Initially the end-date was set for December 16th. What a wonderful Christmas present. Luckily they couldn’t get enough skilled people to take over our jobs in Berlin. Going by the logs and experiences we and the customers have had, they still can’t, but this might improve. I will just not be able to witness it. The end-date was postponed to February 24th.

Little by little, people applied for jobs and got them, so they left, before the end-date. This meant, they wouldn’t get the ex-gratia payment of 1000 euros, but at least they had a job.

I waited until January, before I seriously started to look for work. I’d had an interview with Netgear in November, but their response to, if I got it or not was very slow. I got an interview with OVH in Dublin in the meantime, after I passed a Technical Test. OVH is the biggest Webhoster in Europe. The job was to support people and businesses who had taken out a subscription to either a server or the cloud.
It had been years since I’d been to Dublin, so was really looking forward to a visit. Was an hour early in Dublin, so had a little walk through the city center (well, a few streets), as OVH was in the middle of city centre. Had the interview. Didn’t think it went very well. Then went out to Howth. About 10 years ago, when I lived in Dublin, I and a friend went there regularly on our motorbikes. We both just got our licence. Nice to go down memory lane. Also went to the street where I lived before. Then back to the city, to meet up with the recruiter (Careertrotter). Had a nice conversation and a coffee. After that, it was back home for a two hour drive and the waiting if I got the job could begin.

I was also invited to do a Technical Test with Dell (also in Dublin) a few days after OVH. This test went surprisingly well as well. This job was Enterprise Technical Support Analyst. This means supporting owners of Dell Powerdedge servers as well as any other hardware from companies that have been taken over by Dell (Equalogic to name but one). A few days after my interview with OVH, I was, yet again, on my way to Dublin for an interview with Dell. This went well. I had agreed, seeing as OVH already said yes, that Dell would give me an answer that same day. I was nearly in Limerick when my phone rang, but the connection got lost straightaway. Hmmmm. About 5 minutes later, while ‘Tonight’s gonna be a good night’ by the Black Eyed Peas was playing, I got a call again. I got the job at Dell as well. Talk about life providing theme songs to situations. After about 10 nano-seconds deliberation, I accepted the job at Dell. Although OVH was a good opportunity as well, Dell provided better prospects; more chances to grow, more people (OVH was an office with only 7 people, smack bang in the centre of the city, which meant taking public transport).

So, now I’m working for Dell as a Enterprise Technical Support Analyst. Training will start in about a week. In the meantime, we’re doing callbacks for people who have been helped by colleagues, to check if the problem is solved and if the solution was satisfactory. A nice way to see what happens after a ticket gets closed.

Found a place to stay in Wicklow, right by the sea. I will put up some pictures of this later.

Assume, a colleague has no place to stay. Well, she did, but she chose to rent part of a room from me, as temporary accommodation and agrees to pay (part of) rent and bills.

Now, guess what happend after said colleague moves out and is presented with the bill. A bill, I might add, does not reflect what she really owes. Being the nice guy I am, I took money off the amount she owed….. Dis she pay the remainder? Did she heck. What she did do and continues to do, is slag me off in front of my friends. That’s gratitude for you. I should maybe have left her on the streets (where she belongs)

Shame really. When I was still useful to her, we actually had quite a bit of fun.

But, it doesn’t stop there. I borrowed a set of speakers to her ‘boyfriend’ (ooops, no, not boyfriend of course, they just enjoy each other’s company for days on end and they ‘understand’ each other). Instead of returning said speakers, the ‘boyfriend’ decides to take them with him to his new house…about 100 km away. Honest mistake? You be the judge. He didn’t have them when he entered this country and consciously took them away. A further 20 euros it has cost me.

Just to make things clear: all the above is not about the money per se. It’s about honesty and decency, of which they are both lacking and quite honestly, I’m disgusted at their behaviour. At my previous place of work, both of them acted all high and mighty and knew exactly what people should and shouldn’t do. In actual fact, and I hate to say it, they are about the most dishonest, disloyal and unpleasant people I have come to meet so far, I’m usually a good judge of character, but missed the mark by miles with these two.

If you meet them and you have the choice, I would say, quite honestly: avoid. It may seem and smell like roses in the beginning, but the rotting process starts soon after. See this as a warning and, with the above in mind, make your own judgement. Just be careful.

p.s. To the person (we both know who you are) searching through Dutch google: when searching, please spell Shannon correctly (two n’s not one). I mean, how hard can it be, you’ve lived here for nearly 6 months.

