Laundered to distress by Laundryheap

Bewitched by convenience

Their unique selling proposition was more than just attractive but extremely convenient considering the circumstances, for the nearest dry cleaner to me was almost a kilometre away, somewhat expensive, sometimes delivering poor quality service and most of all, I had to take my laundry to them and had to given them at least three days for me to pick up my stuff.

Laundryheap was convenience wrapped up in an online portal with a 24-hour turnaround allowing for their couriers to do a door-laundry-door pick-up and delivery, as long as I had a credit card they could charge once the job was done. They had been my drycleaners since July 2016.

I was sold on the 24 hours spiel, it was irresistibly perfect for my situation.

Those bags were big and I filled two of them.

I probably used them 3 or 4 times a year with my laundry bill averaging £200 to £250 per service. Suits, jackets, shirts, ties, cravats, overcoats, trousers and then shorts were what I got them to do. However, the pandemic has meant I have not used formal wear that much, that I have only utilised the service the last two Decembers and this November.

That’s a light delivery

This last time was an ordeal that totally deviated from the kind of service I was accustomed to, it felt like they were deliberately trying to lose my custom, and whatever might have informed that performance, has not been properly explained to me.

On Wednesday, I put in a request for a collection and gathered my clothes in two piles of inventories according to the item and separated them into bags labelled ‘Dryclean’ and ‘Wash & Iron’, the courier arrived towards the later part of the pick-up window and all I had to do was wait until the next day.

The delivery window came just within the 24 hours of the collection, I received a bag and some hangers, the volume and lightness meant something was missing. I had seen from the billing that some things were drycleaned and some were washed & ironed, meaning they did process the two bags of clothes, the bigger shock was I had 20 items of clothing returned out of 58 items collected the previous day.

Good thing I did an itemisation of clothing to be collected, would have to take pictures of labels too?

Make pictures of words

Missing from the delivery was 3 jackets, 5 2-piece suits, all 9 cravats, the overcoat that did not belong to me, and all my shirts, 20 of them. So, I contacted the chat line which consisted of named but faceless bots hosted in Bangalore, when my clothes were dry cleaned on location in Longsight, just 3 kilometres away.

As they had no phone number to call, I was left to type out details of my complaint and missing items that they were to relay to another team and that might eventually reach the facilities or logistics team at Longsight. Each interaction towards finding my clothes was initiated by me, there was no initiative on their part to keep me updated on the progress of finding my clothes, I was fobbed off stock responses, ‘Rest assured, we are working hard to ensure you things are found by our team.’ And anything else to that effect.

Then I was even offered a £10.70 compensation voucher for my inconvenience as they asked for particular details about my missing items to help them locate where they might be. I found myself exercising powers of recall you never have to use when using a laundry service with the hope that one particular description might stand out enough to lead whoever was looking to a pile of clothes belonging to one person, inadvertently missed in the logistics processing.

Item Type:
Brand/label:
Colour/pattern/design:
Size (if relevant):
Any other distinguishing features:

Size and colour, I could generally remember, brands for my suits I could except for the bespoke ones, the jackets I mostly got from a catalogue apart from one, I never really checked to see what label it had apart from knowing one was 4 sizes smaller belonging to a friend, another 2 sizes smaller, belonging to Brian, the shirts? God help me.

Now, the hours were days

Soon, I got a message my clothes had been found, but the updated billing did not reflect the reality of what I was expecting, I had to question the inventory as they scheduled the delivery for Friday night between 19:00 and 22:00, only to inform me that due to some unforeseen circumstances, the delivery had been postponed to Saturday for the same window. By then, I had been billed fully.

My distress was just compounded by the fact that they were not proactive or prompt with telling of the changes in planned arrangements. It would have assuaged my angst if someone just called me, that never happened. A few minutes to the Saturday window of delivery, it was postponed to Monday. I had given up on chasing them and was looking at the legal options for corporate theft and compensation.

Thank you very much

This evening, I received a message that I was at the end of a 20 deep queue of delivery stops, then it changed to someone expecting to get to my door in 19 minutes. Just 121 hours after what was supposed to be a service touted as “Laundry & Dry Cleaning to your home in 24 hours” my clothes arrived. I simply counted them and put them away. If any are damaged through handling, I cannot care less or even more.

