The item the customer chooses is the item the customer chooses

I no longer go to Holland + Barrett. Not that I went there much, give how dry in the mouth most of their stuff is. I have returned my points card to them, repudiated and cut in half, with a strongly worded note and email.

It's not because there was anything wrong with a bought item - in my view. It's actually the offensiveness of the opposite situation - the till cashier having the arrogance to insist on changing an item that I thought was okay and did not want changed, and when I was in a hurry. It was nothing more than a single vegetarian scotch egg! For which, their shop in Dunfermline Kingsgate mall, on the cashier's opinion not mine that it was "all broken", ignored that I was in a hurry and persisted in expecting me to wait tor them to change it, until instead I stormed out not buying anything. As it was labelled reduced and the replacement would not have been, they were also attempting a rip-off by this.

As I have told H+B: For customers in some vulnerable social groups, who I have experience of working with - that's not only autism - changing their chosen purchase for another against their will would constitute illegal monetary taking advantage of. This case flags up against H+B that prospect. No literal minded aspie can disagree with that. H+B stands under shadow of being a place of risk to go to, risk to more manipulable customers and insulting offence to all customers.

Until H+B stands nationally committed to blank cheque automatic backing of the wronged customer in absolutistly absolutistly every case ever. And H+B would not do this. Its customer services e-address, for which its website promises "we'll respond within 24 hours", never responded at all. Either to the first email warning that unless they gave the right answer I would repudiate my card and never go them, nor to the copy of the notice I handed in with my cut in half card to their biggest local shop. It's critical to civil liberty and not having controlled lives, that high handedness by shops must never exist and must never win.

Maurice Frank

useful consumer site suddenly annoyingly closes

It is an emotional and consumer blow that an exceptionally sensible website with a simple empowering concept is closing down. The "Fix my transport" site www.fixmytransport.com.

It's all because of site hosting and maintaining. The way that shifts as projects diversify and their time commitments shift. The web still has this infuriating flaw, that to be good democratic and user-empowering does not bed a site in to the certainty of lasting.

Using that site helped me in motivating the council to take the supported bus route 63 (Gyle to South Queensferry) away from Horsburgh, whose shoddy standards included simply cancelling buses without rep-placement if they broke down. On an hourly service, and there was a case where they visibly used another bus to deliver staff from their depot to deal with the breakdown but not put the bus actually onto the service for the folks who had been waiting an hour.

When Lothian buses took over, they reinstated the Sunday service that Horsburgh had found unviable and dropped years before - and it seems that just by running it better they have found it viable enough now to increase the evening service, on all 7 days, as well as the day frequency during the week.

It shows the positive public empowerment at stake having a facility like "fix my transport", and now it's going. Credit also Queensferry Community Council, for its local response to the issue, but they did not make it publicly findable knowledge, it was Fix My Transport which served for that. We need to bother to organise a similar sort of consumer info, for spectrum folks, through ANS. An idea that has been raised before and has not yet taken off, as it needs starter contributions, like this 63 bus item could have been one, to get it going.

Maurice Frank

consumer action

ANS's projected writing on consumer issues is an opportunity to effect a lasting empowerment of us in consumer situations, through open record of the problems that can happen. We should build up some sharing with each other, through ANS, of consumer pitfalls. The resulting responsibility for autism workers to be on guard for them for the folks they work with, helps also the independently living aspies who don't have any workers, because the whole scene has to respond to what is seen can happen.

*If you should buy a bed, avoid any with joints held together by a part called a "dowel", which is a silly flimsy wooden pin a few centimetres long. They are a ridiculous design, because they are made to carry too much weight and they are not substantial enough to do it. they can snap easily, When they do, the whole structure is unusable because half the dowel is left stuck in flush the hole preventing reuse. So see what all the joints are held together by, make sure they are not dowels. Don't ignore any joints where you can't see what holds them together, dowels are likely to be hidden from view because both ends of them insert into a hole. The bed I bought not knowing about dowels I succeeded in getting returned and refunded. A dowel snapped when attaching an end part to the bed's main body, within 2 hours of receiving the bed! They were going to send a whole replacement end part, what an expense for them to have to do that because one small piece of wood snapped. I asked them how they could guarantee that what could snap would not snap again, how in that case the structure could be safe to use, and how expensive would it then be for them to have to keep sending large new parts repeatedly? Unanswerable. I did not have to use trading standards to actually chase them, the company knew I had made them aware of these questions, that was enough. Returned, at cost of an extra delivery outing for them: they had to take it back just to avoid admitting the rest of their stocks of it should not be sold, for it was surely physically worthless to them to take back the actual bed.

*Now, having ANS's consumer writing to cite in my flyers is helping me respond to a particularly bad bus issue. It concerned a council supported service, the 63 Queensferry to Hermiston. That they can leave you for an hour then change their mind about putting on any replacement bus, when one breaks down, it happened with the 0830 first morning bus from Queensferry on Mar 19, is a serious enough failed standard for a supported service they are paying them to run, that the council transport office is chasing them for an explanation. The community council's interest is secured, quite properly, in the prospect of not renewing the support contract for that route with the same company if it defends and does not show measures guaranteeing to eradicate, the practice of leaving passengers misinformed for an hour. But the issue should not be just left until the contract renewal comes up top save bothering. It affects passengers now. To make a significant number of potential passengers living along the route know that this happened and is what they can expect, both is what the bus company deserves and puts a proper pressure on the council for more immediate action. So how can you create some passenger awareness? By putting a flyer around!

Headed:

63 BUS WASTED AN HOUR OF PASSENGERS' TIME.

That is a strong consumer action. I wrote why the council needs to bother:

" This not an innocent consequence of technical problems. To mislead passengers for an hour, kept there awaiting a provision that is then not provided, is a chosen avoidable malpractice. Meanwhile, further down the route folks' morning bus never turned up. Not for the first time. This was why.

Queensferry community council indicates the council support for running the 63 route is due for recontracting in the autumn. For public health, against getting tension and raised blood pressure and strokes from risking this experience too often, the council must not wait until autumn to take Horsburgh off all its supported routes. "

Maurice Frank