Nice people thread part 5 - nicely does it

lostinrates

Spirit wrote: »

lostinrates wrote: »

Just went to get dh who now has no idea whether he still has a job so decided to come home. He is sanguine about it and is gonna turn up on monday morning and see what happens.

QUOTE]

Sorry to hear that. Hope it resolves itself to your satisfaction. I have some know how about job loss situations (sadly usually creating them and managing exits:o) and SarEl who 'haunts' the employement board is excellent, should you want assistance.

Thank you very much! Tbh, not really sure yet what is happening.

Edited!

PasturesNew

misskool wrote: »

Change the phones to accept credit/debit cards? Or a card which has credit loaded on and you get loyalty credit for making long-distance calls?

The way I was thinking was that this approach wouldn't work as you need to get volumes of people using your service, rather than a competitors, so they automatically use yours for their long distance.

Loyalty points reward people that are already using you to keep using you. As I see it you need to get them using you first, so they stay for the paid-for calls.

How about: Long distance, first one minute free. They'd start using it, believing they can say what they need for free .... then get swept up in the call and end up paying for a longer call?

But then the original problem still remains: free local call makers clogging up the booths. So that doesn't solve that one.

PasturesNew

lostinrates wrote: »

... removed on request...

At least this gives him some breathing time to clear the lake and get some swan pedalo designs down on paper.

Could have that lake up and running as a pedalo, duck race and radio controlled boat centre by Easter you know!

silvercar

LydiaJ wrote: »

OK, I wasn't particularly curious about this when you first mentioned it, but I am now. Please tell all! OK, I'll have a go at guessing.... It has to be something to do with being pregnant while caring for kids - childcare for antenatal appointments, perhaps?

child care vouchers. If you are already getting them through salary sacrifice (so you already have at least one child), when you go on mat leave for your next child you are still entitled to get them. As your statutory maternity pay counts as a benefit, the employer cant deduct the cost of the vouchers from your statutory maternity pay - so you get the vouchers without having to pay for them.

The guidance on this was only established in 2008 and only truly works as a gain if your company doesn't give you any maternity pay above the statutory minimum. She works for a company that only gives the minimum and had assumed that either she would stop getting vouchers or would pay for them out of her SMP. I just happened to read something on MSE that proved otherwise. So my friend gets 9 months of vouchers that would have cost over £200 a month.

silvercar

Phone booths: play music during local calls, quietly at first then getting louder and louder until they drown out the call.

Temperature controlled booths, so on paying long distance calls the heating or air- con kicks in, but doesn't on local calls.

Wheezy_2

silvercar wrote: »

Temperature controlled booths, so on paying long distance calls the heating or air- con kicks in, but doesn't on local calls.

Yes, good idea.
The local caller stands in the cold and dark.
When the booth detects a long-distance call is being made, a little patio heater flips on and a chair unfolds.
When the long distance call lasts more than 15 minutes, an inbuilt microwave will start heating a frozen kebab (kebab supplier gets 60p of the call revenue) and every extra 15 minutes long distance earns you another kebab.

PasturesNew

Wheezy wrote: »

Yes, good idea.
The local caller stands in the cold and dark.
When the booth detects a long-distance call is being made, a little patio heater flips on and a chair unfolds.
When the long distance call lasts more than 15 minutes, an inbuilt microwave will start heating a frozen kebab (kebab supplier gets 60p of the call revenue) and every extra 15 minutes long distance earns you another kebab.

Right ... where is a booth - and who shall I call first??

LydiaJ

But my idea of having different coloured phone boxes for different kinds of phones was rejected on the grounds that it would require making significant changes to the stock of phone boxes. So presumably the answer that we are all trying to guess didn't involve any major alterations?

zagubov

misskool wrote: »

Change the phones to accept credit/debit cards? Or a card which has credit loaded on and you get loyalty credit for making long-distance calls?

Very sophisticated solution but would involve tons of work for the company.

zagubov

LydiaJ wrote: »

But my idea of having different coloured phone boxes for different kinds of phones was rejected on the grounds that it would require making significant changes to the stock of phone boxes. So presumably the answer that we are all trying to guess didn't involve any major alterations?

Yes changes were made in every booth but not involving expensive software/ rewiring etc.

Some of the recent ideas were nearer the mark e.g. silvercar, wheezy.