Rip off Britain
James Forsyth 1:57pm
One would have thought that getting a bunch of passport photos done in London would be no great hassle—but you’d be wrong. For a while I’ve needed to get some taken for the Tory conference accreditation form so on Thursday I popped into Hampstead Post Office to use the photo machine there. It was out of order. I went back this morning thinking that it would have been fixed in the meantime. How foolish I was.
This lunchtime I went to Victoria to use the machines there. I went into one and started plopping in the four pounds that I had to pay to get four photos. But when I got to three pounds eighty it told me the service was temporarily unavailable. To be fair, it did inform me of a number I could ring to get a refund if I called with the booth number but, seeing as I was pressed for time, I decided to just write the money off and dashed over to the machine on the other side. Here, I managed to get three pounds in but it wouldn’t accept my last pound coin. I sprinted round the station trying to swap the faulty coin but lots of places couldn’t open their tills without me purchasing something. Seeing as I was down to my last quid, I couldn’t do that. Eventually, a kind lady at the florist swapped it for me. But even this replacement coin didn’t work. By the time I had swapped this one, the first three pounds I had entered had disappeared off into the machine.
Eventually, after I had gone off taken out some money and purchased something to get change, I managed to get four pounds in and my photos done. But the total cost of four photos ended up being £10.80.
Maybe, I am just turning into a whineger but it does seem that these little tasks are getting ever-more stress inducing. And don’t get me started on HSBC—my ‘local bank’—which want me to send them copies of my bank statement despite the fact that they are my bank and it is them who send me the statements in the first place.
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Comments
CS
June 23rd, 2008 2:25pmSuffering from writer's block, James? Do tell us more about how broken photo booths are a comment on modern Britain.
Lance Diatessaron
June 23rd, 2008 2:27pmJames: Go to Snappy Snaps. There's one next to the Red Lion. It's quick, it cost me £5 for 4 pictures, but best of all it is done by a human with a digital camera, not some automated machine. You can even go for a pint while you're waiting for them to be developed.
http://www.snappysnaps-westminster.co.uk/
Disraeli's Ghost
June 23rd, 2008 2:34pmIf they offer you a refund and you're too lazy to claim it, you can hardly complain
Alex MacCaw
June 23rd, 2008 3:05pmI'm not sure why you buy passport photos, use http://www.epassportphoto.com/
SmileyMan
June 23rd, 2008 3:28pmMy advice is to invest in pitchfork manufacturers - their stock should be going up soon......
Ted Tedford
June 23rd, 2008 3:40pmMr 's Ghost: Yes, ring a premium-rate line terminating in Kyrgyzstan to be told you can download a form online to print out and post to the customer relations dept so they can post you a cheque for £3.80 in ten weeks. It's not laziness that means you don't follow up: it's despair.
Perspicacious Perry
June 23rd, 2008 3:42pmJames : a seasoned Conference-goer like yourself should have no trouble following these guidelines :
(a) Don’t fall into the ‘got to have a piccy’ trap and all the other Orwellian nonsense. Tell them to stuff their piccy, and the Conference also.
(b) If you, ‘something in the Speccy’, and your current bone fides aren’t acceptable, - then woe is you boyo.
(c) Trust the small trader to be helpful (by giving change) – (and get a good job done quickly and efficiently.) Small really is beautiful.
(d) Help preserve your sanity by spending the equivalent Conference time, money, and energy on some nice whiskey or gin, tobacco, and a comfy seat in a favourite place, far from the blather.
(e) Repeat (d)
(f) footnote : Health Warning – for the sake of you and your nearest and dearest : irritation at petty bureaucracy, surely spawned by the De*il Himself, gets you down and makes you ill. Petty bureaucracy appears to increases annually and exponentially in all aspects of life. Find and join a group that seeks to undermine and / or overcome it.
John Wallace
June 23rd, 2008 4:00pmTo put this into context you should be grateful that you don't have to change you name after getting married. After our marriage last year my wife found to her horror that amending the name and marital status on her passport would cost £72, good old Gordon eh!
For confirmation of this stealth tax on marriage visit:
http://www.ips.gov.uk/passport/fees.asp
Changing name and marital status comes under the Renewal or Amendment of an existing adult passport row.
Perplexed Perry
June 23rd, 2008 4:17pmJohn Wallace – our congratulations to your and your wife on your Marriage, - and our sorrow that your wife has been attacked and penalised by the State for joining you in matrimony. Being long married ourselves, we had not realised this extra, nasty, taxation (for that is what it amounts to) on marriage, and thus joining your lives, exists.
C Powell
June 23rd, 2008 4:21pmJohn: you don't have to change your name on getting married (though I like the typing error - "adult passport row"!) Of course, if ID cards come in we'll all have to every time any personal data changes: not just £100 to have one, but £100 every time you move house, get married, have a child, change car etc.... Nice little earner for the Govt and our privacy vamooshed.
As for you, James: Lance has the answer - the one in Hampstead is next to a good coffee shop as well.
Tiberius
June 23rd, 2008 4:21pmThe long term answer to any problem of this nature, James, is to get a woman to do it for you (clearly you would have to accompany her to get passport photos but hey life's a bitch).
Customr service counters, slot machines, refunds; you name it, you will always get a better outcome if you are female. I make no comment as to why this is so, but Dr Dalrymple may know.
Hysteria
June 23rd, 2008 6:08pmbroken slot machines is a comment on the inefficiency of the purveyors of that service - not on the overall value received in monetary transactions in the UK.
TomTom
June 23rd, 2008 6:55pmWhy people use those awful booths beats me. A photographer surprisingly will knock out digital passport photos for a fee not dissimilar to booth fees - at least that is so in this part of the world
Jennie
June 23rd, 2008 10:30pmFaulty photo booths and vending machines that swallow your money are petty theft.
Charges by garages, plumbers and electricians approach grand larceny.
sharon
August 16th, 2008 11:54amreading this has given me a headache, enough now.