It's a focus group treadmill

Lend us your views

Within the last month, I have been invited to and attended a few focus groups and research study forums seeking to understand my usage and experience of healthcare and mental health services in the diverse community areas in which I find some belonging.

I guess recently, I have been both forward and willing to offer a perspective because whilst I am affected and impacted by many issues, I am not in a sponsored or activist role, I probably speak for an underrepresented demographic of people who usually keep to themselves and seeking no recognition.

Stuff your vouchers

Now, there is the perverse view of the organisers that we attend because we have been enticed or induced by some sort of incentive. It helps, but if every engagement was for the acquisition of vouchers, that would be unfortunate.

Yesterday, I agreed to attend one such focus group, I arrived on time, only to find that the session had started and there was apparently a restriction to the numbers that could attend. To add insult to injury, I was being offered an alternative engagement for the bounty prize of a voucher.

If the look disdain would could capture for posterity, I think the people in that room could not have been less convinced. You think I came for your voucher that I probably cannot find a place spend before its validity expired. Well, the first part was duly expressed as the latter part was absorbed in my thinking. I came for a focus group I was invited to attend, at the time stipulated, even though the convenor arrived much earlier and decided to start before the scheduled time.

Please, do not waste my time

Anyway, I was not going to waste my time if my time was not being valued and my person respected, as an apology came from many directions until the person coordinating the invitees decided to ask if others could join the focus group. Eventually, I was invited to join the activity that had barely got beyond the introductions and ground rules.

Whilst I commend many who work in the non-profit and community engagement sectors, the availability of people to help and volunteer themselves in activities and other research endeavours should not be taken for granted. I can only wonder if I would again be persuaded to engage with that agency after our first encounter.

It was unfortunate, but where I would not be treated with courtesy and respect is not a place or an environment I want to be. From a cynical perspective, I do wonder how any of these things I have participated in would improve the services we use. I guess it is a wait-and-see thing and then calling them to account further down the line. You can only attend so many focus groups before you begin to wonder whether it is merely for funding acquisition rather than service improvement.

Running the gauntlet of influencer clout blackmail

Be glad for the professionalism

I got involved in a thread conversation on Twitter this morning because I felt there was a seething sense of entitlement bordering on blackmail that could not be overlooked. The poster had used the services of a skin specialist whose professionalism had eradicated hyperpigmentation from his face, and one would assume out of customer satisfaction, the poster recommended other people to the skin specialist.

It transpired that the skin specialist told the poster that through his recommendation, some 500 other clients had used his professional services. The skin specialist thanked the poster for the recommendation and that should have been enough.

This is just barefaced entitlement

However, the poster did a mental calculation on the 500 clients, imagined the total income from that clientele and came to the conclusion that the skin specialist’s gratitude could have been better expressed in a probably a free year of skincare services and so by inference labelled the skin specialist an ingrate for getting all that custom and providing no tangible reward.

Now, I cannot say how large the skin specialist’s business is, but one thing is certain, if the skin specialist had not achieved the results of fixing the poster’s face, everything else that resulted in referrals, increased clientele and additional income from the clients would not have happened. What professionals do is provide a service for which they get paid and if the customer decides to recommend them, that is a bonus.

Please respect the professional

What I take issue with is people who having obtained a good professional service for which time and resources have been meticulously devoted expecting to get a free service in reward for their recommendations. It is one thing to have agreed beforehand that you will bring custom to a business for some reward, and it is another to expect a reward from having benefitted from a service. If it is exclusively your decision to recommend a business, do not return to blackmail the business owner into giving you a free service.

In fact, professionals should always be treated as professionals with skills on the market to be monetarised, please respect the professional, and pay up. For example, would anyone having had a successful surgical procedure and then recommended the surgeon to others now expect the surgeon to provide free services for subsequent surgeries as an expression of gratitude? What makes a surgeon different from a skin specialist or a computer expert except for the tendency to denigrate and contemn one in relation to the other?

Paying forward is better

I have recommended businesses and services just as I have written reviews about services that have not been to a professional standard either to get them to change or to alert other customers about issues with the business. Where my reviews have redounded to the bottom line, I do not stand at the gate seeking compensation or reward, I pay fully for the service provided respecting what they do.

My principle is to pay forward rather than seek reward, what I can afford, I pay for, if the business wants to be generous, that generosity is better directed to those in need. I would not let acquisitive greed deprive others of opportunity and access. Like if the skin specialist offered a free session, I would probably suggest it be given to someone who needs it but cannot afford it.

It is blackmail, no less

This brings me to the issue of influencers; these are people who have a large following due to activity in their situation who have consequently promoted a business or service to their followers. Whilst I cannot essentially class fame or infamy as a profession, some do use their influencer clout to then attempt to blackmail businesses, services, or professionals into providing free products and services for exposure to their following.

