Photography | Design | Technology | Business
Wow, Winksite has had an overhaul it seems!
A very nice redesign for a mobile centric website that was *way* ahead of it’s time a couple of years ago… I’m going to have a play around with it again me thinks 
(Thanks to Paul for reminding me about Winksite…)
I bought a game for my PSP about a week ago. The thing is, I can’t find my PSP (Nete swears she hasn’t touched it, but, whatever…) so I decided to return the game as per Game’s returns policy. I figured I could just buy the game again when my PSP is ‘found’.
We have two Game stores here in Brighton. One in the mall and one on Western Road. I bought the title in one and went to return it in the other. I was told I couldn’t do that because the stores were so close together. Wtf? I cocked an eyebrow at that and asked the sales guy to eloborate. He said that they’d had so many problems that it was policy now, in Brighton, to have people return things where they bought them. BS, I thought and stated that I was aware of my consumer rights and maybe he should get on with the return procedure. He sighed and did exactly that. Then something else cropped up…
When I bought the game I’d also bought some Wii points because they were the ‘deal of the week’ and half price.
The receipt said, ‘when bought with’, in relation to the game and points. This was not, as far as my memory allows, the case at the time of purchase however. The sales guy took the opportunity to tell me to go back to the original store again. There’s a pattern emerging here isn’t there? I suspect that they get quite used to being able to manipulate kids who don’t know any better and don’t like it when you argue back because…
I was getting quite cross at this point. Still restrained, but a little angry at the childish attempts to override my consumer rights with half-baked untruths. So, I commented that their aftersales service left a lot to be desired. A couple of times I’ve pre-ordered new release items from them, with deposit, and when I’ve gone to pick them up I’ve been told that there were none left. It was my fault because I wasn’t there on the day of collection apparently. Despite having paid for a pre-order. Shady huh? So, I referred to this with the sales guy today and he said that they don’t take money when taking pre-orders for software. At this stage, when being faced with another un-truth, I wanted to cut the whole thing short so I said that I suspected that I’d been buying games from his store longer than he had worked there and he could charge me for the full price, half price offer on the Wii points and that I’d take all of this up with Trading Standards post-event…
Guess what? He told me I’d better go over to the other store because he didn’t like ‘my attitude’. I got quite indignant at this because even though I’d been getting more and more angry, I’d kept my cool and only stated, argued, about things that had been said to me or misrepresented previously. His company’s insistance on mistreating their customers over silly little things is what caused this semi-argument today, not my ‘attitude’! My attitude came from being told half-truths and lies. His not liking it came from not being able to fob me off like they do to young kids who buy stuff from them.
So, all in all, another dreadful experience at Game UK. It took me over a year to go back there after the last bad experience but this time there is an alternative in Gamestation. Game may have a hold over the majority of high streets but whenever I’ve gone into Gamestation I’ve been majorly impressed and I suspect that it might not be too long before they catch up. I just hope they continue to maintain a good customer service record…
I won’t go back to Game now. The £600 or so I’ll be dropping on a PS3 in the near future will go to Gamestation as will every other purchase that’s games-related (which, with a 13 year old boy in the house tends to be quite a lot). Small potatoes to Game UK no doubt but worth it to get rid of a customer who won’t be fobbed off I’m guessing.
Fab Quicksilver script that enables you to Twitter from the usual QS interface. If you have Growl installed it’s a pretty elegant way of updating your status quickly.
Well, not Bren himself, just his site.
The background gave me eyestrain in places though.
What’s up with Starbucks in the UK at the moment? Or maybe it’s just the Brighton franchise… Anyway, in the past few months they seem to be struggling badly on some very basic things.
For the past couple of months you’d be best advised to make sure you have cash when going into Starbucks in Brighton because it’s a lottery whether their card machines will be working or not. When there’s a group of 4-5 of you, paying by card can be very handy.
In the past two weeks, they’ve almost never got any food in store either. When this started happening, the guys working there said it was the delivery company, recently changed, that was the problem. Then, it was the food supplier that was being changed. Now, it’s a new, improved food ‘range’ that is being introduced. Whatever the real story is, it can’t be that hard to sort out…
They seem unable to find any tea either. I know it’s a coffee shop, but sometimes I just want a cup of tea but they have ‘run out’. For a week and a half now.
I hope they get back on track soon. The reason I care is because there are a number of us who come together to work there and there really is nowhere else in Brighton that we could do that (small cafe businesses in Brighton seem a bit scared of installing wifi and having people sit there for a few hours buying cakes, coffee or tea and working in case it brings porn barons in or something).
The main site will be updated this week, but I just added Flash on the Beach 2007 to Upcoming.org so you can start planning the latter half of your conference season 
Last year was amazing but this year is going to be the killer creative/developer event in the European Flash world…
Some as yet, unannounced details: 2 full day workshops on the Sunday, then the 3 day conference. Some new names include Andries Odendaal, Robert Penner, Robert Hodgin (flight404), Carlos Ulloa (Papervision3d.org), Carole Guevin (Netdiver). There’s gonna be student showcase zones and everyone will get to experience Guy Fawkes night too (fireworks a go-go…)
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