Serial Complainer

I have high blood pressure, and I struggled for a couple of years to manage this through diet and exercise. But I just couldn’t seem to get it low enough to avoid damage to the heart, so I bit the bullet a couple of years back and went on medication. I’m on 40 mg of Micardis daily plus 75 mg coated aspirin. This used to cost me about €42 per month, but I’ve managed to reduce this significantly over recent weeks.

There is a bit movement in the USA towards use of ‘pill cutters’ or ‘pill splitters’. Basically, these little devices allow me to take 1/2 a 80mg tablet each day instead of the 40 mg tablet. The 80 mg tablets don’t cost double the price of the 40 mg, so I was able to bring the price of my Micardis down from €36 to €24 monthly. You can read more about pill cutters (or even buy one) on http://www.pillcutter.com/ or a whole range of other sites. Some US insurance companies and HMO’s insist on use of pill splitters for certain drugs, and will only reimburse the reduced cost of the split drugs. Apparently, those who get Viagra on the medical card system here have been known to split their maximum of 4 tablets a month, for obvious reasons.

My GP was willing to facilitate me, and prescribed 1/2 an 80 mg tablet daily. My pharmacist tried ignoring the GP prescription and my cost-saving approach by giving me the same old 40 mg tablets at the same old price. I had to protest to get them to issue the 80 mg ones, so I started looking for a new pharmacist!

I found one, thanks to some of those canny people over at Askaboutmoney.com.  They recommended the UK online chemist http://www.chemistdirect.co.uk/. Their website suggests that they only accept UK prescriptions, but they were quite happy to accept my Irish GP’s prescription. I had a scary week, when the original prescription sent to them by post didn’t seem to arrive. They got it 8 days after I sent it, and dispatched my medication in a plain wrapper to me on the same day. Their price is nearly 1/2 that of my Irish pharmacy, and could be reduced further by ordering in bulk.

And finally, instead of paying €6 per month for aspirin, get anyone travelling to the US to pick up a box of OTC coated aspirin, like any of these products, for just a few dollars for 3 months supply.

These are hard times, so we need to explore all options for saving money.

I try to keep Serial Complainer’s professional complaining and my private life seperate, as divorce can be very expensive. I failed this weekend. We had a nice dinner out at Tante Zoe’s on Saturday evening, courtesy of National Irish Bank’s goodwill gesture. In these difficult economic times, eating out is a rare event, and likely to become rarer following Mr Cowen’s mugging of 8% of my salary, so it is important to enjoy the event. We to’d and fro’d over whether to bring the kids or arrange a babysitter, and we finally settled on a family outing. It seemed that ours were the only kids in the place (6pm Saturday), and we got a few looks from other customers. I’m glad to say that they behaved beautifully, with the help of a Nintendo DS to fill in the gaps between courses.

The food was very tasty. I had chilli and garlic prawns to start, and the other half had potato skins. For main course, I went for the ostrich, which was very tender and came in a nice mushroom sauce. Herself had the shrimp creole, which was tasty and spicy. My only minor complaint with the food was that nothing particularly grabbed my attention on the dessert menu. I opted for a lemon tart, which just wasn’t tarty enough for my taste, though quite pleasant all the same. Service was great, as the waiter managed to dig up two Kir Royale’s, even though these don’t appear on the menu. He was also very pleasant with the kids, without being in any way instrusive.

So where’s the complaint, I hear you ask. Well, the complaint related to the behavour of another customer, rather than anyhing that Tante Zoes did. There were two girls of about 30 years of age seated three tables away, and one of these two had the volume setting on her voice set way too high. We heard pretty much every detail of her conversation, including her role as a theatre director and the difficulties in getting good actresses these days. I’m guessing that she had taken one too many voice projection classes, as her voice was painfully clear over at our table, even though she wasn’t shouting in any way. There was another girl at the table between ours and the noisy table who was visibly wincing at the noise.

I really don’t like direct personal conflict (despite my keyboard warrior status), so I was somewhat reticent about doing anything. How do you ask a stranger to politely shut up? After the main course, we endured one particularly loud stream of conversation that really got on my wick, so I headed over their table and said something like ‘I wonder could you do me a favour? You’re probably not aware that your voice is travelling right across the room, and it is really intruding on my enjoyment of my meal. Could you keep it down a bit?’. She was quite taken aback, not surprisingly, and just responded with a hesitant ‘Right’. I returned to the table, and for about 30 seconds, her voice was as loud as ever. Just as I started looking around for sharp instruments, she quitened down noticably, and kept her voice at a very reasonable level for the duration.  My missus was somewhat mortified (coming from the Oirish school that complains about everything but never takes any action). I’ve no regrets, as I’m sure she is a very nice girl who probably just wasn’t aware of the impact of her actions on others. If by some coincidence, you ever get to read this post, it was nothing personal, and I really hope that I didn’t take away from your enjoyment of your evening.

