Darling, are you stupid?!

Since when did any shopper get excited by a whopping 2.5% discount? Why is cutting VAT such a big deal...?

1. It is NOT a 2.5% reduction it is a 2.5% reduction from the mark up price - try it - £100 + 15% vat is £115 vs £117.50 if it was 17.5%. If you take 2.5% OFF £117.50 it would be £114.56 - sounds a small difference on £100 but it mounts up!

2. He is raising duty on Fuel, Tobacco and Alcohol - so what he taketh with one hand....

3. The average Joe the Plumber (to use McCain speak!) doesn't pay VAT on most things - food, kids clothes etc are exempt, Gas and Electricity fall into a separate VAT band not affected by the change, Fuel will be adjusted to compensate, as will the other sins of drink and fags...so what exactly is the Chancellor suggesting??? It would seem his solution is to get us all to go out and spend more of the money we can't borrow and don't have to help him in his (our) borrowing nationally?!

4. We'll get clobbered later on with higher (hidden and otherwise) taxes.

5. The work involved in reseting systems, tills, price tickets is massive (only to be reversed in 13 months time!) and how many savings will really be seen - especially at a time when raw materials prices and costs of goods continue to out-strip the 2.5% off!

6. Businesses claim back VAT anyway so it makes no difference to them and they wont be encouraged by any such saving - and as for a Corporation Tax change - it only helps if you make money Mr Darling!

All in all, it seems like a load of spin and piffle to me. What do you think...share your thoughts here....

Customer (lack of) Service

Why do companies bother to have a customer service department if they dont want to return calls or emails when customers get in contact.

We dont want voicemails, long holding times and an idiot who seems to care more about his next tea break than our issue...we want to be heard, understood and made happy. After all, if a customer takes the time to actually tell you what went wrong the company is getting a second chance and a useful bit of feedback....so a small suggest from us would be USE IT.

Here at UOE we dont use voicemail, automated button pressing or off-shore call centres, we use experts who understand the importance of your business and survey a cross-section of our clients every 90 days to ask them how we are doing...so what is so hard about that we wonder and why do so few other companies seem to follow our lead.

Have you had a bad experience with another company why not share it here....nothing beats a good rant.