Bungle's Twanger?!?

Oh my giddy aunt! I can't believe this video. That's my childhood ruined. The things you can find on YouTube. This video is very funny, yet slightly disturbing at the same time.

DrGaz's new image

After many months of searching for a new pair of spectacles frames a decision has finally been made. It's gonna be a pair of DKNY 5548s in colour code 1062 (pictured). I "discovered" them in a shop in Cambridge a week ago, and decided to write down the model number and shop around for them (they were priced at £150 in the shop). I found one company on the internet that sold them for £70 in the correct colour. However I decided to check Google Maps to see where they were based and it turned out to be in someone's back garden in Dorset. I had absoutely no luck trying to find them anywhere else, so sadly I ended up going back to the original shop and paid top dollar for them. I tried my hardest to knock them down they would not budge on the price at all. It was a shame that Vision Express didn't stock this model. If you ask for a discount at Vision Express the nice people there will knock of 30% before you can finish the question.

Well that's £150 spent on just the frames! If you wear glasses yourself you will probably be aware that the expensive part is the lenses. Sure you can get the cheap ones, but if you have eyesight like me or my good friend Mr Magoo then the last thing you want to do is buy the bog-standard lenses. They will make you look like a nerd and you will have abolutely no hope of ever pulling a woman. The worst pair of cheapos I ever had was when I was 16 years old and the lenses measured 12mm thick. Therefore, I always go for the highest quality pair of frames and lenses I can afford. I am still shopping around for lenses, but I'm going to have 1.9-index Zeiss ones (glass) which are the highest spec currently available. The best price I have had for them is £350. Ouch!

I paid £450 for the spectacles I'm currently wearing. Most people who knew how much they cost me thought I was clinically insane for spending so much money on a pair of glasses, but I think it's insane to save a few quid on something so important that you wear all day every day. This pair have lasted me 10 years. Thats 12p a day.

Royal Mail Hell

Again this not exactly "hell" - but pretty bloody irritating...

During the last 12 months for various reasons I've had cause to send a total of 5 letters by the unbelievably crap Royal Mail "Recorded Delivery" service. Four of those letters have disappeared into a black hole - two about a year ago, and another two about a fortnight ago. I sent the mail by this method because I specifically wanted to know that it had arrived, so what exactly is the point of Recorded Delivery 80% of your post goes missing?

Fortunately what I had sent was of no actual value - it was just boring but important stuff (changes of address to banks etc) that I wanted to guarantee would get to its destination. After the first two went missing I went to the local post office (the same one I sent them from) and spoke to a miserable git on the counter about the service. He was surprisingly defensive about the whole thing ("not my fault mate" etc) and shoved a couple of forms at me. I explained that it wasn't worth me bothering to fill them in just to claim back £2 worth of postage, and then left.

Another recent annoyance is that a book I sold on eBay went missing recently. Two years ago a £30 John Lewis gift voucher (again sent by recorded delivery) that I also sold on eBay vanished.

Bloody annoying.

IKEA hell

Well my current situation is more mildly irritating than "hell" to he honest....

In summary: I ordered a bookcase, chest of drawers and 2 x bedside cabinets from IKEA, waited 2 weeks for it to be delivered. Unwrapped it all and they had the following problems:

1) Bookcase backing was broken.
2) Two of the drawers on the chest had horrible scrach-like marks on the front, and a horrible mark on the front.
3) The quality of everything is generally shite.

I didn't want to wait another 2 weeks for replacements which would probably just have their own defects of some description, so I thought I'd just keep them and demand a discount. Although the defects don't look pretty, the one on the bookcase can be masked by the books, and we'll just have to live with the markings on the drawers.

So I phoned customer "service" where "Dave" gave me the email address of the department who deal with this kind of situation. I sent them an email and some photos. I then waited...

and waited...

A week later and and still no reply. So I rang them and asked them what's going on. I was speaking to "Susan" this time who informed me that a character called "Darril" has definitely got my email and will definitely phone me tomorrow to sort it out. Guess what? "Darril" didn't bother ringing the next day. I rang them back a couple of days later and "Pam" tells me she'll chase everything up and phone me back later. Later comes and still no phonecall from the helpful Pam.

I do want a discount, but it's not all about money - it's more about why I should put up with this crap quality and crap customer service. Why should I just allow myself to be fobbed off by them? So methinks I'll have to get a letter of complaint sent out to them. But here's the catch.... you won't find a single postal address for IKEA HQ on their website!

I've found what seems to be an authentic address on a messageboard which I'll try out.

It's bloody annoying, but nothing compared to the aggro I'm currently having with Vodafone and Barclaycard. I'll tell you about them another time. I simply don't have the strength to even think about those bastards right now!