If you misinterpret “Topshop Southport is closed” to mean that the entire town is closed, you’re probably too dim to be allowed to shop anyway. It’s sad when a local paper feels the need to use a full page to publicise the locals’ inability to interpret “Topshop’s standard store closure poster”.

It’s like they couldn’t decide whether to go for serif or sans, so went for a bit of both.

A little while ago, before I did all that App reviewing nonsense, I blogged about Natwest’s utterly unambitious Customer Charter.

You’ll probably have seen on TV ads and billboards nationwide that they’ve just published their first independent review of progress – it’s online here, and it’s well worth a read and a chuckle.

Let me share with you some of the highlights.

You’ll remember that one of the commitments I derided the most was “We will aim to serve the majority of our customers within five minutes in our branches.” They have two pages dedicated to this commitment in their follow-up report. The first is congratulatory, with big ticks heralding the arrival of more cash machines and a queue management system. Neither of those is the crucial outcome measure, though. That comes on the next page, with this pearl of wisdom:

We know … that there are times and places where customers have waited longer and we have much more to work on … We are testing a new tool to measure queues.

Their solution to improve waiting times is… to change the way waiting times are measured. Because, dear customer, this represents “Helpful Banking”. Presumably, you’ll stand in the queue for exactly the same length of time, but their report will look better. Fantastic.

Another promise was that they’d only piss off 10% of their customers: “9 out of 10 customers will rate us friendly and helpful.” How did they do?

8 out of 10 customers rated us friendly and helpful during 2010.

They failed. But, not to worry, they still include this congraulatory customer quote:

A 9 out of 10 customer satisfaction rate … does help to reassure me that they are serious about their commitment.

Not only would pissing off 10% of customers not go a long way to reassuring me that NatWest is serious about “Helpful Banking”, the fact is that they didn’t achieve it. So it doesn’t reassure anyone about anything!

Some quick-fire ones now.

Promise: “75% of our customers to be satisfied with the way their complaint has been handled.”

57% of our customers were satisfied with the way their complaint was handled.

Promise: “[We will provide] more than 22,000 days each year to community volunteering”

During 2010, [we] gave 7,547 days of volunteering to their local communities.

Promise: “We will answer 90% of calls in less than a minute.”

We answered 91.4% of calls made to our telephone banking centres in less than 3 a minute.

Hmm, that last one looks good. It looks like they’re meeting their target. And, in fact, they are.

I’ve included it because of the ludicrous way they define the target, which is curiously hidden from the main report.

Their published result makes it look like I can phone up, and my call will be answered by a real person within a minute. That’s actually not true, because there’s often an automated machine answer first. They have then gone on to exclude from the sample anyone who fails to get through the automated machine’s ‘screening’ of calls. If you can’t find out how to speak to an actual person, you’re excluded from the figures. If the machine won’t let you speak to a real person – perhaps because “lines are busy, please try later” – you’re excluded from the figures. Extraordinary.

I can only repeat my advice from last time: Switch.

Swtich to Smile. Switch to First Direct. Switch to The Co-op.

Switch to anyone who actually gives a damn about customer service, instead of waiting for change for a bank which clearly doesn’t know how to prioritise customer service, and whose solution to poor customer service appears to commit to more poor customer service.

Don’t put up with it. Switching is quick and painless. The more you put up bad service, the more these corporate idiots think its acceptable, and the more it propagates.

Please, for the good of us all: Switch!

Apple Logo

Twelve months ago, I was ‘a PC’, as the ads would have it. I’d used Windows for most of my computing life, and had no real reason to change. To me, Macs were incompatible with everything I use, great for graphic design and little else, and owned only by pretentious idiots with more money than technological sense.

Now, I have a MacBook Pro and and iPhone.

So what changed? How did Ballmer lose his grip on me in the face of the cult of Jobs? Well, I came to the dawning realisation that Apple products are better for my needs.

My old Toshiba laptop was happily running along on Windows XP, but nearing the end of its lifespan. After four years of abuse, it was running slowly, becoming occasionally tempremental, and making worrying noises now and again. I decided it was time for a new one.

