Luck, PETA and Horse Racing

• March 15, 2012
• #horse racing
• #peta
• #pr
• #animal rights

The HBO show Luck has been cancelled after a third horse died during it’s filming. It’s sad that a horse has died and I would guess that it’s fair to say that HBO did what they could to avoid such things happening, but who knows?

The thing I found interesting was the quote from Kathy Guillermo of PETA (People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals). She said:

Racing itself is dangerous enough. This is a fictional representation of something and horses are still dying, and that to me is outrageous.

There’s a weird, tacit hierarchy she seems to imply from this statement.

1. Best of all would be to have no horse racing at all.
2. Second best would be to have horse racing, but no fictional representation of racing (this is ‘bad enough’)
3. The worse situation (‘outrageous’ indeed) is to have both racing, and fictional representations of it

But ethically speaking (and these people to have the word ‘Ethical’ in their organisation’s name, after all), what’s the difference between killing a horse as part of a horse race, or killing a horse as part of a fictional representation of a horse race? The two situations are purely about entertainment. Is the real-life race in some way more acceptable than its fictional representation?

Strangely, and I would guess rather inadvertently, PETA seem to be saying that killing horses for racing is more morally defensible than killing them for a TV show. And yet the standards of care for horses in most TV shows will be better than for many races. Indeed, even just UK horse racing has polished off 804 horses in 5 years, and three horses died just yesterday, two at Cheltenham (Abergavenny, Featherbed Lane) and one at Southwell (Palawi).

The issue I have with PETA here is the way they seem focused on aiming for high-PR, low-hanging fruit, hurting companies that are doing relatively little wrong, whilst ignoring massive industries that are doing much, much worse. It makes them very difficult to take seriously. While I’m sure they feel they’ve done something very impressive in getting HBO to cancel Luck, I’d be surprised if it made any difference to the overall treatment of horses anywhere.

How Amazon Ruins its Customer Service by using Yodel

• March 14, 2012
• #amazon
• #yodel
• #customer service

Back in the middle of February, I ordered a new coffee machine from Amazon. I’d heard good things about the Gaggia Classic and I knew that my wife and I would be in the house for the next few days, a relatively unusual occurrence since both of us have jobs and work at home pretty rarely.

On the 17 February, the coffee machine arrived. I set it up, but something was clearly wrong. However closely I followed the (appallingly written, but that’s another matter) instructions, the machine just wouldn’t work. I called Phillips (because they do customer support for Gaggia in the UK) and they suggested I call Amazon to get a new one sent to me, since there was nothing they could do for this particular machine.

This was frustrating, but not really anyone’s fault. A relatively complex piece of machinery such as this was bound to have a failure rate, and we were just unlucky to have one that didn’t work. When I called Amazon, they were fantastic, put in an order for a new machine, and two days later the second one arrived. This one worked just fine, and makes lovely coffee.

But unfortunately, after this good experience with Amazon’s customer service, then things took a turn for the worse. Amazon, understandably, wanted the non-working machine returned, and sent me to their website to arrange an appointment with Yodel, a collection/delivery company. I went to their website and arranged a day the next week when I happened to be working from home. The email I received said they’d got my request and would send me confirmation for that date once it was booked.

Except they didn’t.

Indeed, even by the day of the supposed collection, I’d heard nothing from anyone at Yodel, so I emailed them back and asked them if I should expect someone to pick up the package. By lunchtime I’d heard nothing¹, so I assumed no-one was coming and went out to get some lunch. While I was out, someone did get back to me to tell me that a delivery was booked that day, so I rushed home.

However, by the end of the day, no-one from Yodel had arrived. Annoyed, I emailed them again, asking what I should do next, since no-one had turned up, and they told me to arrange another collection time. However, the next working day I was going to be in the flat all day (since that is the only time they’ll come) was in two weeks’s time. I asked for a date then, but they said they could only book up to one week in advance, which seemed a little strange. They said to email them again when there was only one week to go.

Weird though this was, I did exactly that, and emailed them again, asking for a collection date of today (14 March). I heard nothing back. After a couple of days, I emailed again, and still heard nothing. I emailed one more time, but got no response at all.

So, today was the big collection day, and I’d heard nothing back from Yodel. I had, however, received an email from Amazon, reminding me (politely) that I only had until the 25 March to return this object, before they’d charge me for it. I decided to call Yodel. Their phone line charges you 10p per minute, plus further network charges, and tells you this, excruciatingly slowly, before putting you through some terrible menu system that’s entirely confusing for someone who’s not just waiting on a simple delivery. I eventually got through to one person, who told me she wasn’t the right person to speak to, and she then put me through to someone else.

This guy was polite enough, but told me that there was no record of any collection being arranged for today, despite my four emails. He also told me that it’s perfectly possible to book collections weeks and weeks into the future if need be. I asked him if he could arrange one for today, but he said no. He could arrange another day, but that’s no use to me, since the way I can afford to buy coffee machines from Amazon is by having a job, and broadly speaking, they expect me to be at the office during the time that Yodel do their collecting. He did, kindly, tell me that they would collect from anywhere, but I didn’t particularly fancy carrying a coffee machine to work, since if I was going to do that, I may as well have bought one from a shop near work, and carried it home, avoiding this system entirely.

I hung up.

Annoyed, I called Amazon, who again were perfectly helpful. They told me that if I took this to a Post Office, and sent it to the place on the return label I’d printed off for Yodel, they’d refund the cost, and that’s exactly what I did at about 12pm today. Everything went smoothly, and when I got home, I called Amazon, told them the amount and they put the full cost of the postage back onto my card.

As you can see from this lengthy, and rather tedious story, Amazon’s customer service has been utterly faultless. They’ve been fast, polite and sensible. They’ve done everything they can to solve problems that have happened as quickly as possible, causing the least possible inconvenience to me. Indeed, after the final call, I was sent a quick questionnaire, which I answered positively, saying that Amazon’s service has been brilliant, they’ve just been let down by the terrible service provided by Yodel.

I wish this is something that Amazon would address. My office has trouble accepting parcels for employees, so I can’t send things there easily. I love using Amazon, but if they send anything through a company other than Royal Mail, I often can’t receive it for weeks, due to the sort of games you have to play with third party delivery companies. Indeed, without the Royal Mail option, I don’t think I’d buy anything from Amazon again.

Amazon Prime looks like a great service, but because they don’t use Royal Mail for it, it’s of no use to me. Amazon need to fix this fast because I’m getting more and more hesitant to order anything from them. I have no faith at all in any quoted delivery time, and if there’s a fault, I have to deal with situations like the one above to sort them out. Honestly, I’d rather just pay a bit more and buy the item in a normal bricks and mortar shop.

Finally, and just to show their level of competence, four hours after I called them and they told me they had no record of any collection being booked, and two hours after I’d taken the coffee machine to the Post Office, someone from Yodel arrived at my door to collect my parcel. When I told him what had happened, he sighed resignedly, like this was what happened most days, and left.