I Want The Last Two Hours of My Life Back, LG

I won't explain why I had to complain like this, it's all in the post (and yes I know there are at least two mistakes in there and yes each one is liek a steak hamered in to my chast but the sight helpfully does not let you edit these thangs.)


http://www.lgblog.co.uk/2010/01/lg-customer-service/

It begins...


 

You know it says something about the world today when the only way you can actually reach a major company is via their blog. Ok, so maybe that sounds too much like the deranged rantings of someone who is trying to sound so devastatingly cool that 90% of what they come out with is simply 'Facebook is too commercial nowadays' even when the conversation was actually about the price of timber in the Sudan or the hazards of lions in Scotland... or is that the other way r... never mind. What it does say something about is the company itself.

I am going to take a short break to give you a heads up here, this comment is going to be long, it is going to get seriously wordy and likely go off topic and delve into the realms of robotics, the potential for creating sentient potatoes and the precise meaning of that most hideous of political terms 'Quango', because honestly I have no idea and despite it being explained to me in length a dozen times I still insist it was a character from Banjo Kazooie.

Now, to the matter in hand, I have a pair of Flatron W2242S monitors which up 'til recently have served me beautifully (or as beautifully as a monitor can for anyone without a bizarre fetish that leads to them having a love affair with a laptop and getting banned from PC World). Not long ago however one developed a fault, namely a horizontal line of what looks like something somewhere between dead pixels and screen burn. So I set about digging out the guarantee from the mound of boxes in the garage, thinking that it would be the most difficult and tedious part of the process, if I knew then what I know now I think I would have simply built myself a small nest in amongst the boxes and gone into a catatonic state...

Without wishing to sound melodramatic or to overstate things too greatly... your website is going to bring about the destruction of mankind. I'll develop on that shall I? You know how the evil genius supervillain types from the world of Hollywood always have some sort of back story involving a 'lab accident', or being wronged in some way by a traffic warden that inevitably leads to them hollowing out a volcano and declaring their undying vendetta on mankind by repeatedly attempting to kill British agents? Well... sorry I've now gone so off topic I've lost myself. To put it another way: your website is bad. If LG were say, a small florists or pet dealership that also sold small amounts of fishing tackle and looked very much to passersby like some kind of syndicate run drug front then having a bad website could be overlooked. However LG (which I take it stands for 'Lots Good!') is a major technology company, you can build a phone that goes online and yet you can't manage to build something that 13 year old girls the world over manage to create and fill with photos of puppies and pink things at various degrees of cuteness. See, I warned you this would be long and largely off topic didn't I...

I first sent an email not quite as lengthy as this comment (but vastly more surreal ((on that note I am no longer going to call this a comment but an 'essay', no wait, a 'treatise')))...to the email address listed in the guarantee book only to get an email back moments later that despite being very courteous was deftly to the point (yes I know it was an automated response but I like to treat all emails as if they are from real people, it makes the world a more interesting place and often leads to lengthy debates with web servers at 2 in the morning)...stating that the email address didn't exist, or rather no longer existed. So I set about looking for another on your flash riddled website, my heart sank (seriously not an overstatement this time) when I found that your support had no public email address and that I would need to use the contact form. Now I am aware that this treatise has already become far too long and delved far too deeply into the realms of ridiculousness, so I will endeavour not to explain precisely how much I loathe contact forms but needless to say I was not much pleased at the prospect of shortening my email to just 1000 characters, after all you would not have given Shakespeare just a 1000 words to let him tell you how devious Scottish people are, would you?

Ok, back on topic, if I can actually recall what I was on about... err...

The website, yes. Right, focus... I filled in the contact form, despite having no idea what my model number actually was (I'll get to that in a moment) only to find that the moment I sent it the page ceased to exist entirely, presumably due to some kind of paradoxical event in the space-time continuum. I tried again, but no, the page still crumbled into a fleeting binary digit the moment I set eyes upon it. So I tried the repair request form, but first had to work out exactly what my model number was. The monitor has it branded conveniently in the top corner and it is pasted on the box several times as 'W2242S'. The first time I entered this I was helpfully told that no such model existed, indeed the second and third time I was told it again. Then, lo and behold, the next time it worked, despite typing (in fact, pasting) the exact same model number in.

