sell.

They have a range of feeders that seemed quite well designed compared with other offerings from other makers.

I had gone in search of better bird feeding products after buying a "squirrel resistant" feeder made by Nature's Feast and discovering that resistant means it will break in one day given an attack from and average squirrel. £8 or so per day is quite expensive for feeding wild birds in my (perhaps) slightly old fashioned view, especially given there's no food involved at that price point. Using their lesser models means feeder replacement twice to three times a day, or even more and they run out at about £1.50. Seems to me that spending almost six times the amount should get you more time, but it did not in reality.

Actually I found out that the bar which bears the entire weight of the product is not able to support any more than the combined weight of itself and the peanuts it's supposed to contain. One more thing being added, a squirrel for example, is enough to demonstrate the mechanical failure that is designed into this item, mostly on grounds of cheapness. It's abundantly clear that no one at the company has actually tested the claims it has put on the sales label, as it simply does not do what it says on the pack. It can not even resist itself very well, never mind the attentions from a squirrel

Anyway, I chanced my arm at CJ and purchased one small defender seed feeder and a guardian cage to wrap around it. 2 days later it was with me, which is not bad service it must be said, well and truly on par with those suppliers I consider adequate.

I noted however that the base of this feeder is cast zinc and has been powder coated inside and out, sadly that inside includes the thread in the base which is supposed to hold the guardian to it via a plastic wing nut (one can only wonder why it's plastic). Due to the powder being where it was not needed or wanted it meant the wing nut had to have lubrication applied and considerable force to get it close to being fully home in the base. After a few days it was of course observed to have seized solid. This prevents cleaning of the feeder which is poor in a bird feeder, where cleanliness is the only way to prevent disease in the creatures you feed. Bear in mind we have had all those avian flu scares in the news and you'll see why one would be concerned if one was remotely interested in seeing birds fed properly and safely.

About a week after the first purchase I made another, another 2 day delivery again, (so they can do that reliably if that is what they choose to do) I went with a small peanut feeder with guardian cage this time as my local bird population are as smitten with peanuts as most squirrels are, and this time the powder coating problem was not witnessed, so it looked hopeful that this was just a one off. However this time the feeder itself was damaged. It showed damage straight from the box in the form of two broken areas in the mesh. In general I'd not normally worry over something like this, but the squirrels we get here are extremely taxing, and would have been "in like Flint" if this were to be left unattended to. The guardian cage wrapped around it being the only thing preventing that to date. I'm bothered that a small squirrel will make it through in time and destroy this feeder exactly like it happened to all the other feeders that have gone before it.

I've been in touch with a number of people at CJ and so far I have had an offer to send spare parts, which have not materialised in over a week despite the order being reported as having been processed, and another offer to replace outright, which is also yet to happen after a substantial part of a week has passed. All this has taken up most of the month of June. I leave it to you to decide if that is acceptable for you. I'm already certain it is not terribly acceptable for me.

The guardian cages are pretty good though, so I may be forced to end up seeking other feeders to put in there as it looks less than likely I shall ever see working ones from CJ based on the experience as witnessed so far.

What a great shame, I really thought I'd found a good company to deal with until this rather lacking performance in customer support emerged. The offers they have made have been good, and friendly in nature, but not actually delivering them makes them about as useful as any other hearsay in the reality.

In this century, you might reasonably imagine that spending £60 on two bird feeders, and waiting most of a month, would actually see you feeding birds in some style, without any hassles at all, but this has not been the experience so far with CJ. I offered to help shoulder some of the cost regarding the first offer (I had delivery in mind) but this was rejected by the company in the name of good customer relations. I'm not sure what one can say at that point, there does not appear to be any excuse that I can see, perhaps it is obscure and that is why I can't see it. Who can possibly say?

News on the Jessops front...

It seems my experiences at the hands of this company are not the only bad news for Jessops.

I've heard it reported that they are in the process of closing 25% of their stores on the back of less than stellar performance.

It's entirely understandable that a company resting so firmly on it's laurels would suffer issues like this one arising.

The only mystery to me is why they don't close them all and go online only, where their service managed to scrape up to the dizzy heights of adequate in my experience.

They may manage to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory yet.

Shopping in a Jessops store? No thanks!

For readers outside the UK, Jessops is a major national photgraphic specialist chain of stores, of some 300 shops I think. 300 is quite a few here in the UK. Here's a link to the salient details . I'd suggest you read it after you've read this lot here as it's possibly more likely to raise a knowing smile once you read the chairman's comments, knowing what you will, by then, know!

