Well, for those who go off recomendations when deciding to use a new company, here’s one to avoid - thedigitalcamerashop.co.uk. This is my story of why.

On the 25th of Feb 08, I placed an order with thedigitalcamerashop.co.uk for a Slik Pro 700 DX and a Manfrotto 676B Monopod. Total cost was £117.89. The online shop didn’t have a live stock system so I had no idea if either of the items were in stock, that wasn’t really and issue as I reaslise that small businesses can’t have the same or similar setups as some of the larger online shops + waiting for a week or two wasn’t really an issue either!

A few days later, a parcel arrived for me Prompt delivery I thought. Upon opening the package, I realised that I’d only had sent to me, the Slik tripod. So, the next day I called up to enquire about the Monopod as I hadn’t had any notice that the Monopod was out of stock - or so I thought. The person who took my call was pretty rude and after I’d quoted my reference number ‘kindly’ pointed out to me that it was printed on the bottom of the delivery note that the Manfrotto would be delievered in a few days due to a lack of stock. FIne I thought, I got the main item I was after and as mentioned before, I could wait a few days.

A few days came and passed, no Manfrotto and no contact from thedigitalcamerashop.co.uk, something I later find out not to expect from thedigitalcamerashop.co.uk, no contact that is - oh and no Manfrotto either but more the lack of contact

Weeks later and no frotto still, no contact still so I thought, hey, I’ll check on the status of the order so again I gave thedigitalcamerashop.co.uk a quick call only to find out that, surprise surprise, they didn’t have it and still didn’t know when it was going to turn up. At this point I just cancelled the remainder of the order and went into Jessops and bought one.

Some months later I was checking through my bank statements and thought I’d make sure the refund had gone through for the Manfrotto knowing what thedigitalcamerashop.co.uk was like with their lack of contact. Fail, they hadn’t refunded me! So again, I called and this time got voicemail, time, after time during that day. No phone call back and to be honest, I very much doubt I would have got one so I emailed them to ask them what was going on. At this point they were quick to respond - with a basic apology and a promise to refund me the remaining balance of the order. Great, I also asked them to refund me the delivery cost for the order due to the 5 months they’ve now had my money for the order with no contact on what was happening.

22nd July 08, They responded, yipee! They agreed to refund me the cost of the Manfrotto - how could they not but they totally ignored my request for the delivery charge to be refunded so I emailed them again, asking once more, for the delivery cost to be refunded, to this day, they’ve ignored that email as well.

So, in short, avoid buying from thedigitalcamerashop.co.uk, they DO NOT contact you when asked or to give you any updates on orders which don’t get processed immediately, they have no idea about customer service and don’t seem to care one bit.
DO NOT USE thedigitalcamerashop.co.uk!

Bookmark It

Hide Sites

If you would like to sponsor me then fire a paypal donation my way to paypal@lathwood.co.uk and I will cover the paypal costs.

Thanks,

Bookmark It

Hide Sites

If you were planning to come down anyway then come and say hi, if you weren’t why not pop in and say hi. We’re on stand E142 and should have a pretty decent setup with a few things going on.

Bookmark It

Hide Sites

Some companies are now making a big deal out of advertising that they don’t send your calls to anywhere other than say, your local branch like the Natwest do. Having today had to deal with, only briefly mind, but that was long enough, a company who have outsourced their support centre to India, it left me thinking that I could never even remotely consider outsourcing the support team I have to India. After the two calls I made with little joy in getting the information I needed, I didn’t know what else to do! The first phone call that I had the luck of having to make ended with me thinking that you wouldn’t want that type of company managing or having anything to do with your company. I called an 0871 number to speak to someone in support to try and get a number redirect working, when I was told that they couldn’t assist because basically they didn’t understand what it was I was referring to, they asked me to redial and press the same option I had for the current call!!!

I stated that surely that would just get me back through to them again and was told, “maybe”?!?! Unbelievable - but I tried anyway
So what happened, well I’m sure you can guess, I called, pressed 1 for support and got a lovely person on the end of the phone - from the same call centre. So went through the same thing as before to see if I got anyone else with at least some clue. Of course that didn’t work and I should have hung up a long time ago, or not even bothered to actually call them back in the first place.

To top all of this off as well, not only could I not speak to someone who understood our account and knew what I wanted or could point me in the right direction but the website for the company had zero contact details that were of any use or actually allowed me to speak to someone in the UK. Not what I would call customers service at all!

Bookmark It

Hide Sites

8. Use of Your Content

a. Adobe does not claim ownership of Your Content. However, with
respect to Your Content that you submit or make available for inclusion
on publicly accessible areas of the Services, you grant Adobe a
worldwide, royalty-free, nonexclusive, perpetual, irrevocable, and
fully sublicensable license to use, distribute, derive revenue or other
remuneration from, reproduce, modify, adapt, publish, translate,
publicly perform and publicly display such Content (in whole or in
part) and to incorporate such Content into other Materials or works in
any format or medium now known or later developed.

