Anyone who has used Amazon, will know that the company takes the money AFTER the order. Pixmania takes it right away. So it means if they have made an admin error when an item is not in stock one can cancel and choose to wait.

Pixmania, choose to take the the money in advance and not FULFIL on the order. Cancelling an order or if they cancel and admit their error means a 7 day wait. Great isn’t it. Make an order for 1k and have to wait a week to miss other offers. Bottom line it’s like having a food store 47 days away. Can you survive the 7 days or not. The law of averages after you’ve got a reply from them [24-48 hours after] you wait while the less than satisfactory customer service runs you around in circles.You give up and wait 7 days more and miss-out on other offers. It’s a law of averages… most people are impatient. However if they bought the item from a reputable 2nd hand dealer with 12 months refurbishment warranty.. you’ll still be quids in!

Pix mania’s online selling I have to say is, what in the UK would be classed as misleading. In fact it borders on the bizarre IMHO. Spain needs to reform its laws to state that all prices have to include what it really is bottom line. For example, they state price for X is Y. Y is price to pick it up at a shop. This is in Spain a revelation. It’s like going to the checkout after you’ve filled your trolley and being asked for a 10 euro surplus as someone has manned the shop.If they send to your home it costs a few euros more. But the price on the shelf is X.

The question begs then how come every other shop you go to you can order the item there and not pay for them to walk 30m maximum to get it, you have to pay 14 euros more when they have it available at the store?

Does it make sense to you? To me neither. It ought to be priced at X + extra money =  [more expensive than other places].

Spanish law needs reform. This is how a famous Irish airline continually flaunts UK law or how ebay victims get hit by p&p costs for lightweight items.

I vow never to do business with Pixmania again. I recommend you believe something from the 13,600 results from google on the company’s ermm.. outstanding reputation >:(

An example of it’s 14 euros to BUY it in a shop. This price is included if you walk off, from the street. So if you GO TO their store and see a camera for 100 euros, on the till they will ask for 114, for walking that extra 10 – 30m

Why not treat yourself: Here’s a link to  Manic Street Preachers’ live guitarist Wayne Murray‘s new act called a Boy Cried Wolf . Below you can find a link to get an MP3 from his f The Firebrand EP.

The title of the song is No Comfort From Your Skin. All you have to do is go to the band’s website and sign up for the newsletter. Easy innit!

The EP comes out in a month’s time on November 1st. You can pre-order from their shop. Signed copies are available on the Tour…

November
11/12/10 Glasgow – Academy
11/13/10 Leeds – Academy
11/14/10 Manchester – Apollo
11/15/10 Southampton – Guildhall
11/17/10 London – Brixton Academy
11/19/10 Nottingham – Rock City
11/20/10 Birmingham – Academy
11/22/10 Koln – Live Music Hall
11/23/10 Antwerp – Trix
11/24/10 Tilburg – 013
11/25/10 Luxembourg – Den Atelier
11/27/10 Copenhagen – KB Halle
11/28/10 Oslo – Sentrum Scene
11/29/10 Stockholm – Arenan

December
12/01/10 Hamburg – Docks

Tickets go on sale this Friday (September 10) at 9AM here

A new series caught my eye, if only as it had Steve Buscemi in it.

HBO are known for big production TV series…

I can’t say from their website that I’m impressed that much by the photos or web set up.

Looks far too clean cut, usual suspect looking actors and nasty clean sets. Think ROAD TO PERDITION… yeah baby that’s what we want.

It’s cool there’s a lot of unknowns in the cast but still, they could have got some uglier characters than those on show:

http://www.hbo.com/boardwalk-empire/inside/extras/newsletter?cmpid=ABC189#/boardwalk-empire/cast-and-crew/index.html

Feel free to  read about the plot outline here, there’s nothing we don’t already know although there’s some new slants and characters.

I just hope with all the production they’re throwing into this, it can be as intense as the Wire, with twisted humour of Breaking Bad with the tension of the same.  Somehow.. from the look of it.. I don’t think so.

http://www.hbo.com/boardwalk-empire/inside/extras/newsletter?cmpid=ABC189#/boardwalk-empire/about/index.html

I’ll eat my own Bermuda if it’s better than breaking bad. The  sets look far too clean and Hollywood like, looks like the normal kinda historical set up with a bit of occasional blood and betrayal.

Maybe I’m wrong… but  I hope for the final piece Scorsese is gonna make it look a lot more grimy! Dude, you’ve impressed me with your last few films, don’t

RoadRunner Records are offering a nice HEFTY 8mb free download for Opeth’s upcoming live album.

The single: DIRGE FOR NOVEMBER live can be downloaded here:

http://www.roadrunnerrecords.co.uk/opeth/mp3us/

Oh, there’s one catch.. you need to sign up to their mailing list!

I’d say as well, they ain’t windproof. I think any season camper who’s been in the mountains will testify that they’re not as good as those lighters that are like jet fighter plane engines and kinda glow blue then red. But, they don’t look as good or as cool as the zippo plus you can’t use it for the things above mentioned. They are REALLY useless as a light.

Anyway… enough about my ramblings. I’ve read the instructions for a Zippo and in 20 odd years of owning a Zippo, I’ve never had a problem using other brand fuel. Their main competitor it seems is Clipper which is around the same price. So my question, dear reader is what do you think? Any notable experiences with using other fuel?