For some businesses, there can be a beneficial end to that, but to put upon a professional and predicate that by your influence their business has survived and without you, they will be nothing is quite an aggrandisement and close to delusions of grandeur. It is the professional’s prerogative to express gratitude as they deem fit without having to be excoriated or abused for just expressing thanks instead of doling out freebies.

Ultimately, if you can’t pay for the service, go elsewhere. If you feel entitled to a free service, find a gullible professional ready to sacrifice their professionalism for your influencer schtick. Enough of the backhanded recommendations seeking reward, if anything, it is utterly reprehensible, and I have no qualms about calling it out.

The benefit of naught

Seeing beyond the plain offer

What looks like an offer may not necessarily have a benefit, as there can be many variables at play to determine if, in the immediate term, the situation might have some credible participation. In the same terms, a bargain, attractive as it may seem, is also perverse; in that, it presents an opportunity to acquire either what you do not need or more than you need.

The utility of that acquisition is elastic, as it might give you the benefit of longer use or better facility, much as acquiring excess beyond what you need can lead to waste. The balance between the durable and the perishable is somewhat lost as consumption might be sped up or storage presages the loss of quality and usability.

Not all offers should be grabbed and taken advantage of, just as a bargain might not be of any benefit to you as it is to those offering the bargain to shift stuff or get more footfall. To paraphrase an old sales dictum, if you are not paying the going and full price of an offer or a bargain on a product, you have become part of the product.

For the food, I can forget

You switch power in time

I have not normally had much interest in the utilities I use, I acquire the service and arrange payments and leave it at that. Then I realised these utility companies will take undue advantage of loyal customers, your initial contractual period runs out, they do nothing to woo or keep you about, they just let it roll giving attractive discounts to new customers and heaping on annual increases just because your direct debit details allows them to coast along.

About two years ago, I notice my energy company was about to implement an eye-watering price hike and for the first time I thought, I am having none of it. So, I log on USwitch that does price comparisons for energy, broadband, and mobile telephony with seamless switch to other providers and found a better value service.

I saved myself about 50% then the utility company after a year was about to hike rates, which led me shopping for another deal. How annoying can it be that within a quarter of a year, this new offer is again at an unreasonable price hike that it is almost like musical chairs? USwitch is not slacking, as anything I can save more that £50, I am alerted to the opportunity much as I glibly ignore many offers. Here we go again.

App on the blink

Over a year ago, I acquired a NETGEAR Nighthawk X6 R8000 router because all other access points that I got to replace the moribund Virgin Media Super Hub 2AC wireless service were not giving me stable and reliable connections especially when working from home. When setting it up, I was offered an app to install on my Android mobile phone to manage the hub, which seemed a rather nice idea.

However, every time I logged on the router to update the firmware from my mobile phone, I was told there was no new update and I believed it. All I was able to do was restart the router on occasion and I thought nothing of it. A few days ago, I thought of installing my ExpressVPN service on my router by logging on via a web service and found my router was so far behind on firmware updates I needed to perform an intermediate update before the latest one.

A virgin I am not

This brought me to my Virgin Media broadband service that provides Internet, television and land telephony of which the last two I can do without, considering most of what I need on television comes from my Amazon Fire Stick 4K, they want to add 5% to my subscription having had my custom since August 2014. I have been paying too much already and I was not going to stand for this.

In South Africa, I was using the Amazon Fire Stick Lite and bought ExpressVPN which allowed me to watch shows I will normally get to see when in England. Murder, She Wrote, NCIS, Columbo, and Law & Order are amongst my homely comforts. There are other uses of the VPN along with giving me access not normally available in the UK.

I eventually found time to call up and 45 minutes into the call from the land telephony service I have with them, I was ready to cancel, but they made me some interesting offers that I could not decide on yet as USwitch seemed to have better deals until I realised how much of a hassle it would be to change providers.

Delivered from lagging delivery

This morning, I called again, and we went over the whole provision, something was marketed to me to retain the services I had for a 30% discount for 18 months. I think I can take that, but I am not going back on that outrageous tariff in 18 months’ time. Meanwhile, I am getting a new hub and I can install my VPN on it.

Since I am sorting out a few technical things, I thought of getting a new laptop for my test lab activities, one that has some particularly critical security features I need to take through its paces and acquire some knowledge and practice. I had my designs on a Dell laptop which I was ready to pay for when I saw the delivery date 26 days hence. That, for me, was not good enough, if they could not turn it around in just over a week, someone else will get my custom.

Anyway, no time for a rant. What’s for supper?