How To Manage Dormant Accounts
This afternoon, I got an e-mail from William Hill, the bookmakers.
It said that I hadn’t used the account for some time and would I like to use some of the money there to have a bet.
Quite frankly, I’d clearly forgotten I had the account and I think the last time I used it was well before 2007, as I know C was still alive. I think she had asked me to put money on a horse in the Grand National.
They said there was about £50 in the account, which let’s face it, buys a reasonable meal around here for two.
On trying to login, the site told me the account was locked and would I contact them through the on-line chat button.
I did this and after about an hour of patient chat, I got a new password and they unlocked the account so I could log in.
I then updated the account with my new address, phone number and credit card and then duly withdrew the balance.
Perhaps after the good service I’d got, that was a bit mean.
But it does show how if you manage your customer support well, you can get customers pleased with your company.
So thanks to William Hill, I’m now going to have a free meal.
How many other betting companies or financial institutions would have left the money there earning them interest?
I should also contrast this episode with the service, I’ve received from a well-known energy company (Not nPower or British Gas!) who supplied electricity and gas to the tenants of this house, before I bought it.
When I took over the house, I felt that it might be easier to stay with this company. But after waiting on the phone for twenty minutes or so to contact them, I gave up and went elsewhere.
I did owe them a small amount for when they supplied me until nPower took over, but they did try it on a bit and I still haven’t received what I consider to be a properly audited bill. E-mails to the company are unanswered and I have spent quite some time trying to phone them. I have spoken to friends and most feel that this company has a miserable standard of cutomer support at best.
So if I haven’t heard by Friday, I’ll probably pay the bill in a manner that A P Herbert would have approved of.
I of course advise anybody who uses the company to seriously think about getting an alternative supplier.
The Boiler – Sorted
When nPower changed the gas meter, they told me to get the boiler serviced. Over the last few days, it has not been performing well and I’ve been cold, so yesterday I phoned a number on the boiler and the engineer rang me back this morning to say he could come round at 10:00.
He’s just left and the financial damage wasn’t too bad, considering that the boiler probably had never been serviced since it was installed. Nothimg else in this house has I suspect! And they’ve managed to lose all the manuals too!
I would certainly call Accurate Services on 020-8523-1121 or 020-8531-4411 again!
The Discontinuous NHS
I am a control engineer by training, although I haven’t really practised since the early 1970s. But any control engineer will tell you that the most difficult system to control is one with discontinuities. I always liken it to riding a bicycle, which you may be able to do happily on the flat, but then you need to go up or down a kerb and you have a problem.
Some of the biggest problems we get in life are concerned with discontinuities; such as birth, marriages and deaths. We also get a whole series of problems when we do something like move house.
Organisations such as the banks, insurance, utility and telephone companies, major retailers, supermarkets and some government agenices like the DVLC, TV Licensing and a few others, have used modern methods, such as web sites, e-mail, text messaging and dare I say it well-designed call centres to liase with their customers in whatever way those important customers find easiest and most convenient. If say a gas company doesn’t do what the customers want, then those same customers will desert it.
Moving wasn’t particularly difficult for me, with respect to gas, electricity, banks, gas, water, credit cards, broadband, TV and phones, even if I have a couple of minor issues to sort out.
One problem I have had was getting used to the refuse system. But Hackney council were very helpful over the phone and the binmen sorted out the small details. But in an ideal world all councils would use the same collection system. In a few years time, they probably will, as one method will probably be cheapest for all councils to operate for a variety of reasons. The method will probably have a high level of recycling too.
But the NHS seems almost to be designed to be discontinuous.
My previous and current surgeries are run on different lines, probably use different computer systems and have made my transfer a lot more difficult than it should be, as I can’t understand, why the same system is not used in both places. Would, BP, Shell or Esso, use different computer systems in all the garages they supply with fuel? I don’t know, but I suspect they don’t!
Today, I miscalculated when I would run out of tablets. I thought I had another weeks supply, which I do, except for the statins I take. So I needed to get some more.
At my previous surgery, I just e-mailed them and they would be ready within 24 hours. But my new surgery doesn’t have a pharmacist and after visiting them this morning, they informed me, I wouldn’t get the prescription forms until tomorrow afternoon. I had assumed as it was a repeat prescriptiuon, I could just pick one up and get it dispensed. I thought that I might be able to get some in emergency at a pharmacist, but this would need a visit to a doctor at an NHS walk-in centre. Would we accept such a system for buying groceries at Tesco’s.
We need two things.
- Every surgery should use similar systems and methods. They should also make it clear to new patients, how you get repeat prescriptions.
- All repeat prescriptions, should be on a central NHS database, so that you can walk into any pharmacy and get the drugs you need. But would that be giving too much power to the patient and pharmacists? What would happen say if I was on holiday in Cromer and I lost my backpack with all my drugs in it? I suspect, it would probably take a whole day to sort it out!
The NHS might save billions by doing what any sensible organisation would do and many government agencies already do. Service would improve to the more modern standards that people expect and receive from many companies they deal with on a day-to-day basis.
Is This Platform the Future for Offshore Oil and Gas?
As Deepwater Horizon and Piper Alpha have shown, trying to get offshore oil and gas wells working properly can be a hazardous business.
I was converted to the idea and the economics of reuseable platforms many years ago, when I did the calculations for Balaena Structures in Cambridge.
A few days ago I was watching BBC Breakfast, when they had an item about F3-FA, which is a reuseable gas platform. It may have cost £200million, but it is intended to drain up to four or five smaller gas fields during ts working life.
The article says this about the costs of the design.
“Most platforms are permanently installed on the seabed, they are used for a number of years, after which they are decommissioned and brought back onshore,” he says.
“This platform is self-installing, which means it comes out on a barge, you put the legs down to the sea bed, you exploit the oil and gas out of the field and when the field is finished you do it in reverse and take it to the next field.
Just seven or eight people are needed to run the 9,000-tonnes facility“And you do that three or four times, thus reducing the cost.”
Note that statement about the platform needing a small crew. It must surely have safety and accommodation implications as well as cost.
Incidentally, it is very different to the Balaena I worked on. One day, I’ll put the details of that on this blog.
I Don’t Like Gas
There are reports coming in of a gas explosion in Salford. It would appear that people are trapped.
I don’t like gas and when I designed this house, the propane tanks are a long way from the house, the AGA is electric and the boiler is in an outhouse.
My fears stem partly from working in the chemical industry for ICI in the 1960s, when a gas explosion destroyed the reaction vessel and killed two people on Polythene 6 plant. A lot of engineers I worked with didn’t like compressed gas, as only a couple of kilograms have a tremendous explosive force.
My new house in London will probably be heated by gas, but I will make sure that all the safety equipment is installed. I will of course not allow anybody to smoke.
But even with all the checks, I’d much prefer that the only energy we took into our houses and factories was electricity. After all it is probably a lot safer and much easier to distribute!
The Anonymous Widower 