The image supplied is from France, but it’s the same branded packaging and everything!

I guess this will be the saviour of any traveller who has a phone stolen or has to make a lot of in-country phone calls while away on holiday or a business trip! It comes with 60 minutes of calls and is rechargeable.  There-in lies the difficulty if you’ve not got a charger.

It’s made by Alcatel Telecom, so as a basic no thrills gadget it will be cool. I mean, take this to a festival or a beach and there’s no worries about loosing it, just leave a forwarding message on your iphone! Cool!

Michael Weston from burn-notice, I’m sure would say how cool a bugging device this would be for 20 bucks… I’m sure they’d be a WHOLE episode on it

Don’t get your black pants on right now… it’s for March 24, 2011! Ticket sales are to be announced soon!

Venue:

Razzamatazz,
Pamplona 88

Play.com: How you won and lost my heart!

A review on my experiences with play.com, the alternatives, value and customer services.

I’ve been raving about play.com for sometime. I’ve raved about them in a magazine I write for Barcelona Connect re: How to Get UK books and TV here in Spain for discount prices. I never seemed to have a problem with them until mid last year. Play.com’s service, delivery times and order statuses just seem to have plummeted.

What sold me on play.com is the great auto responses, the free delievry to Spain which is ideal. Additionally, I can send books, dvd’s, t-shirts etc to friends in the UK for their birthday and save a great deal on the inflated prices of consumer goods here and save on delivery!

I’ve been using play.com since they first started… They used a business model not dissimilar to those book clubs where you buy X many books at 99p and then have to buy the rest at their price. Luckily, play.com were offering at that time great priced books and DVDs.

Now play.com offer band shirts and gadgets. Books here in Spain in English are well overpriced. Amazon don’t exist here, [well they did until they found out how little the average Spaniard reads]. Amazon do take a sizeable chunk on P&P. The question is, should I offer amazon my 5+ years custom from play.com? Is the loss of foreign postage for ad-hoc book buying really worth that much?

I think it might be. Thing is, let’s look at the facts for Amazon.

Amazon again are very hard to contact. Try and find a telephone number. Navigating a CONTACT US button is impossible. It kind of defies everything I’ve learned in 8 years of dedicated ecommerce  website building. Just in-case you want to know Amazon.co.uk customer service number it is 0800 496 1081

At least PLAY.com do offer this and it’s on their front page [but well low down]

I’ve never had a problem with refunds or items that never arrived getting replaced. Replies took 24H but I got one. One has to question the whole offline experience. I’ll tell you why now.

Books started to go missing in the post [for Spain] and are arriving later and later. My most recent purchase from play.com took 21 days to arrive. A family member in the UK  posted something last Monday and got to me today. So what’s going on?

What really miffed me was 2 sets of reordering for a friend’s birthday present. They never arrived, I reordered and one of them never arrived. It took ages to get a reply back from my friend who probably thought I never ordered it anyway. What was I to do? It was well outside the normal times to complain.

I loved play.com. Dudes, you had my heart. For ex-pat UK dudes in Europe, it’s a money saver, I can order in Euros get stuff delivered to Spain, UK, Germany… anywhere.

A book in FNAC vs Play.com‘s price is a far stretch. The question remains how cheeky FNAC are with their European distribution chain [I think it's massive] and the charges they ask for foreign language goods.  I recommend anyone, check out amazon.co.uk, play.com and abe.com [second hand] resellers. They arrive quicker than from play.com itself. Weird innit!

Still, I think my last order with play.com themselves will be indeed my ultimate one.

I can no longer afford to have friendships ruined by the ‘trust’ aspect of online shopping with them. The last delivery time of 21 days is excessive [that's from postage not ordering date], which would put the whole experience near 28 days from order to delivery.

The company does refund, it does have a telephone number, it is postage free. There is value in ordering from them. Still, paying a few bucks more from a similar company Amazon might have to be my next option or play, abe, amazon resellers….. sadly.

The Ashbory Bass a unique product. Basically imagine a violin, well it’s more or less the same size with super thick LATEX strings and ultra fine frets.

I had a trouble with the high end, but the cool thing is, you whack talc on your hands and play it like a fret-less bass and it just sounds like a double bass. I’m thinking of bringing it back with me from the UK to here. Using riffworks and my trusty notebook I can literally play D&B tunes sitting in a back of a car.  Taking it camping… no problemo… takes up NO SPACE at all!

I might loose the talc mind in the back of the car. My GF will go crazy!

Live, it does look a bit kinda like the guitar keyboard did for the keyboard player in Level 42. Yeah, a bit of a non event.  By that I mean SHAMELESS! However, the deep end and size of it means if you’re playing very simple lower level bass it’s just so easy.  I remember using it playing ‘Breathe’ by the Prodigy. You ought to know how fast that bass line is. This bass can do it. Looking for a Roni Size bass tone without octave effects.. this has it.

The only trouble is getting the strings to be in tune. You have to stretch the strings for ages [they're latex]. The G-string always seems to snap. Still, I think if you play a double bass tune at an open-mike night… you’ll get people wondering WHERE the huge bass sound is coming from. No way it’s coming from that violin ahhaah!