The schedule for the rollout of food waste bins and caddies has been announced this week by the local district council. I’m all for minimising waste, and recycling, but it struck me this week just how many bins households in our locale are now going to have. We opt in to the paid garden waste bin scheme (and already compost peelings, tea and coffee grinds etc.), and have this bin collected every other week with the general waste bin. We also have two recycling wheelie bins which are alternately collected in the weeks when the general waste bin is not – one for paper and card, and the other for mixed recycling. These food waste caddies and bins – which I support the rollout of for many reasons – will thankfully be collected weekly, but will bring the total number of bins for each household to five. Five!
We’re fortunate enough to be able to keep our myriad of bins out of sight…but spare a thought for terraced houses! The urban landscape is already morphing into a parade of plastic soldiers at half-arm intervals. I have no idea what it is, but there has to be a better way…
Phantom Couriers
Our microwave went on strike this week, and steadfastly refused to agree to provide any form of warmth. It did agree to requests to illuminate and spin the frozen peas, but is clearly ‘working to rule’ when it comes to the provision of any heat. We only bought this one in September and it’s covered by a 2-year guarantee. Now, some chat bots are bearable, but not the ones deployed by this company! In fact the ‘human’ it passed us onto wasn’t much of an improvement. One of the security checks was to ask the last 4-digits of the debit card used. We input the text, and double-checked its accuracy…only to be told it was ‘wrong’ – at which point the operator terminated the chat and bade us farewell. Oh, how we laughed.
Round two with the bot brought us back to the same ‘human’ who had just cut us off…and I copied and pasted the same 4-digit information from the chat on the screen…and it passed the test this time. Anyhow…replacement microwave ordered? Check. Return collection booked for the faulty one? Check. Request for packaging to put the microwave in? Apparently plastic bags are fine.
We didn’t, we put it in a suitable box and sealed it up with brown tape. The courier duly arrived the next day, and took out a pad of forms ready to take the faulty one away, and hand us a proof of return. Naively, we had expected the courier to arrive with a returns label…as is customary with Yodel, and the Royal Mail, say. Nope, not this one. Back to the ‘human’ via the outer office patrolled by the bot. No apologies were made, but a return label was emailed for us to print out (gee, thanks) and the courier was once again booked for 0800 to 1800 the next day. Saturday. Great.
We waited in all day for the phantom courier, and no one came. Grrr. Back to the human via the bot. Again, no apology, but the courier is once again booked. Am I confident that they’ll turn up tomorrow? Am I hell as like.
