Ross Brown dot net

I thought I had found a megadeal when I ordered my Canon 350D from Pixmania, for £556. They still haven’t shipped it (over a fortnight later) so today I cancelled my order. Turns out now I can buy it from Jessops down the road for just £20 more (after taking shipping charges into account) and actually have it in my hands the same day. I think this is the first negative online buying experience I have had, but I suppose I have been lucky before now (and my experience pales in comparison with the abusive tactics employed by one NY camera retailer).

If you were thinking of using Pixmania, be warned that they don’t always honour their “ship within 24hrs” claim.

[edit] Well, I tried to cancel the order, but would you believe they had just shipped it before they processed my cancellation request, so I ended up receiving the package yesterday. When I opened it up there were three problems; 1. No CompactFlash card (I guess they shipped it separately, but it still hasn’t arrived) 2. European mains plug (not a huge problem since they gave me an adapter, but it looks rubbish) 3. NO ENGLISH MANUAL!

Aside from the fact that it took them two weeks to deliver a stock item (despite their 24hr delivery claim… hahaha) I am pretty unhappy with the service I received.

I’ve done a bit of digging on their site and if you read the small print, they do say the manual is provided in French, German & Italian and they give a link to a Canon site where you can download an English version…. but I still think it’s poor show on their part and personally I’d rather have a properly-produced paper book than a stapled-together A4 version.

How I wish I had read some customer reviews first! Have a look at the Pricerunner users’ experiences with Pixmania. It seems I am not the only one who has experienced a long delay and poor customer service.

I really wish I had just bought it from Jessops in the local high street, since the price difference is negligable but I’ll chalk it down to experience. All I can do is pass on my negative experience and hope that if you were thinking of buying from Pixmania you will do a bit of research on them first. Try giving their customer service line a ring on 0870 118 117 and see how long it takes them to answer your call (I gave up after 25 minutes). If you manage to speak to someone, ask them how long delivery will be before ordering and ensure you get an English manual - I had to pay £13 from Canon for mine, making the total saving £7 vs Jessops and I still don’t have my memory card!

I’ve started to buy Lotto tickets online, because it’s so quick and easy. I got an email from them this morning:

We have some exciting news about the ticket that you bought for the Saturday 26 November draw. Please Sign In to your Account at the National Lottery website for more details.

My heart nearly stopped! I recently won £500 in a prize draw at work, so I was imagining what it would be like to have won something twice in one month - and just in time for Xmas too!

After logging in, it turns out I only won £5 on the Thunderball draw. Ah well, better than nothing, but I really thought it might have been a lot more!

Well, here is the first picture of my Nephew, Kei McCall-Pohl. He’s healthy and weighed in at 8 1/2 lb, which I’m told is pretty big. I took some more pictures, which are in an online photo gallery. In those pictures, the McCall clan (Norman, Shirley, Candi) and myself are visiting Cindi in hospital.

Carl’s parents are over in the UK at the moment, so we are all meeting up on Friday. It’s Norman’s 60th Birthday this weekend and we’re having a big family get-together. What with one thing and another, this year has been pretty hectic!

I had some camera trouble recently, all of my shots had a noticeable shadow halfway down the right hand edge, (like this) so I sent my camera back to the internet firm I bought it from. It was a Fujifilm s7000, less than one year old and they sent me a replacement straight away. However, the new one had a faulty ‘zoom out’ button on the back (you could still operate the zoom with a different control) so since it was faulty on arrival I returned that one too.

So I got an email from the returns dept yesterday, telling me that this model is out of stock and it has been placed on backorder. I did a bit of looking and it seems Fuji may be replacing the s7000 with the new s9000 / s9500 - have a look on their digital camera page. I wonder what’s going to happen, if I get a refund I’d like to get one of those and pay the difference.

My sister-in-law, Cindi gave birth today to a healthy 8 1/2 lb baby boy. They’re both in hospital overnight and that’s about all I know at the moment! I’ll update this when I have more news.

