OK contestants, a little fun for you now. Which of these is the odd one out?
1 – Ocado
2 – South Eastern Trains
3 – Boris Johnson
4 – BT
The answer is – Boris Johnson, he’s the only one not busy doing dumb things to customers and people this week.
Boris was at BASE London yesterday talking about exciting plans for cycling in London, new lower emission buses, and a sustainable Olympics for 2012 and beyond. He’s an interesting and entertaining speaker who is clearly passionate about developing London as a sustainable city. Good work.
The others?
Ocado has previously made a big noise about how 100% of their fleet of delivery vans all run on environmentally friendly diesel. That is until a photographer spotted the vans filling up on regular diesel and sent the evidence to The Independent newspaper. “Yes it’s true that in London our vans do use regular diesel”, a spokesperson for the company confessed when confronted. Well just say so then eh? Transparency pays, credibility dented.
Southeastern Trains has been spotted selling first class tickets for a train service without first class seating. A £9.90 premium on the London to Dover Priory buys you….well nothing as it turns out, as there is no first class service on the train! Although there is a slower train with first class seating which takes you from London to the coast in almost an hour longer. You couldn’t make it up. The story expands in embarrassing detail here, the attempted justification for this dumb things is hilarious
BT are in the news this week. Staff were asked by their union to vote on a strike over their latest pay offer. The pay offer is 2%. BT’s CEO is “showing restraint” by opting for a pay rise of 2% himself. That will see his salary go up to £867,000. Well done. Do the same as the workers, we like that. So, I wonder when BT will announce a staff bonus for all employees in excess of 100% of salary? Yup, Mr Livingston is “showing restraint” by trousering a £1.2m bonus at the same time as insisting that staff be satisfied with a 2% rise in pay. Of course there will be arguments that bonuses are not the same as pay rises, we get that. But in the league of do as I say, not as I do, this dumb thing tops the lot. And please, don’t get me started on service. I wonder how my mate who had to endure 8 days without broadband service as BT struggled to deliver a repair service feels about this?
http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/b8b12d6a-69ef-11df-a978-00144feab49a.html
So – that’s the awards handed out, or is it? If you’ve spotted anyone doing dumb things to customers this week, please let us know.