Peter Viney's Blog

Hamlet review (National Theatre) added under Film & Theatre reviews.

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People Who Get Up Your Nose

#1   in a long series: The eBay Seller

Picture the scene. Your local post-office. There are people working behind four counters and a single queue system.

One of the people has a CLOSED sign and is mildly and slowly sorting out some paperwork. You’d think there’d be a back-office to do it, but no, do it behind a CLOSED sign with a line of people in the queue stretching out to the street. It has to be done, but not so annoyingly in view of the public, who are entitled to think, ‘Look at the queue! Do it later.’

The person behind the second counter has just put up the CLOSED sign to go for lunch. It’s 12.30 when everyone is trying to use the post-office in their lunch break. If you were starting post offices from scratch as a business, you might say “no staff lunch breaks between 12.00 and 1.30.” Harsh? People who work in catering live with it.

The third counter arouses our sympathy. An elderly lady has two Christmas cards to go to the United States. They’re explaining that the first card is 97p postage, but as the second is 61 grams, it’s going to be a  whopping £1.98. She hadn’t realized the difference in size (slight) and weight when she chose the card. She also wants to buy this year’s Christmas stamps for the UK. Wallace & Gromit. Cracking! Only the stamps and images are so tiny that she can’t see what they are. What’s the point of commissioning artwork, then printing it too small for people to enjoy?

Then we look at counter four. The cheerful eBay seller. He or she has two large square bottomed canvas bags, groaning with parcels. They’re going across the counter one at a time, and some have to be Recorded Delivery (Signed for), and all of them need a certificate of posting. Cheerful eBay seller is on friendly terms with the counter staff. Why not? They’re mainly used to paying out money to people, so taking money in is positive. Cheerful eBay seller spends 45 minutes in the post office twice or three times a week. Of course, Cheerful eBay seller could buy a home franking machine, and pay the post charges electronically, but then that leaves rather a large trail for the Inland Revenue, currently taking a long hard look at eBay businesses (as well as everything else). So Cheerful eBay seller simply “hogs” the post office and creates long queues. That IS the post office’s business, and Cheerful eBay seller is spending a fortune with them (without eBay and amazon and online business generally, the post office would have collapsed in terminal unprofitability five years ago), but it’s the “mixed use” which causes resentment. They have needed for years to separate out their businesses, which are (a) being an agency for government transactions and (b) helping people post letters and parcels. They’re not the same business. Within the “post office” business they need to sort out the “commercial user” (eBay seller) and ordinary user (elderly person buying a stamp). The first is important to their survival, but shouldn’t be mixed in with the second.

Far worse is Miserable eBay seller. I watched him last week for the whole twenty minutes I was in the queue. He was having a long mobile phone conversation, simply handing parcels and packets over when the counter person said “next one”. No eye contact, no conversation. The person serving him must have felt like a machine. I couldn’t cope with such customer rudeness. I’d have to say, “Either you’re posting stuff or making a phone call. Decide which!”

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The experience of sales bullshit is repeated every time you buy something. I’ve been keeping my Xerox printer going for a year with horrible streaks, constant jams and the door falling off daily, hoping to use up the existing ink supplies, as the new bits I need cost more than a new printer. The ink in mine came in great big 11,000 page cartridges, and so I wanted to get the fullest use, but the cyan ran out (it continued to work for 8 weeks after it told me to replace it though), then this week the yellow ran out. The cyan reached a critical point and now it will only print in black and white. It’s also jamming three times a day. So off I set to buy a new one. A little research online told me that a similar specification new Xerox cost £349 + VAT (a fraction of what I paid for the old one).

So to Staples. I looked at the printers on show. High-gloss black is the colour of choice for 90% of models. 100 sheet capacity. 150 sheet capacity. Cartridge life 200 pages (or on one, just 65 pages).  It’s obvious that like early Kodak Brownie cameras with film, they sell the printers at cost, or a loss, in the hope of selling ink. The biggest they had was a Brother at 150 sheets storage and 2200 page ink capacity. The equivalent Xerox is 530 sheets storage and 6500 ink capacity from solid ink pellets. I thought my Xerox was flimsy (the door falling off constantly aids that impression) but compared to the Brother, it’s built like a tank. I was about to leave when the hovering salesman got to me.

Salesman:  Are you looking at printers?

Me:  Yes, but I’m not looking for a home one. I want an office one.

Salesman: These are office ones.

Me: Right, but 150 sheet capacity isn’t office size.

Salesman: It’s the biggest you can get.

Me: Office ones take a ream.

Salesman: What’s a ream?

Me: (and this place sells paper!) It’s a block of 500 sheets of paper. You’ve got lots of them over there.

Salesman: (sharp intake of breath) Two thousand pounds.

Me: What?

Salesman: That’s what it costs for a printer like that.

Me: £349 plus VAT for the Xerox.

Salesman: Does it fax?

Me: Fax?

Salesman: All these are fax machines too.

Me: I don’t want a fax machine.

Salesman: Very useful. Fax machines. You can send documents to people over the phone line, you know.

Me: I haven’t sent a fax in ten years. When I had a fax machine, I got twenty faxes a day trying to sell me fork-lift trucks.

Salesman: And scanners. They’ve all got built-in scanners.

Me: I’ve got a scanner. A proper scanner.

Salesman: This one’s got a telephone in it. With a two hundred number memory. And a little LED display so you can see what it’s printing.

Me: I can see that on the computer screen.

I didn’t wander away this time. He did.  So online you go. Next day delivery, and yet another retail business gets another nail in its coffin. I know why they don’t sell big Xerox or HP printers … if they did, their ink sales business would be seriously dented.

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Review added under Film & Theatre reviews.

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Review added of the film (see film and theatre reviews)

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