Last Saturday I had a shopping list of 3 items to buy from our local Jessops store. I'd picked the items from their web site. The upshot was that the store manager and a few of his assistants offered some mixed advice regarding 2 of the 3 items.

The advice included but was not limited to, that they were no longer made, that they might be web only, that they didn't even sell them. An interesting blend if you think about all of them and see how in places they actually start to contradict each other.

I did suggest that since it was not mentioned on their web site that they were web only, then that would be deeply unhelpful in the event that it were the case, and seemed more or less incompetent especially when added to the fact that they could not even establish if the company had any or had ever had any despite consulting their computer terminal a number of times.

So, basically a wasted visit to the store, and a distinct air of complacency from the store manager. I have no idea how he imagines he can turn a profit in his branch from out of stock and no sale situations; I don't think it's possible. He was asked how much he felt he could make from a no sale and he stopped talking at that point, I think even he knew it was not likely to work out favourably for him by then.

So once back on the web site, the 3 items were seen to be in stock and an order was placed, They all arrived on the following Tuesday. There was no mention of any of the items being web only, and I did specifically look to see if it was the case. The nearest I came to finding anything exclusive to the web was the price of one item, and that saw a modest but still welcome saving over the in store price, interestingly this was for the only one of the three items they did actually have for sale at the branch.

One comment offered by the store manager makes me wonder about today's retail staff; It was put to him that the (at best 33%) performance looked somewhat incompetent, he replied, "Oh no, I don't think there's any incompetence here". Well, I'll just have to wonder what he would elect to call it?

I know for my part that I would be rather unlikely to see if he could do better another time, and from now on it would be exclusively web only with the company, and quite possibly as a last resort, if at all.

I'd further hazard a guess that I might have seen better results from an Argos or even a Dixons branch, it's all seen in a clearer light when you consider that they are general retailers and Jessops is a supposed photographic specialist, well I'm fairly sure that's what they would tell you in that very branch of Jessops.

Oh, the three items, yes, very tricky and very obscure photographic items, most unfair of me to even ask I guess; let's see now, a camera bag, a camera support (the simplest and most basic of all the Branded monopods which they advertise as being carried) and a pack of four batteries. They had the batteries, but were asking more money than the web site was asking for them! ;O)

Am I going to tell the Company or it's Chairman? Nope, let them figure it out or go to the wall. It's not like I'd miss that sort of experience, I'd imagine most other people would not miss it too terribly either.

Now use that link above and see the Chairman's own words. I guess he's quite possibly not been in one of his stores in a while to even think of saying that, only to find the genuine status of his words so effortlessly and comprehensively unveiled by the staff at branch level.

Batteries can be a right pain!

What a week I've had of it, the hama duo had to be returned, one of the 4 cells supplied with it was a no volter it turns out. They all charged up, but one day in the camera, and one of them dropped to zero volts during that time. The really bad news was that it was not actually in picture taking use, it just dropped to 0.0V while sat there ready to go (in theory!)

So that had to go. I could not bring myself to try another of that brand, so went with an Energizer Ultra Compact which was the only other alternative at that Asda store. Can't offer any results for that one yet as it's not even had it's first charge cycle. Also picked up a Compact Energizer from Tesco. I'll run them head to head and see what they are like, The Compact does trickle charge after full, and The Ultra Compact does not, but offers a slightly quicker charge time potentially. Both came with 2500 mAh cells and it'll be interesting to see how they all pan out.

Energizer was not my first choice for a charger as it was one of that brand that broke down in the first place, so I was a bit reluctant. Choice seems rather poor here in the UK high street sadly. The cells from that old Energizer are still going strong, while I've yet to hear a peep out of Rayovac about the specs for some of their cells which I have had for some time. I'd like to charge them up too, but I can't get a specific set of figures from which to calculate how long they need to charge for. Rayovac deserve a serious slap for not printing the mAh on the jacket in the first place, and second one for not replying to help an existing customer. They just made it to my do not buy list for that egregious performance. There is no reason that would make what happened with them OK again. So now I've gone from existing customer to ex-customer. Nice Complacency job guys, I'd like to wish you well to enjoy it! ;O)

Finally during this week I had to grab at least one set of spare batteries suitable for use with one or other of the new chargers. I opted to try out a set from Jessops. There's quite a lot more to be said about this contact with Jessops, but that's for another posting. It was NOT a fun customer experience all the way, but ended up fair enough I guess, well, perhaps adequate is the better word to use here. ;O) The Jessops cells did not appear to get as hot as the hama 2500 offering while being charged in the hama charger, and maybe that's a good sign. Equally, the Energizers, so far, appear to run pretty cool while charging too in The Compact charger, but there's a fair few hours left to go on their first run. After that I plan to try the Ultra Compact model and it's cells.

