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New Band!

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Haven’t blogged in an age, a combination of house renovation, the day job and my obvious short attention span. So whilst I wait for a database to restore (it’s taking an absolute age – I know, rock n roll right?)

Anyway.

After moaning for years about wanting to get back into music, I realised my best way back in was to either a) join an existing band as guitarist or b) form a new band.  Both options had issues, for a start I hadn’t picked up the guitar for years and would be of very little benefit to any band (even if you disregard the fact that there are on average 20 guitarists within a 2 minute range of all people at all times – increase this to 40 if you find yourself in a supermarket).  So my best bet was form a new band, but again this means being able to play and having new material, or at the very least a good solid idea of what I wanted to do.

It all sounded way too much work and Netflix keep releasing seasons of bingeworthy nature.  Gotta love that Daredevil chap.

I decided to finally go back to Unit 5 in Mansfield (www.unit5studios.co.uk) and learn to play again.  I went every Tuesday night and alternated between practicing singing one week and electric guitar the next.

The more I practiced, then the more people got in touch interested in what I was doing and soon I was practicing with other people, jamming around and even working on an EP project with Marv.  I even managed to sneak in a short gig playing acoustic at the Jolly Brewer in Lincoln.

After several months of practice, my friend Carl got in touch with me who was looking to form a new band.  I’ve played in a band with Carl before – back in The Chavs and he is an excellent drummer, so I didn’t hesitate!

We are 2 practices in so it is early days, but I’ll try to track our progress here!  Our general idea at the moment is get 3 or 4 new songs done and go from there.

Bitter Tweet

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We have recently moved from a 2 bed rented flat to our own little building site, er I mean, house.  This of course means moving all of our services, which isn’t a major problem unless you have experience of dealing with Virgin Media.  I don’t know if I’m just unlucky but it does seem that every dealing I have with them it feels like a game of russian roulette.  It’s a sad state of affairs as the actual service they offer is good, but the support/customer service they offer is so bad its almost comical.

My first job from college was working in a customer service environment where I helped customers with your normal day to day customer service issues (where is my parcel?  where is my refund?  what are you wearing and where do you stand on spanking?) and technical support (why won’t this work?  which button is the any key?  I still want to know what you are wearing and now i’m naked).

What I’m saying is that I know how hard it is to work in a callcentre and i’m sympathetic everytime I speak to someone in that situation, so it does take quite bad service for me to start complaining.

So…. we moved into the new house and moved the virgin across from the flat.  We had internet over the telephone in the flat and have moved across to cable.  The installation didn’t go too well partly due to us not having the sockets powered up on the ground floor so the engineer didn’t test/connect the service before he left.

When we got the power connected a few days later, we tried to connect the internet but it didn’t work, so we had to phone support.  Got through to the outsourced callcentre who took all the details and ran some tests.  Only to be told that an engineer would have to come out.  A few days later he came out and said that it hadn’t been installed correctly and fixed the problem.

The next day we tried to connect the tv to virgin and nope, this didn’t work.  Yet again another phone call to support, another outsourced call agent following a script and another engineer booked to come out and fix the problem which again was due to a bad installation.

We’re about 2 weeks in now and finally the services are installed and working, huzzah!  No more dealing with Virgin and I can just sit down and do nothing!

I then get my first bill and the confusion started.  My services have always come out via direct debit and the debits had continued as normal, so why was I getting a first bill?  I suspected that I was still paying for the previous address, so deep sigh and back on the phone to virgin media.

I’m at work and I don’t have my details, no worries I think – i’m internet savvy (I should do it for a job really) so I look up the virgin media website and can I find a telephone number?  No!  Lots of frequently asked questions (funnily enough none of them are “WHAT IS YOUR PHONE NUMBER”) and its all very interactive but no numbers to be found.  I googled it, and found the number on a separate website, so took a deep breath and gave them a call.

