Simon Pearson - minor9th.com

An email to Barclays Cycle Hire

posted in London

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And now for an even more boring post than usual: I’ve recently had a pretty crummy customer experience with Barclays Cycle Hire (often dubbed Boris Bikes). The TL;DR is that I used a bike for journey which they believe I did not complete, charged me £150 and have since been pretty useless through the process of me trying to resolve the situation.

Below is the record of my recent email of complaint to them, updates will be posted here for others in a similar situation (I’m sure there are plenty).

——-

Saturday, April 28 2012, 7:27pm:

To: Contact @ Barclays Cycle hire, CC Caroline Pidgeon, Chair of the London Assembly Transport Committee

“Hello,

I’m writing to complain about an experience I’ve recently had with the Cycle Hire scheme.

I am a member of the scheme, however in February of this year my access fob became faulty so I made a couple of journeys on credit card whilst I waited for my new fob to arrive.

On February 23rd I took a journey from Macclesfield Road off City Road at about 9pm to Cartwright Gardens in Bloomsbury. I docked the bike and nothing untoward happened (I am a frequent user of the scheme so aware of the docking / undocking requirements). I happened to notice in March after looking at my credit card bill that I had been charged £150 by TFL on February 26th. I called the call centre in late March to request a refund. I was told I would be notified of the outcome within two weeks. I never received a phone call, so I spoke to the call centre again this week on Tuesday 24th April. I was told my refund request had been declined and that someone should have been in contact with me to explain. This had not happened, so I requested to speak to a team leader. I spoke with someone called Maria who was very polite and understanding, and told me she was investigating the case. She called back in the afternoon to say she didn’t have resolution but promised to call back on Wednesday.

I didn’t receive another phone call, so I phoned the call centre again on Friday 27th April and spoke with Mustafa, who informed me that whilst the journey had now been closed (by operator), the bike I used had not been registered on the system (the bike number he told me was 14544) and that my refund request had been declined.

Now I understand that when I hired the bike I agreed to the terms and conditions of the service, but I am 100% sure that I re-docked the bike. As I mentioned I am a regular user of the scheme so I know my way around the bikes & docks well. The problem we have here is that I cannot prove that I docked the bike (without trying to find CCTV footage or similar), and you cannot prove that I did not (there are well documented cases online of users who have docked their bike, received a green light and still been charged).

I’m upset for two reasons:

- firstly that this happened in the first case as I now fear using the scheme with my member fob in case I am charged an enormous amount of money – enough to buy a new bike, indeed – for using the scheme as intended. Surely this isn’t what you want for your customers.
- secondly the communication about my case has been extremely poor – despite leaving contact details each time I have called, I have had to chase and push constantly until the final admission that my refund claim has been declined by TFL for a second time.

Could you please advise how I can appeal this decision and get my money back, and also ask what steps you have taken to attempt to locate the missing bike (which I did not steal).

Simon Pearson”

—

Saturday 28 April, 2012, 7:33pm

From: Enquiries (Barclays Cycle hire)

“Thank you for your email. We will respond to your enquiry within five working days.

Regards,

Barclays Cycle Hire”

—

Saturday 28 April, 2012, 7:49pm

From: Caroline Pidgeon

“Simon

I’ll take this up on Monday

Best wishes

Caroline
Caroline Pidgeon AM”

—

Monday 30 April, 2012, 4:49pm

From: comments@barclayscyclehire.tfl.gov.uk

“Our Ref: 101001156924/ KA

Dear Mr Pearson

Thank you for your enquiry dated 24 April 2011 [SP: was actually 2012], regarding a Refund Request of £150 for a Late Return Charge taken from your debit/credit card.

We have considered the points you had raised when contacting our centre regarding a cycle journey on the 23 April 2012 [SP: was actually 23 February 2012] from Macclesfield Rd, St Lukes.

Upon investigation we can confirm that the circumstances that you have described do not meet the required criteria for refunding a Late Return Charge in accordance with our Refund Policy.

