Philip Nicosia

Okay, I got a final demand from Talk Talk today that told me if I didn’t pay up within 4 days they would refer my case to a debt collection agency.

Once again I went through the process of calling their Credit Control department to be told they can’t deal with my account and that I would need to speak to customer service. So they put me through to the wrong department and then transferred me to a dead line.

I called again and this time someone was a little more helpful and told me they would arrange for a credit to be raised on my account to zero the balance. When I asked them about the money they owed me they said I would need to speak to customer service. This time I actually got put through to someone but clearly they didn’t understand their own billing system and I kept getting put on hold so they could speak to their supervisor. I was then told they were going to keep the money I had paid them by way of a cancellation fee.

There should be no cancellation fee as I was out of contract and had given more than 30 days notice but this was what the Talk Talk girl was told to say by her supervisor.

I tried to explain to them about my overpayment and eventually they hung up on me. I guess my only option now is to take them to the small claims court. It’s a lot of hassle and the money involved isn’t a great deal but it is the principle of the matter now. Companies like this don’t deserve to be in business. It’s a shame that us Brits have to put up with such crap customer service and it’s annoying that we have come to accept it as well.

I recently bought a Mac Mini and having used a windows PC for quite a long time I had almost 30,000 emails that I needed to import into Mac Mail.

This wasn’t as straight forward as I had hoped it would be and searched around for information on how to do this and had a lot of trouble finding something that worked.

I eventually stumbled across a site Littlemachines.com that sells a low cost program that will convert Outlook PST files into mbox files that can then be easily imported into Mac Mail as well as other mail programs running on Mac OS X.

My Outlook.pst file was just over 500mb in size and running the program it took about 30 minutes to convert all of the data. Then I just selected to import data in the Mac Mail program and after about 1 hour I had all my email loaded into the Mac Mail program.

So if you are looking for a way to convert Outlook files to Mac OS X compatible file then give it a go. It is the best $10 I have spent in a long while.

I had a pleasant surprise a couple of days ago when I received an unexpected parcel from Google. On opening it I found a card saying “Happy Holidays” and a cool digital photo frame.

Thanks Google, I’d always thought about getting one of these but never actually got round to it.

I recently came across a couple of ringtones podcasts and thought what a great idea it was.

Check them out: Ringtone Podcast and KSSX Ringtones.

The first one seems to be updated regularly while the second offers just a couple of ringtones from the Eric Rice show.

I’m feeling trapped today. The roadworks being carried out at the Horse and Jockey roundabout have been causing major delays on the roads around where I live and today is the worst it has been for a long time.

Trying to get out of Watermead and past the Horse and Jockey roundabout has taken me more than 30 minutes each time this morning and I have had to do it 3 times today so far. Getting back into Watermead is just as bad and I reckon I have wasted 3 hours today sitting in traffic jams.

There has to be a better way of doing this. Why they chose to block the roads off with Stop and Go signs on a Saturday I do not know.

Weekends are supposed to be a time to relax and be able to do things you can’t do during the week while you are at work but I guess the council doesn’t think that is important. My girlfriend suggested to me that maybe they did this at the weekend when no-one would be at the council to complain to. There maybe some truth in that?

I feel a bit sorry for all the retailers as well. I’m sure it is going to effect their Christmas trade and drive people to alternative towns or like me to the internet to do all your shopping on line this year.