How not to sell French enamel house signs

Date: 9 September 2010 17:24:14 BDT

Hi Roy,

As requested, this is to confirm we would like to proceed with our order for a custom sign as per the revised artwork. Cost of £55 paid by debit card this afternoon. To be dispatched to: [withheld]

Sent: Monday, November 01, 2010 6:47 PM

Hi Roy

As per my phone call just now we have not received our sign. Please

advise on delivery.

Judy

On 1 Nov 2010, at 19:16, Roy wrote:

France is in a total meltdown at the moment, national strikes, gorilla strikes and when back at work, no work is being done.

I have spent 2 weeks in France at the factory trying and threatening and pleading for my work to be finalised.

Hopefully a delivery will be with me very soon and I can then post every ones order to them.

Regards.

Roy

Sent: Tuesday, November 30, 2010 7:23 PM

Very disappointed to see that nearly a month has gone by with no further communication from you.

If you are not able to deliver the sign for which I paid nearly three months ago, please say so and return my money.

Judy

On 5 Dec 2010, at 13:11, Roy wrote:

?Hello.

The French have been having lots of strikes and also France & the  UK is now having the worst winter for 20 years.

My order is stuck in France at the moment but should be with us  later this week.

We will then post everyone's order out to them.

All this of course is beyond my control.

Roy

Sent: Sunday, December 05, 2010 2:03 PM

I'm afraid all this sounds like excuses rather than reasons and the

complete absence of any apology or any communication unless chased is

both annoying and worrying. From where I'm standing it seems likely

the factory is refusing to release the goods for non-payment.

I hope that is not the case but if I don't hear something more

concrete within 24 hrs I will start formal procedures for the return

of my money and also report you to your local authority.

Judy

On 5 Dec 2010, at 14:50, Roy wrote:

Hello Judy,

I think it's best if we refund your money.

I realize you will probably find this hard to believe - but I would have liked to have delivered your plaque to you months ago. It is of no benefit to me to have irritable customers. I'd rather not have people sending irate e-mails to me. All I have been able to tell you is what the factory tells me.

We have been told that the plaques have been shipped, but I don't know when they will arrive. I wish I did. You don't need me to tell you, that the weather is bad here and in France - but then, there is no point in explaining anything else to you - you don't want to know.

You do not need to do anything else, e-mail or phone me. You will get your money back.

Roy

Sent: Sunday, December 05, 2010 3:42 PM

Poor Roy. None of it is his fault, it's the factory, it's the French,

it's the weather. It is, rather amusingly, gorillas. And when all

else fails it's the fault of the customer.

You might have fewer 'irritable' (sic) customers if you kept them

informed, and apologised for the inconvenience you have caused them.

And you would have greater credibility if you stopped changing the

story.

Please ensure the money is returned to my account on Monday.

Judy

On 5 Dec 2010, at 16:14, Roy Foulger wrote:

Are you drunk? Or don't you understand English?

Please do not e-mail me again.

On 5 Dec 2010, at 17:00, Judy Olsen wrote:

Customer service isn't your strong point is it Roy?

J

Free copywriting - but check the conditions

I've often said I'd rather work for nothing than for cheap, and like everyone else in this business I have on occasion given my services for free to a good cause.

Now though, I'm offering to do this for one person or organisation on Twitter. 

What you get is a full half day of my time, which is enough for a campaign letter, a couple of pages of a website, an email or two, a modest flyer, a bit of editing or an ad to go in your local paper. I charge serious professional rates, so this is worth something. Here are the conditions:

1) You're not in it for the money either. You might be a small disability rights group, a campaigning organisation or an animal rescue - that kind of thing.You don't have to be a registered charity but you do have to have a Twitter account.

2) Your budget really is zero. If you have the money to pay a copywriter, please pay a copywriter. We're worth it. 

3) The offer is limited to four hours of my time. Please don't ask me to write an entire website or your annual report.

4) Think of me as a consultant and my work as advice. Don't ask for a re-write if I begin a sentence with 'and'.