After navigating the phone system (Customer services / Billing) I was passed through to an agent in the outsourced call centre who took my details.  I gave him my new account number, he checked my address, password and asked all the necessary security questions.  I then explained the problem and that I suspected my old account was still active and was being charged.  He took a look at this and confirmed that I was right and it was still active.  Unfortunately as it wasn’t a cable account he would have to pass me through to a different department.  Fair enough I thought… So back on hold and passed through to operator number 2.

Operator number 2, asked me my account number.  I explained that I don’t have the account number as i’ve moved and its an old account.  He asked me my address, password and a few security questions.  Then asked me what he could do to help.  I explained the problem and he said “Ok I’ll have to pass you through to the right department, please hold”.

Operator number 3 answered the phone.  I’d already had enough by this stage and asked her straight away “You are the 3rd person i’ve spoken to, can you help me?” she asked me for my account number, but I explained that as i’ve moved yadda yadda blah blah smash smash head head wall wall.  She then explained that i’d need to talk to the moving team and she’d transfer me.

It’s at this point that some part of me died inside.

Operator number 4 answered the phone and took my details.  As I didn’t have my account number, he had to ask some security questions – funny that eh?  I explained the situation and it went something like this.

VM (Virgin Media): What can I help you with today?
Me: I’ve recently moved and you’ve not closed my old account down and you’re still charging me for it.
VM: Ah ok so you want me to close this down?  When do you want me to close this?
Me: It should have been closed on the 30th June.  So can you explain to me why this hasn’t been done.
VM: I’m not sure sir but we’ll close this down and credit your account.
Me: When will this be credited and how much?
VM: I’m not sure sir but I’ll have to get my manager to give you a call back and he can give you more details.
Me: Riiiight.  When will that be.
VM: He’s just walked past my desk a few minutes ago so it should be within the hour sir.

I then confirmed my contact details and hung up.  I knew they wouldn’t phone as this was a pretty standard customer service fob off tactic that we used to use all the time!  It’s up there with my all time favourite, which is.

“Hey sir would you like to buy this crap we’re selling today?, we can give you a great deal….. in fact let me just put you on hold and i’ll talk to my manager to see what special discount you can have today”

Hold Music: Fleetwood Mac – You can go your own way

“Good news, my manager says I can give you 50% off if you order today….  Sir… Sir?”

It’s a classic and it always makes me chuckle, but I digress.  They didn’t phone me and after speaking to 4 people I wasn’t going to waste my time again, so back to the website and followed the complaints procedure.  I emailed them and informed them of the problem and then promptly cancelled my old direct debit to stop any future payments coming out in error.  Within a few hours I got an email from virgin who had noticed that I’d cancelled my direct debit and warned me that i’d need to make alternative payment arrangements!

I got no other response from Virgin.

I’d phoned and spoken to them, i’d cancelled the debit and emailed in a complaint and nothing.  I wasn’t sure what else to do, and then I realised that I did have one final option.  Twitter.  I joined twitter last year (@tonyhearn) and definately fall more on the Facebook side of the social networking divide but I have tried to keep up with Twitter and know that if you want to directly communicate with companies then this can be a very effective means of communication.

Now even though this felt a little like “Airing my dirty laundry in public” I had no real choice, so I found Virgin’s twitter account and Tweeted them. Thus follows that conversion.

Tony Hearn after being let down by customer service, I emailed in a complaint and have heard nothing – how long should it take to reply?
Virgin Media ‏Where did you send your complaint to Tony? BMc
tonyhearn sent through the website and got a auto response, am not phoning cs again, passed through 5 different people and then ignored
Virgin Media ‏It can take up to 28 days to reply to those forms, however it usually is much sooner to be honest. BMc
tonyhearn that’s terrible service. I imagine when you fail to take the money from my account then you’ll waste no time chasing that.
Virgin Media ‏ Can I ask for you to tell us a bit more about your complaint? | SD
tonyhearn I moved house and you’re still charging me for old account. Simple problem no idea why it can’t be sorted quickly
Virgin Media Can I ask why it wasn’t sorted out when you rang our guys? KB
tonyhearn you tell me! The 5th person I spoke to said they would get someone to call me back within an hour. Heard nothing since.
Virgin Media Oh my! Please fill out our form here http://virg.co/social  so that we can investigate this for you | SD
tonyhearn Ok, i’ll filled that form in – can this be resolved?
Virgin Media ‏We’ll give it our best shot 🙂 You’re in good hands. TB

After this I filled in their form and they phoned me back with 2 hours and sorted it all out straight away, also they emailed me afterwards to confirm everything.