At the same time, I’d be trying to find the perfect operating system for my Acer Netbook. It came with a fairly rubbish pre-installed flavour of Linux, and I’d been experimenting with Ubuntu, Moblin, even Windows 7 (which ran so slowly it was comical). I had come to realise that operating systems could be done better than Windows – though I wasn’t sure I was ready to leap to Linux for the purposes of my main computer system.

One of the most negative aspects of my experience with Windows XP on the laptop was it’s constant nagging. Everytime I opened the lid of the laptop, it would have a handful of messages to tell me it had connected to a wireless network, updated its virus scanner, and an update or six were available – which would probably require a reboot taking at least ten minutes. My limited experience of Windows 7 on other computers and on my netbook hardly convinced me that Microsoft had reversed this trend.

What I needed, I realised, was an operating system that gets the hell out of my way, and just lets me do what I want to do – much like Moblin on the netbook.

Now around this time, many of my online acquantances were changing to MacBooks. I was mildly curious about this, but I was fairly sure that Mac wasn’t for me. I didn’t want the hassle of converting documents to use them on Windows machines, having to find alternatives to the software I use that are ‘Mac Compatabile’, and peripherals probably wouldn’t work with it either. No, I was sure I wanted to stick to Windows.

Then, with curious timing, an Apple Store opened near me. Being a bit of a tech-head, of course I naturally went to have a look. Initially, I gawped from outside at the hoards of people, wondering how people could spend so much money on such ‘toys’ instead of proper computers.

MacBook Pro

Within a couple of weeks, I ventured inside. Having never really examined one in the ‘flesh’ before, I was amazed by the MacBook Pro. It was a thing of beauty. It wasn’t a noisy great hulking grey plastic lump of ‘tech’ like my laptop. It was metal, and shiny, and sleek. It looked like it had been designed, rather than just being the result of an unholy union between screen and keyboard. It impressed.

Still, I scoffed at the large trackpad. Recalling that Macs have only one mouse button, I assumed one had to tap to click, and no right-click would be possible. I’ll admit to being more than a little impressed when I tried it, and found that the trackpad actually physically clicked…

And, over time, the seed planted by the Apple Store grew. I learned that that right-clicking was not only possible, but easy – just click with two fingers. I noticed how the Macs sped along, even when multitasking, compared to my slow, clunking laptop. And gestures like two-fingered scrolling and four-fingers for exposé came naturally, even from just playing in the shop.

More than anything, the more I learned about Mac OSX, the more I felt some design had gone into that too. It didn’t feel like the latest iteration of something that had gone on forever. It felt thought-through, somehow fluid, and complete. It just worked, and kept the hell out of the way.

I was given yet more confidence to make the switch by the support offered by the Apple Store. The idea that they were there, on hand, to help with any questions or struggles I had was manifestly reassuring. And the idea of being able to take a misbehaving laptop straight to the Genius Bar for repair sold me too.

So, after a little research, I took the plunge. I made a Personal Shopping appointment, took along my NHS ID and got a hefty discount off a new MacBook Pro. The shopping experience itself was brilliant. I had an attentive assistant’s undivided attention, and he was clearly knowledgable. He knew all about the machines, how they worked, and how to do stuff on them.

He didn’t try to up-sell – despite me expecting him to, when I asked if the 13″ would meet all of my needs. Ask that in PC World, and they’ll undoubtedly try to sell something horrendously overpowered to bulk up the sales figures.

The guy was trying to tell me all about the benefits of iLife – I wasn’t really interested, I assumed this was Apple’s version of bloatware that I’d remove within days.

He offered to take in my old laptop and transfer everything across, but I figured that I could do that myself – though he assured me that they’d be there if I got stuck.

I got the MacBook home, and loved it. Transferring everything across was easy, especially as most of my documents and the like are stored with DropBox. Transferring music involved a simple iTunes backup on the old computer, and restore on the new one. Easy.

The ‘bloatware’ of iLife turned out to be excellent. I use Mail, Address Book, Calendar, iPhoto, and iMovie regularly, and GarageBand for podcasting. Everything stays in sync with my Google services flawlessly – I now rarely find myself logging in to the Google Apps online.