Now follows a list of the options it gave me, followed by a brief poem to break up the monotony of lots of tiresome model numbers:


W2242S-BF
W2242S-PF
W2242S-SF
W2242S-SF.AEKVQPN (my personal favourite)
W2242S-SF.AEUQQPN
W2242S-SF.ARUVQPN (name of my first hamster)
W2242SM-SF

Is it too much to ask,
to name products en anglais?
In daft numbers you bask,
whilst I drift off in a haze.

My mind these codes do baffle,
came here looking for help,
ended up in a raffle.
This website makes me yelp.


Ok, so Shakespeare I am not but then he never had to contend with the frustration of finding a product number on the back of a monitor (thankfully, or else Hamlet would have taken a bizarre turn). Unfortunately the tangle of wires I call my desk or, when I have had a few, Steve, made digging out the product code as difficult as the boxes in the garage. When I located the silvery sticker I found that it had half a dozen more codes on it which sounded like they could be model numbers. If I were to be pedantic and actually type the model number that the online form asks for I would end up with 'W2242ST' which it would then promptly (in theory anyway, the site was being terrifically slow earlier) tell me does not exist. The PFT.AEKGAVN bit could potentially also be the model number, although it sounds suspiciously like a Russian made assault rifle to me, and the product code without that bit of communist jargon is simply the name that is branded everywhere else. Only at the top does it actually say that my particular monitor is a W2242S-PF, although why it is that is unclear. I had assumed, wrongly, that BF was 'Black Finish', SF was 'Silver Finish' and then I got as far as PF and realised that a 'Pink Finish' monitor would result in the marketing team being sectioned under the mental health act...

I really need to try and wrap this up soon... I entered that code and it asked me to register it, which I did, for both monitors, something, that like washing my hair, I probably should have done years ago. After creating my login and registering them I figured I was moments away from finishing this whole godforsaken exercise but then the site helpfully declined to offer me any means for actually submitting a claim. Every time I entered the monitor model number it simply asked if I would like to register it and examining my already registered products gave me no hint at how to finish this level and move on to the next one, I looked online for a walkthrough (I know it's cheating but I was eager to move on to the boss fight) and then remembered that this was not the latest installment of the popular (though frankly, done to death) Zelda series and was meant to be an online support system.

I decided to try another product to see if I was simply not allowed a claim on these because they were no longer being sold (despite them still being under warranty) so I had a look at your television section on the site. I grabbed the model number of the first one and pasted it into the claims form and then... it told me it didn't exist. Oh for fu... your website just tried to sell me it Mr Claims Form how can it not exist? It's that temporal shifting business at work again isn't it? Oh that crafty space-time continuum and his ineffable contempt for the internet.

Anyway, I tried the second one on the list and it actually offered me a repair thing... shortly before the website very helpfully informed me that I could not do that at this time because the support system was under maintenance... Again, oh for the love of uncharacteristic censorship on the internet, could you not have told me that half an hour ago, you know before I got so angry that I actually considered buying a dog just so I could shout at it for desecrating my garden by means of relieving my stress (though not relieving it all over the roses).

So yes, that is pretty well the entirety of my tale, your website has aggravated me to the point where I am considering simply tippexing over the line of deadness on my screen on the basis that most of what it should be displaying is white anyway.

So how are you going to resolve it? Well I would suggest replacing not just my broken monitor but also the second, perfectly functioning, one on the basis that the replacement will not be the same model and hence will not match (I have a strange feeling it may well be involved in an incident soon anyway). I am not asking for money, sexual favours or a courtesy butler that can read my emails and word documents out to me whilst my monitor is out of service (although I would love to see him trying to describe events in minesweeper through interpretive dance), so I do not think that my request is too much. At the very least I expect this post, sorry, 'treaties', to be published in your training manual under the section 'Dealing with Complaints from Writers', though perhaps 'Dealing with Complaints from Time-Wasting Lunatics' would be more appropriate...

Thanks for your time, now if you could show me to the door...

(Apologies if the formatting has gone all to hell on this but rest assured that is also the fault of your site.)