This was such a simple issue to fix and its frankly ridiculous that it even got to this point, but mistakes happen.  However how a company deals with its mistakes speaks volumes and even though they resolved it in the end – they really should sort out their customer service issues, certainly the callcentre staff i’ve spoke to generally don’t give me the impression that they care and are just reading from a script and passing you on to someone else if your square peg doesn’t fit into their hexagonal hole.

Twitter though does give you a voice, and it can be quite a loud voice.  Send them public messages, write on their facebook walls.  Anything that is public is damaging their image and they need to be seen to be doing something about it.

It’s all as Winston Churchill once said “We shall fight them on facebook, we shall fight them on twitter, we might fight them on myspace and we might even consider fighting them on bebo but we shall never bother phoning crap customer service again!”

House, where art thou?

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In 2010, we moved into a 2 bedroom flat in the centre of Nottingham.  The flat was on the small side and you had to climb 4 flights of stairs to get to it, but the location of the flat was great.  We were within minutes of all the shops/pubs and restaurants of Nottingham. We also had some great views from our window over the Park Estate.

However in 2011 we decided it was time to move on.  The city centre is very loud in the evenings and as we lived on the edge of one of the many student areas we were often woken up at 3am by people buzzing our flat (imagine the buzzer from the game Operation at full volume) or by a 18 year old staggering up the main road screaming “WHY WON’T YOU LOVE ME” or “I JUST WANT YOU TO TOUCH IT, OR AT LEAST WATCH ME WHILST I TOUCH MYSELF”.

At the time the UK was in a recession (in fact it still is as I write this) and the house market was being reported to being in decline.  The banks were not lending which meant people couldn’t afford to buy and therefore houses were simply not selling.  This was then having a knock on effect to the rental market which saw an increase in the amount of people needing to rent and therefore landlords started putting up rent.  Having managed to save up a bit of money we decided that we’d buy a house together, after all we’d been in the 2 bed flat for a year and because both of us are self employed (we need to be able to work from home) the extra space was incredibly appealing.

House Hunting

We started house hunting in Jan 2011 and quickly discovered that one of the main hurdles is that people were simply asking far too high a price for their houses (understandable given that all the houses dropped in value and people had a lot of negative equity – but not really realistic).  Banks and mortgage companies were undervaluing houses, which seemed to cause major problems, especially where someone had agreed a purchase price which was higher than the bank thought the house was actually worth.  We saw many houses throughout 2011 go off and then come back onto the market having fallen through at one of the many hurdles in the buying process.

After a few months of looking we decided that we were looking for either something that was finished, that we could just move into and pay something towards the top end of our budget, or for a house which needed a complete renovation, get a bit of a bargain and leave enough money spare to carry out the works.  Stephanie has a talent for design and is a qualified Interior Architect and I have a talent for sitting down and watching people work (my pointing skills are legendary – “You!  Put that…. there.”) so the renovation was fast becoming a preference, especially considering that we could buy something relatively cheap and turn it into exactly what we require.

During that year we actually put in offers for 3 houses, the first 2 offers ended up in a bit of a bidding war (thought we were in a housing slump?), but we lost out due to having to keep our eye on the budget for the renovation works for both properties (in fact looking back i’m glad we didn’t end up with property number 2 which was a Victorian mid terrace which was both expensive and in need of some major works).  The 3rd house was a Victorian semi-detached in Mapperley and needed some serious love.  We put in an offer on the house and after a bit of negotiating we had our offer accepted and we finally got the keys shortly before Christmas 2011 almost a year after we started looking.

For anyone going through the buying process and are having to deal with laywers and estate agents, here a few tips that we either did, or wish we did!

