Flippin' councils

Paul Boyd usenet.dont.work@plusnet said:

In the recent winds, an aluminium poled wire mesh fence came loose on an
industrial park,
...
On 2nd March this
was duly reported to the council, who can presumably contact the owners
of the park to fix it. Today, 4 days later, I got this:-

================================================================
Thank you for your email.

================================================================

So it's nice to see that a potentially dangerous situation is being
treated with the urgency with which it deserves. I can't help wondering
if the situation would be any different if this pole was waving about in
the road - I'll ask them!

--
Paul Boydhttp://www.paul-boyd.co.uk/

In fairness to the Council though Paul, it sounds as though you
emailed them about this.

That doesn't excuse the "10 days to investigate" but it does partly
excuse the "4 days to reply".

In my line of work I get very frustrated about being emailed with
urgent problems - when you click "Send" you have no idea how long it
will take to arrive, whether it actually will arrive, whether the
other person will be aware of its arrival... etc.

If it's urgent enough to need immediate attention, pick up the phone.

In fact, it's probably worth phoning them now to explain the
situation.

In the meantime, be careful out there! I'm glad you managed to avoid
a nasty accident, I've had a similar near-miss with a fallen tree on a
dark lane and it was not a pleasant experience.

Paul Boyd <usenet.dont.work@plusnet> wrote in news:45ed5d71$0$8746
[email hidden]:

Quoted message said:

So it's nice to see that a potentially dangerous situation is being
treated with the urgency with which it deserves. I can't help wondering
if the situation would be any different if this pole was waving about in
the road - I'll ask them!

If I noticed a pole waving around at face height across a cycleway, I'd be
tempted to dial "999" for exactly the same reasons as I'd dial "999" for a
pole wafting around at windscreen height over a road. There is, after all,
a danger to life or risk of injury being caused - which is one of the
criteria for which a 999 call is warranted.

[email hidden] said the following on 06/03/2007 12:47:

Quoted message said:

In fairness to the Council though Paul, it sounds as though you
emailed them about this.

.... apparently their preferred method of communication.

Quoted message said:

In my line of work I get very frustrated about being emailed with
urgent problems - when you click "Send" you have no idea how long it
will take to arrive, whether it actually will arrive, whether the
other person will be aware of its arrival... etc.

In my line of work, if I wasn't aware of the arrival of an urgent email
for 4 hours I'd be shot, never mind 4 days (although there was a weekend
in between - apparently some people have Saturdays off!!!!)

Quoted message said:

In fact, it's probably worth phoning them now to explain the
situation.

I have spoken to them on the phone, and they said that the "10 days" is
a standard email response, and in fact they will try to get someone out
today. I'm not blaming the council for the problem, but rather that
they have the means to contact the estate owner to fix it and I don't.

--
Paul Boyd
http://www.paul-boyd.co.uk/

Quoted message said:

In fairness to the Council though Paul, it sounds as though you
emailed them about this.

No, that's really what we're asked to do. If you phone 01934
888802, you end up in a queue and get a brush-off if possible if
it's anything complicated. I phoned up to report some tidal-flow
traffic lights letting oncoming traffic go before all vehicles
have cleared the controlled section and was told they'd do nothing
because the lights weren't theirs. I was later told that was an
error, but I'm not surprised to hear others have had similar bad
service.

If you see the candidates before May's vote, ask them about this!

Regards,
--
MJ Ray - see/vidu http://mjr.towers.org.uk/email.html
Webmaster/web developer, statistician, sysadmin, online shop maker,
developer of koha, debian, gobo, gnustep, various mail and web s/w.
Workers co-op @ Weston-super-Mare, Somerset http://www.ttllp.co.uk/