Monday Night Musings

Ok so it's not Monday in the strictest sense of the word, as strict as one can be about these things that is, frankly the whole week generally blurs into one terrible... blur most of the time anyway. Also I am fairly sure that I have either stolen that title from some magazine/blog that I cannot recall the name of or from several magazines/blogs that I cannot recall the names of. Regardless theft is theft and quantity scarcely seems to work as a defence, as can clearly be cited in the famous case of 'Dave the House Nicker' in which the defendant, Dave, claimed that he could not be 'done' for burglary since he was not stealing mere trinkets from the victims houses but in fact the houses themselves, brick by brick, mortar, foundations, garden (somehow) and all. The case naturally fell down, as did many of the stolen houses, when he claimed that since everything inside the houses, which he had not stolen, were now inside his property then he technically owned them.

Anyway, like the subject of this particular whatever-the-hell-day-it-is musing I fear I have gone somewhat adrift from the plot. I was considering, as I so often do, the fate of one 'Orlando Bloom' star of films and... stuff. The particular stuffette that led me to this consideration was the Pirates of the Caribbean film series, which I have been led to believe he starred in (previously I had considered his role to be portrayed by a very convincing animatronic puppet).

I had noticed, in the course of my watchings, that the character portrayed by 'Mr Orlando' spends a good deal of his time swimming from place to place and jumping/falling off ships, hence leading to him being required to swim from place to place in the first... place. Given his apparent knack for these aquatic acrobatics I have come to conclude that he is a fish. Seems like a simple enough conclusion right? I'm sure it is one many of you have come to before, likely after too much Stilton or some bad eggs but such is the heightened degree to which my mind can process obscure thought I do not need such pollutants to conjure these images (although that Brie was a little... bluer than I care for).

If this story were to end here then that would be that, no revelation would have been revealed, etc. However it appears to me as though Will Turner is not actually a fish, surely the role was not written as such anyway, I get the impression that the part was moulded and changed to fit the style of 'Orlando Bloom' who I have come to conclude must be the fish. Obviously the evidence of him swimming about a bit in a series of films is not enough to convict him and get the fryer heated up, but consider, for a moment, his other 'works.'

He falls out of a Black Hawk in the film of the same name, or the film of that name with 'Down' added after it anyhow. Down in the context of the direction, the direction in which he falls (I believe that is why the film is called such) and not meaning the feathers of a bird, though with the whole 'Black Hawk' thing that conclusion could too easily be drawn. In fact he falls out of a Black Hawk helicopter and not a young bird of prey, though that would have made the film so much better, if not a somewhat dubious factual account of a historical event.

You may ask: 'What has this got to do with fish?' and you would be right to ask it. Well done. Granted it would have been a dead give away that he was a fish had he have been dropped from the talons of a hawk rather than falling from a helicopter but then think about it... What would a fish do in that situation? If you were so inclined to bring a salmon or a small tuna along on a elite military operation and were capable of convincing your sergeant that it was mission critical, perhaps for luring bears out of hiding, then what is the first thing it would likely do? Yes, you've got it: fall out of a helicopter.

Fish can't be trusted in a helicopter, they are unaccustomed to the gyration of the rotor blades and lack the appendages to hold on to the available hand holds. Also they are shit at manning the 50 cal.

Fish fall out of helicopters.

'Orlando Bloom' falls out of helicopters.

'Orlando Bloom' is a fish.

The evidence is insurmountable.


Also he plays an elf in Lord of the Rings and that's obviously just a metaphor for a trout.

Shockingly Startling Facts About Money!

There now follows some little known facts about everyone's favourite subject: money.

Every 10p currently in circulation has at some time been inside a parking metre.

Due to an ancient loophole in the law it is technically illegal to purchase fruit using coins, bank notes or cheques. Credit cards, watermelons and debit cards are not affected by this law.

50p and 20p coins are shaped as such for the sake of the blind who will only pay using these coins and as such are forever cursed with too much small change.

The half penny of the 70's and 80's (that's the one that is slightly smaller than the current 5p, for you younglings) despite actually being smaller and thinner than the penny, used more metal and weighed twice as much. The cause for this anomaly is currently unknown.

Every other 20p currently in circulation has at some time been inside a parking metre.

The £1 and the original £2 coin used a very specific alloy of metal that was found to be highly resistant to heat. This was chosen to prevent Welsh dragons from melting the money in their fiery breath and so devaluing the currency, now that the £2 is back in circulation and no longer made from this metal however there is a serious risk of a full scale financial dragon invasion. Please, for the sake of the country, petition your MP now demanding that all our coins be fireproofed.

