Archive for August 2007

Gear Zone fail to keep their word

Posted by on August 2nd 2007 in A bit of a rant

The 14 working days have passed since the 12th of July, when GZ emailed me to tell me that I would be refunded during that time. Well, you guessed it... no refund. It's no surprise, really - GZ do this to a lot of people, I'm just stunned that they are allowed to carry on doing it.

Last night I spoke to my bank about the situation, I was told that GZ had told the bank on the 19th of July that they would refund within 14 working days (of the 19th), hence the bank were still waiting within what they thought (erroneously) was the correct refund period. Keeping a grip on my temper, I referred them to their copy of the email that GZ sent to me, and they now agree that GZ should have refunded me by now.

The bank will now take appropriate action.

And, rest assured, so will I, when I've got my money back. I'm collecting as much relevant data as I can find, it'll be presented to the appropriate authorities and various consumer-rights bodies, in the hope that this crass attitude to other peoples' money is discontinued. I'm not hot on legal terminology so I don't know if what GZ are doing is theft, fraud, wilful deceit or anything else, but I do know that it's unacceptable and, in layman's terms, it's crap.

The message is - don't screw with me.

Catching up with transmissions

Posted by on August 1st 2007 in On the box

Having spent so much time being kept away from the telly (the kids are on holiday, so they're in charge of the remote control, apparently), I've been grabbing a few chances to catch up with some of the interesting programmes that I've been missing.

Many blogs and forums have told of the latest batch of outdoors epics from Julia Bradbury and Griff Rhys Jones, so I needn't go into much detail here, except to say that I've watched them with much enjoyment.

The programmes that I really needed to catch up with, and eventually did, aren't outdoorsy at all, so if you're already losing interest, look away now...

OK, let's start with The Music of the Primes. I found this to be fascinating - I've had more than a passing interest in prime numbers for many years now. This programme told the story well, in terms that the layman could understand, but not belittling the learned viewer. Chris (maths degree, senior computer systems analyst) would have enjoyed it, but managed to sleep through the whole programme, so she's a bit miffed about it.

Next up (or should that be down?) is Absolute Zero, a two-parter retelling the story of "a remarkable group of pioneers who wanted to reach the ultimate extreme: absolute zero, a place so cold that the physical world as we know it doesn't exist, electricity flows without resistance, fluids defy gravity and the speed of light can be reduced to 38 miles per hour". Brilliant stuff, every A-Level physics student should be given the opportunity to watch it. For myself, I can understand the physics behind superfluids and superconductors, but I've yet to get a mental grip on the concept of the Bose-Einstein condensate.

Then there's Atom, another mini-series. Part One was good, a sort of potted history of the concept of the atom. The series continues tomorrow (Thursday)... Part Two "tackles world-changing discoveries such as radioactivity, the Atom Bomb and the Big Bang, and tries to answer the biggest questions of all - why are we here and how were we made?" I reckon that I can cope with that, but I fear that I'll need a beer or two to get me through Part Three.

Finally, there's Dangerous Knowledge, a one-off documentary that's on next week. Sounds intriguing, and slightly depressing. I'll need to get even more beer in.

The astute will note that all of the above are BBC programmes... I just thought that I would mention it.
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