So what’s my beef with bad recruitment agencies? That’s like asking what’s wrong with traffic wardens or estate agents. Apart from the fact they’re normally cunts who are just after their pound of flesh… actually, that’s pretty much it. But for the sake of fairness, I’ll give specifics.

When looking for staff, we’ve found that generally, agencies would talk up the skills of candidates who had no clue, presumably in the vain hope that we’d employ them and they would get their pound of flesh.

When looking for a job, I’ve been put forward for roles than I have no interest in, as well as have no skills in – also presumably so the agent will get their pound of flesh. I’ve also been told that my CV was “no good” and that it “wouldn’t be forwarded to the client unless I rewrote it”. This is despite the fact that in my 13-year experience as a web developer, only twice have I not got the role I’ve been interviewed for – the first occasion was due to the role changing from a contract to a permanent position, and the second was due to the job specification changing to require skills I did not possess.

It’s not only when needing the services of a recruitment agency that they manage to fuck me off, however. I get a lot of spam emails from recruiters who ask me to do their job for them. Yes, you heard me… they are the recruiters, and yet they constantly ask me if I know anyone who would be interested in jobs they claim to have. For those of you that may not understand why this would wind me up (so that’ll be any recruiters reading this), let me spell it out: it’s their job to find people, not mine. It would be like me ringing them up to ask how to use jQuery.

So, you can see why I’m not generally a fan of recruitment agencies or agents.

When these emails or phone calls come in, I normally tell the truth: that I don’t know anyone who is looking (because usually, I don’t). If the email or phone call is about a permanent job, I’ll ask to be removed from the relevant mailing list, as I’ll only go permie when hell freezes over, or when I have a lobotomy – whichever comes first.

So what have The JM Group done to piss me off so much that I’m blogging about them? Well, one of their agents, Jamie Weston, sent me through an unsolicited email for a role so far away from anything I’d normally do that it may as well have been for “King of fucking Narnia”. Honestly, not one of the required skills on the list was anything I’d ever had any experience with, and not one of the skills was anything I’ve ever talked up or mentioned on my CV.

In a nutshell, Jamie was after his pound of flesh for submitting the wrong candidate for the wrong role. What a complete and utter useless cunt.

Let me tell you about the role, and what it required. It was a contract role for “Head of Brand Partners” at a “leading financial services client based in Bromley”. Now, while I might not mind earning the £700 – £800 daily rate that was being offered (after Jamie had taken his cut, that is), I would feel guilty turning up to a job which I could not do. Hell, I’d even feel guilty about applying for the role without any experience (something that Jamie Weston clearly has no problem with). Here’s what the role required:

• Excellent General insurance knowledge
• Extensive Brand / Partnership Management experience
• A strong understanding of contracts
• Experience managing teams of relationship managers
• Full end to end ownership of client relationships
• Excellent stakeholder management
• Financial acumen for the development of the business
• Contract and commercial structuring arrangements

Do you think I have any of those skills? No, I clearly fucking don’t, and if Jamie had even bothered to read my CV before spamming me, he’d have known this. Having said that, I don’t have any experience as a recruitment agent, but I bet I could do a damn sight better job than Jamie Weston, because, surprise sur-fucking-prise, I can think for myself and use my brain! What an absolute moron, thinking I might even be vaguely suitable for this role.

Now, it wasn’t the case that Jamie was rude at all. In fact, his email was very nice, even starting with “Good Afternoon”.

He went on to mitigate the unsolicited nature of his email with “Please excuse the nature of this approach”, and “please accept my apologies if this reaches you in error”. Does he think I was born yesterday? I don’t buy those lines for one fucking second. I bet he puts them at the top of all of his unsolicited spam emails, and I bet you he does so to make people think that he’s not simply spamming them – which he clearly is.

My reply needed no mitigation, although it did start just as nicely as his:

Good afternoon.

Are you fucking kidding me? I’m a web developer… of course I’m not fucking interested in the ‘head of brand partners’ position, you complete and utter parasitic fuckwit of a poor excuse for a fucking job agent. Use your fucking halfwit brain (assuming you have one) and think for a minute before sending your emails, you idiotic cunt.

Please remove my details from ALL of your mailing lists immediately.