However on this occasion as a gesture of goodwill TfL have used their discretion and are willing to provide a total refund of £150 for the Incurred Late Return Charge.

Please note that this is a gesture of goodwill and does not set precedence. Should these circumstances occur in the future we will not be liable to refund this charge in accordance with our Refund Policy and the Terms and Conditions for use of Barclays Cycle Hire.

All approved refunds should be processed within 5 working days, please check your online account during that time to see if the refund has gone through.

To avoid facing charges of a similar nature please check if you receive a green light when docking your cycle. If you do not please call us on 0845 026 3630 where one of our Customer Service Representatives will be able to check your cycle has been correctly docked.

Should you require information regarding any other scheme related matter, please refer to our website www.tfl.gov.uk/barclayscyclehire. Alternatively, you may also contact us using the details below, where one of our Customer Service Representatives will be happy to assist you.

We hope you continue to enjoy using the Barclays Cycle Hire scheme.

Yours sincerely

Rebecca Kelly”

—

So it appears that I have success, though no more information on why my case does not meet their requirements for refund. I will keep an eye on my credit card to see if the refund actually gets processed. My recommendation to those in a similar situation is to go public with the correspondence as I have here.

Tap tap…

posted in London

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Is this thing on? So cold, so blue, so quiet…

Sweating through early summer

posted in Keeping Fit, London

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The weather’s hotting up, the running’s been continuing and I’m making reasonable progress, having run 61Km this month in all kinds of weather. The low point was a particularly windswept 7k in Finsbury Park in which I got absolutely soaked and shat on by a bird with greeny-coloured poo.

Today’s run was the longest so far – a 9-miler around Regent’s Park and Primrose Hill. All felt good, but the strength of the sunshine and the 22°C heat left me sprinting for the shade and wondering how those folk running ultramarathons in the desert cope. It’s surprising the difference even a couple of degrees makes.

Right. I deserve cider.

Two whole weeks off in London

posted in London

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The last time i had two consecutive weeks to myself was a very long time ago. Even at university, when only 30 weeks a year were spent in lectures, there wasn’t ever a time when I wasn’t staying up doing overnight recording sessions to finish off my portfolio or checking other people’s data entry to make ends meet.

So from Friday, aside from a visit to my family up in Wales, I’m pretty much free as a bird, with all of credit-crunched London at my disposal.

What’s a boy to do?

Victoria line closures in iCal format

posted in London, Travel

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I recently moved to Finsbury Park, and luckily the weekends have been nice enough to afford drinking tea outside on our teeny teeny little roof terrace thingy. Tea good.

Victoria line being off is a slight nuisance though, and it causes all kinds of woe when people want brave the tube and come round to share in said tea.

Because I’ve yet to find one, I’ve created an iCal of the closures up to November on the Victoria line only, compiled from the not overly parseable pdf of planned track closures on their site.

The next things I will do with this are:

• Add evening closures
• Write to tfl and ask them nicely to provide their own iCal version of the skanky pdf document of closures on tfl.gov.uk
• Update the calendar to include closures to March 2009 done
• Add the others lines’ closures (whilst waiting for tfl to do their own thing)

Download the Victoria line closures calendar (iCal) now

Update March 1st, 2009: the calendar now includes all closures through to November 2009.

Who’d live in a house like this?

posted in Life, London

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Over the last month or so I’ve been flat-hunting extensively, crossing the threshold of various abodes listening to the same estate agent spiel.

Sadly the experience was nothing out of the ordinary, and despite what anyone says, garden flats will always be a bit dark; rooms remain the same size regardless of which way around you put the bed; if there are bars on the window there’s probably a good reason why; 15 minutes walk from the tube normally means 15 minute bus ride.

But most entertainment has come from dodgy ads on Gumtree, where property marketing through exquisite photography is the name of the game. These pictures represent just a few of the classy pads on offer in London this August.

Being an estate agent places stringent demands on the memory – it’s a job where the turnover of faces is high. But our charming, gelled-up letting agent Dan should really have realised that when I’m about to part with a large wodge of cash I’d rather not have my hand shaken by someone who calls me Peter.

