Graffiti is shit, don’t do it.

Today we thought we would give the Eurotunnel a go, booked our tickets through tesco clubcard – ready for a weekend driving our own car somewhere in france for a bit of shopping and some time a la foreign.

So I have done more than my fair share of homework on what the requirements are to take your perfectly road legal UK car over to another part of the European Community. So to drive there you need your Car registration, Insurance, A “green card”, your driving licence, an emergency triangle, a yellow reflective jacket (HAS to be in the glove compartment), and to screw around with your headlights to avoid offending the timid French drivers.

I have been driving in America, Germany, Macedonia, Malaysia, and here – so plenty of driving on the other side of the road experience so that was not going to be a problem. We got ready and left at 8am from west London I blasted all the way to folkestone as the tomtom satnav was convinced it would take almost two hours to get there for our “check in before 10am” deadline before we catch our 10:30am train reservation.

It’s 9.20 and suddenly we are there, confronted by “tool booth ahead” signs, I’m wondering what the fuck? not even in France yet. But this is the part where you “check in” with your reservation number and get a large ticket with a letter on it that you hang from your rear view mirror. The machine regrets to announce that it cannot give us our 10:30am train and can only offer us a place on the 10:35am so I wonder what the fuck – who cares it’s 5 minutes. OK so now we are in and it’s time to get some breakfast; while downing our £10 of greasy service station slop we hear an announcement asking people with letter O please go to border control now. As we have letter P we presume it fine to wait a while as it’s not even 10am yet.

We take a walk around to kill 10 minutes and realise no more announcements have been made so off to the car we go through the police bit to confirm that are not crooks, then wave our red passports at another french bloke, only to find there is a single file queue of cars there at 10:20am and it’s going nowhere – there are about 50 cars in the queue and it’s our first time on this thing so we are amazed if they can get everyone on this train within 15 minutes.

In the distance we see cars that have left the start of the queue going backwards.. second “WTF?” moment of the day. So we have been on Eurotunnel property for over an hour now and are absolutely nowhere, the selling point of the Eurotunnel being that you can be in France in around half an hour.

So a pickup truck comes racing along and we think that’s the answer, another 10 mins and we are at the start of the queue and told to go to lane 9 (there are about 12 lanes where you wait.. again..). It’s now 10:55am and we realise this morning is’nt going quite to plan – I have been wanting to take my own car out of the UK just for the fun of it for years now so I’m getting a little disappointed.

Finally shit starts to happen, lanes 1-5 go off one after the other, then 7, then 6… then 8… then 10, 11, 12, 13.. well half way through 13, then the rest go off…..

Lane 9 cars are all still there, and we hear an announcement finally saying that they ” regret to announce for cars with P and Q tags that the 10:35 train is now full and we are being given priority place on the next train at 13:40, so we all get out and go off to the dozy prick standing at the barrier to give him a piece of our mind – he of course hasn’t got two braincells to rub together and asks everyone to go back to their cars and wait for him to give out some vouchers..

As we go back someone else says this guys vouchers are only for a cup of tea… fucking rediculous episode this is turning into. As I get back to our car around 15th in line I realise this asshole is going to take an hour to get to us and as our weekend in France is basically fucked now because our “30 minute trip to france by train” is  now a fucking 5 hour trip to France by train and we could have gone to Paris by plane and back by now and spending a quarter of your daytrip travelling is pointless. So I walked back up to him and asked where I could go to get a refund as I didn’t fancy waiting wasting another hour of the weekend. Last week was was hell of a stressful one banging my head on a wall again at work followed by a very informative antenatal class all day friday.

I pull the car out and wait in a separate line to go to the customer services for a refund, we wait there.. so I get out and ask dipshit how much longer we have to wait given we now are not interested in Eurotunnel anymore – by the time I get to him the barrier is up, when I am back in the car (third in line) the barrier is down and we wait AGAIN… seriously who the fuck is running this place?, so I stick the car in reverse and race back to this monkey to tell him to radio it in to be raised again… and we wait…. yes… even more waiting..

Then a nice guy comes and waits to escort us on the other side of the barrier back to customer services, they say they will refund this “back to our card”, so I asked him “what card?”.. he actually looks at the screen to see we paid for Eurostar with Tesco clubcard tokens and that we would get a refund that way…. I ask him for a receipt to tha effect rather than just leaving without documentation, and we go to wait for nice bloke to escort us all off the property… so you leave through the staff exit and head straight down this road.. which turns left… into a roundabout… that takes you all the way back to where you started then spits you out on the motorway…

And that was our weekened in France… thinking about taking Eurotunnel to take your car to the continent?, don’t waste your time with them, try a ferry instead.