Whilst the likelihood of using Laundryheap again is remote to totally unlikely, if they have no competition, it might come into consideration. However, a £10.70 compensation for an order that I paid over £310 for and was not delivered on time, is an insult more than derisory. I could fully afford my laundry bill; I did not choose them for charitable or humanitarian reasons to my account. The service is what I paid for; the compensation is like throwing pennies at me.

We are done, for now

What is a 3% compensation for the angst and distress of possibly losing your clothes? Conceptually, Laundryheap might be a useful service, I have my doubts about the heart and soul of the owners being nearer the customer than their profits.

For that, I would be seeking out all sites that provide review services for Laundryheap to award 1-star for customer service and support, even if the other part of the equation can easily get a 4-star rating. They were let down by the service and when it comes to personal items like clothing, it is those little things that become the end of custom and the loss of recommendations. In Laundryheap, which did so well for a while, I am quite sorely unimpressed and totally disappointed.

Holiday Snaps: Location still serves vocation

Tribes in the sun

Location, they say, is everything. This could not have been more evident than in my recent visit to Playa del Inglés on the island of Gran Canaria.

Much as this part of the island offers hotels, sun, sand, mostly in dunes and the sea, there are sections around the place that are tribal, clannish or native.

We are left in no doubt that the Germans frequent this island more than other nationals considering the number of signs in German compared to English, Dutch or Scandinavian signs.

Whilst, many other nationals do visit for the sun and surprisingly we met up with Americans who had somehow found this out-of-the-way European sunshine paradise, it is was something of a surprise to me.

Traces of places

When it comes to night life, there are places to go where a lot is going on. I could not however fail to notice that beyond these central places that the tourists throng, some enterprising and entrepreneurial spirits had thought to attract custom to other places in town.

These new places I found were considerably better in standard, facility and variety compared to the crowded places that proprietors could not care to maintain or update. However, they have so much footfall that they cannot be bothered to differentiate themselves from competition to attract more clientele. Complacency had set in.

Whereas, these new places strive to convince us that they are close to the centre and in the process miss out on providing the critical detail that might persuade people to visit their premises.

Failing to listen

I took it upon myself at one such venue to state that the instructions given for their location were not clear and sometimes confusing. The indications use referred to a building that had a name spelt top-down rather than from the left to the right as most of us read words.

My friend, new to the island had more recognition for the building name that had the word spelt horizontally from left to right rather than for the building name spelt vertically, prominent as it appeared to be, but I could not get that point across to the owners, rather, I was pushed back as being probably stupid.

Missing the essential

You then wonder if their market research despite the quality of the product took cognisance of that minor detail of getting people to come or whether it had any strategies for persuading people to leave the beaten paths to the less well-travelled places.

Yet, with owners who appear to know too much that they cannot appreciate a simple observation from a customer concerned enough to make a point about the directions to venue, there is no wondering why despite how good and fantastic the new places are, not many are venturing beyond the central hubs of activity.

They’ve created paradise in a desert and expect people to leave the comforts of tried and tested venues for an unknown. Unknown, they would remain until they rethink the whole scheme because they present no competition as at yet to force the popular places to improve, upgrade or make attractive offers to customers.

Editorial: Children in the wringer of extreme parenting

Outrage!

Once again it can be so easy for people to be swept away with a news story and its sensationalist import or the public outcry that accompanies it as it relates to morals, values, standards, traditions or trends.

One such case was the report about a mother who administered Botox injections to her 8-year old daughter to help manage the wrinkles and a better chance at beauty pageants.

It is almost beyond belief that a child would have such an early introduction to cosmetic augmentation for beauty and vanity purposes other than for medical reasons.

The child has now been taken into care but this public and singular issue hardly addresses a more fundamental issue.

I first saw this when the news first broke but only decided to comment on it when the custodial situation arose through a posting on Facebook.

Unhealthy competition

Pageants are more than a rite of passage within the American hinterland, there has been many cases of children being provocatively dressed up and made up almost as adults.

In essence, there might be the desire for the child to compete, participate and maybe win, but it gets sinister when one notices the kind of competitiveness that children are thrust into by parents wanting to compensate for their failures through the forced and aggressive pursuit of the success of their wards.

However, this not only a malaise of as it were failed parents, even successful ones appear to demand even much more of their children as characterised by another mother, Amy Chua who wrote “Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother,” which depicts how she pressed her children to excellence with grueling hours of study, practice and unspeakable punishments.

