Thank you to all those who sponsored me and helped raise money for the St Andrew’s Hospice – a genuinely good cause, with lovely staff who did a great job in organising today’s fundraiser. With 200+ schoolchildren and staff scrambling up the mountain they made sure everyone was accounted for, shepherded and got home safe. Obviously, the Ben Nevis mountain staff also deserve thanks, as do the St John’s Ambulance staff and everyone at the Ben Nevis Hotel
Top of Ben nevis
who fed and accommodated us at the end of it all. And even let the staff have a free shower!
To paraphrase the great Douglas Adams – the first 1000 feet were the worst. And the second 1000 feet. They were the worst too. The next 1000 were no fun at all. After that I went into a bit of a decline.
Then it started to snow.
Only a slight dusting, but enough to make the stuff which had already been lying somewhat more slippery and the last couple of hundred feet more of a challenge. Up until then, I’d be taking a layer of clothing off every half hour. The sun was out, my balding pate was getting redder and sweat was running down my face.
That last little hike was probably the hardest purely as I had to spend as much time looking for footprints to stand in as I did making sure I didn’t slip backwards more than I walked forwards.
There isn’t a whole lot at the top other than a pair of stone… somethings and a tiny shack. And a great sense of achievement. Oh, and a corking view.
I made it up early enough that the clouds were only just coming in, so managed to see in all directions. The snaps (link at the top) should give you an idea of the incredible scenery on the way up and from the peak.
The journey down was no cakewalk either. As well as the skiddy snow, my legs were somewhat achey. The muscles I used on the way up were very different from the ones I needed on the way down! This was partly a good thing as I had developed a hell of a pain at the top of my left leg – something I’d not had for many years, but that’s because I don’t exercise enough. Going downhill stopped this particular pain, but allowed many others the chance to surface. Joy.
Still, I made it up and back again in a little under 5 1/2 hours, which I’m quite pleased with. The nice staff at the bottom gave me a little medal and – more importantly at that point in time – juice, energy bars and a banana.
A shuttle was taking people back to the hotel where we got to freshen up and fill up on “proper” food before the journey home.
A very hard slog, but all the best things are worth the effort.
If you feel the need to donate to the charity, by all means drop me a quick email or contact them directly via the web link above. I’m sure they’ll be happy to take your money!
The steep south face of Ben Nevis from Sgurr a' Mhà im (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
It’s not often I’ll ask for cash, but I’m doing a sponsored walk up Ben Nevis on May 6th and I need to raise £90 before then. If anyone would be kind enough to sponsor me a few quid, please let me know and we’ll work out how to get the dosh to me.
Obviously, if you’re local then I can just get the cash. Anyone else can probably get it to me via bank transfer or *spit* PayPal. If you’re a UK taxpayer, make sure I get your postcode and house number as well so we can claw more back off the government!
Oh, the cause – it’s St Andrew’s Hospice. Not one I’ve been associated with in the past, but one that the school I currently work at raises a fair bit of money for.
I buy quite a lot from Amazon. I like them. Cheap, convenient, easy to find anything you want… but like any company, their true colours only come to the fore when you try to get money back off them. As I am now discovering.
In January 2011 I bought an Acer Aspire 5742Z laptop. I’m using it right now – just. I like it, still do. Except for one problem. It’s taken to overheating somewhat rapidly and shutting down if I do too much on it. By “too much”, I can mean watching 6 YouTube videos in a row. Or recoding an mp4 video as avi. Or re-encoding a pile of mp3s. Or playing a game. Or opening Chrome with 12 tabs to restore.
Up until around February, this simply wasn’t an issue. I started to notice the machine resetting a bit for no adequate reason. Then I noticed the fan was going mental more than it used to. I did the obvious and checked it for obstructions, gave it a blast out with air, ensured it wasn’t blocked externally, elevated the machine a little more from the flat, hard surface it was being used on and so forth.
None of this helped. In fact, it gradually got worse. I bought an external fan which the machine is currently sat on top of, and installed some core temperature monitoring software (Core Temp v0.99.7, if  you’re interested). This revealed that, while idling (ie around 25-35% CPU tending to background tasks), my CPU was averaging around 70 degrees C. This was with the external fan. It used to idle nearer 40 – 50 degrees without the fan.
Try and run anything processor-intensive and it rises into the 80’s. If it hits 90 the machine shuts down as it is meant to.