Regrettably I did not think to check the voltages on the hama cells straight out of the packaging, but did with the Energizers, as I've learned from experience to do better like that now. The Ultra Compact from Asda showed a markedly lower voltage than those in The Compact set from Tesco, there could be a product storage issue with Asda, or certainly with that branch. I'll not name the branch, as if Asda do decide to audit how they treat this sort of stock, then they'd be best off doing it at all branches as otherwise the point is going to be fully lost, I'd be fully crazy to encourage that to happen. So the Tesco batch offered 3 out of 4 cells above one volt and the Asda batch offered 3 out of 4 below one volt. I can only hope none of that will become a significant issue.

Absolute Power! - Well, not quite.

[make sure to read the edit at the bottom of this post]

I had a battery charger just die on me a week or two back, and needed a new one in a bit of a hurry to keep a digital camera in working order. It was an Energiser and wasn't of any great age, so I was surely not going to buy one of theirs this time around.

OK Hama has had a fair reputation down the years, and I felt £18.00 for that and 4 x 2500mAh AA cells was not too bad a deal really. The 2500 mAh would be welcome since I've been getting by on some 1200 and 1500 cells for a while.

The unit is a Duo 2/4 and was somewhat over packaged, requiring metal cutting shears to gain access to the goods. Having got into the contents I set about reading the instructions, which it must be said could stand a little work as they are not what I'd class as quite adequate (poor translationn seemingly is the greatest problem).

Anyway, I managed to work out the charging rate situation it was trying to explain. It all got a bit easier once I knocked up a spreadsheet to figure out the maths - thank heaven maths does not take a lot to translate - I suspect I'd have been fully lost otherwise.

Sadly what the maths also revealed is that the charger is not actually capable of fully charging the cells included in the pack! They would require something over 14 hours to become fully charged according to the maths on the package, the charger is unhelpfully designed to automatically switch off after 13.5 hours, as a safety feature according to the blurb! You could indeed unplug it and top up the shortfall I must suppose, but of course that would completely defeat the touted safety feature, allowing a significantly greater than 10 hours overcharge to take place in unfortunate circumstances. This really would be quite a dangerous situation potentially, especially when mixed with the poor translation of the instructions and the assumption that the maths is not beyond a purchaser, which can not be ruled out, given a reasonable amount of thought, say, 2 seconds worth of thought at most.

It's interesting that this got out of the front door of the manufacturer as it seems to be a fully silly situation to me. I mean, the bottom line is that here we have a product which is not entirely compatible with itself, and could quite possibly lead to a dangerous situation. I'd speculate this package has been uprated with greater capacity cells to prolong the shelf life of the product cheaply; with 2000 mAh, 2100 mAh, 2200 mAh or even 2300 mAh cells it would quite probably have been absolutely fine and it's safety would probably be beyond question right now.

[edit]

In the last 24 hours I've started on doing an awful lot more research into charging and using NiMH cells. I'd estimate that I may have a month or two of rather dry reading ahead. However I'd like to stress that the research I've done so far indicates that the problems and concerns I've voiced here should be seen in perspective; that prespective suggests that the situation I've outlined here is quite possibly a lot less dangerous than some other methods this maker could have opted for, and which sadly some other makers HAVE opted for.

While the hama unit does have those potential issues, they are almost like nothing compared to the issues other makers are bringing to the table for consideration by some fairly suspect methods which they are employing.

To remain safe I'd say that the best thing to do is for now accept the undercharging situation, and as time passes maybe look into obtaining a very gentle trickle charger to "top off" batteries charged in this way, so that full capacity can be enjoyed. It's a bit of a rigamarole frankly, but does appear to be the only sensible route to go, oddly.
[/edit]

IKEA! Really?

Tried out our local branch yesterday evening;

I had a shopping list of 4 component items for a desk I wanted to make, chosen from their online listing and their paper catalogue. 3 of the items were out of stock. I was offered a 5 week wait for new stocks to be in place. The purchases were all interdepenant. So the outcome was a "no sale". About £80.00 of thrown away business in fact.

Earlier this week I heard on the BBC that people in The City were a bit surprised that Ikea had taken a downturn in their profit figures. I can only assume The City have not lately tried to just buy something from the retailer.

Here's a tip for Ikea: If you want profits, then you could try having most of your product for sale in your store. It's a really simple concept. Clearly you can not expect to prosper from "out of stock" situations.

I'd also heard lately that there could be customer service issues with Ikea, I did see some people there who certainly did appear to be having one as it happened.

