The trick is to be as courteous and pleasant as you can. I do some work as a telephone agent, and I am as unhelpful as I can be when an arrogant customer comes on the phone.

When I was sorting out my car insurance renewal, I got put through to a most helpful gentleman. Since I was pleasant to him and we had a bit of a laugh about a few things, he really did try his best to help me out. In the end, he managed to save me over half on my insurance without changing a single detail on the policy.

I actually sent him and his manager a thank you card the next day, which they both replied to. When I came to phone them next time to change my policy, I seemed to be given some sort of preferential treatment because they did it completely free of charge, when I expected to pay £100.00 or more. With my telephone agent work that I do, there is a box to enter a few secret notes about the customer and many have very unpleasant words in that field.

Peter.

I just had the most strange experience when I was trying to park at the Take That concert this evening. I searched the area yesterday and found a public highway with no parking restrictions on it, which was within walking distance of the stadium.

I turned up at the said road this evening and happily found a suitable parking space. I got approached by a gentleman, who was incidentally missing a few front teeth, who told me I had to pay him to park there! I tried to reason with him by explaining that it was a public highway, but he told me to pay £20.00 for parking or my car "may" be damaged or missing upon my return.

It was tempting to leave it, especially as I don't actually own the car, but it would have been somewhat inconvenient to find it missing after the show! I managed to get a photograph of this gentleman and have dropped the local police and email with a photograph, because I believe what he was doing was illegal.

In the end, I drove off as quickly as a could and found another good space five minutes further away. The worrying thing was the amount of people who paid him £20.00 for parking there. He must have made an easy £200.00 that evening.

Peter.

I do believe that "protection rackets" are illegal. I hope the police ID him from your photo, but I rather expect they'll file it under "B".

I have managed to perfect my act of pretending to text, when I'm really taking a photograph. Poor guy looked as though he had never seen a phone before anyway!

I don't mind paying the lads at football matches £1.00 to mind the car. They're kids and it's not a huge amount of money in the grand scheme of things. I just refuse to be bullied into paying £20.00 to park on a public highway.

The other people who were arriving didn't seem bothered about handing over the money

Peter.

Caretaker has arrived to look at the malfunctioning aircon.

Of course, now he's here, it's working fine.

The filters really need cleaning, and it's probably overdue for a service.

Why do we wait for the hottest part of the year?

I was quite confused...I thought you had typed "caketaker"...Was wondering why you had someone come in to take cakes and look at your aircon...

Paying cake for work sounds a good scheme.

I used to print a hobby newsletter and it was paid for on the "doughnut account".

Just ordered myself a core i7, P6T Deluxe v2, 12GB RAM & another GTX280 (to sli with my current GTX280)

Whoohoo

I hate you...I want one...

For those of you that know of (and of those the ones that care) my car accident last year, today marks it's anniversary.

Mark

I was going to say "happy anniversary", but then thought that's probably not appropriate.

Did you get compensation for your injuries yet?

Nope. I think numbers will be mentioned the next time (or very soon after) I see the doctor, which'll be in a couple of months time I think.

Mark

And just as importantly, are you still recovering? I know that last time it was mentioned you were still in some discomfort, but has that improved?

Edit to add: just seen your reply to Heathers post which I guess answers my question...?

Only a small amount. The physio sorted my neck pain but I'm still getting considerable shoulder and, to a slightly lesser extent, back pain.

Mark

Is that something that the physio is also going to be looking at?

Obviously the answer will be yes, but have you been given a time frame?