Any further correspondence, other than a single email to confirm you have complied with my removal request, will be used to file a case against you with the Information Commissioner’s Office.

Would you believe it, he actually complied?! I got a single email from him, acknowledging my request. I almost couldn’t believe he’d managed to do something right!

In a way, it’s a shame; I would’ve liked to have forwarded the details to the ICO, but a deal’s a deal – even if it is made with the devil (well… a recruitment agent).

What do I think of this? At best, it’s misleading; at worst, it’s an outright lie, utter crap. To put it another way that might be better understood by the Kiwis of the PAK’nSAVE pricing team:

Those who know me will know that I do not get riled up for no good reason. I don’t tolerate mediocrity, and I can’t abide people who don’t use their common sense, but these are not normally enough to get me wound up enough to put fingers to keyboard and write a blog post. So what is the reason for this post? Almost being ripped off by PAK’nSAVE, that’s what, and the casual attitude the staff have when it is pointed out to them.

I’ll come back to their “lowest food prices” policy shortly. First, I’ll start with the rip-off pricing structure of so-called “value” packs – which any right-minded person would think are branded as such because they will be better value for money. Not at PAK’nSAVE in Invercargill, they’re not, so I can only imagine the pricing team at PAK’nSAVE are not right-minded, and are in all probability, a bit hard-of-thinking.

Question 1 to PAK’nSAVE: Are the team in charge of pricing at your Invercargill store hard-of-thinking?

Yesterday I went shopping at PAK’nSAVE in Invercargill to pick up some bread and milk. My mother-in-law had asked me to pick up 3 or 4 sachets of Maggi tasty cheese sauce and a few other items while I was there.

I found the Maggi cheese sauce without too much of a problem – although at the same time I discovered that mustard power and mustard are kept about 2 aisles apart (perhaps the pricing team also worked on the shop layout?). I saw a 3×sachet value pack and put it in my box (I use a box as I refuse to pay 5¢ for a carrier bag when items cost more than at a supermarket where the bags are free). It was only by chance that I glanced at the price of the individual sachets as I was making my way elsewhere, and realised that PAK’nSAVE were ripping me off. There’s no value whatsoever in their pricing of the “value” pack: it costs more to buy than it does to buy the individual contents, and not by a few cents, either — the “value” pack costs 70¢ more!

Here’s the evidence, taken at around 8:50am:

On the left is the Maggi tasty cheese sauce “value” pack containing 3 sachets. The price is $3.85, which works out at just over $1.28 per sachet.

On the right are the individual sachets, priced at $1.05 each, which works out at $3.15 for 3 sachets – 70¢ cheaper.

To put this rip-off in perspective, the value pack costs over 22% more than buying the contents individually! How would you feel if you were all set to buy a house for $315,000, and at the last minute the buyer raised the price to $385,000? That’s exactly what PAK’nSAVE are doing. You can buy 18 individual sachets for 35¢ less than it costs to buy 15 sachets in the supposed “value” packs!

Question 2 to PAK’nSAVE: Is it your policy to price “value” packs at a better rate than the individual contents would cost, or is there no policy on this at all?

Now I’ve shown that PAK’nSAVE’s pricing policy is anything but fair and reasonable, let me move on to the lie they perpetrate about having “NZ’s lowest food prices”.

Later the same day, I was shopping in Countdown for coffee, as Gregg’s Flat White boxes are around 50% cheaper there than at PAK’nSAVE (they are currently on special offer at Countdown, so I’m not going to hold this against PAK’nSAVE). While there, I thought I’d see how much the Maggi 3×sachet value packs cost.

I’m sure that I don’t need to add a huge amount of sarcasm to this post for you to guess that they were cheaper.

Any guesses on how much cheaper they were? Well, to save you all a trip to Invercargill (which is, after all, 28 km up the arsehole of New Zealand), I’ll tell you: they cost $3.49 – 36¢ cheaper than over the road at PAK’nSAVE, who claim to offer the lowest food prices nationwide.

Obviously, prices cannot be compared with other supermarkets every second of every day. This leads me nicely onto my next questions:

Question 3 to PAK’nSAVE: How often do you compare your prices with other supermarkets to ensure you always do offer the lowest food prices nationwide?

Question 4 to PAK’nSAVE: If a product can be purchased cheaper elsewhere, do you refund the difference, or perhaps even double the difference (as is common in many UK supermarkets)?