Would I go back there and try again? Probably not.

I was an average punter in an average city on an average evening trying to buy some average goods; my conclusion must be that, on average, Ikea is currently under performing.

One care - install issue - IE7

Seems this thing wants to use IE7 RC1 and nothing else. So I'd suggest that they insist you download and update to that version prior to install of OneCare, as it would definitely ease the install of both.

I had to wait for ages while the MS server was on one of it's horrid little go slow sessions.

This is not a good thing as a sub process to installing a new bit of software, there is already quite enough that could go wrong without just ading to the list for the sake of it.

Lack of joined up thinking there I'd argue.

OneCare - backup daftness

OK, so I've been jumping through the numerous hoops setting it all up so it works without issues.

We have now hit a real rock in the road; It don't like my Western Digital passport hard drive.

Why? It wants it to be NTFS, not FAT32!

Well here's an update for the team that wrote OneCare, that drive comes formatted that way out of the box, and that's all there is to it. It's a current major highstreet product that many would buy to use with their laptop. You need to work with the world that is out there, and not try changing every little thing that is in it to suit your needs. That's just serving you, not serving potential customers.

I'd have appreciated your software objecting to this device right at the start of what is now looking like a total waste of 6 hours of my life.

I don't really see why it could not just get on with it and register it's contempt for the fact that it is in another format. Surely it's not technically too challenging to use an older Windows format over a newer one?

Some decisions are not made by the user, for example, OneCare are not giving me a decision over the format of the target device, so they can't go blaming me or WD, I didn't get a choice from WD, or from OneCare (and they're doing what WD did), so if WD are held to be wrong then so are the authors of OneCare.

The end user had no choice to get a decision wrong at all of course.

Thanks by the buckets full guys.

OneCare - intalled now

So after 6 hours OneCare is finally installed.

There are more than one or two issues arising out of installing it all.

I'd better address them each in a post of their own.

I'd only add at this point that for a first impression, I can't imagine how 6 hours is seen as a good amount of time to be held hostage for an install, since it's so significantly longer than the OS itself took. They would do well to look into and address that.

Morrison - good product

It's Carvery Wafer Thin Dry Cured, Cooked HAM on the wrapper.

Had a couple of slices of this in a salad for supper, good taste, and a surprisingly good mouth feel, which is somethig many others could take a look into if they want further custom from our houshold, in particular Sainburys, they really should stop pumping it full of yukky substances.

Top Marks Morrison!

I'll give you 9 out of 10 on this one

Nil points go to Sainsbury and Tesco for product in this area, but not of adequate quality.

Changing of computer use

I've just noticed on one of my machines that it is now spending most of it's time updating Windows XP SP2 or IE Version x.0 in one way or another.

It used to be that I got to use it for doing things I wanted for a fair bit of the time, now it's there simply to secure itself in the main.

Understandably I'm starting to wonder if philospically this falls under the category of progress or not.

MS OneCare (beta?)

I got an invite from MS to try their new OneCare package:

Firewall (now inbound and outbound) Virus Scanner killer, malware take down, and tune up: all in one. Sounds too good to be true, but tempting enough to give it a go.

There seems to be some disagreement as to whether this is beta-ware or not, I spotetd a number of MS sites along the way so far that are not all singing from the same song sheet.

Even worse, a number of not particularly legit looking URLs are involved. In view of that I'm ONLY trying it on my laptop, since that's completely backed up, and only has rather trivial stuff on it anyway.

I reckon they could try unifying a few things if they want to inspire complete confidence in the product from the end user's point of view.

We shall see.

A lemon is a lemon, right?

OK, I got a cold, it's just a cold, and not full on man flu.

So we got some lemons to make hot honey an lemon drinks to ease the symptoms.

I don't know about other sites, but the local Morrisons seem to have no real idea about buying in lemons, or their quality control is poor to absent.

These things have about 30 pips per fruit, and they are hard as hell, so much so that squeezing them induces RSI pain in the way that no other lemons ever have.

I'm a bit underwhelmed, and if you are in our area (profile) and wanting lemons, then I'd seriously consider getting them elsewhere as the present batch is a lemon in rather too many ways.

First post

I felt the need for a blog which tracked those things that come up during a day and make you go hmmm..... Or that just plain defy understanding.

It's the nitty gritty little things like pictures on food packs with the all too often inane "serving suggestion" caption; it's the instruction to open at other end, when it would not matter in most cases. It's batteries and PSUs not included rendering a new item useless without further needless expense. It's just crazy things that you fall across in everyday life. It's also about good and bad product experiences.