Seth Godin has inspired me write this post.

If you click the link in the previous paragraph you’ll find Seth talks about a company with the money/budget to get their customer service right, but have implemented a support system that fails spectacularly.

In my case, having spent four hours when one should have sufficed, it was a case of three companies that couldn’t be bothered with going the extra mile for a customer. In fact, it’s debatable whether what I wanted them to do constituted going an extra inch.

Let me explain (I have to get this off my chest) I needed a new set of number plates for the car. I drove the car to the first, second and third outlet to ask them to provide the number plates, with holes drilled so that I could fit them to the car and drive away. It would have been brilliant if they would have fitted them too, but more about that later.

The first outlet said they would not drill holes in case they cracked the number plate. So are they assuming I can do any better; have the right drill bit; have the right drill i.e. hand drill, electric drill on slow speed or high speed?

Are they saying they are not competent to do the job. Quite frankly, I won’t be going back to Portland Towing of Lincoln. To my mind they aren’t prepared to learn how to drill number plates properly.

On to the next. Motosave on Newark Road, Lincoln. They said they were too busy to drill the holes (no, I’m not kidding!) but could make the number plates for me. Goodbye.

I had to go to Newark so I stopped at Allwoods Automotive on the way into the town centre. Again, no they’re not prepared to drill the holes in case they crack the plates.

On to Selectatyre. John didn’t do number plates but had a friend that did and asked me if I’d like him to ring and check. Would I? I think you know the answer! John phoned Dave at Tallis, Lakeside Centre, London Road, Balderton, Newark (01636 610243) who said he would do the job.

I shot round to Tallis, took the old number plates off the car so Dave could use them to locate where the holes needed to be. He made them up, drilled them and I was on my way in about 10 minutes.

Oh, and for just over a quid cheaper than anywhere else. I would gladly have paid more to have the holes drilled anyway.

So, if you’re in the Newark/Lincoln area use Tallis, Dave’s auto and bike spares shop, he actually deserves your custom. And if you need tyres, John at Selectatyre is very helpful too.

And do you think I’m unreasonable expecting holes to be drilled in the number plates so I can attach them to my car? What do you think? Am I a grumpy old git or just have reasonable expectations? Let me know.

And thanks, Seth, for inspiring me to get this off my chest!

Quite some time ago I took the decision to move my blog away from blogger.com. There were a number of reasons for this. Slow response times, particularly when saving posts. Sometimes the saving process was aborted altogether.

Added to this was lack of facilities. No trackbacks or tags being the main shortcomings. All in all, the service was no longer fit for commercial use - in my opinion.

However, after researching the situation I knew it wouldn’t be straightforward completing the transfer to my preferred blogging software, Wordpress. And this is what put me off doing it sooner. Also, I decided I wouldn’t keep adding to the blogger blog, because if I had to resort to manually transferring information I would only be adding to the burden.

But there comes a time when you have to do something, and that time was yesterday (it’s now the early hours of Monday morning) because today I’m giving a talk on Blogging For Business and having a 3 month gap in my blog isn’t exactly a good working example!

Anyway progress was good up to the point where I was ready to transfer my blog from Blogger.com to my Wordpress installation. I set-up the Wordpress software, tested it and was happy with the results.

Now the bad news. Everytime I ran the import procedure the script came up with error messages. Resorting to the Wordpress support forums just proved my worst suspicions, and in fact for some poor souls the situation was alot worse.They’d upgraded to the new beta version of Blogger and the import script didn’t work at all.

I eventually found the answer to my problems and have managed to import the blogger files, but in doing so it has changed a number of settings in the software and I’m left with a heap of formatting and functionality issues that, quite frankly, will have to wait, because it’s now 01:30 and I’m going to bed!

Not an auspicious resumption to my blogging, but at least I tell it like it is. :)

So if you’re reading this, in business and thinking of starting a blog take my advice and avoid blogger.com.

It’s six years since an ex business partner and myself decided to go our separate ways. And at the time I decided to go back to working from home.

The net result was lower overheads, broadband, no time spent travelling into Lincoln every weekday and no parking fees. A situation I was very happy with!

But businesses grow and mine has got to the stage where offices are again much more of a necessity. No longer will I have to ask you, my client, to step over the cat, mind the dog and excuse the mess.

No longer will I have to ask the children to be quiet because I want to make a call or take an incoming one, or cringe if the dog barks while I’m on the phone.

Also, I want to reclaim evening and weekend time for my long-suffering family, although my eldest daughter asked if I was taking on a second room at the office… to put my bed in.

The new office is at Great Northern House, Great Northern Terrace, Lincoln. It has plenty of parking spaces and I’ll have room for all my existing stuff, and enough space to hold client meetings.

All administration matters will continue to be dealt with from our Cornflower Way address.

I’ll be operational at the new premises as from 4th September.

Telephone, fax and email addresses remain the same, and in addition the adminstration telephone number will be 01522 800283.

Unfortunately, BT can’t sort out the office line ’til 8th September so all calls will be dealt with initially by Carol in admin, until the BT line is up and running, hopefully on the 8th.

I’m really excited about the move, and feel it’s a very positive step in the right direction, so wish me luck!