Oh the Highlands...

Went up to Edinburgh last week with Tom and Arnold. We hired a car and, like the Canadians that we are, drove for hours and saw as much as we possibly could. We did take our British friend Tabby along, but she loves road trips, so she was cool with it. I did have to tell the guys to stop saying, "This looks like BC!" because it was probably annoying Tabby (but of course it wasn't because she's awesome)! Some areas of the Highlands definitely reminded us of BC, but I am not sure if it's just because we have been in Southern England for so long--anything with mountains and lakes looks just like BC to us!

We ventured up to Stirling, and Loch Lomond (which we kept pronouncing wrong) the first day. The second day we went over to Dundee (by accident) and then up to Inverness through Perth and the National Park area. Wow, the drive was incredible. It did not look anything like BC the second day(too bad Tabby wasn't with us)...rough terrains, amazing moss covered mountains... you look at all the soft grass and rolling hills and can't help but think, "no wonder the Scottish invented golf!". We finally arrived at Inverness, a city in Northern Scotland. I think it is the biggest city in the North, but I could be wrong. It boasts of being the "Highlands of Scotland" antd o give you an idea of where it is latitude-wise, it's almost equal to the Yukon border. Oh and yes, we did go to Loch Ness, but I didn't see Nessie...only in the souvenir shops!

We also saw lots of Highland Coos! I love them...especially the famous "Hamish" the coo. Here's a picture of one--took it myself!

Customer Service

One of the things I won't miss about living in England is the customer service. Not only are they rude (more often than not), but they also have this strict 'can't think out of the box' attitude. And this is not just my opinion, I have talked to several people, foreigner and Brits, who agree that the customer service here sucks--and is frustrating in a 'tons of paperwork and no flexibility' kind of way.

For example, today I went in to discuss a monthly bill I pay. Because I won't be here for the entire year, I asked them to break my payments in 12 months instead of 10 months which they currently do. You pay the same at the end of the year, but if you are only staying for half the year, then you would pay more each month (and not get the benefit of two months without pay).

Let me walk you through the conversation I had to endure, and I have simplified it-- I am not even doing it justice:

Me: I would like to have my bill changed so that it is distributed over 12 months, and not 10 as it is now.
Them: Oh I am sorry we can't do that.
Me: Why not?
Them: Because this is the way that we do billing by 10 installments.
Me: Okay. But this is for an annual fee and I am not staying for the whole year.
Them: Yes but you are actually charged per day, so we need to do 10 installments.
Me: Okay, if I am charged per day, then please distribute my bill over 365 days.
Them: No we can't do that because I would have to go back and talk to someone in charge.
Me: Okay, let's try that then. Why don't you go back & ask.
Them (becoming all fidgety because they never want to do more work than the minimal amount): Well, you could write a letter or send an email asking, and they will review your reason and maybe let you do it but probably not, because we don't do that.

Oh my goodness---not even logical reasoning. A serious inability to think outside the box of 'rules'. And then they try to say the same thing a different way to convince you. Or there was the time Tom tried to get our mail forwarded and they made him bring all this documentation of where we lived and then said they don't do university addresses-but we didn't live at a university address, just housing for Marrieds & Couples 'affiliated' with the university. Tom actually had to convince her that we do in fact get mail delivered to us by the postman (she accused Tom of thinking it was the postman when it was actually someone else like a university worker) I'm sorry, do you actually think that Tom could do a PhD at Oxford and not know what a real postman looks like?

There is no such thing as putting the customer first here...at least I have barely ever seen it. Sometimes we get friendly people, which is great, but often we get people just making things up in order for us to go away (no seriously, we know this has happened for a fact). Our Aussie friends just bought a house here and they said it was a nightmare of paperwork and illogical customer service stories. Oh geez. Yep, won't miss that. Especially since I really take my rights as a customer seriously (I am a Martin after all) and I can't get no R.E.S.P.E.C.T. in this country! I have rights people~!