That's basically it. You can find out more about me at www.judyolsen.co.uk or follow me on Twitter (@judycopywriter) and requests should be sent to topcopy[at]mac[dot]com. These don't need to be detailed or complicated - just say who you are, what it is you'd like me to write, and whether or not you already have a draft.

Update: There may be a problem with emails triggering Apple's spam filters. So if you send me an email request, please also send me a tweet so I know it's on its way. 

The deadline for requests is being extended so please feel free to apply.

Turning base metal into...more base metal

A recent radio discussion on what to do with all those spare coppers (money, not lazy bizzies) attracted some amazing texts. Apparently, Britain, you simply chuck your surplus pennies in the bin. That's right, there are people who throw away money. Isn't this the ultimate in conspicuous consumption? 'Oh we have all this money, but it doesn't quite suit us so we're going to throw it away.'

It's not hard to imagine. The perfect house. The smudge-free glass doors leading to the sterile garden. The bowl of grubby coinage that poor people may have touched. Nope, just not part of the dream.

True, these are not people who go to the pub, to have crisp notes downgraded into a trouser-full of change. But they don't use public transport and the Daily Mail is delivered, so their opportunities to offload metal money are limited.

Presumably they're also too thick to understand that this is still money, just in its second least appealing form*.

But for the rest of us, help comes from an unexpected quarter. Lord Sainsbury and his ilk have provided us with special machines so we can convert handfuls of smash into acceptable drinking tokens. And here's how.

In the interests of cutting the nation's few remaining jobs, major supermarkets have introduced self-service tills in their smaller outlets. These tills take cash. You can also part-pay in cash and then switch to a card. For small amounts of change, this is the preferred method.

But let's say you want to buy something costing £5, and have accumulated £10 in change. If you have the nerve (and I do) you can feed your £5 into the machine in any combination of coins you happen to have. Then press 'Cancel Payment'. Do you get your rubbish money back in an embarrassing heap of coins that spills on to the floor? You do not. You get proper money, including notes. You can then feed another £5 of change into the machine to complete your purchase.

Unfortunately you are also doing the supermarkets a favour, by giving them loads of change, and saving them the cost of buying it from the bank. But I think we can live with that.

* Rupert Murdoch or George Osborne, your choice.

The old man and the tree

Behind this street there's a smaller street that runs at 90 degrees. So our kitchen looks out over their long back gardens.
In the third garden along there's a rather fine tree. But the man who lives there hates it. The first sign of spring round here is when he gets out his ladder and hacksaw. And today is the day.
Each year he climbs into the tree and prunes it hard. His wife watches from a faded plastic chair. Then he takes the branches into the lane and burns them. Each year the man's hair gets a little more grey and the bonfire in the lane gets a little bigger.
I imagine their conversation.
'It's the wrong time of year, you know. You should prune this tree in the summer.'
'I know what I'm doing.'
'You're pruning too hard. You're making it grow bigger. Look at all the shoots from last time.'
'I know what I'm doing.'
He's looking thin and bent. This may be the last year he climbs the tree.

Everyone forgets...why they were sh*t-scared

With one of the kids doing a school project on JFK, we asked my partner's dad for his 'where were you when' memory.

It turns out he was on duty as an air traffic controller, in the tower at Prestwick Airport. Someone heard a BBC news bulletin on the radio in the airport lounge, and John used the emergency phone to call the USAF on the other side of the airfield and see if they knew anything. (They didn't).

With the Cuban missile crisis fresh in their minds, they all thought that the Russians had shot Kennedy, and that nuclear war was imminent. John's wife Shirley - alone in the house with four very young children - was terrified.

So for some people at least, the power of that iconic moment was less about the Zapruder film, and more about thinking you're about to die.

Cleaning out the cage

Like a selfish child with a new pet, I lavished attention on this blog when I first started. Then my attention was distracted - hey, it happens - and well, I just lost interest.
Fortunately, unlike hamsters and guinea pigs, blogs don't die from neglect. So time to clean out the cage, buy a few fresh carrots, and start scratching its tummy again.