Sorting Out IKEA
Ever since Summer 2015, I’ve been unable to purchase anything on-line from IKEA. It is very difficult trying to build a kitchen in phases to have to go to the store to buy or order everything. Especially, when you can’t drive. I am lucky, that I can get a 341 bus to IKEA from about two hundred metres away and can even catch a bus from closer, that uses the same stop as the 341 at Manor House station. So it might take about an hour, but it’s not an arduous journey.
I think that the reason for non-delivery, is that they don’t like my home address, as they use a system that checks it against a list of ones with a large number of problems in the past. These were long before I bought the house.
If this is the case, a friend who used to be the Compliance Director of a major finance house in the City, said make a request to see what they have on you, under the Data Protection Act. So I searched Google and found this page on the IKEA web site, entitled Privacy Policy.This is said.
For the purposes of the Data Protection Act 1998 IKEA Limited, is the “data controller” collecting your data. Our registered company address is: 500-600 Witan Gate House, Witan Gate West, Milton Keynes, Buckinghamshire, MK1 1SH. If you have any questions regarding this policy or in respect to data privacy, our contact details are;
IKEA, Customer Support, Kingston Park, Peterborough, Cambridgeshire, PE2 9ET
Telephone number: 0203 645 0000
e-mail:customer.service@ikea.com
So I sent this e-mail to the e-mail-address on Monday morning.
I will give you a bit of background.
In December 2010 I purchased and moved to XXX XXXXXXXXX XXXX, London N1 XXX, where I have lived by myself since.
The property was built new around 2000 and before I purchased the house, it was let out to a selection of tenants, most of whom seemed to have skipped without paying the bills for energy and lots of other purchases, judging by the number of bailiffs, who used to call.
From 2011 to July 2015, I bought more than several IKEA products on-line and they were all successfully delivered against xxxxx@xxxxxxxxxx.com to the N1 XXX address. I had started to rebuild the kitchen and currently it sits half-completed.
Order numbers include XXXXXXXXX, XXXXXXXXX, XXXXXXXXX and XXXXXXXXX
In October 2015, I tried to place some further orders and despite getting the initial confirmation e-mail several times, no product was ever delivered.
In the end, I took a taxi to Edmonton and ordered and paid for the products in the store. They were delivered OK, but I had to waste an afternoon travelling to Edmonton and pay extra for the taxis.
Because of the difficulty, I assumed it was an unsuspected problem with my credit history, so I joined Experian and when I looked last week, my credit score was 986, which according to a friend, who runs a financial business, is good.
But it doesn’t appear to be good enough to buy products on-line at IKEA!
I am now ready for the next phase of the kitchen. So as to test if the hiccups of last summer, were just a passing issue, I attempted to place a small order. Despite getting the order number of XXXXXXX and the first confirmation e-mail, no money has been taken from my credit card and I have not had the Delivery Advice e-mail advising me of the actual delivery date. On trying to track the order, it is not in your Order Tracking system.
Obviously, I would like to find out, why you can’t accept my orders and to that end, I want to obtain all the information you hold about myself and my address and e-mail address, under my rights as laid out by the Data Protection Act.
I understand there could be a charge for this.
Obviously, confidential information has been redacted.
So far, two days later I’ve not had a reply or even an acknowledgement to my e-mail.
Today, I will be sending a copy by post.
An Irresistible Force Attempts To Shift An Immoveable Object
This article in The Guardian is entitled Govia Thameslink takes Aslef union to court over longer trains dispute and the title gives a good précis of the story.
Could this be why new Cl;ass 700 trains have not entered service on time, as I reported in Where Are The Class 700 Train?
After all, some of them will be twelve-cars too!
Another Suicide Bombing
This morning, this report on the BBC, is talking of another suicide bombing in Afghanistan.
Correct me if I’m wrong, but I can’t think of any suicide bombing, where the perpetrator wasn’t Muslim.
So why is this deadly practice an exclusively Muslim phenomena?
Jerry’s Wonderful Wiring
In sorting out my kitchen, I need to adjust the wall between the kitchen and the living area.