Today I went with my Dad, my brother and a friend of the family, Paul to the Royal International Air Tattoo at RAF Fairford. The weather was absolutely stunning with clear skies and bright sunshine; the airshow itself was pretty amazing too. There were something like three hundred planes on static display, these included helicopters, gliders and UAVs. There was almost constant buzzing overhead, with non-stop flying taking place from when we arrived until after we left. There were some memorable flying displays - a guy called Ali from Izbekistan doing crazy aerobatics (with a plane that weighs as much as a Mini with a 400HP engine!) the Harrier ascending in a vertical spiral, the Apache strafing across the runway but the best for me was the Red Arrows.
I took about 150 pictures with my Fuji Finepix s7000 camera - I’ve uploaded them all to my own picture gallery:

http://pics.rossbrown.net/gallery/RIAT-2005

Please leave comments for your favourites!

We drove to the local service station in Basildon last night to get petrol and as I was screwing the filler cap back on I heard the sound of screeching tyres and a sickening thud. I turned around to see that one of those Honda CRV 4×4s had turned right out of the garage into the path of an oncoming Ford Mondeo. The collision badly impacted against the CRV’s driver’s door, throwing the driver sideways with a fair bit of force. The Mondeo driver was ok, largely thanks to his airbag going off. The Honda driver had this two young sons in the car and they were OK, but he was badly shaken and complained of neck pains. I saw something on TV about the compatibility problem between 4×4 vehicles and cars - the force of the impact severely damaged the front of the Mondeo and the Honda’s drivers door sill, bending the side of the vehicle right in. If the crash had happened the other way around (ie Honda -> Mondeo), the raised height of the Honda would have caused much worse damage to the Mondeo’s door.
Maybe the answer to the (IMHO) blight of 4×4s on our roads is to all go out and buy one. At least then we wouldn’t be at a life-threatening disadvantage in the event of an accident with one. Either that or we continue the “my vehicle is bigger than yours” willy-waving so eventually we all end up driving Hummers.

This weekend there was another classic car show, this time at Beale Park. I went along today and took my camera, you can see the results on my photo gallery. Unfortunately, the weather wasn’t great when we arrived, but it brightened up later and I managed to get a few shots in the sunlight. All in all though, we were slightly disappointed with the cars on show - there seemed to be more ‘modern classics’ and the definition of what actually makes a classic seemed to be open to interpretation, too. Don’t get me wrong, I like to see a wide variety of cars on show, but felt the show suffered from having too many ‘ordinary’ cars on show - Porsches with ratty bodywork, nondescript BMWs etc. The other negative point was that the organisers were charging £6 for entry - which seemed very steep to me.
Highlight of the show for me was the Jensen Interceptor - an immaculate example complete with 8-track stereo system!
I took a couple of pictures of the metallic brown Wolsley that was on show as my parents used to own a similar white one when I was a small boy. You definitely don’t see many of those on the roads these days, the owner of this one reckoned there are currently about 5 examples in the UK.

Bank Holiday weekends are great, the extra day off work is a real treat. This weekend there was the added bonus of nice weather, which is more or less unheard of in the UK.
The McCalls were down, staying at a camp site and we all went to a small classic car rally in a nearby town called Wallingford.
I took a few pictures, which you can see here. Norman even got to assist a fellow MGB owner after his car stalled at the traffic lights!

Well that was… interesting!

As per my previous post, my domain did actually seem to expire on 27 April (even though I had paid the registrar) and it wasn’t a simple matter to get it resolved. It’s all sorted out now though and I have initiated a transfer to a different registrar. Once I am sure I am well away from the old hosting co, I will tell you all about it

I launched a new site this week (well, I re-used an old domain I had lying around!). It’s going to be a sort of diary of what we decide to do with property this year - rent or buy. We’ve been renting since before we met and to be honest, it’s getting to be a hassle moving every year.

The premise for the site is that it’s a blog about UK property market news, opinion and links to other property sites. Anyway, check out the site for more info:

http://neverhappy.com