Affected children

That story is then contrasted by the experiences of children who have been through such parental grilling for excellence in a long article written for the New York Magazine titled Paper Tigers - What happens to all the Asian-American overachievers when the test-taking ends?

Showing that a life of constant competition in academics, sport or the arts does not necessarily produce a well-rounded social being even though they might be high-flyers after a fashion.

Handling life

The real issue is a lot deeper than Botox injections and the earlier this kind of unhealthy competitive spirit is curtailed for children to just grow and act at their own pace within their own natural capabilities; the world would become more cut-throat and those at the risk of losing will dare to kill to win.

Success should be celebrated but failure should not precipitate into the termination of hope or opportunity, the variety of life should allow for both the humility of victory and the ability to concede loss without bitterness or the vilification of those that have excelled us.

Parenting reviewed

Every parent should encourage their children to be the best they can be in a healthy and properly nurtured environment of example, inspiration, mentoring and most of all interactive communication – the line must be drawn where the child become an externalisation of the parent rather than a uniquely able person with a clearly defined personality with goals defined by an outlook that is not constrained the singularity of the parent’s particular purpose.

One would hope that this makes parents realise the difference between gentle persuasion and shoving their wards into any situation as proxies of their personal aspirations – that is the broader issue with Botox simply being symptom.

Acknowledgements

The Parent Dish website broke the story - Eight-year-old beauty pageant Botox girl taken into care, a review of , Amy Chua’s “Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother,” appeared in the New York Times – Books section in January 2011 and the riposte to such an upbringing by children who had been through the wringer of extreme parenting appeared in the New York Magazine under the title Paper Tigers - What happens to all the Asian-American overachievers when the test-taking ends? In May 2011.

Nigeria: Rich Man, Poor Man Billionaires

Setting the O. K. Corral

I was awoken to the tweets and Facebook comments of people who had read a Forbes blog [1] that followed the Forbes 2011 Billionaires’ List that included two Nigerians.

There was Aliko Dangote [2] who had made the list for 4 years running but also had seen a rise on percentage terms of 557% of his wealth in a year to maintain his 1^st position in Nigeria and now become the richest in Africa.

For a man who had been in business for over 30 years and despite his various business activities had been stuck in the low billions until the public offering of this commercial vehicle that brought in the bucks, there could be no dispute to the fact that he was that well-heeled.

Then the man who places second in Nigeria is Mike Adenuga [3] but a good 544 places behind the 51^st placed Aliko Dangote in the world and this is Mr. Adenuga first showing on the Forbes List, though he might have been on the radar in the earlier years as one to watch but his recent valuation does not touch any of the three previous estimations of his compatriot.

Making the billionaires list with audited sources of income is a feat in itself especially if that derives from industry and services rather than from political power as is usually the case with many disreputable African moneybags who have gained a form of respectability from roguery and are unabashed to display their ill-gotten gains.

A billionaire’s row amongst minions

The contention however that has come out of Nigeria and even so the supporters of the second-placed Mr. Adenuga is that he cannot be that far behind Mr. Dangote.

Now, this is not some isolated issue but an endemic problem of one-upmanship and penis-envy, powerful Nigerians and their sycophants cannot bear to think there is someone more powerful than their potentate, surely not more influential or richer.

However, no one can present corroborated or undisputed figures to close the gap between Adenuga and Dangote but the sentiment and illusion exists that the valuations are too conservative as outrageous comparisons are made to give credence to fallacy.

The fantasy numbers game

I could remember when the census figures [4] were published in 2007 and though it was just 370,000 odd people between Kano State (9,383,682) and Lagos State (9,013,354), politicians were plucking figures out of the air of Lagos State having at least 14 million people but no one had verifiably counted that number, they just needed to say it long enough for the precipitation of supposition upon supposition to become fact.

So, one supporter was willing to bet, though no wager was placed that Mike Adenuga was worth at least $10 billion or $15 billion; I would suppose there is nothing about the $5 billion difference when Mr. Adenuga is said to be worth a paltry $2 billion.

Another did not know what he was worth but knew he was worth over $20 billion which conveniently puts Mr. Dangote in the shade and then the same person allows a swing of $15 billion in chicken change to aver that if Mr. Adenuga was poor he would be worth at least $5 billion.

A pissing contest – Not!

