Information

Stay with me here, you'll be thinking you're reading the wrong blog.

A week or so ago, I needed to get a printed circuit board made. It's too complicated for me to do myself, and it's four-sided so I wouldn't know where to start.

I was recommended a firm called PCB-Pool (God know why they're called that) who could do the job quite cheaply, as long as I don't mind waiting about a week.

I took matey's advice, and now I understand why he recommended them.

A chap rang me to ask a couple of questions, and it was a good job he did.

Within a day, I was sent a .PDF file showing me the masks, as generated by them.

A couple of days later, I was sent Tin Strip pictures.

Another couple of days, and I received UV curing photographs, then Surface Finish.

And now I have a tracking number for the delivery, which is now in the depot in Cork awaiting its next movement to England, and thence to me!

"Right, Marvo, very interesting," I hear you say, "and your point is?"

And here is my point.

I like information. I don't NEED to know what is happening with my board. I don't need to know what they're doing today, or whether they've even started it. But I LIKE to know. It's INTERESTING. It won't get here any quicker, but it's like when you boil the kettle. The little light goes on (if you have a little light). After a short while, you hear the noise of the bubbles rising from the element. If you have a transparent kettle, you see the bubbles too. Shortly afterwards., the noise changes to the big bubbly noise of nearly boiling, and then you can have your tea/coffee/gravy. A watched kettle DOES boil.

If I'm waiting for a train, and the sign says 12.42 when the train was due at 12.36, it's 6 minutes late. I can work that out. The train might come soon. It might not. It might be cancelled, or it might have fallen off the track, or the driver might have driven the wrong way and it might be in Birmingham. And I am now seriously disgruntled. However, if the sign says 12.42, and the 12.36 is expected at 12.57, then although I am slightly pissed off that I'm not halfway to London by now, I don't really mind because I know it's coming and I've only got 14 minutes left (yes, I know you think it's 15 minutes, but it ticked over to 12.43 while I was typing that bit).

See what I mean? It might only be me. I doubt it, because I wouldn't have thought that the PCB people did this JUST for me. I don't think that East Midlands Trains put that system in just for me, nor do I think they did it for their own benefit. My suspicion is that there was another reason. Customer Service. Look after people. Tell them what's going on.

Because if you DON'T do that, then people will go somewhere else for their service. To someone who DOES tell them what's going on. Someone who treats them as they should be treated. Someone who realises that we are the customer, and we need to be looked after. Need INFORMATION.

Don't we, The Coalition? Because if we don't get it, we might just go somewhere else for our service.