Chris Hansen’s blog

I realise I haven’t blogged all week, so here comes a brain spew.

Monday I had an appointment with the quack. She gave me the name of a bariatric surgeon to speak to about a duodenal resection. This not only will help you lose weight but also seems to nearly cure diabetes. I’ve had it with being fat and diabetic, so later on this month I’m going to make an appointment, go private, and see what can be done.

Monday night we had a Woolwich Area Forum, where we discussed as a group of mixed laity and clergy the recent Woolwich Area Clergy Conference. I tried to hold up the laity’s end of things…it’s difficult sometimes.

Tuesday I went to meet the cochair of the Lammas Lands Defense Committee, and we talked about the website.

Wednesday was yoga night. The class is getting a bit more adventurous, but I enjoyed it nonetheless. I’ve decided not to eat as much, so I’m having a salad with cottage cheese and a hardboiled egg for lunch at the Big Investment Bank and a salad for dinner, usually.

Tonight we went to The Well for dinner, and I had soup and roast pork with rice. I didn’t feel like finishing the rice.

My glamourous life, such as it is.

One strange thing has happened this week. I got a notice of a comment in a very old LiveJournal post. I took a look, and it purported to be from one Olly Comyn, the publisher of the Economist, who noted that I had mentioned in my blog that I wasn’t receiving my Economist because of the postal strike. He couldn’t find me in their database somehow, and was wondering why I hadn’t availed myself of their offer to reimburse me (by adding issues to the end of my subscription) if I bought my copy in the newsagent. He asked me for my phone number so that he could apologise in person.

I thought it was a joke, or spam, or phishing. I responded that I preferred not to give out my phone number, and that an email apology was sufficient. He wrote back, apologising profusely, said that they were still trying to track me down in their database, and offered to send me the issues (by then it was four issues) that I had missed.

Now I’ve been reading the Economist for about 20 years, but I was absolutely gobsmacked. The publisher of a major international newspaper took the time to email me personally (not once, not twice, but four times) to ensure that I was happy with my subscription and didn’t feel upset at the strike-lost magazines. Now I had no intention of blaming them for something that wasn’t their fault, of course, but I’ve got to say, this man knows not only how to publish a first-rate magazine, but knows about how to keep customers happy. I’ll not let my subscription lapse until I’m so old, blind, deaf, and gaga that it won’t mean anything to me any more.

Of course, today is Friday, Economist and Church Times day, and I didn’t get either…but I’ve been assured that if the Economist arrives on Monday or later I can inform the publisher and he’ll extend my subscription and take it up with Royal Mail.

This entry was posted on Friday, November 2nd, 2007 at 09:35 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.