Approximately half of the £5, £10 and £20 notes in circulation have traces of cocaine on them, in fact if you wash around £300, collect and then evaporate off the water you are left with somewhere in the region of £30 worth of grade A 'Columbian talcum powder.' Due to the large amounts of sweat, skin cells, ink and general grime that is also collected this product is known on the streets as 'Compost Coke' because of its brown colour and unpleasant smell. Some of the human debris and dirt can be removed using coffee filter paper and distillation but since this is time consuming the mixture is usually just smoked as it stands, or occasionally squirms. After a few repeat washes to get as much cocaine from the notes as possible the perpetrators usually 'launder' the money simply by paying it into a bank and then withdrawing it from another the following day to avoid suspicion. The process can then be repeated and it is in fact possible for a coke riddled hoodlum to feed their addiction entirely from a small stash of money.



People often talk about there being £1000 and £1 million notes used for exchanges between banks and for country to country repayments after the war, in fact the most valuable British note is currently thought to be worth £5 million due to its tremendous rarity.

The note in question is the result of a printing error in one batch of £5 notes back in 1975 where the image of the Queen was accidentally replaced by that of Attila the Hun, the notorious ruler of the Hunnic Empire. The problem was not spotted until most of the notes had already been circulated, this led to vicious and unfounded rumours of the King of the Hun (by this time quite dead) intending to overthrow the monarchy. The error was never officially admitted by the Bank of England but most of the notes were secretly recovered from banks and destroyed. There are currently 5 specimens in museums around the country and some 50 in the hands of private collectors, there are estimated to be about 20 of these notes still unaccounted for, could they be stashed in some forgotten piggy bank or wallet in your house? Go look. Now, go. No? You don't have any of them? Shame.

Paris Hilton in London!

That's right, your eyes are not deceiving you, Paris Hilton, star of.... err, um... renowned for her... made famous by such great... things as... um, because err... Paris Hilton!

Paris Hilton, world renowned person of a notoriously disreputable nature is in London, attending the annual Kruff's Dog Parade (www.kruffs.com for all your kennel and shed needs!). When asked if she would be participating in the contest she was quoted as saying: 'What?' she later went on to say 'Shut up!' and 'What?' a further seven or eight times (reports vary). Finally her manager stepped in and informed the press, and hence the world, that she was going to be judging the competition as well as entering in it in a spectacular display of unfairness. When quizzed as to which of her 25 disgusting, tortured handbag-bound, mistreated, forever suffering poodles she would be entering into the competition her manager explained that she would in fact just be entering herself.

Over the years Paris has been called many things, a socialite tramp, whore, bitch, retarded slut, nobody, The City of Love, The Big Apple, a pretentious stuck up prom-queen wannabe, whore, prostitute and whore. Now however it seems she wants to add 'dog' to her already overflowing repertoire of disgrace.

Since she is somehow adored and idolised by half the world and hated to the point of physically being sick by the other half her attendance will undoubtedly overshadow the entire competition and 300 years of dog parading history will be spoiled like so many disgustingly stained Hilton bedsheets. I remember when you could talk about Kruff's with honour and when you could use the term 'champion dog parader' without simply being laughed at.

In her eternal attempts to sully the world and defile the entire human race Paris Hilton has gone too far and it is time we did something about her. All dog owners the world over must unite and boycott the name of Hilton; we shall not stay in their hotels; we shall not eat their cheap subsidised food; we shall not buy their daughters god awful, ear hemorrhaging CD; we shall not watch their homemade sex tapes and we shall no longer idolise the untalented for simply being rich and outrageous.


It is time that respect and idolatry were reserved for the truly talented like Nicole 'Richie' Rich, Katy Perry, Vanilla IcedT, Stalin, 'RnB' legend Seaman Staines, Rebecca Longington and the rest of the 'Fifteen Minute Squad.'

Branching Out...

I have been told by certain parties that shall remain nameless, owing to a lack of creativity in coming up with names on the spot, that I should really be more in touch with the news and general goings on in the world. Clearly he, or she (I have yet to decide) is wrong but like the old saying goes I figured: 'When in Rome... why not pay the Pope a visit, I hear he rather enjoys tea and scones with passersby, but don't try him on a Wednesday because he gets a bit grouchy after his dialysis and bloodletting treatments, but otherwise pop by any time...'