Question 5 to PAK’nSAVE: If a product can be purchased cheaper elsewhere, do you lower your price to match so that everyone will benefit (as John Lewis do in the UK), or do you leave the price as-is and hope no-one else will notice that you are now knowingly not offering NZ’s lowest food prices?

I do have one last question, which is related to a comment I made at the start of the post. When I pointed out your rip-off pricing to the girl at the till, she gave a nervous laugh and didn’t really know what to do, nor have any suggestions about what I might do about it.

Question 6 to PAK’nSAVE: Are your staff trained to use their nous and call a manager if there’s an obvious error in pricing, or do you only train checkout staff to do the minimum required to take money from the customer?

I’ve ranted about Burger King, and I’ve ranted about KFC, but so far, McDonald’s have managed to escape my ire. This is not because McDonald’s have somehow managed to be better than the rest of the fast-food competition; it is simply because we normally choose to eat anywhere other than their filthy little establishments. And now, dear readers, you are about to see why I avoid the golden arches like the plague.

We are over in Invercargill, New Zealand at the moment, visiting my father-in-law who is recovering from an operation. Visiting hours at the hospital ended at 8pm, and we asked my mother-in-law what she wanted for tea. We’d all had a tiring day and didn’t feel like eating a huge amount, nor doing any washing up, and so she opted for sitting in McDonald’s for a burger.

Now, the date of our visit to McDonald’s happened to coincide with St. Patrick’s Day (March 17th), but we arrived just after 8pm – well before pub closing time, and as there weren’t that many people sitting down to eat, I do not understand how the staff managed to cock things up so much.

Here’s how the night progressed:

17/03/2012 20:11:07 – I placed our order. Unlike most fast food restaurants in the UK, the girl who took my order understood my perfect English first time, did not try to up-sell me things I didn’t want, and had my order placed quickly and efficiently. This was the only point during our visit that I was in any way impressed by any of the staff or their behaviour. She printed out my receipt, made a tray up for my order, laying a copy of the receipt on it, and moved on to the next customer.

Here’s what I ordered, all ‘medium’ size:

1x Quarter pounder combo (burger, fries, drink)
1x Crispy chicken combo (burger, fries, drink)
1x Big mac
1x Fries

So that’s 3x burgers, 3x fries, and 2x drinks. Simple, right? Simple if you have a brain. Bloody impossible if you work for McDonald’s in Invercargill.

After a few minutes, it became obvious that she (the girl who served me) was churning through orders faster than they were being delivered. Trays were stacking up along the bench, and people were waiting to get food, yet she was still taking orders.

Question 1 to McDonald’s: When it becomes clear that customers are waiting and orders are not being fulfilled, do you train your staff to keep serving – and taking money to line your pockets, or do you train them to give paying customers their orders? Of course, this assumes that it is clear to your staff that this is happening. It was very clear to me, so it should have been clear to those who have undergone your training process.

A few more orders later, and a few people got their orders and left. There was one guy waiting for quite some time after I got served and when she realised he was still there, she said to him something like “are you only waiting on a <insert product name here, something like ‘cone’, or ‘frozen’>?” He nodded and so she went off, got his cone / frozen thing and he went away, order fulfilled. How long he’d been waiting overall for this single product I do not know, but if I were him, I’d have gone behind the counter and served myself rather than wait that long for a single quick-to-make product.

The crazy thing is, the drive-in staff seemed to have time to spare. There was one slightly chubby girl with a headset on who seemed to have a few minutes here and a few minutes there between serving customers. I saw her and another colleague on several occasions stop by the machine on the corner opposite the fries for a chat, possibly waiting for something to be handed to them so they could bag it and finish orders.

Question 2 to McDonald’s: Are your staff trained to deal only with their own customers, or are they trained that during ‘down time’ they should help their colleagues and other customers as well? If the latter, then your drive-through staff need a damn good talking to because the girl who served me was run off her feet while these two were gossiping.

Some more time elapsed, one of my burgers arrived and was placed on the tray. More waiting around, and some times later, another burger arrived and was placed on the tray. One or both of these burgers were placed on top of the receipt showing what I’d ordered, thus making it impossible to see at a glance what was needed to fulfil my order.