So I’ve been to-ing and fro-ing with the Data Protection Commissioner’s office about my complaint about a breach of Data Protection by Metro newspapers. I found it strange that they were querying whether the email address used in this case was an ‘individual address’ or a ‘non-individual address’. I found this quite confusing as there was no information on the ‘your rights’ section of their website about varying rights depending on what kind of email address was used.

After some discussion (and an escalation to the head honcho himself), it turn out they have interpreting Section 13 (1) (b) of SI 535 of 2003 which refers to an email sent “to a subscriber who is a natural person” as being dependant on the type of email address used. Where a business or organisational email address is used, the email is not considered to be sent to a ‘natural person’. This seems somewhat nonsensical to a layman like me.

In the particular example of Metro newspapers, it is screamingly obvious that I entered the original competition as an individual, and they sent their marketing email to me as an individual. However, the Data Protection people assure me that it is not possible to achieve a prosecution in the courts where a ‘non-individual’ emails address is used. They did follow up with Metro newspapers to make sure that my email address had been removed from their database. I’d have hoped that they would also ensure that Metro had removed any email addresses which were inappropriately collected, but I don’t think they went this far.

I suggested that they should update the guidance on their website to make it clear to consumers that their rights depend on what king of email address they use. They didn’t want to do this, as they feared that this would create a charter for abuse by marketeers. Fortunately, Denise Cox has provided some useful details on her blog.

Unfortunately, it appears that local staff at Superquinn Ballinteer aren’t living up to the expectations of their Chairman, Simon Burke. Simon commented on my earlier blog entry about these empty stands that he would ensure that these stands were kept stocked. I was passing through the store today, and I noted that the stand is empty again (see photo below). Funnily enough, the adjacent stand for Superquinn loyalty cards seemed to be reasonably well stocked! You can draw your own conclusions about the priority given to Customer Service at Superquinn. The good news is that the fire exit wasn’t blocked with trollies today.

Superquinn aren’t alone with this somewhat sloppy approach. I posted over the summer about the ‘now open’ signs outside the closed O’Briens Sandwich Bar in Beacon Court.  I’ve been meaning for some time to mention that I passed through the (spookily quiet) Beacon centre in November, and noticed the Now Open signs still out, though O’Briens was closed again (see photo below) - not impressed. The only consolation for O’Briens might be that the new EBS office in Beacon also had a ‘Now Open’ sign outside their closed office!

Superquinn always had a strong reputation for customer service in the old days before Fergal Quinn sold out. I’m not sure that this has carried through to the new owners.

At Superquinn Ballinteer, I noticed this display stand titled ‘Tell the Boss’ for customer comment cards (see photo below). The headline reads “Send your views or questions direct to Superquinn’s Chairman”.

Nice idea, in theory. However, the dispenser for cards has been empty for several months now. Somebody went out and spent maybe €20k on getting stands made for every Superquinn outlet and getting the cards printed. Somebody delivered the stands and the local branch manager picked the location for the stand. Somebody put the first batch of cards on the stand. And then everyone forgot about it.

With a bit of attention to detail, they could have made it part of somebody’s daily or weekly tasks to refill the dispenser with fresh cards. But they didn’t bother. More worryingly, it seems that no-one has noticed the absence of fresh comment cards coming into the business is a sign that something is wrong. So now there is a pile of wood and perspex taking up a bit of space and carrying out no useful function.

I guess that it is one of those things that staff just become immune to. If you pass this yoke every day, you stop seeing it, and you stop thinking about it. Attention to detail is often mentioned on job descriptions and at interviews, but it doesn’t seem to be happening in practice at Superquinn Ballinteer.

Poor show, Superquinn. Bet it wouldn’t have happened in Fergal’s day! And oh, wouldn’t it be nice if they kept the fire exit clear of trollies (see photo below).

