What a month so far. I must make up a new rhyme to include the line 'September is full of woe'. Things started to go wrong near the start of the month. One of my 13A dual sockets included a couple of USB ports for charging phones, etc.. One of the 13A outlet switches had jammed in the on position so I decided to order a replacement. Looking through eBay I found a seller with a 100% reputation and ordered a replacement with a turbo charge USB outlet. After a couple of days a package duly arrived. On opening it I could see I had been sent an older version, not the one listed. Somewhat miffed I duly opened a 'item not as described' case on eBay and received a pre paid return label. Within an hour I had a profusely apologetic email from the seller promising an immediate refund on receipt of the return.
Next day (Friday 13th) I trundled off to the Post Office in the next village to post the offending item back. Just as I walked up to the P.O. counter a notice went up - Position Closed. The computer had gone down and refused to re-connect to the system so no business could be undertaken. How did we survive before the birth of Babbage or Bill Gates? Back in the car I drove to another village where I had seen a P.O. in the past only to find it had closed down some time ago. That meant going in to Louth but as I hadn't any loose change for parking fees I couldn't go to the main Post Office. Anyway it was a market day so finding a parking space would have been a problem. Fortunately there was another branch P.O. in Louth and a quick look in Google Maps on the iPhone showed me where to find it. Fortunately, though it was on a narrow back street, I was able to find a parking space opposite. Their computer was working so the job was finally done. True to his word the seller did refund my money the day he received the returned item.
That was just the start. A few days later I had decided to order a new Internet Radio from Amazon. That arrived the following day. Unpacked it and set it up. Plugged in the wall wart power supply and switched on. Nothing. No life in the radio. No message on the screen. After checking the PSU was working properly I went on the laptop and contacted Amazon's technical department. After going through everything I had tried it was conclude the receiver was most likely dead on arrival. Another returns label issued and courier arranged to pick it up. Money was refunded within a couple of hours. As the radio had lots of good reviews I ordered a replacement once my money was returned to my account. Fortunately the replacement is behaving perfectly - so far.
Was that an end to September woes? Not yet. Last night I was watching a recording of an episode of Last of the Summer Wine on my FreeSat box. Half way through the screen went blank and the box became very sluggish in responding. When I eventually got to look at the list of available recordings it was blank. About 47 programs I had recorded had all disappeared. Tried the usual. Switch off, wait a bit, switch on. No joy. Still no recordings listed. I thought the hard drive had probably crashed. Tried a few more things to no avail. As a last resort I found the menu item which could force the box to reset to factory settings. An anxious minute or two as it did its stuff and then had to go through all the set up instructions as though it was a new box. Finally it was back up and working properly and, joy on joy, all my recording were showing again.
Nine more days left to the month - will it throw any more spanners in the works?
The rest of the month will be plain sailing. Unless you get a sudden headwind.
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