Question 3 to McDonald’s: Are your staff trained to not stack things on top of the receipt, thus making it easier to see what is remaining?

At some point during the wait, some fries and drinks arrived. Of course, with the receipt covered up, it was impossible to know whether they were mine or not, and so began ‘the dance of the items’. When it was ascertained that they were for me, they were placed on the tray. I am sure that one or more of these items was placed right back on top of the receipt.

Question 3 to McDonald’s (again): Are your staff trained to not stack things on top of the receipt, thus making it easier to see what is remaining?

Some more time elapsed and the other burgers arrived. Again, with the receipt covered up, it was impossible to know whether they were mine or not, and yet again I saw ‘the dance of the items’. When it was ascertained that they were for me, they were placed on the tray. Again, I am sure that one or both of these burgers were placed back on top of the receipt.

Question 3 to McDonald’s (yet again): Are your staff trained to not stack things on top of the receipt, thus making it easier to see what is remaining?

At this point, I was waiting for 2x medium fries. Guess what? Drive-in girl +1 still found time to gossip at the machine on the corner, and girl who served me was still taking orders. However, she did find time – on at least two occasions, possibly three – to assure me that my fries ‘were coming’.

I know you had plenty of fries, because I could see them, so any excuse about running out of fries at this point would be a clear lie, and so my next questions:

Question 4 to McDonald’s: On all of these occasions when my fries ‘were coming’, who was bringing them? It clearly wasn’t drive-in-girl or +1, and it clearly wasn’t the girl who served me (and was still taking orders).

Question 5 to McDonald’s: On all of these occasions when my fries ‘were coming’, how did the person who was bringing them know they had to do so? Was it printed on a screen they could see? Was the girl who served me meant to be doing it? Was it perhaps someone who should have been looking at a receipt that your staff seem very keen to keep covered up?

Now, I’d been waiting so long for our 3 meals at this point, I had forgotten what it was I had ordered (and I couldn’t see the receipt anyway as your staff kept piling food on top of it). Therefore, when finally asked what it was I was still waiting for, I said “1 fries” instead of “2 fries”.

Question 6 to McDonald’s: Are your staff trained to rely on the customer to know what was ordered, or are they trained to rely on the receipt, in case customers pull a fast one and try to get something for nothing?

17/03/2012 20:35 – So, meals in hand, twenty four minutes after I placed my order, I went to join my partner and mother-in-law. Of course, the first thing they said was “why are there only two fries?”. My response to them does not matter, but needless to say I went straight back to the counter and managed to get another medium fries without waiting for another twenty four minutes.

The end. Oh… but it isn’t the end, by any stretch of the imagination. What do you think my partner found upon opening the box to the quarter pounder? Head of rat? Head of mouse? Eye of newt? Something nice and tasty to eat? Well, it was certainly none of the these.

Apparently, it was a McDonald’s quarter pounder, in all its glory.

Therefore, I can only assume that all McDonald’s quarter pounder burgers are dry, rubbery, and shrivelled, with rock-hard buns that you can tap to hear how solid they are, and congealed cheese around the egde of the box that is cold and also rock-hard.

It’s a shame that a camera cannot capture how hard a McDonald’s quarter pounder bun is, and it’s also a shame that this photo doesn’t do the cheese justice, as it doesn’t look anywhere near as solid as it actually was.

Seriously, you could tap the bun; it was solid – there was nothing soft about it in any way shape or form whatsoever. It was a complete and utter abortion, and a pathetic excuse for safe, sanitary, and healthy food given to us after a twenty four minute wait. I would hate to see the conditions of the kitchen that this burger came from, and to be honest, I didn’t really want to eat my chicken burger after seeing this.

Question 7 to McDonald’s: Before 17/03/2012, when was the last time your Invercargill restaurant was checked by food inspectors?

Question 8 to McDonald’s: On 17/03/2012, did your Invercargill restaurant have all necessary food safety / hygiene certificates, and what are their details and expiry dates?

17/03/2012 20:36:45 – It didn’t take a genius to realise that eating this burger would have had serious consequences for the health of my partner, and so it was taken back and exchanged pretty quickly by the staff who offered yet more hollow apologies to join those for the missing fries and long wait. It was at this point that I first noticed the food strewn over the floor by the rubbish bin.