This makes it impossible to perform tasks such as video conversion as it powers off before it’s managed to make it through one file.
Basically, it’s broken. There is a fault within the machine that was present when it was purchased which has taken until now to manifest itself, and it is getting progressively worse.
I contacted Acer who told me “Sorry, but it’s out of the 1 year manufacturer’s warranty. We may be able to fix it, but it’ll likely cost you.” Fair enough.
I then contacted Amazon who said “Sorry, but we only give a year’s warranty on electrical goods. Take it to the manufacturer.” This is bullshit.
There’s a little thing called the Sale of Goods Act 1979 (amended 1994) which states that goods should be:
Of a Satisfactory Quality, i.e. of a standard that a reasonable person would consider to be satisfactory – generally free from fault or defect, as well as being fit for their usual purpose, of a reasonable appearance and finish, safe and durable
Fit for the purpose – as well as being fit for the purpose for which they are generally sold, goods should also be fit for any specific or particular purpose made known at the time of the agreement
As described – goods should correspond with any description applied to them. This could be verbally, words or pictures on a sign, packaging or an advert.
These rights are valid for 5 years (Scotland) or 6 years (England / Wales) from the date of purchase, and the responsible party is the retailer not the manufacturer. If an item has become faulty within 6 months of purchase, it’s a no-brainer. After that, it’s the duty of the customer to prove the fault was there at the time of purchase and isn’t the result of accidental damage, negligence, etc.
Of note is the fact that good should be expected to last for a reasonable length of time based on their value, branding and so forth. There is no hard and fast rule under law for that but (and I got this example from another website) a £600 TV should be expected to last more than 18 months, whereas a £12 kettle maybe not so much. I’ve got a £380 laptop that’s started to fail after 13 months and is now unusable for one of the purposes for which I purchased it after 15.
Also of interest is that if an item was bought using a credit card – even if part-purchased e.g. part cash/part credit – the credit card company is also liable. I paid with £60-ish worth of vouchers, but the balance on, ironically enough, an amazon.co.uk branded credit card. I’ll be talking to them tomorrow as well.
Now, I don’t expect a full swap out for a brand new item. I’d be happy with a replacement of the exact same machine. I’d also be fine if they repaired it and covered the costs – to which I am most definitely entitled. I will also insist that my rights are reserved in that should I accept the repair I do not waive my rights to future refunds should those repairs fail.
But in the meantime, I’m trying to talk to a brick wall at Amazon who stated that if I wanted to pursue the matter I would have to raise it via a solicitor.
A solicitor. For a failing laptop which is utterly, totally, in black and white their responsibility under publicly-available British law.
Amazon, you are seriously having a joke.
My jobs tomorrow:
1) Contact Amazon again as I don’t expect them to be back in touch though they said they would be
2) Contact Acer again to see if they’ll do an out of warranty repair – you never know. If they refuse to do it for free, then get a quote.
3) Contact the credit card company and inform them of the situation
4) Contact Citizen’s Advice and the Trading Standards offices
5) Get hold of some papers for Small Claims
… in that order.
So just a word of warning, folks. If you buy electrical goods via Amazon, don’t expect them to be aware of your consumer rights. In fact, expect them to lie outright to you down the phone and claim you don’t have any rights and that any attempts to utilise said rights will have to involve you paying for a solicitor.
Updates as they occur.
UPDATE
A lot of what I was going to mention was posted by Chris in the Comments. Amazon Europe is based in Luxembourg and therefore come under European Law. The Sale of Goods Act supercedes those regulations as it’s actually more restrictive and beneficial to the consumer, but should a retailer argue that they’re not within the UK (which is actually no argument at all) then they still fall within European legislation.
Amazon have already been “spoken to” by the Luxembourg government for being… well… **** as far as customer care is concerned. However, this seems to have had no affect, and the authorities don’t seem to have bothered exacting any of the punishments they legally could. As such, Amazon are continuing in their merry way, pissing on customers.
