Metro Meltdown

The rain was welcomed by many in Wellington today, it helps the garden when there is a ban on using water outside, and it might save the New Zealand cricket team playing a test match at the Basin Reserve. But after their cancellation over dew last week, I was expecting trains to be delayed for moisture on the line this morning. 

So when the text came through announcing the usual ten minute delay, I was almost pleasantly surprised that it was due to a signal failure. We've had these before, but a quick check of recent explanations of recent delays, it was one that hadn't been trotted out this year. Another old favourite points failure which used to be leading cause of delay, hasn't been seen in months. So Trans Metro has been getting some bad publicity in the local media, but a ten minute delay isn't any worse than a normal day, it just doesn't show any sign of improvement.

Then a few minutes later the train I catch was cancelled with no explanation. Now we've gone from mild annoyance to full on annoyance. Trans Metro aren't showing any signs of learning, they promised all would be well when we got new trains and the maintenance on the lines was done, but instead we seem to have more unreliable trains.Hopefully they have a plan to fix the trains, the lines and the signals. But they could fix the communications today, and I'm available to give them advice at a very reasonable rate - that is for free. 

Dicked Around

My son bought an extended warranty from Dick Smith because he was told "warranties are on sale today".  Reading the warranty it is interesting to see that Dick Smith acknowledge that the Consumers Guarantees Act provides for a remedy if there is a problem with the product, but suggests buying the warranty provides as no fuss way of dealing with problems. I read this to mean you will have a fuss if you exercise your rights under the Consumers Guarantees Act but not if you buy the warranty. This is pretty much what I've been told by one person I declined to buy an extended warranty from, but the terms of the warranty appear to all but confirm it. So to back up an extended warranty system that appears to provide no additional cover that the law didn't provide already, you have to promise to provide bad customer service to those who don't pay a ransom? Sure doesn't look like a clever way to operate a business to me, recipe for going out of business.   

Over Dew Apology - Trans Metro

Now I take a Trans Metro train most days and given the amount of times they have to apologise for being late, you'd think they'd get good at it. So I'm signed up to the service delay text, which might be useful if the information about how late the trains was running was anywhere near accurate, but experiences says it has next to no reliability. I've even been on a train that was running on time only to be told the train I'm on will be late, go figure.  

But the best bit about the texts is attempts to explain why the train is late. Now I don't mind the ones that say train is late because of an earlier break down or similar, you might wonder why brand new trains break down so often but at least you know what is happening. Similarly the "delayed by slippery tracks" may get you wondering why a modern train gets delayed by a bit of rain, although this morning a train was cancelled due to a slippery track and it is a beautiful sunny morning. Ok so I now know dew cancels trains, I guess no one ever thought trains would have to operate in wet weather in Wellington.

But the most used excuse is delayed for operational reasons. Now this happens practically every day so I'm guessing operational reasons are we're just running late for no reason at all. And later today I'm expecting given it is a nice day, that we'll get a delay due to "heat restrictions". This is a popular one once the temperature gets above 20 degrees, which in fairness is our local equivalent of a heat wave. So too hot, too cold, too wet, and just waiting for too dry.

Oh and Trans Metro, can you please stop thanking for my patience, I ran out of that years ago. 

HP Well Done

Well one good thing came out of recently taking laptops for repair, that is on both occasions HP repaired the laptops without issues even though the retailer thought they might not. But I am always impressed when you get more than you bargained for, because HP also fixed without being asked a problem with thee hinge and the battery department case. The hinge was a problem that occurred through normal use and the battery department was never quite right from when the laptop was new. Still you unfortunately expect these days that suppliers will do the bare minimum they have to do to get rid of you. So excellent work HP - the laptop looks like it is new and the faults it had are at least for now restored to an as new status. This is how it should be really, but it is still great to see it happen.

Slow Post

I went to the Lambton Quay branch of New Zealand Post so that I could arrange a courier of repaired laptop to my son in Christchurch. I went at what I expected would be a quiet of 11 o’clock, I knew the branch often had long queues at lunch time, by long I mean up to fifty people and almost out the door on to the street.

On a previous occasion where I’d waited over an hour to be served, I’d written to the national customer manager who assured me they were looking into ways to speed up serving customers, it didn’t appear that hiring more staff was one of them.

So on this occasion I was pleased to find only eight in the queue and two people serving the customers, and only fifteen minutes to get to talk to someone. They even had a guy who was sitting right in front of the queue ignoring it, get up after ten minutes and help at the counter. Unfortunately I got pointed back to the shop area at the front to get a bubble wrap, and had to wait in the now much longer queue for about twenty-five minutes.

So I’d have thought a wait of fifteen minutes was at the upper end of what you’d want to keep a customer waiting for, but to make the customer go back to the end of the queue and wait forty-five minutes in total is surely poor customer service.

They need to look at their process for starters, why should you have to wait in the queue twice for the same transaction. And on top of that, they need to look at the staff numbers they can bring to peak times, I know you can’t always predict a rush but this branch never seems to have enough people.

Next tiem I want to courier something, I think I’ll go somewhere else.