For now, I’d recommend avoiding using the service until they resolve this which they are doing according to sources.

Bookmark It

Hide Sites

Do your part!

Bookmark It

Hide Sites

I’ll try and give it a whirl this weekend and post my thoughts.

It’s good to see software companies embracing online technology other than google, it seems to be the way a lot of things are going nowadays but how it will all work out is still anyone’s guess!

Bookmark It

Hide Sites

Microsoft seem to be getting more right nowadays, some of the new features being released indicate that things are definitely changing for the better, this could easily change though and it’s not the first time that Microsoft has made promises both before and during a launch only to be shot down due to bugs/faults in the release. One thing that they have ventured into but from the talks don’t seem to have got quite right is the new Windows Server 2008 Core install, this new install version will give you a non-gui CLI only Windows installation - I can only assume to be able to compete with *nux. However, they have failed to be able to provide ASP extensions meaning that all you can do is server static content or run PHP. Now this might be good for those who do only code static pages (are their anyone who still do this?) or run PHP, however the lack of ASP extensions means that Windows developers are really going to stick with the standard GUI interface to be able to run the apps they develop. This seems to defeat the object of having a CLI version as if I want to run PHP then I’ll just stick a Linux box online to do that job!

They do however have a lot going on with their new HyperV technology which looks particular interesting with the ability to manage other vendors Virtualisation software such as Xen and VMware. The interface for managing installs of this seems extremely simple and well thought out which could come as a shock to those used to running Virtuozzo (or parallels server virtualization as it is now know as)  due to the, well lets put it simply, completely crap interface they provide!

Something else that they seem to be incapable of doing is converting fault / log id’s into text, they demo’d to us how you can now enable full auditing when running a DC, as the demo showed, when you disable or enable an account in the DC, it now logs that this has been done and according to the person showing us, code 62345 (made that code up but it’s like that) means the account has been enabled, ffs, why not just tell us that rather than having us look through a bunch of codes to find out it’s meaning?

All in all it was a good day, very informative and well presented. The free drinks and chocolate bars seemed to go down very well which is not surprising with a building full of 1000+ geeks! They also laid on a spread for lunch in the expo area which is the first time I’ve seen that been done although the food wasn’t exactly the best

Bookmark It

Hide Sites

They didn’t just have the one sizable office that you might imagine, they had 3 all next to one another in a U shape, each building was a pretty decent size and comparable to a full size football pitch with 2-3 floors. We were there for a seminar day on the Cisco WAE and the Cisco ACE but expecting more of a sales pitch than anything else. From the moment you walk in and sign the guest book, your shown where you need to go by a receptionist as they had around 2 or 3 at the desk! The seminar was really technical and turned out to be one of the better ones I’ve been on as for once, it didn’t turn into a sales pitch

Lunch was brought round to us with a mixture of sandwiches, pies and free drinks from a fridge stocked with a variety of different soft drinks and bottled water. During lunch I bumped into our what I suppose you would call account manager for Cisco who spent 10 minutes seeing how business was going before HAVING to show me one of their teleconference rooms which he described before we got in as 24 like He wasn’t wrong and looking back I wish I had asked to take a photo just to show you how this hasn’t been done by half. 3 40″+ plasma screens surrounded a bank of cameras for viewing who you would be on a conference call with, speakers placed around the desks would have enabled around 6-8 people to participate in a conference call from this office alone. It was truly amazing and we chatted briefly about possibly ripping out our new phone system to go Cisco……

After the seminar I promptly headed to reception to book a taxi to take us back to Heathrow T1 (which I’m currently still sat in :(), reception kindly informed me that a free taxi would be around in 10 minutes to take us back and pointed me in the direction we needed to wait - the only bad thing I had to say about the experience was that it would have been nicer to wait inside as it was freezing out

Me being chuffed at being at the Cisco office.

Bookmark It

Hide Sites

Either this wasn’t the case and I was being a bit paranoid, or we really are that good - for those of you who are customers of ours then I will let you decide that but I definitely would like to think the way the company is run, the support that we offer and the way we are always striving to improve and take on criticism as a growing business has a lot to do with it. Obviously I am going to be biased towards where I work but that also means I have first hand experience of the work and dedication that the staff put in, especially the support team who do go above and beyond the call of duty to help clients get to where is needed.

Our MD, Lawrence Jones accepted the award and thanked the team behind making things happen but I do have to say - couldn’t wish for a better person to work for. The amount I have learned as time has gone on with regards to performing the role I have within the company is amazing, having come from pretty much a full technical background with a bit of management experience has meant it’s been a strange but interesting learning curve which I’m sure is going to continue……..

Bookmark It

Hide Sites