I pass by the Little Harvard creche on College Road in Rathfarnham a few times a week. The street entrance to the apartment is through the new apartments opposite Taylor’s Three Rock pub. However, I’ve noticed more recently that many of their customers appear to be using a pedestrian gate onto College Road. I suspect that this gate was not designed for customer use. There is no proper parking along this stretch of College Road, and there is no path for pedestrian use. This means that parents (many carrying or leading kids) end up walking along a busy road with no path, out around the parked cars. These pictures will give you some idea of what’s happening;

It is unacceptable for a business that is supposedly caring for children to put children and parents at risk in this way. I’ve raised this matter with the Planning Enforcement Dept of Dun Laoghaire Rathdown Co Co, and I look forward to hearing their response soon.

I recieved an email earlier this week from Metro Ireland announcing the launch of their new eMetro service.

I was pretty sure that I hadn’t subscribed to any mailing list with Metro in the past. I don’t usually get hot and bothered about spam, but given that that Metro are a substantial organisation with roots in Ireland, I decided to do a bit more digging. I opened up a thread on Askaboutmoney.com, and one of the posters there correctly indicated that I might have entered a competition with them in the past. My super Google Desktop search engine immediately found the acknowledgement email from a competition that I entered in 2007. That email gave no indication that my email address had been retained, and gave me no option to unsubscribe. This appears to me to be a breach of several of the legal responsibilities for data controllers, particularly

1. Obtain and process the information fairly
   
2. Keep it only for one or more specified and lawful purposes
   
3. Retain it no longer than is necessary for the specified purpose or purposes

I’ve submitted a complaint to the Data Protection Commissioner, so I look forward to hearing their response soon. Hopefully, they’ll put some manners on those small people at Metro Ireland.

Nothing pleases Serial Complainer more than spreading the joy of my complaints all around the internet. I got very excited to discover Better Driving Please, where you can post reports (positive or negative) about motorists. There is a potential risk with websites like this, as they are open to abuse. There is nothing to stop me posting bogus reports about the nasty neighbour and the painful work colleague.

In most cases, I only make reports where I have photographic evidence, but there have been a few serious issues that I just couldn’t let pass. It is somewhat cathartic to post details of these offenders. I often feel like I’m getting a big load off my chest when I click ’submit’ with my reports. Anyway, you can read all my reports on BetterDrivingPlease.com at your leisure, and feel free to post your response on this site or on BDP if you prefer. Why not try a search by registration number to see if you’ve been clocked!

I subscribed years back to the email notification list from The Competition Authority (TCA). For the life of me, I can’t recall why I subscribed, but anyway, I get occasional emails from them, which are occasionally interesting. The latest email arrived on Tuesday from jmcc@tca.ie and had the catchy subject line of ‘Competition Authority/IIEA joint seminar on Cartel Leniency, October 1st @ 12:45pm’.

The bad news is that The Competition Authority don’t seem to grasp or give due regard to current data protection legislation. The email was sent without using the ‘bcc’ function, so the email addresses of a couple of hundred other recipients (including what looks like every lawyer in Dublin) were visible to me, and my email address was exposed to a couple of hundred other subscribers. Pretty dumb, eh? I’ve reported this breach to the Data Protection Commissioner.

But it gets better - this is not the first time. Back in 2005, I received an email from independent consultants Indecon inviting me to buy copies of some reports they had recently completed from the Competition Authority. It turned out that the Competition Authority had given their subscriber list to Indecon, without permission from their subscribers. I reported this to the Data Protection Commissioner, who undertook to investigate. While this was being investigated, I received a seperate email from TCA which also failed to use ‘bcc’ , and exposed my email address again.

I reported the 2005 incidents to TCA and to the Data Protection Commissioner, and while they showed some initial interest, I never heard the final outcome of their investigation. I got an apology from the then Communications Manager of TCA, but clearly, they failed to put in place rigorous control procedures that would stand the test of time.

As a public servant, I get hugely frustrated at the anti-public-sector, anti-quango bashing that goes on in much of the press. This level of sheer unprofessionalism makes it very difficult to defend the public sector, particularly as TCA is the statutory body with a specific role to enforce Irish competition law.

Within a few days of Tesco taking two years to delete my email, I recieved another ‘deleted not read’ receipt today, this time from O2 and arising from an email I sent in May 2007, a mere 16 months ago.

Here’s the email text;

Your message

To: Customer Care Feedback (IE)

Cc:

Subject: Sending group texts from a mobile phone

Sent: Sun, 20 May 2007 09:50:37 +0100

was deleted without being read on Thu, 4 Sep 2008 15:15:04 +0100

You wouldn’t want to be waiting,would you?