BagBlog

I booked some tickets to travel to London for a training course through theTrainLine.com . At the time of booking there was no option to reserve seats, so I phoned the helpline to try to do so. They asked me for booking reference, confirm my name and address, was I the cardholder (no) so I transferred the call to my boss (who is), they asked him for further details for the journey so he transferred them back to me and after all this, they told me that seats had not been released for reservation yet. "When can I reserve then?" I asked. "We don't know, try a week later".

2nd attempt, I tried to cut out all the dialog passing details and asked, "are there seats available for reservation?". "Sorry sir, we have to go through the . . . " laborious dialog follows, ended by being put on hold indefinitely at which point I hung up and tried again.

3rd attempt, my slightly more human assistant managed where the other had not to cut out the details passing and confirmed that seats were not yet released for reservation, "try a week later".

4th attempt, today I tried again. I was very nice to the assistant (I'm always polite - it's not their fault that the system was designed by an imbecile). She managed to cut the crap and cut to the chase. Seats not available to reserve. I asked her to pass on my frustration to her management and told her I would never use theTrainLine.com again. I left my phone number and left it at that.

Although: I then phoned the actual train company and nearly got the brush off, but was at least able to find out that the train I will be travelling on does not have reservable seats at all. Why couldn't theTrainLine.com tell me that when I booked the tickets or when I phoned?

Labels: thetrainline

Bought a Magicbox Imp Internet Radio for my wife, Karin so she could listen to Hungarian radio channels. She opened it on Christmas day and I confidently entered the relevant WEP codes - error. Disable security on my router - error. The thing just wouldn't connect. Huge disappointment mainly for me, but for my wife too. Now I have to jump through a few hoops and maybe even take time off work to be able to call the support line while I have access to the Imp and my router.

Grrrrrrrrr.

P.S. I noticed that the error message was "Bad ESSID or wireless config invalid". Support said do a factory reset on the IMP and on my Belkin router. I tried al but the reset on the Belkin. When the IMP found my network, it listed it as Bagnall Software Consultants Lt (note no d on the end), whereas the Belkin had Bagnall Software Consultants Ltd . I had a hunch this may be the problem so I removed the LTD from the SSID on the Belkin, the IMP then found it and connected, no problem. Just one other thing that's not easy to determine, when entering a wep, do not add spaces or puctuation to the character pairs. I hope this helps you get connected. Let me know in the comments if it does!

Labels: magicbox imp