RIP Wickes

[Steve Firth]

He's had jobs in London since then.

[Doctor Drivel]

Hatton Garden in the City - ideal.

High standard indeed - very plush.

It was the above.

And others not.

[Doctor Drivel]

I wish I did and it was in Jockoland.

[Huge]

Best of luck. I never, ever, manage to go just to one if I want more than half-a-dozen things.

[Andy Hall]

It's not often that I get to that point for a DIY shop visit, but agree with you that that's probably about the limit.

[Huge]

I thought it was normal to appoint a Regent in such circumstances.

Or perhaps you meant "reins"?

[The Natural Philosopher]

Surely a noose is more appropriate?

[Dave Plowman (News)]

We've done that one already.

[Owain]

Barbara Woodhouse always recommended a choke chain.

Children are just like small dogs but less cute, more unpredictable, noisier, considerably less intelligent, harder to toilet train, and more expensive.

Dogs don't grow up to be axe-wielding psychopaths or politicians, either.

Owain

[Stuart Noble]

That's usually because their parents preferred animals.

[Huge]

Sadly, due to Tiscali's utter incompetence, I cannot read or post to news after about 1pm each day.

[Owain]

Claranet Mail and News £12 a year?

Owain

[Andy Hall]

Don't you believe it.

They do slobber at mealtimes though, and that's similar to politicians

[Huge]

They traffic shape NNTP so it doesn't matter whose News server I use, I cannot access it.

Their Helpdesk is the most useless I have ever spoken to, without exception.

[Martin Bonner]

Matter of taste

Hell yes.

Yes

Yes

Yessss!

But this one:

Nope. The problem is that the intelligence is applied to solving / their/ problems, which are not necessarily those of their parents or innocent bystanders.

[Andy Hall]

If it's so bad as not to allow traffic on 119/tcp much at all then I would argue that they are in breach of reasonable fair usage policy. If you were scarfing large volumes of pictures and binaries, it would be another matter I suppose.

I've come to the conclusion that to get a reasonable help desk with semi sentient people, you have to buy a business service as opposed to a consumer one.

I have two services with Eclipse - one residential and one business. There are different support numbers for each.

The business one is answered more or less immediately and one gets to talk to a reasonably sensible technical person, although they can't help very much with issues such as router configurations beyond the very basics. Admittedly, it is a wires-only service.

For a recent problem on the residential service, I waited in a queue for over half an hour to discuss a problem that had arisen following regrading of the service. It had been on a capped 512k tariff which was quite inexpensive but there was now a DSL max service for effectively the same money. After several days following the regrade, the link was still capped. The ADSL info. showed the ATM part running at 7M, so it was obviously IP capping in Eclipse's network. The support person swore black and blue that this was a BT issue and that I should wait for several days to see if it improved. I didn't buy this and asked her to check. Two minutes later it was at the expected rate.

[Huge]

Even Tiscali's own (crap) server...

The situation is complicated. The BB is provided by my employer in order that I can work at home. They buy it from a telecoms provider, who buy it from Tiscali.

Tiscali's helpdesk referred me to their Business Broadband people, but they only do provisioning, and referred me to the telecoms company, who said they didn't know anything about it and referred me to our internal Helpdesk, who said they had no control over the service and referred me to ... Tiscali's helpdesk, who referred me to their Business Broadband people (sound familiar?)

What's even more annoying is that the very issue is discussed on Tiscali's support forums, which I cannot post to because I don't actually have a Tiscali logon.

All I need is some networks dweeb in Tiscali to change me from one user group (capped NNTP) to another (uncapped). How hard can that be?

What I *do* know is that if I ever have any influence in the matter, I shall never spend a penny with Tiscali or the telecoms provider, ever again.

Which I'm not. I'm imagine all this nonsense is because of the peer-to-peer dweebs using Usenet to steal their entertainment. All I want to do is download a couple of dozen, mostly work-related, non-binary groups.

I'm coming to the same conclusion & I think I'm going to sack Tiscali and buy somewhere else.

[The Medway Handyman]

It would be a loss to me. I shop almost daily for bits & bobs.

B&Q only seem to have fluffy cushions in stock, Homebase are even worse & double the price. Builders merchants are ridiculously expensive for small purchases. Wickes does it for me.

Agreed, a rubbish store.

[Andy Hall]

I think it depends on how you buy and whether you let them charge their first offer price.

[Lobster]

Well, my buying pattern is probably much like the MH's, and I'm a big Wickes fan too. For large purchases I'll go to BMs and negotiate, but for daily small stuff I just can't be doing with the whole BM experience; where nothing is labelled and for every purchase you have to ask the price and then decide whether you're being ripped off or not (you are); then decide how much you're prepared to pay and see if they'll come down.

Wickes is WYSIWYG, and usually pretty favourably priced, and you don't get 'attitude' from the staff either.

Still get most of my stuff from Screwfix/Toolstation where time/convenience permits, though!

David