Took some time off from life and technology for the last ten days. Came back to find an inbox choking itself to death, a blog crying out for some content and a fridge with no food in it. Welcome to life in the twenty-first century.

There are a million things in my head to write about but let me start with something that needs saying. Hopefully by writing it out, my head will calm down.

At my core, I’m very easy going, but sometimes people can sneak in between the cracks and along with making me pissed off, make themselves look stupid and inefficient - and sometimes, a company can make your day go great because they’re that damn good at what they do.

In the name of ‘customer service’ the whole world over, here’s what I learned this week:

Digital Village (digitalvillage.co.uk) - a week or so ago, I bought myself a new Ibanez 12 string from gear4music.com - the sexy beast arrived the very next day. I figured it might actually need a hardcase and not the box it came in so I picked one up at digitalvillage - or at least I thought I did. It took an extra day for them to approve my card payment by email and then another whole day to write and tell me it wouldn’t be delivered until February. FEBRUARY! I could make one myself by then.

Moral of the story? Just because you have the tech know-how to build an online shop doesn’t mean you should open one. I should have stayed with gear4music - who, now I look properly, actually have one in stock and I can have it tomorrow…

WINNERS: gear4music VERY POOR LOSERS: digital village

LOOKERS SAAB: On the flip side of the coin, I had a little electrical problem with my Saab while I was away (ie: it was dead, dead, dead). We called the RAC guy out but two hours later, even he had to admit defeat as he couldn’t get behind the dashboard and we agreed to tow it away to the nearest Saab dealership for some tech advice.

I was up in North Wales at the time, so it wound up at Lookers Saab in Chester - where they:

Called me first thing next day to see what I wanted to do
Fixed it - and explained in English what was wrong - without cocking about
Charged me a decent price all things considered
Checked the rest of the car over for wear and tear
Washed the damn thing before they gave it back
When I left all the paperwork on their desk by accident, they mailed it to me the next day

The RAC were great. He went through everything he could, called everybody he knew and took her away with zero hassle - which is pretty much what I needed right then. Lookers rocked even harder. I’ve never been to a garage that treat you like you’re important before. Come to that, I don’t think I’ve ever been to a garage where I haven’t choked on the bill. Nice work everybody - and I still love the car despite it throwing me a curveball.

WINNERS: Everybody VERY POOR LOSERS: er… actually, nobody in this case…

I also decided to get myself an ipad last week. It was a late evening decision - one of those where you want something “right now”. After checking in at PC World, Currys and Tesco - which all happened to be open, the next day I ended up atStormFront - the Apple store in Canterbury.

I should have known better than to go to PC World in the first place. I’ve never had a nice experience in there my whole life. How can it take somebody 20 minutes to go and see if they have one? Which they didn’t - and no, I wouldn’t like to consider an android model as an alternative. What freaking planet are you on? Tesco where slightly better but instead of 20 minutes to go and see if they had one, it was 20 minutes to wait for somebody to ask. They didn’t have any either but “might tomorrow”.

Sigh.

When I got to StormFront, I was in and out in about five minutes and we even had a few laughs thrown in for good measure.

When will people learn that being in business isn’t all about turning over the cash? We all know it’s integral because that’s what business is about, but there’s a way to do things that make customers come back time after time.

WINNERS: StormFront VERY POOR LOSERS: You can figure it out yourself

Rant over. What did I learn? When you want something done properly, go see a specialist.

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I’m struggling with my book collection at the moment. I don’t know what to keep and what to purge. So far, I’ve replaced an awful lot of them with digital copies for the iPad. Some of the hard copies where easy to get rid of but some are ‘sticky’. They really don’t want to go, but I’m so near to my goal of only owning six items (clothes not included) that I really want to get this final shove underway.

I hardly ever read a book twice, so there’s no real reason to keep hold of them. I just like having them around I think, but they’re not even decorative anymore. They sit on a whole load of shelves out of sight. Does anybody have any advice before I drive myself insane over something relatively unimportant…

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Right, that’s the top level scooped off. More later…