Jerry’s Wonderful Wiring
Jerry obviously thought he was a very competent electrician.
But my experienced Hungarian handyman and myself think otherwise.
London’s Trains With Built-In Energy Storage
I took this picture at Blackhorse Road station on the Victoria Line.
London’s Trains With Built-In Energy Storage
Since it opened in 1968, all trains have had built-in energy storage to save energy. Under Design in the Wikipedia entry, this is said.
Each platform constructed specifically for the Victoria line from new is 132.6 metres (435 ft) long. The line has hump-backed stations to allow trains to store gravitational potential energy as they slow down and release it when they leave a station, providing an energy saving of 5% and making the trains run 9% faster to a speed of 87.2 km/h.
I wonder if Crossrail and other lines use this technique.
Dear old Vicky, may be just two years off fifty, and some things may have been skimped in the construction, but some features of the line can’t be described as anything but the best of designs.
Disabled Passenger Numbers Hit Record Levels
The title of this post is that of an article in Rail Technology Magazine.
It certainly shows that rail companies are going the right way!
One thing you notice in London is the increase in the number of disabled and blind passengers being guided by staff.
Perhaps the perceived increase in London is due to their simple policy on help. This is said.
On the Tube, TfL Rail and Overground, station staff will also accompany you to the train and help you on board and, if needed, can arrange for you to be met at your destination. Anyone can use this service, but it is particularly used by blind and visually impaired passengers and people using boarding ramps onto trains.
If you would like to use this service, ask a member of staff when you arrive at the station.
I hope things are as relaxed elsewhere.
Where Are The Class 700 Trains?
According to the Class 700 entry in Wikipedia, the first train should have entered service on Saturday.
But it didn’t and there’s nothing on the Internet as to why!
Illegal Football Watching Melted My Internet
I should say, that I swapped my Internet use from the Vista system that I liked with Office 2007 to the current Windows 7 and Office 2010, which I don’t like about eighteen months ago, when the older machine became unreliable.
I made one mistake in the transfer, in that I didn’t write down the passwords for my smtp and mail connections. They are stored on my old machine, which is totally dead.
It has worked successfully since then, but yesterday at four o’clock, when the vArsenal match started the Internet went into a curious meltdown.
So many people wanted to watch the Arsenal match on Sky, through broadband, that the connection seemed to melt down in a curious way.
Displaying a page on the Internet was extremely slow, but my e-mail program couldn’t get through the mess and kept asking me for a new smtp password, which I hadn’t written down.
So I just hit return. But it was doing it every ten seconds or so.
And so I must have typed in something, in all this chaos and now as I haven’t got the right password, I can’t connect.
As I was trying to send an e-mail, when this happened, Outlook won’t let me do anything without putting in the correct password first.
I can’t even shut Outlook without forcing it.
I’m pretty certain, there’s a high proportion of boxes, that watch football illegally in this area, which probably caused the problem.
Electrification Of The Midland Main Line Along The Derwent Valley
As I went to Sheffield yesterday, I took these pictures as the train ran along the Derwent Valley on the Midland Main Line between Derby and Chesterfield.
The river from Matlock in the North to Derby in the South, is the centre of the Derwent Valley Mills World Heritage Site.
And Network Rail want to electrify this line, so that fast electric trains can run between Sheffield and London via Derby!
This map shows the Midland Main Line from Trent Junction, South of Derby and Nottingham to Chesterfield.
Note the following about the route of the Midland Main Line.
- My train ran via Derby, Belper and Ambergate stations, up the route on the West of the map.
- Trains via Nottingham would go up the East, before joining the Erewash Valley Line directly up the middle to Chesterfield.
- A new Ilkeston station is being built, between Nottingham and Attenborough stations.
- There is pressure to expand the Robin Hood Line by reopening the Ambergate To Pye Bridge Line between the two stations.
- HS2 is supposed to join up with the Nottingham Express Transit in the Toton area.
- How many of the closed stations in the area will be reopened?