They were so aggrieved by the valuation that they urged the correspondent to seek an interview with Mr. Adenuga who his staff address as Dr. Adenuga whilst might be because of the conferment of an honorary doctorate rather than academic ability, he has an MBA.

It is doubtful that Mr. Adenuga would subscribe to a pissing contest to prove he can do it better but if Aliko Dangote had not made the astronomical gains he made last year, he would have been at $2.1 billion (2010) and created less agitation but because a new man has joined the billionaire’s club a ravilry should ensue considering Dangote lost in 2009 from an even higher valuation in 2008.

The issue is no more about billionaires but that absurd case of Nigeria having a rich billionaire and a poor billionaire – just part of the usual Nigerian narrative and possible grist to the mill of Nollywood imitating life.

Sources

[1] Mike Adenuga Is Not A Poor Nigerian Billionaire, His Reps Say - Kerry A. Dolan - Shades of Green - Forbes

[2] Forbes - Aliko Dangote

[3] Forbes - Mike Adenuga

[4] Akin Akintayo: Gauging the Nigerian 2006 Census

On Corporal Punishment

My Comment on Corporal Punishment

Ayoke at Exodus touched on the emotive subject of corporal punishment having read another blog; this is my substantial comment in relation to her write-up.

This is a difficult subject but one where differing cultures and values determine how the question of child-rearing and discipline is administered.

I know for one that I did suffer varied amounts of corporal punishment at home and in secondary school.

On the one occasion, my mother being a school principal - meaning her kids should be saints and nothing less - was administering punishment and my father intervened - "mind his eyes", he said and no, he did not stop her.

That in a way was an expression of love, though, whilst I dreaded punishment, it was not brutal, I had the knowledge that I put myself into that situation and had to avoid circumstances that put me at variance to the rules at school or at home.

Separating punishment from brutality

The problem is where punishment begins to looks like brutality and I once lived with an uncle and with my aunt were merciless with my niece whenever she lied.

That, really upset me that there was a time I got in the middle of the whole thing and vicariously offered myself instead, if they really had to vent their anger so vehemently - in my book, that was not punishment at all.

In an ideal world, one should be able to instruct a child in a clear voice without a wrangle, when you have to reason with a child before the age of accountability, there is a problem brewing and how do you administer punishment/reward to ensure the child does right?

The birch and the wealthy classes

To follow on, there is a whole history of judicial birching that is still administered in many places; I would not be surprised if public schools in England do not still use the birch. As the reference says, the wealth classes encouraged its use on their children.

The belief being it creates a modicum of mental toughness and discipline; basically, you cannot have a high pain threshold or the discipline to endure duress if there is no regulated punishment regime that impacts on the body. The sense of purpose, duty and responsibility in appreciating that you are receiving just retribution for your actions is part of that culture of education in public schools.

Other related evils

The other problem is how the lack of these types of discipline in not wanting to hurt the child is creeping into areas of competition, you cannot mark papers in red, nobody fails, competitive sport is being relegated to just participation and so on – the real world is seriously competitive and adversarial and these left-wing ideas of removing competitions and ambitious goals cocoon kids from stark realities that they would soon be unable to handle.

I cannot say, I understand the logic of corporal punishment in terms of its psychological effects and my estrangement from my parents is certainly not related to the punishments I received.

However, just as in the adult world we have rules and law which when infringed exact sanctions and punishments as fine, community service, imprisonment and so on.

How, with the child?

You cannot withdraw love from a child, but you have to enforce authority and discipline in a way that does not compromise the understanding of what rules are for.

I do have my concerns about the emotive word hit as opposed to smack - a hit - I would say is a blow to any indiscriminate part of the body, whilst a smack is administered on the buttocks.

It has to considered, determined and reviewed in context and definitely not out of anger.

Some wisdom to consider

Naturally, I am not given to violence, but like we have in a Yoruba saying - If you discipline a child with your left hand, you draw the child to your bosom with your right.

When Solomon said, spare the rod and spoil the child in the book of Proverbs, he must have witnessed something of value in child upbringing - that wisdom needs to temper every occasion offered to administer corporal punishment.

Only, in that context would I support corporal punishment - a tough love approach to loving - whilst you should definitely mind the eyes.

References

Corporal Punishment Research

Facts about Corporal Punishment

Is the Bible ambiguous on corporal punishment, the spanking of children?

Corporal Punishment (spanking) is strongly supported by God in the Bible