  • When the mortgage company demand a survey, go for the cheapest.  The other ones are a bit of a waste of money and if they find anything actually wrong with the house they will just suggest another survey.  If you think the house might actually have a few issues, then commission your own survey separately to the mortgage company survey.  Always remember that when they carry out a survey for the mortgage company it’s primary goal is to make sure the house is worth what the mortgage company is lending you.
  • The estate agents are not your friends.  They are not real people so don’t be afraid to hurt their feelings.  If you are buying a house then the sellers estate agents just want their commission and won’t actually try and help you in anyway, in fact at times they will just push you to push the solicitors through the process.  If you want them to do something, demand it.  If they refuse or give you any kind of delaying tactic then just get your solicitor to demand it directly.  Do not let them waste your time, they do not want to work for their commission.
  • If you have any doubts about the property – walk away.
  • Visit the area at night, if someone tries to sell you sex then you’re onto a winner.  Move in immediately.

The House

The house was a little run down and had years of DIY abuse laid upon its poor foundations.  The wiring and plumbling was suspect and it was clear from the start that we would probably have to gut the whole place and possibly even go back to brick.  If only we knew how right we were!

The hallway still has a couple of original features with the coving and an archway, along with 3 layers of carpet and woodchip wallpaper!

The front room and dining room had been knocked into one room with a 70’s style suspended ceiling and many layers of carpet.  We also had pine panelling covering all the walls. We actually tried to look behind this before buying it as we suspected it was covering damp but the estate agents kept giving us the run around.

The kitchen itself was a little on the tired side and the floor was completely knackered.  Yet again we found a suspended ceiling.

At the rear of the house (and accessible through the kitchen) was a good sized extension built in the 70s, and judging by the decoration it hadn’t been redecorated since!  Again we found pine panelling, but this time on the ceiling!  That’s 3 suspended ceilings – all on the kill list.

Walking outside from the kitchen we found ourselves in a wooden wonderland.  Some people may call it a conservatory, some people may even call it a lean-to and some surveyors may call it a temporary and illegal structure.  “Ah you say Tomato I say Tomato, Tomato – Tomato, Lean To – Fire Hazard lets destroy the hell out of it”.

Upstairs there were 3 good size bedrooms, a bathroom and a separate toilet.

Bedroom 1

Bedroom 2

Bedroom 3

Bathroom

Toilet

The house also had a pretty decent size loft, which seemed to be pretty much the same size as the biggest bedroom.  We were always looking for a house with extra space and a loft conversion was always on the forefront of our minds.

So, thats the house and how we got it!  We started work on it in January 2012, but i’ll go into more detail on that in my next post!

Thanks for reading!

“It’s time I blogged”

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Well, I suppose it was inevitable really.  My clients have blogs, my friends have blogs and now (not being one to distance myself from the in crowd) I have a blog!  As my Mum said many times when I was young “If he put his hand in a fire does that mean you have to?”  well, the conformist in me is screaming a resounding “Yes”, and who knows there might be something in that fire worth pulling out!

Anyway.

I’ve decided to start this blog, so I can discuss everything that’s going on in my world.  So let me introduce myself.  I’m a musician, a computer “type”, and I eat cake….. lots of cake.  I live in Nottingham, England with my significant other Stephanie and was very disappointed in how Lost ended – 6 years…… 6 YEARS………

I’ve played guitar in several bands over the years, and even though i’m currently “without band” I prefer to think of myself as between bands or pursuing my solo career.  Unfortunately by “pursuing” I mean “doing nothing about”, but hopefully that will change soon.  I may discuss my previous bands in some future posts, and will also post any news about any new music projects I get involved in.

I’m also the co-host of Punky! Radio (with comedian Paul B. Edwards) which is an alternative music podcast that has been going for over 7 years now, you can find out more information at http://www.punkyradio.com.

For the past few months my life has mainly revolved around renovating a house that we recently purchased and indeed the main focus of this blog for the time being will be that renovation.  I’ll post separately on that subject!

So, welcome to my blog – it’s my first time. Be gentle……