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Category: Cycling

  • The fun of eBay (as a buyer) – not!

    As both sides, I’m a seller and a buyer and I can understand how frustrating it sometimes can be. I try to retain my 100% so far positive feedback and I don’t really want to leave negative feedback. However, I had one experience today that makes me wonder on both sides. I brought an item for £25 – a tablet computer or Linx 8 in relation to the previous post, my bag can’t take a laptop or even the tablet I did buy when I start cycling! (If anyone has any suggestions that won’t throw the bike out of balance, please let me know.)

    So, I got a message this morning, this is what it said with my replies (the seller id has been omitted for clarity and to protect the “innocent”):

    Colour code, seller and my responses

    “hello. My wife has fallen tablet out of hand when he wanted to pack up and now no longer open. I’m really sorry and will give back the money. thanks for understanding.”

    (refund issued straight away)

    “Please elaborate? Your sentence doesnt make sense” (I should of corrected myself and added doesn’t.)

    “It has fallen to the ground when put it in his box”

    “Any visible damage?”

    (then a couple of seconds later:)

    “Are you able to send a photo to put my mind at rest please? It should show the damage”

    One thing I don’t tout a lot although my colleagues at my workplace know all to well, how good I am with computers, I worked in a computer shop, stripped several laptops and desktops, in recent times, I’ve even dealt with phones (I don’t want to do that again, they are just too fiddly). So I know what I’m doing most of the time. I try to go for 100% success rate, but more like 90%. I also know how to run complicated networks, even a thin client network which I have started a small scale one. Anyway, his reply:

    “No visible damages. I’m work now, this evening I send you photo.”

    Lets see what he produces later.

     

    First thing is first, why didn’t he message me and send something like “I do apologise, I have a slight issue with the tablet. While we were packing your tablet computer for shipping, we dropped it. The issue at the moment is I don’t get anything on, I can send you a photo of the damage if you want or when you get it and you aren’t happy with it, I can issue you a refund. What would you like me to do?”
    Simple, effective and helpful, its communication. This person assumed I don’t want it straight away and issued a refund which gets me suspecting something dodgy, but I cannot prove it yet. Communication can solve a LOT of issues. You’ll notice that I asked for photos, I would of sent one as soon as they requested one, that would be the avoidance of doubt and OK, my reputation would take a hit but at least in this instance, I was tempted to leave negative feedback. We will see.

  • Oh how I missed cycling.

    Here is one for you, last time I cycled (properly!) was something like 3 years ago. I used to cycle a lot, then I learnt to drive, then I actually drove (and had to endure the Chichester to Portsmouth daily commute by train which has got worse over time and no longer a train at the moment – its a bus some of the time!), then I used my bike and car together, then someone as mentioned earlier somehow broke my bike! Then brought another car, then another car, then another… it goes on until I ended up with more cars than I could think what to do with.

    13901462_10153616340277352_3778878860613529992_n

    Today I had no real choice, Mr Charles Horton’s company, GoVia Thameslink Railway or (New) Southern Railway for us that don’t live on the Thameslink patch have absolutely positively and utterly no service. I know the parties to blame but I’m not going to publicly say in this blog! I orignally feared for the worse as I dragged out the white rusty monster and looked for the lock, detached everything that wasn’t necessary and started making my way, with nerves… oh fuck it, shall I just take the sodding car? I resisted and resisted, even called my dad to see if he thought it was going to rain, he confirmed not. So I mounted the saddle and pedalled into traffic then lost control of my rear brakes!

     

    After about 10 yards, my nerves were gone and thought, “lets see how my 30 and a bit legs can propell me” as I headed up towards “New Fishbourne AHB” level crossing. Seems like I still can go quite fast, in fact keeping up with traffic even though I was on a race bike, if the computer was right and the bikes computer calibrated correctly, I managed in my unfit state to attain 23.28mph. BUT with a problem, now I stunk of sweat and visiting my local Tescos only attained a lot of odd looks and embarrassment of sweat. At least its a way of loosing weight. Today’s cycle was only 2.2 miles, but 2.2 miles is better than zero. I think I got a new years resolution next year, keep track of my bike mileage and attain 600+ miles plus throughout the entire year. It sounds a lot, but it isn’t if you work it out by the day. About a mile and 3/4 by quick maths. Here to Chichester is nearly 2 depending on the route and this at least should help me loose a lot of weight and reduce my car dependency.

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