2012 International Bank Holiday dates

Our 2012 Country Information and International Holidays resources have just added our Gold Collection.

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James Baldwin quote on facing change

"Not everything that is faced can be changed, but nothing can be changed until it is faced." — James Baldwin (1924-1987)

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Quote: Carl Jung on understanding ourselves

"Everything that irritates us about others can lead us to an understanding of ourselves." — Carl Jung (1875–1961)

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2011 Almanac of Significant, Notable and Interesting Dates - just added our Gold Collection

Our 2011 Almanac of Significant, Notable and Interesting Dates has just added our Gold Collection.

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Surplus and Adventure Problems:Lessons for Online Buyers and Sellers

This blog is a draft for an article I am writing on lessons for online buyers and sellers. The lessons are illustrated with a real-life case study.

On 26 November 2009, I ordered a lantern from Surplus and Adventure who have an army surplus store in Flyford Flavell, Worcestershire. My credit card was charged £26.90 on 30 November even though – it transpires – they did not have the item in stock.

After seven weeks of chasing the order by email – I never succeeded in contacting them by phone – I asked them to cancel the order and to refund my credit card. I received a reply on 20 January saying they had ‘cancelled my order as requested’.

My latest Visa card statement did not show a refund so I sent them one last email and wrote letters to the shop’s manager and the company’s Managing Director (different address) saying that if my money was not refunded by 9.00am 17 February I would be contacting my credit card company and requesting a chargeback.

9 February - Received an email from Surplus and Adventure saying that they had 'emailed' the refund request to accounts and that they were sorry for any delay.

17 February - the day of the deadline. I checked my credit card balance and - sigh of relief - my money had been refunded.


Lessons for Buyers

• If you don't know and trust an online supplier try Googling them including the word 'problems' or 'complaints' before you buy.
• Pay for online purchases with a credit card or PayPal - rather than a debit card.
• Be suspicious if a seller charges your credit card before they have an item in stock.
• Be suspicious if you are unable to contact them by phone.
• Do not make accusations, judgements or threats - just keep to the facts.
• Given the supplier the opportunity to correct the problem.
• Clearly communicate what needs to be done, when it needs to be done by and the steps you will take if the deadline is not met.
• Write to the company to reinforce any deadline you may have communicated by phone or email.
• Once you have set a deadline and conditions, do not deviate from them - even if you receive what seems a plausible and reassuring response from the seller.
• Keep a copy of all your communications with a supplier.
• Understand how credit card chargebacks work.

Lessons for Sellers

• If you do not have an item in stock, make sure that you have made this clear on your website.
• Don't charge a customer's credit card until you are ready to despatch an item. You can always authorise a payment - to ensure that the customer is able to pay - and capture the payment later.
• Keep the customer informed at all times - especially if there is a problem. Don't wait for them to contact you.
• Give an estimated despatch date when you confirm the order.
• Email the customer when the order has been despatched.
• Don't make a promise just to keep the customer quiet.
• Always do what you said you would do.

Also see:
Chargeback on Credit and Visa Debit-Cards
xomreviews
Ripoff Report

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Definition of Learning

Kerrisha Gayle has just submitted the following definition of learning to my Learning Forum:

"Learning is a process of Mental, Physical and Spiritual development. Development is advancing and growth. Development is proof that learning has taken place. One has to apply him or her self to a given situation and or context in order for learning to occur."

This broadens the definition of learning.

Also see:
Definition of Learning
Learning Forum - Definition of Learning

Language Learning

I have just booked a holiday in Italy and I would like to learn a bit of the language before I go. Learning grammar and vocabulary like I did at school doesn't work too well for me so does anyone have any ideas for learning a new language?

Contentment Quote

The highest happiness of man... is to have probed what is knowable andquietly to revere what is unknowable.
- Goethe

Anger Quotes

I have just added an 'Anger Management' section to my Quotes Collection.

Recycling

Abraham Myerson relates the following story in his book 'TheFoundations of Personality':

'I have a son who, when he was three, manifested great emotion if death were to enter in a story. "Will anything happen?" he would ask,meaning, "Will death enter?" And if so, he would beg not to have thatstory told. But when he was four, he heard someone say that there werepeople who took old automobiles apart, fixed up the parts and thesewere then placed in other automobiles.

"That's what God does to us," he cried triumphantly. "When we die, He takes us apart and puts us into babies, and we live again." Thereafter, he would discuss death as fearlessly as hespoke of dinner, and all his fears vanished.

Quotes

"Man who chase two rabbits catch neither"
- Old Chinese Proverb

"Minds tend to be emotional, not rational"- Strategy Guru
- Jack Trout

"Unless teams can learn, the organization cannot learn"
- Peter Senge

Herbert Paul Grice (1913-1988)

Grice was born on 15th March 1913 in Birmingham. His father Herbertowned an initially successful business manufacturing small metalcomponents. When this began to fail after the First World War, heretired from business and devoted himself to playing the cello.Grice's mother, Mabel (née Felton) took in paying pupils and educatedthem, along with her own two sons, in the family home.

From the late 1930's until 1967 he held positions at OxfordUniversity. During the war years he served in the Royal Navy. In 1967he moved to the University of California, Berkeley. He retired in 1979but continued to teach until 1986.
Grice is best known for his work in the philosophy of language, inparticular, his analysis of speaker's meaning, his conception ofconversational implicature, and his project of intention-basedsemantics.

Largely as a result of these ideas, the focus of the philosophicaldebate over the nature of meaning shifted during the 1970s and 1980sfrom linguistic representation to mental representation.

Grice's most important ideas may be found in his William Jameslectures presented at Harvard in 1967. Several lectures from thatseries were published in the form of journal articles, and for manyyears the lectures circulated in their entirety in mimeograph. Theywere finally published (in revised form) in 1989 in Grice's collectionof essays, Studies in the Way of Words. (This was published under thename 'Paul Grice'. Prior to that, Grice had been known to the world atlarge as 'H. P. Grice'.)

Publications
Grice, H. P., 1957, "Meaning" The Philosophical Review 64: 377-388.
Grice, H. P., 1968, "Utterer's Meaning, Sentence-Meaning andWord-Meaning," Foundations of Language 4: 225-42.
Grice, H. P., (1969), "Utterer's Meaning and Intentions,"Philosophical Review 78: 147-77.
Grice, H. P., (1969), "Vacuous Names", in D. Davidson and J. Hintikka,eds., Words and Objections, D. Reidel, pp. 118-145. [bookstore]
Grice, H. P., (1975), "Logic and Conversation", in P. Cole and J.Morgan, eds., Syntax and Semantics, vol. 3, Academic Press, pp. 41-58
Grice, H.P., (1982), "Meaning Revisited", in N. V. Smith, ed., MutualKnowledge, Academic Press, pp. 223-243. [bookstore]
Grice, Paul, (1989), Studies in the Way of Words, Harvard UniversityPress. [bookstore]