I wrote to Amazon and explained to them what I would do:
1) Check with Acer in case it was a known fault with the unit, in which case there was a chance they would repair it (outside of warranty) for free
2) Otherwise, check with a local repair shop as to the problem and any possible solution. Obtain a quote and expect it to be dealt with by Amazon as per my rights under the Distance Selling regulations
3) If no luck was forthcoming, take my quote to the Small Claims Court and just wait for them to sort it out
Amazon’s response was a strange one. They offered me £57 in Amazon vouchers or a £76 refund. I think, though this wasn’t made clear, that the refund option would involve me sending them my laptop. They claimed this was a good will gesture in recompense for a laptop that had been used for 16 months (the warranty is for 12), and in no way was them agreeing to my terms. They believed (my arse) that they had no responsibility within the laws mentioned to resolve any issues.
As it turned out, I could get the unit opened and fixed for around £65 (it was a fault with the unit, present as a result of manufacturing error), which I did and claimed the £57 in vouchers. I made it clear that I reserved the right to contact them again should further faults appear and that I was not accepting the vouchers in lieu of their responsibilities, but as payment for them as they were legally obliged to recompense me for the repair.
Amazon responded that they were mistaken with the original amounts and increased the vouchers to £76 which were credited to my account shortly thereafter.
I just don’t get this. They refuse to admit liability (although they are, in law, liable) and then give me more than I claimed as recompense.
Surely it would make more sense economically to give me the amount I claimed (cheaper for them) and from a business point of view to make a customer happy by saying “yes, of course” in the first place?
Like Chris, I am now wary about using Amazon for large purchases. A shame – for them – as I’ve never had such an issue before and, in fact, bought a lot such stuff from them in the past. Well done on being dicks and rattling a very loyal customer, Amazon. Seriously stupid.
Number two in my occasional little “ooh, I forgot how good this album is†series is Testimony of the Ancients by Dutch band Pestilence. I’ve got it on my phone and it gets regular plays in the car.
The history behind the band and album is interesting. Without repeating too much of the Wikipedia entry (worth a read – it’s not too long), the band went through a lot of line-up changes. With each change and each album (up to and including their fourth and last for an extended period, Spheres), their music style ducked and dived considerably. Testimony of the Ancients is their third and, in my opinion, not just their best but one of the best death/thrash albums I’ve ever heard.
It’s a novel piece of work with an unusual sound to it. Not as fast as some thrash, but with more tempo and less of a tinny, treble-y sound than a lot of death albums of that era. Simply, the production is superb. Given that it’s a Scott Burns job, this isn’t really that surprising if you have a look at the list of classics he worked on.
Each main track is separated from the next by an unusual atmospheric “outroâ€. These range from half a minute to just over a minute long and could be used in the soundtrack for a horror-based video game. A nice little extra to throw on there.
What makes TotA such a good album, in my opinion, is its accessibility. It’s easy to listen to and an excellent portal into the world of death metal. Along with Death’s Spiritual Healing (also a Scott Burns production), it’s amongst the first albums of this genre I heard and I still listen to both frequently.
I recall seeing Pestilence at Graspop a couple of years ago and they were superb, playing a fair part of their set from this album. I also swear I have a ticket from the early 90’s somewhere which tells me I saw them at the Riverside in Newcastle possibly before this album came out. So many bands, and too small a brain to retain all the memories!
Having lauded such praise on it, it’s a shame to then say that I wasn’t impressed with follow-up Spheres, which melded the likes of jazz fusion with the death metal sound. It just didn’t work for me. The band broke up for 16 years after that one and have since recorded two more albums I wasn’t aware of. Time for a dig in the online shops…
“While the western world uses Fahrenheit as its temperature of choice…”
*face palm*
*seeing red*
*attempts not to paint all Americans with the same brush*
My response to them:
“While the western world uses Fahrenheit as its temperature of choice…” – sorry, but bullshit. The USA is not the total sum of the western world, only a small part of it. Europe uses Celsius, and it’s very much a part of this western world.
Population of Europe: 731 million
Population of USA: 307 million
On that basis, the USA is a minority shareholder in determining what temperature scale is “of choice” in the western world. Add to that the population of South America – on the same landmass as the USA, but also using Celsius these days – and your comment looks even more ludicrous.
In fact, let’s refer to Wikipedia (I know, I know – it’s not 100% accurate) which states that ” The temperature scale [Fahrenheit] was replaced by the Celsius scale in most countries during the mid to late 20th century, but it remains the official scale of the United States, Cayman Islands and Belize.”
So your “western world” consists of three nations with a combined population of approximately 735 million out of a world population of 7 billion, the rest of whom use Celsius.
Stop being so self-important and realise there is a whole world beyond your borders who aren’t quite so caught up in themselves.