I was initially frustrated by the lack of a “maximise” button on the Mac, but once you’re used to working in windows that are only as big as they need to be, you quickly learn to appreciate the advatanges of working in multiple windows. As I write this, I have a couple of chats window open on the right of the screen – something I never would have done under Windows XP as I would naturally have maximised this one window. I’ve also adopted this new-found multitasking behaviour on the Windows systems at work – and often try to stroke the mouse, as I do my Magic Mouse at home!

Whilst I have iWork on the MacBook, I also bought Office for Mac for pennies via NHS Discount, and find myself using that instead. Again, the layout of the software is rather different to what I’m used to under Windows, but it is in many ways more intuitive through being less formal and more fluid. Writing a PowerPoint presentation a few weeks ago seemed easier on Office for Mac than on regular Office – even though it’s regular Office that I’m used to. And I had no problem at all loading it onto a memory stick and presenting it at work.

MacOSX does what I wanted – stays out of the way. And I’ve come to appreciate that features like exposé, which look like flashy gimmicks in the shop, are invaluable – I actually don’t know how I managed without it! And I can honestly say that I haven’t found anything – anything – that I could do on the PC but can’t do on the Mac.

So, laptop wise, I’m a Mac Convert. I prefer the way Macs work, look, and feel. They are a better match for me than Windows PCs – though I accept that some will prefer the latter – I’m a convert, not a cult member.

I was going to write about how I was later converted from Blackberry to iPhone, too, but given the length of this post, I think that will just have to wait till another day.

Three years ago, everyone’s favourite Guardian columnist Tim Dowling wrote a G2 article listing low-cost ways to transform your human existence, in Even £50 can change your life.

His lowest budget suggestion was buying socks:

£50 [is] enough to be able to throw out your entire sock collection and buy a new set from Tesco. No more holes or mismatched pairs. Just fresh, clean socks every morning from now on.

Doesn’t that sound appealing?

Around the same time, another of my Guardian favourites, Anna Pickard, was blogging about the frustrations of socks, and perhaps because of the sheer volume of sock-orietated content that permeated my brain around then, the idea of having a whole new collection of socks has been lodged firmly in my mind ever since.

Now, back to 2010. Having recently accepted a dream job in Public Health, and having just about finished my job in General Practice, I was in the mood to treat myself this weekend. But this being credit-crunch Britain, and the job I’ve just finished being un-banded, the celebration was hardly going to be grandiose.

But – given Tim’s advice – why not make it life-changing nonetheless?

So off all my socks went to Oxfam (well, nearly all of them, I kept my favourite ones). And, clutching Clubcard vouchers, Partnership Card vouchers, and a Debenhams voucher from Kantar, off I went to the shops, and procured myself three fine sets of shiny new life-changing socks for nothing.

This does mean that I’ve swapped a whole drawer of socks for just about fourteen pairs, but it cost me nothing, and who needs more than two weeks’ worth of socks anyway?

I can officially declare that it is entirely liberating to have a whole collection of comfortable, hole-free, well matched pairs of brand new socks. That initial sense of mild disappointment and frustration each morning that “all my nice socks are in the wash” has been eliminated.

And my feet have never felt happier.

A Happy Foot - It's not mine, it's just illustrative. Courtesy of evelynishere (used under licence).

By-the-by, it turns out, that the Guardian‘s position on this has changed. Michael ‘Smugface’ White doesn’t do new socks. Instead…

I still wear my own children’s discarded socks and, if they were a particularly good black pair, occasionally even darn them.

Just think of his poor feet.

Is this really, as he claims, an environmental micro-choice which remains with him from his time spent growing up in the aftermath of the Second World War? Or is it just a pitiable sign of a being a tight, grumpy old bastard? It’s hard to say for sure, but I know which explanation I favour.

Knowing what’s under his highly polished shoes, will we ever be able to take his pompous self-righteous TV political commentary seriously again? Here’s hoping no-one will.

My inner pedant would like to point out to the media at large that Poundstretcher is not a single price point store. Everything is NOT £1… «

Poundland and Poundworld, on the other hand, do offer a single price point, which doubtless won’t be changed after next week’s VAT cut. «

Given that Ikea’s fit together like a dream, how can Argos produce flatpacks seemingly inspired by the Intelligence round of Krypton Factor? «

Just seen my first Christmas display of the year in Marks and Spencer. They do know it’s only 16th September, right? «