17/03/2012 20:52:49 – We had finished and left the restaurant when I took that picture of the food, still present on the floor, sixteen minutes later. I am not going to lie and say it was present for only sixteen minutes, just that I noticed it was present for at least sixteen minutes. There were really not that many people eating in, and in all likelihood, the food was there from the moment we walked in the door, over forty minutes earlier.

Question 9 to McDonald’s: How regularly are your restaurants supposed to be cleaned by the staff?

Question 10 to McDonald’s: On 17/03/2012, when was the last time before 20:36 that your Invercargill restaurant was cleaned, or checked and deemed to be clean?

Question 11 to McDonald’s: Do you have any CCTV footage covering the area where the rubbish was dropped, and if so, when was it dropped, when was it finally cleaned up, and was it cleaned up by a member of staff or a member of the public?

The end (again). Except it isn’t quite over yet. There’s one further incident to this whole sorry tale…

18/03/2012 06:18 – I am awoken by a very sore stomach, stumble to the toilet and squirt out a massive load of diarrhoea (sorry, no photo… Diarrhoea McFlurry didn’t sound like a marketing winner).

Question 12 to McDonald’s: Have you had any other customers get in touch regarding feeling ill after eating in your Invercargill restaurant at any point in the last month?

The end.

Neither my partner or I thought the staff worked cohesively that evening; the girl at the counter was certainly left in the lurch, and we both doubt that there was a manager on duty – or, if there was, they must have been very new and inexperienced. For a night like St. Patrick’s Day usually brings, only a fool wouldn’t expect a higher-than-average customer turnover at a fast food restaurant, and so my next questions:

Question 13 to McDonald’s: On 17/03/2012 from 20:11 onwards, was there a manager on duty at your Invercargill restaurant, and if so, were they experienced, or quite new to the role / disinterested?

Question 14 to McDonald’s: Were any extra / more experienced staff scheduled to work at your Invercargill restaurant on 17/03/2012, or was it simply ‘business as usual’ with the staff that happened to be scheduled to work that day working that day?

I would like honest answers to each of my questions, and an apology and perhaps even a refund would be a nice gesture, too. Let’s face it, my chicken burger wasn’t nice on the way in or the way out. Should you want to see the original receipt (for NZD $26.30), I still have it.

You might also want to apologise to the girl who served me for leaving her in the lurch on such a busy night, although as I’ve already mentioned, I felt that she did bring some of that on herself by continuing to serve customers instead of fulfilling orders she’d already taken.

Should you want to use your CCTV footage of the night to help with staff training, and would like me to come in to identify us, I am willing to do so. Please get in touch to arrange a consultation.

Update 12/04/2012: At the end of March, I spoke with Simon Rhind, the franchisee owner-operator of McDonald’s in Invercargill, and we agreed to meet up the following week so he could show me round and answer some of my questions. Neither of us were able to make the day we’d agreed on, and with easter looming and family coming to visit us, I let Simon know that meeting after easter would be better. With lots of meetings with my father-in-law and various medical specialists, I’ve been unable to plan a time at the moment, but I’d still like to meet Simon at some point. With a few trips to Dunedin hospital over the next few weeks, it might be closer to May before this happens, though.

I’ve been back to McDonald’s on two occasions since St. Patrick’s Day, both very last-minute and unplanned (sorry for not getting in touch, Simon… the decisions really were very last-minute). On both occasions, the place was very busy and there were more staff on, working cohesively. Our visit today, just before a meeting over the road, coincided with a kids magic show and a visit from Ronald McDonald himself. The place was absolutely packed with families, and I honestly had no idea you could fit that many people in the building. Still, the staff had everything running smoothly with no problems: they had the orders under control, they were turned around quickly, and the food was warm and fresh. Great job!

Interestingly enough, I’ve discovered that my family actually lived on the same site as the McDonald’s building before it was turned into a McDonald’s. How spooky is that?!

While probably not against any law, local or otherwise, the cleaning staff at Hotel Auwirt in Saalbach (a popular European skiing destination) seem to think the “do not disturb” / “do not clean my room” sign on the door doesn’t apply to them. In fact, they seem to make ones room up regardless of what sign is displayed, or indeed, if any sign is displayed at all. Which begs the question:

Why give guests a fucking sign at all?

