Fitzroyalty

Hyperlocal news about Melbourne's first suburb: Fitzroy 3065

Archive for the category: Customer service

Woolworths Fitzroy breaches Australian consumer law by refusing to offer a refund for faulty goods

8 May 2013 | 3 Comments

Some time ago, perhaps a year or a bit more, I bought 4 Woolworths ‘essentials’ brand AAA 800mAh NiMH rechargeable batteries, made in China, from Woolworths on Smith St in Fitzroy. They recently failed to charge and are dead.

NiMH rechargeable batteries are supposed to be capable of dozens, if not hundreds, of recharge cycles, and should have a life of several years. I would have recharged these batteries only about 5 or 6 times. They can be reasonably considered to be faulty and unfit for purpose.…

an open letter to Sky Sports from an Australian F1 fan

25 April 2013 | 13 Comments

I am an Australian who loves F1. I attend the Australian Grand Prix in Melbourne each year and am there for every minute of every session. Practice 1 on Friday is my favourite session of the year. As the Australian Grand Prix has been the first race of the season for many years, I get to see the new driver / team combinations for the first time live, rather than on tv, which is very exciting.…

complaining to Australia Post about the North Fitzroy post office

28 March 2013 | 8 Comments

The North Fitzroy post office is notorious for providing bad service, losing parcels and generally being the Fawlty Towers of post offices. You can read many complaints in reviews. But complaining about Australia Post in a Google page is of no concern to Australia Post – I doubt they’re trawling the internets and attempting to find consumer concerns to sooth away.

The customer service is now bad at most Australia Post outlets. As an organisation, they’re too busy undermining the wages of skilled staff and replacing them with unskilled contractors who never deliver parcels, who can’t sort letters and who dump mail that is obviously for other properties in your letterbox.…

the Victorian government thinks food hygiene transparency is a good idea, but refuses to release the data

20 February 2013 | 2 Comments

This is an absurd little amusement. On 26 January I tweeted the Victorian government Health Dept a link to this Telegraph story about how the NSW government has the nation’s most transparent food hygiene regime. Of course I got no response.

food customer service city of yarra

On 12 February Chris Samuel tweeted about the Victorian government’s data directory. I replied stating that I wanted the food hygiene inspection data created by local governments in Victoria to be mandatorily collected by the Health Dept and published.…

the City of Moreland has falsely accused me of defamation

18 February 2013 | 8 Comments

Defamation can be defined as the act of making a false statement designed to damage the reputation of a person or organisation. In contrast, truth cannot be defamatory no matter how damaging it is.

In this post I will outline the evidence that supports my argument that the City of Moreland has falsely accusing me of defamation. The screenshots published in this story are unedited apart from blanking out references to other people to protect their privacy.…

would you like rodent faeces with that?

29 October 2012 | 4 Comments

In 2008 I started writing about food hygiene standards in restaurants and why local and state governments should do more to inform ratepayers and consumers about which food businesses pass or fail health inspections so people can make informed decisions about where to eat.

In May 2009 I initiated a campaign to get the City of Yarra to publish the details of its food hygiene inspections on its website. Despite a formal freedom of information (FOI) request and a subsequent appeal to the Victorian Ombudsman, this failed.…

what do you do when you get food poisoning from a restaurant?

14 October 2012 | 5 Comments

Last Sunday night I cooked dinner for myself at home. On Monday morning I felt fine, ate my usual breakfast of juice, coffee and toast and went to work still feeling fine. I had lunch at a cafe in St Kilda, a place I had never heard of before and which I knew nothing about. At about 1.30pm I ordered the chorizo, feta and fennel salad, pictured below, and it was tasty.

st kilda food customer service business …

dinner at Marmalade and Soul, Queens Parade North Fitzroy

22 August 2012 | 2 Comments

Marmalade and Soul opened at the start of the year in a former scruffy pub in a bit of a backwater location in between but apart from the busy Brunswick St and Queens Parade strips. The food is a mixture of the modern and the retro, and the current offer of 3 courses for $60 is a tempting offer.

wine queens parade north fitzroy food customer service coffee business

I met a friend there for dinner recently and this is what we ate. For entrees, smoked eel with cauliflower and eel jus and ancient grains salad.…

southside lunchings 9

20 August 2012 | 1 Comment

The southern end of Chapel St in Windsor (south of Union and James streets) is not known for food. It is however op shop central for vintage lovers. The northern end of Windsor is much busier in terms of food. I don’t rate Ghin Kopi for flavour of Dino’s for service (see below). But there’s a new Americana diner called Parlour that is worth trying (see below).

Perhaps the best place to eat in this area is Minghouse, which is modest in appearance but makes excellent char kway teow (and other dishes), much better at least than at New Wind further north (yes I know New Wind is Vietnamese-Thai, but they have it on the menu and I thought I’d try it).…