Ok, I may have said I was working on a mysterious new project but at the moment I’m tidying up a couple of sites - this one for a start.

You’ll therefore hopefully notice a few changes…

1. I’ve added topic counts and links to topic-related feeds.
2. The old social bookmarking has been replaced with ShareThis (and thanks to Tony for putting me onto that).

But - and more importantly, but probably not so noticable - I’ve finally gotten around to making my blog valid (i.e. the XHTML. Or most specifically, the sidebar, which is what had the errors in it).

Next up, I’ll be working on the Copy+ site - I’ve already had a tidy up of the forum.

I’m not feeling too well right now. Really sore throat and generally grotty (at least it didn’t happen last week whilst I was away).

Unfortunately I was joking at work today about a meeting I wanted to get out of, and suggesting I might pretend to be ill.

Bum.

I was in York last week with my wife and her sister (and my daughter, but she’s not relevant to this particular story). They were shopping at the Cath Kidston store there.

Now, personally, I’d rather stick pins in my eyes than have anything to do with their particular brand of flowery, old-fashioned, chintz, but they (the aforementioned wife and sister-in-law) love it. And my sis-in-law bought a red flowery weekend bag (which my wife already has) for the knock-down, bargain price of £40 (I’d put a picture of it in this blog entry but I can’t find it on the companies site. Plus I’ve just eaten). However, when she got it back to our holiday cottage (which was not exactly nearby) she found a fine but deep but all the way along one side of the bag.

So, they rang the store… you’re probably now expecting one of my woeful tales of bad customer experience but…. and they’re going to send a replacement out. Free. Without wanting the old one back.

I guess the kind of people who buy Cath Kidston aren’t people trying a con, so are quite happy to accept the word of the casual customer. And how refreshing it is.

Well done Cath Kidston in York.

It’s been a while since I blogged. You’d think I’d been on holiday or something

Well, for reasons I’m not going into (far too long and personal), my work on the BMTG website has stopped. I’m starting work on a new project - details of which will be revealed soon.

Today I received 3 emails from Tesco, the first at 5am. And only 3 days since I replied to them. A new record.

Thank you for your email

We would like to offer our sincere apologies for the delay in reply. Unfortunately, we have experienced technical difficulties which have resulted in a number of our responses not being sent.

All customer contact is incredibly valuable to us and we understand how frustrating this must be. We are currently working on these issues. You will shortly receive our original reply to your enquiry.

Thank you for your patience.

Then, 3.5 hours later…

Thank you for your email.

I just want to let you know that your email has successfully reached us, and we promise to be back in touch as soon as possible.

Thank you.

So, now we have 2 replies, neither of which say much other than to say they’re GOING to reply to me. Why do they do this close to when they do reply? Wouldn’t this kind of response be more appropriate not long after I’ve emailed them, to “set expectations”?

Now, if you remember, my reply was to go into detail about the IE 7 pop-up issue on their website. I didn’t have to, but I did. 3 hours ago I got my third mail of the day…

Thank you for your reply.

I would like to thank you for your comments regarding “The OK Button”

We find all customer feedback valuable as this helps us when we are looking at ways to make our service better. I would like to assure you that I have fully logged the points you have made. These will be directed to the correct area of the business.

Thank you for taking the time and trouble to share your views with us.

So, have they told someone? God only knows. However, the fact that they define it as a “view” does trouble me. I’m pointing out a god-damn failure of your online ordering system, you fools.

I did some testing of the site with Opera and Safari and that seemed ok. So, it only breaks in IE7. And Firefox. Which, by my reckoning, means their site works quite successfully for 33% of people, a figure they can be proud of.