So I have decided to pay the proverbial Pope a visit and take a look at what is currently going on in the world by reading the BBC website. My my, it is quite a change from my usual reading list of scientific papers, caravaning thesis' and dog enthusiast forums I can tell you!


Robbie Punches Hooligan

For starters I have learned that 'Take That and Robbie confirm tour,' now I can only assume and hope that the writer behind this story was fired shortly after for the obvious grammatical errors, since the BBC have refused to reply to my inquiry on the subject. I presume that what the writer meant to say was '"Take That!" shouts Robbie whilst confirming tour' but alas I cannot be sure. It is a mystery as to why anyone would shout such a thing in any situation other than punching a hooligan for scrawling libelous statements about the police all over your caravan or disciplining a dog with a newspaper for desecrating one's carpet/cherished photo albums/other dogs.


That said I am also at somewhat of a loss as to just what a 'Robbie' is, I went into the story with the natural assumption that he was some kind of semi-fictional crime fighting superhero with 'Take That!' being his catch phrase... however after briefly reading it I am no more enlightened as to his purpose or role in society. Like so many things it remains a mystery.



UK recovery steady, says Osborne

I was most pleased to here this, naturally, despite not knowing what an 'Osborne' is either. We all wish you the best UK, enjoy the grapes, get well soon and give my regards to your family and doctors. That's all I have on that one...



Crows, Crows and More Crows

My eye was caught (in a matter of speaking, fortunately online advertising has yet to develop the means to literally catch one's eye, owing to the lack of opposable thumbs, hands, a physical presence etc) by the story: 'Clever New Caledonian crows go to parents' tool school.'
Now I think I can safely say here that I neither have the slightest idea what the fuck (if you will pardon the rare profanity) this story is about, nor do I have the ability to prevent myself from vomiting up my own spleen, through sheer bloody mindless rage, for long enough to bother finding out. The writer is obviously a timewasting fuckhead with the journalistic skills of a mentally retarded, physically repulsive and venereal disease ridden prostitute who has entirely failed to develop the appropriate skills to suck her way up to the head of the BBC. Merely stumbling off the cock-sucking ladder and breaking every infected rung on the way down to the rat infested sewage pit that is the, not-fit-to-be-called-news, filler section of the BBC.

'It just caught fire'

They are merely the equivalent of the poor, down trodden whore that is forced to service insane, excrement-smeared, racist war veterans in the nursing home of discontent and fear, FEAR! I can only assume that literally nothing else has happened in the world this week to ensure that this story appears on the front page. The numerous wars that American has stumbled into like the down syndrome kid destroying the cake at the party of analogy must have all come to a neat, peaceful conclusion. All the major world religions have finally got over themselves and decided to stop throwing bibles at one another. Even the constant stream of doomsayers that have nothing better to do that to claim, nay insist, that the world is surely going to be blown to pieces very soon by some kind of intergalactic cockrocket (good 80's hairmetal band name that) have at last come to their senses and decided to shut the fuck up. Crows, that is all that is left to report on, officially the age old chain of human progression and endeavour has buckled and snapped like so many poorly thought out metaphors and we have come to a halt.Crows, fucking crows. FEAR!

Additional confusing, out-of-context subtitle

I have never respected the BBC, not after what they did to Saddam Hussein, but now the last, wrinkled up slither of integrity they had has been amputated in some gruesome, medieval, metaphorical cock severing surgery by the insane, rampant, perverted public that they call a fanbase. So filled with wrath at the sheer thought of this story am I that I have been rendered utterly incapable of entirely finishing a proper sentence without it appearing to look like it sounds all wrong and frankly bizarre too, yes. My swear jar is going to be overflowing tonight, to the point where it threatens to fall through the floor of my caravan and be lost to the money-grabbing, illegitimate-snake-in-the-grass, ragamuffin, gypsy-bastard, Gimli son of Gloin, local children.

Ah, much better, now that I have gone blindly off the rails like a train driven by Stevie Wonder, killing hundreds of innocent passengers like so many fury dissolved brain cells, simply at the title, I might actually read the story...