It’s certainly all happening around the Midland Main Line between Derby and Nottingham.
This is said in Wikipedia about the future of the Erewash Valley Line.
Network Rail as part of a £250 million investment in the regions railways has proposed improvements to the junctions at each end, resignalling throughout, and a new East Midlands Control Centre.
As well as renewing the signalling, three junctions at Trowell, Ironville and Codnor Park will be redesigned and rebuilt. Since the existing Midland Main Line from Derby through the Derwent Valley has a number of tunnels and cuttings which are listed buildings and it is a World Heritage Area, it seems that the Erewash line is ripe for expansion.
It would seem fairly logical to perhaps make the Erewash Valley Line an electrified one, with a maximum speed, as high as practically possible and just run self powered trains through the Derwent Valley.
There would be two real possibilities for running the services for the London Sheffield services, including those via Nottingham, up the electrified Erewash Valley Line.
- Class 801 electric trains
- Bombardier’s 125 mph Aventra which was reported as possible by Ian Walmsley in the April 2015 Edition of Modern Railways.
Obviously, other manufacturers would offer suitable trains.
For the London to Sheffield route via Derby, the following trains could handle the twenty miles between Derby and Clay Cross, that could be without electrification.
- Class 800 electro-diesel trains
- Bombardier’s 125 mph Aventra which can probably be modified with an IPEMU-capability.
- Voyagers modified as electro-diesel trains, as was proposed in Project Thor, could probably handle the gap.
- A Class 88 locomotive and a rake of coaches with a driving van trailer.
If all else couldn’t handle it, InterCity 125s certainly could.
Surely though, it would help the train operator to have one fleet, so I think we’ll either see mixes of Class 800/801s or Aventras with and without an IPEMU-capability.
The Class 800/801s could certainly do it, but in his article about the Aventra, Ian Walmsley said this about an order for Aventras.
But the interesting one to me is East Midlands Trains electrics. As a 125 mph unit it could cope well with Corby commuters and the ‘Master Cutler’ crowd – It’s all about the interior.
So the same train could do all express routes and also act as the local stopping train.
The maze of lines shown in the map, would be an absolute dream for such a train!
I also think it would be pushing it to run the Hitachi trains through Derby and the Voyagers and the Class 88 solutions aren’t that elegant and would be very much stop-gap solutions. Loved as the InterCity 125s are, after a lifetime of very hard service, they are probably ready for retirement.
As the gap is only about twenty miles, I suspect that Network Rail’s and Bombardier’s engineers have got the engineering envelopes on the table in a local hostelry in Belper to solve the problem of getting 125 mph Aventra IPEMUs to jump the gap, so that services between London and Sheffield, can stop at Derby.
Why are they in Belper? Look at this Google Map of the railway through the town!
Midland Main Line Through Belper
Note the following.
- There must be half a dozen stone bridges north of Belper station, similar to ones shown in the gallery of this post.
- The River Derwent seems to be crossed by the railway, periodically for fun.
- Get that line right, probably without electrification and their uncluttered design will live for centuries.
- Get it wrong and they’ll be lynched by the local Heritage Taliban!
- If Aventra IPEMUs can’t be made to jump the gap, there’s always the reliable Derby-built InterCity 125.
Just as Great Western Railway use iconic photos of Intercity 125s running through Dawlish in their advertising, I think that East Midlands Trains will use video of 125 mph Aventra IPEMUs speeding with little noise and disturbance, through the towns, villages and countryside of the Derwent Valley.
If this could be made to happen, at an affordable cost, everybody concerned will see positive commercial effects.
My First Pictures Of A Class 399 Tram-Train
In Sheffield, I took these pictures of a Class 399 tram-train in the depot on the way to Meadowhall.
In two picture theres is also one of the current Supertrams.
The difference between the two trams, is that the current ones have full length windows in the doors, whereas the tram-trains have shorter windows.
Although, work appears to be continuing at South Meadowhall to connect the tram and heavy rail networks, nothing much was worth photographing.
The Anonymous Widower 