Crap on Matt Thornton

So close, yet ultimately... so far: Ikea.

Wed, 10 May 2023 05:26:35 +0000

Another story of an issue created (inadvertently) by me, which when presented with an opportunity to perform amazing customer service, the business smashed a big fat own goal.

We live in Guernsey, in the Channel Islands. We visit the mainland infrequently. We were recently refurbishing our children’s playroom and given the size of the job and the relatively few local options available to us, and despite it requiring a special visit, we felt that using IKEA to achieve the result would make sense.

If this is the future of challenger finance, maybe it really is time for crypto. Starling Bank

Mon, 21 Feb 2022 05:26:35 +0000

A walk-through of the frustrations of operating with modern finance operations like Starling Bank. To be clear - it will never be time for crypto…

I have blogged in the past at the frustrations of trying to deal with large organisations. Several years ago, I was moaning about how much I hate ’no-reply’ from addresses in comms with BA as the example. And before that, I talked about what happens when you let your systems run your comms, like TripAdvisor does.

My iPhone experience

Thu, 23 Oct 2008 16:16:48 +0000

As a fully-fledged Apple fanboi (as the idiots would call me), I was waiting with great anticipation for the iPhone to arrive in my area. In mainland UK, the iPhone is locked to o2, but here in Guernsey, we have three mobile carriers (none of which are o2) so there was a long, long wait for them to arrive here. And when they did, they were by no means official - that is, the two carriers offering them are importing them certain European countries for sale unlocked, and I’m reasonably sure Apple has little to no idea about it. As I was on the waiting list, I was one of the first to get my hands on one.

I’d needed a new phone for ages, as the ghetto orange Sony Ericsson I had been using was both a) a girl’s phone and b) a lesbian one at that. Not to mention totally beaten to hell and displaying typical “old phone” behaviour in randomly turning off when it ballywell felt like it. Not a good look. When the iPhone arrived here, it was a no-brainer to get one. And, as it turns out, I really had disengaged my brain in getting one.