I could understand if the staff couldn’t understand German, but the sign has a colour-coded panel. What are the chances the staff are both illiterate and colour blind / deficient? Pretty fucking slim, in my opinion, unless the hotel are employing people either illegally, or without giving two fucks about the quality of service that their paying guests receive.

Other than this small-but-rage-inducing annoyance, the hotel was very nice. It had a nice bar, they served nice breakfast, alnd always asked me if I wanted any extra eggs or bacon. The staff were nice and friendly, and even their website is nice. It’s just that there was always this nagging doubt at the back of my mind that if the staff were disobeying my wishes with regards to the door sign, they might be getting up all sorts of things without my consent.

A note to the hotel management, should you be reading this post: Perhaps you can talk / beat the following single-sentence, easy-to-understand message into your cleaning staff, should they have the brain capacity for remembering such trivial details:

Don’t ignore the fucking door signs!

Should it transpire that you’ve given them consent to clean the rooms regardless of the wishes of the guest, perhaps you should take heed of what happened last time an Austrian gave orders, with their subordinates claiming they were “only following orders”, and rescind the orders forthwith before your guests realise this and your trade dries up (going against the wishes of your paying customers simply does not pay).

To quote someone who clearly had a similar experience: “The customer is king”. And if you don’t believe that, believe that “the customer’s money stops my wife and children from living homeless and cold in the streets of Saalbach.” Of course, they could always break into hotel rooms to steal belongings to scrape a living, given some handy tips on how to do so by the cleaning staff at the hotel you used to run before becoming penniless (there’s a hole in my bucket…)

They make it really bloody obvious, too. For example, after getting out a taxi to or from the airport, either the driver or some porter will always grab your bags, and virtually refuse to let you deal with them yourself. Then they will hang around waiting for payment.

I ignored the porter trying to help me when returning from N.Y. You’d think a guy could take a hint. Fuck no. He just stood there with palm outstretched, staring at me and coughing. Can you fucking believe that? What a cunt! I wouldn’t have minded, but I’d said from the beginning that I could manage my own suitcase – it’s already got wheels, why does it need a fucking trolley?

Bastards.

We normally arrive in BK after a night on the town, normally at Charing Cross or Waterloo stations, and we always order the same thing – “2 XL Bacon Double Cheeseburgers”. That’s it. No drink, no fries, no fucking super-size me.

So despite the “Burger King Bill of Rights” that gives its customers the right to “Have it Your Way”, and despite the fact that I clearly state what I fucking want, the ignorant hypocritical fuck-pig at the counter always tries to sell me something I neither want nor have asked for.

Why? Just Fucking Why? Just once, it would be nice if they just played out their nice little servant role and gave me what I fucking asked for with no extra questions or hassle. How hard can it fucking be to do less fucking speaking?

Of course, the shockingly crap descriptions in the menu don’t always help when the employee has the IQ of an earthworm. For example, today I went into KFC in Woolwich. There were 2 “Classic Variety” meals listed:

1) 2 pieces of chicken, 2 hot wings, 1 crispy strip: £4.19

2) 3 pieces of chicken, 2 hot wings, 1 crispy strip: £4.99

Now – I may not have got an ‘A’ for GCSE maths, but I know that for the first option, 2 + 2 + 1 = 5. So when I asked for the “5 piece variety meal”, the guy just looked at me blankly. I repeated myself. Nothing. He asked which one. I clarified:

“The top one. The first one listed. The one with 5 pieces of chicken in it”.

Nothing.

Jesus fucking christ. Is it so hard to understand?

His boss saw the struggle, came over, and rang up 2x of the 6 piece meals. For fucks sake. These guys are thicker than pig shit. Why do KFC employ them? Probably for the minimum wage.

Perhaps they should number the menu items so fucked up brainless twat cunts like these employees can’t fuck it up, and the customers don’t have the hassle of having to repeat themselves. Then again, they probably can’t count past 5 anyway (fingers on one hand), and so this system would probably fail abysmally.

The ironic thing is that while in Hong Kong last year, in a McDonald’s restaurant where the staff spoke no English, I was able to order a meal for 2 with several side dishes. My order was understood immediately, and with no repetition. They had a great system where you simply pointed at items on a laminated sheet which had options for everything under the sun, including the “super sizing” options.