It looks like I have hit a nerve somewhere. One of the culprits (the, well, let’s call him male, for sake of argument), sent me quite a threatening sms last night. He has now admitted to stealing, sorry, taking without consent, my speakers. How sad can you be. Stealing a set of speakers, of which one of the satellites don’t work. What point are you trying to make.

Back to the threats: he threatened to come over and sort out the differences. I will upload a screenshot of the sms later. What he wants me to do, is make the tags disappear. I can do that. The post will still stand and most likely, it will still be indexed by Google. Only one way to get the post removed and that’s to return my set of speakers on my terms or better yet, transfer the money owed for the speakers into my account.

See below for the threat (yes, I alerted him to his spelling mistake):

(last updated 23rd March 2012)

I wonder what the next step ought to be. Send mails to upper management? Send some mails to various media? I don’t know…. For now, another tweet is called for. I hope bol.com understands the power of social media (well, they should, seeing as they have various accounts on twitter and facebook).

If all else fails, I may need to go to an arbitration agency (to which they subscribe).

Granted, I paid the bill, when a reminder was sent. That’s where it went wrong. For my convenience, they combined the two initial bills into one new bill (for one, easy payment, I assume). I paid this bill on time. This was acknowledged on my personal page. What they forgot to do, was book the one payment, against the two outstanding. Instead, they sent the two (already paid) bills to a collection agency. This collection agency then sent me a letter (with nice red lettering on the outside), with various threats and the demand to pay up. The annoying thing here as well, is that after they have sent the information to the collection agency, bol.com claim they no longer have my information (uhuh, of course, they remove me from their ordering system straight away after non-payment) and keep sending me to the collection agency
I explained to the collection agency that I already paid and please leave me alone. Of course they wanted proof, which I immediately provided. They acknowledged my payment and I thought that was it….

…..WRONG !!!

Even after all the above, I wanted to place another order for a few books. The order went through and I was set to patiently-waiting-mode, for the arrival of the books. This was quickly scuppered, when an email arrived from bol.com, to tell me the order was cancelled, due to non-payment.

WHAT !?!?

I contacted them via mail and later via Twitter. They asked me for the order-numbers, which I provided (although my name would and should have been enough). I thought they would have all this sorted within a few minutes, but no, I’m still waiting for the all important mail, stating that all had been paid and apologies for your inconvenience… This last part has taken a week now.

Sigh…

Autoverzekeringen vergelijken doe je op Premie.nl. Premie.nl is een site waar je autoverzekeringen kunt vergelijken en afsluiten. Het aanbod is uitgebreid en zo vind je de goedkoopste autoverzekering!

Four months on and still no papers. So, see this post as a warning:

If Pedro van der Meijden, from Sleeuwijk in Holland, sells you a car, make sure you receive the papers as promised, in person, or you will do without. I have no way of checking if all the repairs etc. he claims that have been done, have actually been done.

A link to his Marktplaats page

He advertises (so far) under the following names on Marktplaats:

pedro
van der meijden auto,s
PIET

The phone-numbers he’s using:

0615340024
0652176902

06-15340024
06-52176902

E-mail addresses used:

bo-oot@hotmail.com

KVK (Dutch Companies House) number: 51554658

Full details, to make sure there is no mixup with people having the same name (these are the details I was given and the actual place where the car was and he lived):

Pedro van der Meijden
Berkenlaan 20
4254 AM  SLEEUWIJK

As you can see, he has a bit of an aversion against capitals, but when he overcomes this, he goes all out. Apostrophs are also quit alien to him.

Never underestimate the power of Twitter…

Now, since the phone has been at the repair centre since the 12th and the repair-time has suddenly been increased to 14 days, I was asked to wait until the 26th at which time, no doubt, the phone will be sent back and look fixed in the shop for another 4 days before I get the call to come and pick it up.

My question about any compensation was duly ignored, so I asked again: if part of the service is not available to me, no doubt T-Mobile will compensate. Well…no. Even worse, it is up to me to get a temporary replacement. The thoughts behind this are that T-Mobile sell phones for as little as 20 euros.

I’m truly shocked at the lack of customer service of T-Mobile. Incredible.