Order from finerfencing.co.uk and be spun off backwards 7 years to a time when E-commerce was in its infancy… I need 3 6×6ft fence panels with posts, they have zen shopping cart and a load of smiley happy reviews so all good to go you would think right?.

WRONG.

I emailed them to ask pre-sales questions, I did not get any response.

Order using their freeware shopping cart and whip your credit card out, you will hopefully realise before it’s too late that there is no padlock in the bottom of your browser to indicate that they are transmitting your details safely through SSL, so don’t send your credit card details through their site.

Enter your paypal details and consider that the best way to go and hope to god that everything is now OK it’s safely in their hands.

I Waited…. waited…. and waited some more… got tired of waiting… called them to ask when my small easily fulfilled order would arrive from this “finer” fencing company who appear to be specialists after all their site states

“Far superior to your average diy store panel”

“We’re a family run business based in the Midlands and pride ourselves on our extensive product knowledge and customer service.“

I found this to be far from the case in the end. After a week and half without any contact following my order I called to be told it would be delivered Friday of that week, having booked the day off work I was called the night before to say that the courier didn’t come to pick up the panels and they would “definitely be there on Monday”.

So today is Monday, having managed to squeeze another short term notice day off work, I called first thing to be greeted with their voice mail… I left my details for them to call me back and confirm that the order would arrive today.

Nobody called back for 4 hours so…

So I called again, to find their voice mail box was now full, I’m probably not enjoying having placed my trust in this company now, there are many companies going under and for all I know finer fencing could have just gone bankrupt.

Then I get an email from the FENCE COMPANY at 1pm which is really unbelievable:

“Hi Brad

Unfortunately your panels will not be arriving today our couriers have refused to take them due to size so I will have to issue a refund.

Sorry for any inconvenience caused

Clare”

So my 3 fence panels that were definitely due to arrive today after failing to arrive last week cant be delivered due to their size…

Based on my experience, I will never order from Finer Fencing again and recommend you don’t either, their customer service is a complete joke and you end up with nothing but inconvenience.

Let’s see what a circus it will be to get a refund now….

Update 1 hour after initial disappointment, the paypal refund has been sent, so at least I can find a fencing company who hopefully know what they are doing now before the rest of my current fence gets destroyed by the little chav’s surrounding my oasis.

I had a closer look at the reviews on finerfencing.co.uk, funny how the same names keep recurring and the dates the comments are added are erratic, almost like fake reviews hey…. what do you think?.

If anyone knows of a decent company that can deliver 3 pieces of 6×6ft featheredge fencing to west London I would be glad if you could pass me their details.

This morning we changed our GP (for those who are not in the UK, this is your local doctor who you go to for general things without having to go to the hospital “General Practice” ), our GP for the last 4 years has been about as useless as a chocolate teapot.

So if you feel like your GP is just someone who is just churning through the local population at fixed intervals offering incomplete advice to maintain their funding and not living up to their responsibilities then CHANGE. You are entitled to swap to an alternative in your area as long as you are in their “catchment area” which can be quite fiddly but it’s almost certain that especially if you live in a built up area you have a degree of choice.

Our new GP can’t even be compared to the other one, very professional, modern, pleasant spacious, free parking, got exactly what we expected from a service that costs a fucking arm and a leg from our automatic deductions from monthly salary… remember that shit isn’t really free unless you are some scrounging wankstain council tennant that sits on your arse all day soaking up state resources, those people are what needs fixing with this country.

I have been a Virgin Media customer for ohhh 3 years now for broadband, TV, and landline phone. Quality of service is very good, and the internet I think has died once in all of the 3 years I have been connected.

But the TV service (UK cable TV with some on-demand services) is really turning into a bucket of shit lately, it’s like paying an extra £10 a month ontop of the already compulsory TV licence for the privilidge of watching fucking adverts for car insurance all day long.

If its not compare the fucking market dot com, or tesco compare (and sell your fucking details without telling you afterwards), or money super fucking market dot com. Or shielas fucking antipodean wheels with that piece of shit theme tune, or elephant dot stupid overpriced bullshit dot co dot uk… UGHHHHH SERIOUSLY THE PEOPLE WHO HUNT FOR ADVERTISERS AT VIRGIN MEDIA NEED TO LOOK AT A VARIETY OF SPONSORS.