If people who speak no English can get things right first time, why can’t the brainless fuckwits in KFC in Woolwich who allegedly speak and understand the fucking English language?

Before getting too carried away, or receiving too many flames, I should state that both my partner and I hold valid zones 1-4 season travelcards.

It all started several months ago when we started a new contract out in Brentford. This meant travelling from Woolwich Arsenal to Waterloo East, walking to Waterloo, and then taking a train to Brentford.

Each day we’d use the readers on the barriers at Woolwich to get the train, and at Waterloo East, go past the ticket inspectors with their card readers to get to Waterloo. These inspectors are ill-trained and ill-equipped to deal with the large number of Oyster card holders. Between them, they seem to only have 2 card readers to deal with virtually a whole deluge of passengers passing them by.

It’s the same story at the gates to get on the train to Brentford, although with less people. The staff are just as uninterested, however, casually talking amongst themselves, and not really paying too much attention to what the card readers report.

It all came to a head last week, when a ticket inspector on the train asked for my card. I gave it to him to scan, and the machine showed a red light and the text “No Oyster Card Present”. He kept at it for about 30 seconds, taking the card out of the wallet, but no luck. It was only when I offered to show him the paper accompaniment that he left me alone. He didn’t actually look at the paper. The same thing happened to my partner who was travelling with me. The inspector insisted his machine was not broken, and poo-pooed my idea that his battery might be flat.

Well – this got me thinking. If his reader wasn’t working or detecting either of our cards, were any?

Over the next few days, I looked at the card readers as I and other passengers went through the checks at Waterloo East and Waterloo, both in the morning and evening. Not one of the readers I saw did anything other than show a red light and say “No Oyster Card Present”. This of course was out of the cards that were scanned – a lot of the time the inspectors just didn’t bother scanning people. I also noticed that they only bothered pulling people over who didn’t proffer their tickets. If you did, half the time they didn’t bother to scan them.

So we decided to start an experiment.

Last Wednesday (November 28th), we both removed our Oyster cards from their wallets, so the wallet contained only the paper slip and photo ID. We did, of course, still travel with the card.

Each day we are inspected 3 times – twice in the morning (once going from Waterloo East to Waterloo, once going from the concourse at Waterloo to the platform), and once in the evening (getting off the train) – while there are inspectors at Waterloo East in the evening, they don’t seem interested in people getting onto trains, only those getting off.

So that’s at least 6 scans per day between my partner and I (sometimes there are spot checks at Brentford or on the train). Since the 28th, we’ve been scanned 58 times. Out of those, very, very rarely have either of us been stopped (on those occasions we produced the card that had mysteriously ‘fallen out of the wallet’, and all was well).

So, the running tally: Us: 56, TfL: 2

So, Ken… if you’re reading this, how about getting:

1) Some Oyster card readers that work,

2) Some ticket inspectors who actually care about doing their job properly in a professional manner, rather than ignoring a lot of the people who walk past,

3) More inspectors at Waterloo East, or perhaps some ticket barriers

After all, if at least some portion of the ticket prices is to counter the revenue lost by fare dodgers, it would only be right to catch more of them to try and keep prices lower.

Of course, any fare dodgers reading this will know all they have to do is have a real Oyster card wallet, and just proffer it to be read, and all will be well. Perhaps this is social engineering at its best?

For example, if I purchased my license on the 1st of July 2007, it would be valid until the 30th June 2008 – giving me 1 whole year of usage for my money. However, if I purchased it on the 31st July 2007, it would still expire on the 30th June 2008 – at the end of 11 calendar months after purchase!

The cost remains the same (£135), but effectively the monthly cost goes up from £11.25 to £12.28, and it also means that I’d have to buy a new license after only 11 months. This may not seem like much, but it adds up. Over a 15 year period, if you mis-timed your initial purchase to the last day of the month, you’d end up buying 2 whole licenses more (an extra £270) – just for a 1-day error of judgement.

Do they publicise this on their website? Is it listed in their FAQ section? Is it fuck.

It’s about time that this con became more well publicised. Perhaps the conning cunts will take heart and openly advertise this on their website. Or perhaps not, given that I’ve known about this for at least 4 years now, and I’m sure it’s been going on for longer. Imagine how much money they must rake in from this duplicity!