The Sequel - Just THREE Questions!

Following up my last blog post, where I ranted about being asked "just two questions" by a person in telesales, I was rung up the other day - at dinner time - by a lady who promised that she just had three questions to ask me.

As may be obvious, particularly to anyone to read the last post, I have a very low tolerance threshold for telesales, but, thinking that I might be able to get another blog post out of it, I decided to run with the call and see how far I could manage.

 So, the lady asked "Can I ask you just three questions?"
 "Yes."
 "Do you live at [my address]?" she asked.  Nice easy one for starters.
 "Yes, I do."
 "What's your age bracket? 20s, 30s...?"
 "30s." I said. Again, no problem with this.
 "What bracket is your household salary?" she asked, following this up with a list of options. I picked whichever bracket we fall in.
 "Have you EVER had a loan or mortgage?"
 "Yes."
 "Are you interested in recovering the cost of Payment Protection Insurance from any of those products?" she asked. (side-note - one day, people on this planet will have no idea what PPI was. You lucky people, future humans)
 "No." I responded.
 "Who is your broadband provider? Sky, Virgin, or TalkTalk?" she asked.
 "None of those, " I said, "we're with Kingston Communications."

 Something you need to understand for the next bit - in Hull in the UK, we're on a separate landline phone network to the rest of the UK.  The rest of the UK is with British Telecoms, but we're not. In times gone by each city would have its own phone network, but over time all of them, except for Hull, formed a single big network.
 The effect of this is that 99.9% of the internet providers in the UK don't offer internet in Hull. I just tried using uSwitch to search for broadband providers, and instead of the usual choice of 70-80 deals, it gave me a choice of one.

 So, she then asked me "Would you be interested in saving money on broadband?"
 "No, I can't change my broadband." I said.
 She helpfully explained "I'm not saying do you want to change your provider, I'm asking would you like to save money on your broadband?"
 "No, I wouldn't, I'm in Hull and there's only one provider, so no thank you." I explained further.
 She repeated "I'm not saying do you want to change your provider, I'm asking would you like to save money on your broadband?"

 "No, thank you, I don't want to." I said, hoping this was the end of this question - particularly bearing in mind the call had definitely included more than three questions at this point.

 Yet again, she repeated herself. "I'm not saying do you want to change your provider, I'm asking would you like to save money..."

 I hung up on her.

 I hope for another call in a few days which this time will have just four questions, so I can keep the blog material coming.

Before I go, I should say that Marketing 4 Startups has kindly let me blog on their website about what makes a good blog post, so do feel free to take a look.

Dealing with spam email

I've been getting spam email recently from people that I've apparently agreed to buy things from. For a long time, I've simply ignored or deleted these emails, but today I decided it was worth making use of these, so I've sent off some replies.

---------------------------------------------------------

Email from Jumadelto:
Subject: African mount

Greetings,


The African mount you are intrested un purchasing is going for 200.00 without delivery
Regards,
Juan


Sent from my LG G Vista 2, an AT&T 4G LTE smartphone


My reply:


Juan,


I could never do business with someone using an LG G Vista 2.


Regards, Mike


---------------------------------------------------------


Email from Mahe M Avinashi Gounder:
Subject: Close5. Womens shoe.

Hi Micheal. Got ur msg in close5. U said u interested in buying the item. Winter shoe. Women. Size small. When shall we meet.


My reply:


Firstly Mahe, mispelling my first name REALLY annoys me. Now, to business.


Is it a left shoe or a right shoe? I am purchasing on behalf of a female pirate, and she requires a left shoe. If it is a right shoe then we really are wasting each others time.


Assuming it is a left shoe, please meet me and my client at Port Royal in Jamaica on the seventeenth day of November, she assures me that she will be "bringing home the booty, shiver me timbers" to port on that date. We may have to be on the lookout for Customs Officers.


Regards, Michael

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Email from Eddie:
Subject: TV Stand

When do you want to pickup the tv stand?

Sent from my iPhone


My reply:


Eddie,


I was really rather hoping for delivery, this being the Internet and all. How much is it for me to subscribe to Eddie Prime?