Luckily we’ve found somewhere a little more inspiring than the above. And this post is the sole result of acute procrastination from packing.

• Check out more bad property listings…
• I customised a basic Yahoo! pipe to filter Gumtree rental ads by location. With a bit of tinkering it should work for whoever wants it. Unfortunately their RSS feed isn’t sophisticated enough to also filter by price – if anyone knows how to do this I’m all ears!

Boris vs Ken: is this really happening?

posted in London

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Not normally one to comment on politics, but the London mayoral election race just seems so much closer than it ought to. I mean. Really. Boris Johnson? As mayor? For real? Is anyone really going to vote for him? With that hair?

• Johnson vs Livingstone: it’s now on a knife-edge
• Stop Boris

Hamlet on a Sunday

posted in London, Theatre

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If you’ve a spare tenner next weekend get your ass along to The Factory theatre company’s Hamlet. It takes place in a different London venue each week with cast members playing different characters. There are no props other than those provided by the audience, which on my visit yesterday included a barbie doll, sponge, mop, water cooler bottles, a glow stick, a giant leek and rubber chickens, among other things. I took along a recorder which ended up being Hamlet’s sword.

It was a really engaging couple of hours – I spent the whole time on the edge of my (constantly moving) seat.

More praise:

• A very different version of Hamlet – Times online
• Richard Godwin getting his plays muddled up – Evening Standard

The sounds of early 2008

posted in London, Music

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Here are a few things I’ve been listening to so far this year – I’m on the look out for some new aural stimulation, and trusty last.fm recommendations can only go so far before you need a bit of good old word-of-blog, so if you have a minute let me know what’s been floating your musical boat in the comments…

The Fourers

Sing-along pop/rock – Next To Nothing has me adding my own questionable vocal harmonies. In the shower. Whilst my housemate’s friends cower in the bedroom next door. They do fall into the indie four beats / four chords trap occasionally but hey, they’re called The Fourers, and they normally manage to save themselves from oblivion with unexpected synths and the odd melodic turn.

Thomas Truax

The whole world should go and see Thomas Truax. With some unlikely raw meterials such as motors, spoons, wheels, spokes, a comb, some strings, ducting, dogs and moons, this man creates nothing short of a genius. He’s playing around the UK in March and April. Book it, book it, book it now. Diddly-do.

The Feeling

What’s their new single about, exactly? The thing I liked about The Feeling last year was that they had an instant, viral appeal. I couldn’t stop listening to the ebola-esque 12 Stops And Home, but it really wiped me out after a few weeks. On this single, they’ve pulled out considerably more than 12 stops: more is more, apparently, and I personally think they could’ve done with paring things down a bit, and perhaps lending a few of the extraneous leftovers to…

Hot Chip

…, who have really excelled themselves with the yawning void that is Ready For The Floor (listen). It sounds like exactly the sort of thing you’d be stuck in front of on the nightbus when trying to sleep. Not really a desert island disc (though it’d be fun to watch Joanna Lumley reprise her role as Girl Friday with this as a looping soundtrack).

Rod Thomas

Repeaters have more fun with Rod Thomas. First heard at Glastonbury last year, you can often hear him around various underground stations putting his Welsh-valley lungs to good use. His voice is incredibly strong, and he’s a master both of layering up great pop songs and making his audience fizz. Great stuff.

Aggregated fireworks

posted in London

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Like some deep-sea creature, originally uploaded by minor9th.

Wandered up to Primrose Hill to watch some good old Guy Fawkes remberance last night – not expecting a display up there, but hoping to get a good vantage point over the rest of the London’s displays.

All in all it was grand – bottle of port, couple of mugs, some good-natured, like-minded scarved folk, and a couple of distant, muted displays from (we think) Blackheath, St Paul’s, and others. There were also a couple of teeny back-garden fireworks in the park which were greeted with amusing over-enthusiasm.

Battersea’s display looked like the most impressive though – at one point it looked like Tina Turner’s entire head of hair was in the sky, so that’s my tip for next year…