BAA, Humbug…

August 12, 2007

A news item today concerned the forthcoming Climate Change protest camp being assembled at Heathrow airport:

“We will not tolerate protesters harassing our customers”, said a particularly assertive BAA spokesperson. Which is hardly surprising since, as any poor sod who's travelled through any BAA-run airport will tell you, that's their very own speciality.

The Infamous Incident of the Knife-Wielding Maniac

So I was in tropically soggy Festival Edinburgh this weekend for a bit of a schmooze, most particularly for our friend Martin's stag weekend. As such weekends go, it was notably good-humoured and civilised, with the party ending up at the Pleasance for its late-night comedy show prior to the inevitable diaspora of cheerful drunks to their various borrowed flats, bought hotels and ad hoc burrows. So far, so good, and when the survivors reconvened on Sunday morning for a relaxed brunch and coat-of-the-canine in George Street's Tiger Lily restaurant, all was relaxed and cheerful.

Photoxxl.co.uk - a 'Service' to Avoid…

March 08, 2007

As a photographer, I sometimes find that I need to go large and print at poster sizes – as my nearest good pro lab is sixty miles away, I'm always interested to see how well online printing services perform. A German poster-size print service has recently set up a UK web site, under www.photoxxl.co.uk, even though it turns out that they have no actual UK presence. The've been publicising a free introductory print (20*30cm), for £4.99 postage. I thought I'd give them a try, so placed an order and uploaded an image.

I received e-mail confirmation of my order, but there was not detail of the order itself. Some time later I received a PDF invoice, showing a charge of nearly £50 for a large canvas print - just about the last thing I would ever consider ordering. Immediately I saw that, I e-mailed them to say that they'd gotten it wrong and to cancel the order. I sent four e-mails in total, all of which they ignored until a week later, AFTER I'd received an e-mail from them saying they'd shipped the print. Since then, I've had nothing but arrogance and stonewalling from them - they have completely ignored every individual point I've raised with them.

From their behaviour and attitude I can only conclude that they're either a) technically incompetent and have deliberately poor customer service and attitude or b) are a complete bunch of shysters.

So I can only recommend that others learn from the mistake I made in dealing with them and have nothing to do with them in the first place.