Oct 19
Ben KingBusiness, Life Business, energy, Life, Other
Commenting on: http://www.theregister.co.uk/2007/10/19/bt_wind_farms/
In a nutshell BT (which accounts for 0.7% of the UK power usage), is investing £250m in building its own windfarms which it estimates will generate 25% of its power needs, or enough to power a city the size of Coventry) .
Firstly good work BT, good to see a corporate taking its responsibility seriously.
The numbers however lead to some interesting thoughts, and it all seems soo cheap, that why aren’t we doing it… over simplified argument coming up.
We are based in Coventry and as of the last Census theres about 300,000 of us living here. If £250m buys you enough power for a city the size of Coventry… unless I have got the zeros wrong on my calculator that equates to £833 per person… I reckon I spend half that per year on power at home… so where do I sign up?
Take this up to a national scale and it equates to £143b, which while not a trivial sum of money still only equates to £2380 per person… so I wonder what the ROI on a wind turbine is?
Oct 03
Ben KingLife Life, Travel
On the way to work at the moment there are some roadworks in Canley while Coventry City Council adds yet more bus lanes… this has led to a 400m length of dual carriageway (passed the graveyard) that filters down to one lane at the end just before hitting the roundabout with the roadworks.
Everyday there is a queue in the left hand lane (usually backing up and blocking/slowing down the feeder roads) with a completely empty right hand lane…
… and everyday I simply jump into the right hand land and merge in at the front of the queue, much to the disgust of everyone else queuing patiently in the left.
This beautifully exemplifies:
- ‘Never Underestimate the Power of Human Stupidity’ – It doesn’t take a genius to work out that if we split the traffic evenly between the two lanes that would mean less congestion on the surrounding roads.
- ‘British Politeness’ – Frankly the British love queuing and are just too polite to use sense.
- ‘No one reads the Highway Code’ – The Highway Code says here ‘where lanes are restricted due to road works, merge in turn’.
Nuff said!
Sep 15
Ben KingLife Life, Selling
8pm Thursday evening, relaxing on the sofa with the girlfriend, watching TV, waiting for our Chinese… a knock on the door…
I answered to be greated by an ultra-chirpy NPower sales person, now normally I would just tell them to go away, however on this occasion I was feeling a little bit sporting and I always relish the opportunity to ‘play’ with the B2C end of the sales spectrum.
What I experienced was actually very very frightening… NPower use a combination of clever techniques to get you to sign over the them…
Now I would be the first to admit I am not shy of the odd ‘Jedi Mind Trick’ here and there in my own sales techniques (only asking open questions, etc.), however its business to business sales and you are (generally) sparring with someone on an equal footing.
However Joe average relaxing at home with a beer in the evening probably isn’t so well skilled or experienced to deal with what are some pretty clever techniques.
So how did they do it?
- Friendly, polite and apparently harmless - she was very friendly, polite and appeared to represent no threat.
- Qualification – she has a list of all the addresses on the road and householders surname (register of electors I guess), the line she used was ‘Your name is on this list and I have been asked to talk you about saving you money on your gas and electricity bills’. Her statement was obviously the truth however a little misleading, using the list to demonstrate authority.
- Only ask a closed question if you know what the answer is going to be - ‘You do want to save money on your energy bills, don’t you Mr King?’ Well of course I do, just not necessarily with you!
- Reinforcing the benefits - She kept reinforcing the points, if you pay my direct debit with give you £80 cash back, there are no standing charges, only pay for what you use, blah blah blah. This in my opinion is a huge weakness and I hate being sold to like this and won’t personally sell like this. However I am sure it has some kind of hypnotic effect on some people.
- Gaining entry to your property – Now this was slick! she is carrying a variety of folders, information, pens and she fumbles and nearly drops the whole lot while trying to show me some information (again adding to the illusion that she is a harmless imbecile). She then pulls a ‘can I just sit there?’ pointing at the stairs. So she is through the door… cunning…
- Objection handling – Up until this point I hadn’t bothered objecting (I was enjoying myself too much), however she had some great objection handling spiel and she wasn’t about to miss out on the opportunity to use it… ‘Mr King, you can move to us for trial, if you aren’t happy within 2 weeks you can cancel and I will move you back to your old provider free of charge’ – Wait a minute can’t I move providers FOC anyway?!?! Also I am not going to be unhappy in 14 days as hopefully I won’t need to call your customer services…
- Slick materials - When I did ask a question she had a folder full of charts, graphs and headlines to answer the question. My main point was ‘I have heard that NPower have crap customer service, how crap is it?’, her response was ‘No we are number 1 for customer service’ and then flicks to a section of her brochure showing a ‘We a number 1 for customer service’ icon. Who says?!
