Zeusblog

Bella’s 11 today! She got an extra bonio for breakfast this morning

The birthday girl

A long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away (well, Salford actually), I used to be a car salesman. One of the things I was taught was that it is a good thing for your customer to have a problem. Deal with it well, as Saab recently did for me (click here to read), and you have won a customer for life. It’s true of any sales situation, not just cars. Of course, the opposite applies too. Which brings me to Renault.

Renault started well. Our nearly three year old diesel Clio has an amazing engine with incredible economy (50mpg round town, and I once averaged 72mpg on a London-Birmingham-London trip), has very low emissions (so only £35 a year tax), came with 0% finance, and we bought 3 year’s servicing for only £100. So far, so good.

But then, bit by bit you begin to realise why you don’t often hear the words ‘quality’ and ‘French engineering’ together very often. Inside the car it’s all a bit plasticky and things rattle and squeak. Then there was that strange banging noise that turned out (after trying to discover its source by driving up and down the road leaning over the back seat with my head in the boot until I was nearly sick) to be a loose exhaust heat shield.

And when you throw a bit of good old-fashioned British jobsworthyness into the mix it can all get a bit annoying. A couple of months ago, it sounded like the exhaust was blowing. So, a little surprised that it hadn’t even lasted three years, I popped into Kwik Fit. It turned out not to be the exhaust but an air filter cover. The Kwik Fit guy showed me the gouge mark where whoever had serviced the car had prised it open with a screwdriver and broken the catch. As the local Renault dealer had serviced it from new, I pointed out the problem and asked them to remedy this when the car was in for its annual service.

Here was their chance to make me a customer for life and an advocate for their brand. So what did they do?

Thy kept me waiting outside for twenty minutes (I was on time by the way) while they shuffled cars from the workshop to the forecourt, and, I kid you not, went off to buy milk and a newspaper. Then, when they rang at lunchtime, they said it wasn’t anything to do with them and the best they could do was put a screw in it. They had no explanation of how it could have happened, even though they were the only people ever to have been under the bonnet with tools. I asked them how much the part that they had broken would cost to replace. £35.

£35! Just £35 (which is the retail price not what it actually costs them) and I’m onside, on message, on brief, telling everyone how great they are. But they blew it. Argued with me on the phone. Kept me waiting. Told me I had to be back for it before 5:30 or I wouldn’t see it again until after they’ve fetched the milk and newspaper on Monday morning. Argued with me on the forecourt when I expressed my displeasure at the botch job they’d done (screwed it shut with a self-tapper!). So now, instead of word-of-mouth, they get word-of-bad-mouth from me.

The moral of this story? Problems happen. How you deal with them can make all the difference to your business. Needless to say I won’t be buying another Renault.

Chalky

Did you know that the average family of four visits their fridge 96 times a day?

Neither did I until a nice lady from printedeasy.com sent us a letter extolling the virtues of fridge magnets as an advertising medium. Apparently, and I quote, “Magnets have an uncanny way of attracting themselves to anything metal”. Well I guess that’s magnetism for you.

She also informs us that “Research has proven that fridge magnets and magnetic business cards are the most cost-effective and longest-lasting form of advertising that exists…” so next time a client briefs us to do a press ad or a poster, maybe we should get them to stop and think should they do a fridge magnet instead?

But back to that astonishing fridge fact again - 96 times a day! That’s an average of 24 visits each. That’s incredible - we need to know more - how do those figures split into mum, dad and kid demographics? If Dad and the kids are only visiting 10 times each then Mum must be going 66 times a day - no wonder she’s tired and needs a drink to unwind. 96 times a day! You couldn’t make it up - or maybe you could…

Hello everybody! Phoebe has drawn a fish for you to name this time. Place your entries in the ‘comments’ below before Feb 28th and the person with the best name wins a packet of Rolos! Have fun and good luck.

If you fancy living in a cool apartment overlooking the Thames and just across the road from James Bond and the gang and Jeffrey Archer, then it’s probably because you’ve seen one of our escalator posters in Vauxhall tube for Salamanca Tower. They’re shared ownership homes available through Notting Hill Housing, if you’re in the market, they’re worth a look - we know because we did the brochure too!

Yesterday I ranted on about, among other things, potholes. Today I’m riding my Brompton for the first time in ages, and to be honest, seeing all the potholes on the way in this morning, I am not looking forward to negotiating them in the dark on the ride home. I’m not keen on potholes at the best of times, but with the little wheels on my fold-up bike they are deadly. 

So what’s a cyclist to do? In fact, what’s anyone to do? (They damage cars too.)

If you see a pothole, report it via www.fillthathole.org.uk 

This is a splendid site run by CTC, The UK’s organisation for cyclists, that reports the potholes to the right people at the right department - and local councils, having had the potholes reported to them through the right channels, are obliged to act. 

I’ve tried it and it works. My local council filled in a pothole I reported via the site. They didn’t fill it in very well, but that’s another matter… 

Chalky

Julia and I are getting more and more annoyed with the news recently. It seems that every item has a ‘this has cost the economy blah blah million pounds’ angle. So the recent snow cost the British Economy £XXX million and will apparently be responsible for 6,000 small businesses going under. Then the snow melted and the damage to potholes will cost £250 million in London alone.

What a load of old nonsense. Who works these figures out? And how do they work them out?

I’ll tell you - lazy journalists work them out by sticking their finger in the air and thinking of a big number. And lazy viewers and newspaper readers don’t think things through and then get outraged by the huge sums bandied about. And Daily Mail readers get even more outraged by the effect it has on house prices too.

The snow didn’t cost whatever they said it did, because we’ll all work a bit harder to catch up - so it actually improves productivity. In fact, if you could put a value on the grins on everyone’s faces when they took a day off and went sledging, the recession would be over. 

And as for the cost of London potholes - well that would assume that the councils had any intention of filling them in in the first place. (That was a pleasing sentence with two ‘in’s together - it’s always fun to goad the spellcheck isn’t it?) And quite how lobbing in a bucketful of tarmac which will wear away in a month or so adds up to £1 million, let alone £250 million, is beyond us.

I could go on and on but now I’m getting worried about the cost to the economy of me writing this and you reading it - it could run into billions and affect our house prices too - so I’ll stop now.

Chalky

And come again on washing day…

At least the snow and ice was fun. This is just wet…

Everyone who turns right out of Goodge Street tube station will at some time or other have been offered a free personality test by one of the intensely sincere zealots outside the scientology shop. (I say shop, but I’m not entirely sure what it is they’re selling - perhaps a mental laundry would be a better description?)

It happened to me this morning. I usually don’t get bothered by them as I put on the same face that I use to deter chuggers. However, I got caught doing a double-take on their poster. I guess the zealot took this as a sign that my brain is susceptable to washing, and asked if I’d like a personality test. My standard response ‘No thanks, I’ve definitely got one’ normally works, but being caught in the act encouraged the wide-eyed one to press me further and continued to project his positivity at me. I felt obliged to explain and informed him that there was a spelling mistake on his poster (moden instead of modern). Obviously there’s plenty more that’s wrong with his poster and his silly cult, but I thought it more polite to keep it to the typo. The zealot, to his credit, persisted, and told me that As only the second person this year to notice, I was entitled to a prize of, you’ve guessed it, a free personality test. At this point, I decided I wasn’t cut out for the Hollywood A-list, and like a tabloid reporter, I made my excuses and left.

Click to see the typo

 Chalky