The cost of poor customer service.

We've decided to buy  machinery for our company to assist in creating models for proposals to prospective and existing clients.  We'd narrowed the choice down to two suppliers and allocated budget for the purchase.  We needed to check the stock level for the desired item at the local branch of our usual supplier. We phoned the branch and hung on waiting five minutes for an answer without success.  Clearly they don't want the business and subsequent follow-on spares purchases.

We placed the order shortly after with their competitor. The Derby branch of Machine Mart screwed up and lost hundreds of pounds worth of business as a consequence. The moral is if you are in the business of sales and the phone is ringing, answer the damn phone. If you don't answer in a timely fashion you can lose a lot of business.

Modern phone systems offer a whole range of features such as call roll-over which might have kept our custom.

Edit: 18/05/2016
We now have a new 14 inch band saw delivered and operational. It was supplied by Charnwood in Leicestershire. It is their own label brand and appears to be well constructed. They'll be getting future machinery orders, so for Machine Mart the damage is long term. Charnwood answer the phone promptly. We'll be using this machine to develop prototype trading room furniture. It is primarily aimed at wood cutting, but it can also be used for plastics.

BREXIT The UK and the EU

Let me say up front, I'm in favour of an open Europe with no trade barriers. I voted in favour in the referendum (1975, here's the Harold Wilson Leaflet) to stay in the EU. I've worked in both EU and non-EU countries. I've been employed by non-UK EU companies and my business has traded with EU and non-EU companies. I like working with European colleagues.  It was a great advantage when the Euro was introduced and spread to most EU countries. It was great not having to hold supplies of currency for each country I visited to do business.

However I believe the time has come for the UK public to vote to leave the EU and become independent of its governance.  The EU has grown from what we originally agreed to join from a Common Market to a beast which demands a federal Europe with all countries beholden to a central government which is not accountable to it's subjects. 

The EU is unable to control it's own spending and introduces additional legislation without properly evaluating the cost impact of legislation. The EU is out of control. They do nothing to protect our industrial base, they do not protect our financial industry.

David Cameron gave the EU an opportunity to reform. At the start of 2016 he came away from rushed negotiations with a few crumbs of success, but nothing like the changes discussed in the Conservative Party election manifesto. The European Ministers do not take him seriously and were not prepared to countenance change. They don't mind taking our money and spending it on the EU Commission and other EU countries, but they are not prepared to take our views seriously. David Cameron knows this and is trying to hide the failed negotiations in a campaign of misinformation. He's using dirty tricks to hide the truth.

Mr Cameron would be more convincing if he had a plan in place for what would happen when the UK public vote for Brexit. 

I grew up in a UK independent of the EU. We managed just fine. It belies all the lies, misrepresentation, omissions and bullying of the David Cameron campaign which has been dubbed Project Fear. They claim we'd be worse off, security would be worse, we'd lose employment etc, etc. It is all Bull Shit.

TalkTalk

The TalkTalk Hack saga is a sad affair. Watching the Chief Executive Dido Harding struggling to explain the situation on television was painful. We're now seeing reports of a 15 year old hacker in Northern Ireland under arrest in connection with the events.

Have TalkTalk under invested in computer security? Were their applications written and tested to be secure? It is reported in the Daily Telegraph that TalkTalk with in the process of reducing spending on IT by 25%. Was that a sensible use of resources? 

You have to ask about the risk of an organisation's executive team where technology skills are under represented. This will lead to false economies on IT spending.  For a technology company such as Talk Talk it is unforgivable.  It seems the trend in the Telecoms Industry to focus more on marketing skills as an essential qualification for recruitment into the Executive Team.

USA pricing in the UK

We've been trialling some Software as a Service for the purposes of providing remote training sessions. After running trials of several products we decided on using GoToTraining. It has good features and the way it is implemented reduces the strain on our currently limited Internet data link.

While we are in the UK we managed to contract to receive the service at USA prices. More later....

UK Telecommunications User Group

I've been giving the UKTUG a hand in formulating a response to the European Union consultation on digital communications in the European Union. Most of the questions were slanted towards the EU team having already decided what it wants to report. Many important topics like IPv6 were ignored. Regardless it is important that members of SME businesses put forward their views. It might affect future legislation.

Can't give them away...

Our domain registrar/hosting company Easyspace have emailed us an offer of a "free"  Lumia 640 LTE Smartphone worth £130 if we sign-up for Office 365.

Either Office 365 is overpriced or Microsoft has loads of Lumia phones it can't sell.

Taking cards

Edit 10th May 2017: We no longer recommend PayPal.  See new post.

We occasionally need to add a fee for our holiday home guests which is outside of the primary rental handled by our agents (Sykes Cottages). An example of this is a deposit fee for the use of the in-house telephone system, or perhaps accepting the outstanding balance of call costs. The benefit to our guests is the don't have to use cash. If they are from another country the currency conversion is automatic on their credit/debit card account.

I've just been trying out Paypal's new reader. It handles CHIP and PIN, magnetic strip swipe and also touch payment. The reader links by BlueTooth wireless to your iPad/iPhone or Android Tablet/Phone. You have to download the appropriate PayPal/Here App from Google Play or from Apple as appropriate. After minimal configuration the device is up and working.for the first time in a few minutes. Subsequently it doesn't take long to get it operational again.

You need to have:

• A PayPal Business Account
• A Wifi or 3G/4G signal to allow you phone/tablet to connect to the Internet.

The handling fee is about 2.75% per transaction.

Operating a configured device is quite easy. First start the PayPal Here App on your tablet/Phone. Get things going by typing in your PaylPal password on your tablet/phone, Then switch on the bluetooth card reader. You enter details of the transaction on your/tablet/phone to get a total fee. You then hand the card reader to your client. It shows the amount you intend to charge. Ask them to either touch,insert, or swipe the magnetic strip of their card. For the latter two they will be asked to enter their card PIN. Your client can then approve the transaction.

Once the payment has been approved you can print a receipt or email a copy to them. The App will display some limited statistics such as transactions and totals. Unlike the iZettle approach you cannot do "Card Not Present" payments, you'd need a different Paypal service to handle those, it costs £20 a month to do that. 

There's no obvious way of replacing the battery when renewal is required. The iZettle has an exchangeable battery.

My initial impression is that it works well, ideal for a small business which needs to take an occasional card payment face to face.