- She was an imbecile after all! - I laboured on with the customer service line of questioning with ‘How quickly do your customer service representatives, on average, answer a call?’ She didn’t understand this and replied ’10 Days’
(I think still in response to the trial period).
- Closing me – ‘So Mr King, can I put you down for the free trial?, afterall you have nothing to lose.’ I thought I may as carry on the fun, so I let her get her form out and complete it…
- Closing her down - When the inevitable ‘Can you just sign here please Mr. King?’ came… I pulled my phone out of my pocket and on speaker phone called my friend Steve who had a terrible customer service experience with NPower, and asked him ‘Steve, who was that energy company who gave you really really shitty customer service’ his response was fast and short… ‘NPower‘. Thanks Steve! Clearly her training did not cover this sort of objection – she went quiet, then stood up said thanks and left.
So it was a bit of fun and I enjoyed it (thanks NPower – you are my favourite energy company – just not for the reasons you want), however the serious point is that these techniques are extremely powerful, work and are potentially very misleading, and in my opinion its not a fair sales technique.
Interestingly a quick Google revealed NPower have been in trouble for this in the past http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/1913534.stm.
Jul 16
Ben KingPlay Baltics, Life, Travel
After a hard week working in Hong Kong last week, this week I am doing a relatively relaxed tour of the Baltics.
My journey has taken me:
- Hong Kong to Vilnius in Lithuania (via Helsinki with Finnair)
- Vilnius to Kedainiai (Lithuania), where I attended the very crazy wedding of my girlfriends brother.
- Kedainiai to Klaipeda (Lithuanias only port city).
Today we will move on:
- Klaipeda to Palanga (for lunch)
- Palange to Laipaja in Latvia
- Laipaja to Riga
- Riga to Parnu in Estonia
- Parnu to Talinn
- Talinn back to Birmingham
May 31
Ben KingLife Big Brother, Life
… still watching 
May 31
Ben KingLife, Play Life
… why oh why??? the annual nightmare begins…
As usual I promised myself I wouldn’t watch it, however yet again I mind myself strangely drawn to the E4 late night live feed.
This year, however, for no reason I can understand it is far more appealing…
May 13
Ben KingLife, Play Film, Life
in a word ‘awesome’.
Apr 26
Ben KingLife Life, Politics
Commenting on: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/6596653.stm
This whole debate about whether Prince Harry should go and fight in Iraq to me seems just stupid, as I see it:
- He will become number 1 target for terrorists in the region, thus endangering himself and those around him.
- Odds on he uses more people to protect him than the effort he actually adds to the overall cause.
- This is an additional headache that the already stretched forces in Iraq just don’t need.
If he doesn’t go the ONLY negative is that Harry looks like a bit of a wuss… well boo hoo… stick to what you are bred for Harry (opening hospitals, being a tourist attraction, etc.).
Feb 12
Ben KingBusiness, Internet Interweb, Life, Systems, Web/Tech
I just found this on the web, someone with the same challenge:
http://www.itoctopus.com/index.php?option=content&task=view&id=18&Itemid=27
I am just beyond part 1 of the problem, fingers crossed for a response from MS with a reset password email for me.
In the meantime my hacker continues to cause trouble!
Update (21/07/2008)
After recieving many posts and emails with people asking and pleading with me to help them get their hotmail back I have prepared a handy document that tells you everything you need to know. I am making a small charge for this of $10, you can buy it here.
Feb 12
Ben KingBusiness, Internet, Life Interweb, Life, Systems
I am distraught, I am the victim of hacker!
My hotmail/msn messenger login has been stolen, I have for some years now had the hotmail address - king@hotmail.co.uk, which i won in a eBay charity auction (for NSPCC).
The address regularly attracts attention of hackers, I get frequent emails in my Hotmail ‘Reset your windows live password now’, not to mention at 10 people a day randomly adding me either to see who has the address or by mistake!
So how did they do it? Being in our business all our workstations are locked down, firewalled, security patched, anti-virussed, anti-spywared up to the hind teeth, so a workstation compromise seems unlikely.
The perpetrator (by all accounts a 19yr old Egyptian male), who has been boasting to my contacts about how ‘he works for msn, and has hacked my account’, by all accounts achieved this by the most artistic form of hacking ‘social engineering’.
‘Social engineering’, basically means he has convinced someone at MS Live to reset my account password, thus gaining him access to my account. He has then gone on to change the other pieces of information (secret phrase, alternate email address), thus stopping me resetting it back.
So I am in the annoying stage at the moment where someone else is logged onto my messenger, and I can’t do anything about it until MS sort it out. BOO!
Update (21/07/2008)
After recieving many posts and emails with people asking and pleading with me to help them get their hotmail back I have prepared a handy document that tells you everything you need to know. I am making a small charge for this of $10, you can buy it here.
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