Marcus D. Hanwell's Blog

After singing Dyson's praises yesterday I suppose it is only fitting another company makes my blood boil today. I don't think I ever wrote about it but a couple of years ago my wife and I went to Ibiza to spread my brother's ashes with my family. I took my SLR camera and ended up taking about seven rolls of film out there. Louise took them to Jessops in Sheffield city centre near Ponds Forge. We used them a little before that and I actually bought my SLR camera from them about six months earlier.

She asked for one hour processing when she dropped them off on her lunch hour. We went to collect the films at about 16:30ish after work and they weren't ready - in fact they had not even started to process them. The machine wasn't doing anything at the time. They actually lied and claimed that she had asked for four hour processing (we didn't even know they offered that - all that was advertised was one hour or next day I believe). They weren't even ready in four hours. They had a kid with long hair in the back who did the processing and he actually started talking about Louise with the other staff whilst she was stood there - hurling insults at her which she overheard as he wasn't talking as quietly as he might have thought.

I complained to the manager, he was pretty spineless and didn't do anything about this rude employee. He offered us the processing for free, but then when he realised how expensive it would be backtracked and offered it to us half price. We stood there and waited whilst the kid who was so rude continued to process the film. In the end (after about 45 minutes) we got our photos and I let the manager know again just how unhappy I was. I also wrote a letter of complaint to their head office and got a reply back basically saying we're sorry and not a lot else.

Then yesterday I was placing an order with Club 35 whom I have found to be very good over the last year or two. As I was looking at the negatives I noticed that the photo I wanted an enlargement of has had its edge sliced off. Looking through the other negatives quite a few of them are like this. Now Jessops is supposed to be an award winning photo processor (part of the reason I paid more to use them) but I also remember him slamming the blade down as he was chopping up the negatives. To me that is just gross incompetence or possibly even malicious. I prefer to believe incompetence but I suspect it was malicious.

That guy didn't have a clue how much or how little those photos meant to me or my wife. Hopefully the guys at Club 35 will be able to make an enlargement from the negative anyway, but I really just wanted to write this post to express my sheer anger. Jessops should discipline their staff if they behave in such a manner, it upset my wife and that guy has damaged the negatives to my pictures from an event that will only ever happen once. It also reminds me how much trust you are forced to put in strangers and how it is so easy to let you down...

No I haven't been paid off by Dyson, but I just felt that I had to express my total satisfaction at their fresh approach. Like most people we have to clean our house from time to time otherwise our computers would get clogged and the house would smell... We've had a Dyson for the past three years or so and it broke on Thursday with a nasty metallic smell coming out of it. We looked at the warranty and it only lasted for two years but we figured it was a fairly expensive Dyson so it might be worth getting it fixed.

They sent someone round to our house on Monday and said there was no charge if he couldn't fix it, it was also free if it was a manufacturing fault or a flat rate fee of £55 to fix it. We figured we couldn't go wrong with that and when he came round he had it fixed within twenty minutes (new motor + filter) and said it was free. They even guarantee the repair for a year! After all the hassle we had with things like our crappy Peugeot 106 (actively trying not to honour their warranty) I was so shocked at a company like Dyson treating us so well.

It is just a small thing but I have to say I am extremely impressed and as far as I am aware this is how they treat all their customers. They have made a loyal customer out of me and for once I have been shocked in a good way. Now to get some work done in my freshly vacuumed office

I was away 8-12 May at a UK Grad school as part of my PhD. I went away not expecting very much from it at all, and I was so shocked. It was a really useful week away, I met lots of interesting people and learnt a lot about myself. I think it has really helped to get me in the right frame of mind to get my PhD finished and find a great job out in California! It has taken me this long to even touch my blog as I have been so busy at work setting my schedule, agreeing it with my supervisors.

I also found the time to sign up for the researchers in residence scheme and attended the briefing day at Sheffield Hallam University (the other one down the road ). We did lots of really useful stuff at the Grad school such as interview skills (great for me as I am job hunting right now), marketing, negotiation, constructive feedback (the level of honesty was very refreshing) and lots more besides. We also squeezed a lot of socialising in during the few hours they gave us to ourselves!

I now have an agreed schedule for writing up my thesis and papers. I still have a little lab time I can squeeze in and fingers crossed it should be submitted by the end of September fully complete. I will of course be using my favourite open source tools to write up with and was considering writing an article on open source tools and their use in a scientific PhD. Could be a good one to write while I am waiting for my viva...

Just a quick note to say we had a great holiday in Malta in the end. The diving improved greatly in the end and Aquaventure showed us some great sites. Unfortunately they never managed to get us out to the Camino caves which would have been great to see. I did go on four really nice wreck dives though to the Rozi and the Um El Faroud - doing some penetration into the engine room of the Um El Faroud. Louise and I also went to the much older wreck of the HMS Maori on our last dive of the holiday which was excellent and he even found us a sea horse which I got a few shots of.

I have put up the digital photos here but have not had chance to improve the colours and stuff yet - some of them look much better with a little tweaking. A lot of the wreck photos also look amazing in black and white. I don't think I have any prize winners yet but they are a great set of pictures for my first diving holiday with the camera (in my opinion at least). I would love to hear what other people think of them. I really have the bug for diving now too so I am hoping to get into the UK diving scene a little over the Summer too. Some of the videos I made are really big, they play fine under Linux for me but Windows seems to have issues on friends systems...

We also went horse riding while we were away, it was Louise's idea and we both really enjoyed it. The weather wasn't great and the food didn't improve at the hotel at all but we had a great time in the end. I also got quite a nice tan. The Internet over there was so amazingly unreliable and slow too with the wireless taking up to 20 attempts just to associate with the router sometimes. Good to be back in the UK where things like this work a lot better

I am packing again this morning though as I am on a residential course out at Lake Windermere for a week with the UK GRAD programme. Cut off from civilisation again... Then I can play with my photos a little and get my SLR photos developed too - I have quite a backlog now. Great holiday though and I am about ready to get back into my work now - get that thesis written up!