Best wishes, Mike


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Email from Christine vargas (with an email address starting "tina"):
Subject: Bread Box

I will sell it off on sunday so email then early I wake up at 7am


My reply:

Christine (I don't accept the name Tina as a shortening of Christine),


It is currently 7.17am on Sunday. I assume that you've already been up and about for 17 minutes whoring your bread box all over the internet, and as a result I've missed the boat. I wish you all the best in your future endeavours.


Regards, Mike


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And the one that I've had a reply to...



Email from alfredo valadez:
Subject: 49ers jersey


Hello I do have the jersey still. I stay in the eastlake area chula vista.


My reply:


Ah Alfredo, I was really after a 48ers? Any chance you can remove 1?


Cheers, Mike


Alfredo's reply:


What ???


I feel bad for Alfredo.


In other news, we are rapidly coming up to the end of the Robin Hood's Bay Roadtrip crowdfunding campaign - currently we have 3 amazing sponsors, Diane Lynn of the Gratitude Letters, Denkai Designs, and deano_1 - for just £1 (which, for non-UK readers, the current exchange rates makes cheaper than ever!) you can join that list, be promoted, and most importantly, fund the purchase of alcohol. Check out the campaign now at https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/the-robin-hoods-bay-roadtrip-friends-fun

LinkedIn, would you mind if I bought them dinner first?

So, this came into my inbox the other day...

Um.. thanks LinkedIn... but I think I'll give it a miss.

Does Gmail secretly like Spam?!? (the junk email, not the meat)

I use Gmail as my main personal email facility - it works fine, I can use it anywhere, all that kind of stuff, but there's one thing that I've noticed.

If you get an email that you want to delete, what you do is you tick the box next to the email to select, and then a "Delete" button pops up.  And you click Delete and boom, the email is gone.

However, sometimes Gmail moves emails into a Spam folder, and occasionally I go in to clear it out.  The Spam folder is always full of spam comments on this blog, offers of Viagra, and coupons for Pizza Express - I'm not sure what Pizza Express has done to deserve the designation "spam", but to be fair I don't go there very often so perhaps Google has picked up on this and decided that I don't want their offers.

To delete the emails in the Spam folder however, you tick them, and then you hit the box marked...

DELETE FOREVER

Which just gives it a little bit more emphasis, as though Google is saying "I think that these are spam emails so you probably don't want them, but I could be wrong so do have a good look through first - wait!  Wait!  You've not looked thoroughly at the emails!  There could be something really important that I've marked as spam by mistake!  Dear me, no don't - agh!  You've deleted them FOREVER!!! Don't you realise how much space I have on my servers?  I could have easily looked after half a dozen emails offering you 40% off a main meal at Pizza Express, you didn't need to just go and get rid of them!"

Perhaps I'm reading a little too much into it.

If you got all the way to the end of this post, well done!  If you like stuff about the internet, maybe this vaguely philosophical piece about spending time chilling out on the Internet might be to your liking.  On the other hand if you're looking for something funny, perhaps I HATE NAPPIES is more to your liking.

Or if you've had enough of this blog, go see Tim over at Life, Explained.  His are very good.  Some people said better than mine.  But I found them and they don't say that any more.

This end bit has gone a bit dark now.

Happy International Left-Handers Day!

It's Left Handers Day today! (hence the photo of my dad below - a left hander - otherwise it wouldn't make much sense. That's banana bread he's holding)

 

So what? What does being left and right handed matter?

How about what side of the road you drive on.

Knights rode on the left so that their jousting lance was in place to take out the opposition,  or walked on the left so their sword arm was nearest to any enemies coming the other way.

But this began to change when the french, and left handed leader, Napoleon rose to power. He  needed to pass people on the right so that his sword arm was ready for use. This was adopted throughout the French Empire. 

Fast forward to today, and roughly three quarters of the world drive on the right. Go Napoleon! 

Famous left handers include Winston Churchill, Angelina Jolie, Julian Clary (whose autobiography I always attempt to read when we pop round to see my fiancée's mother - I'm about halfway through) and Prince William, who is about a month older than me.

As an aside, I got this particularly interesting spam comment on one of my blogs the other day...

I have a notable synthetic eyesight pertaining to fine detail and can anticipate troubles just before they occur.

Really! Thanks for that! I'd quite like a superpower too.  Perhaps "I am able to decimate ten pies in five minutes"?