Kellogg’s ‘Adopt a monkey’ scam

Blur the monkey

This is Blur, a monkey I thought I’d saved from a life of poverty and strive in Malawi through the adopt-a-monkey promotion run by everyone’s favourite cereal manufacturer, Kellogg’s.

But it wasn’t to be. The joy of adopting little Blur was ruined moments after registering, when I discovered that little Blur was still available for adoption to other people – despite my possession of an authentic certificate of adoption.

Nowhere on the pack of cornflakes does it mention that you are in fact not adopting a monkey exclusively for yourself.  So I decided I would not let it rest and contacted the Kellogg’s customer service people.

I made the story sound a little bit worse than it was, mentioning that I had children who had been heartbroken when I told them that we would have to share little Blur.

It took them a day to get back to me:

Thank you for your e-mail regarding our Adopt a Monkey Promotion.

There are not enough monkeys for everyone to have a monkey of their very own. When adopting a monkey you are obtaining a share of a monkey along with several other people. You, together with the help of Kellogg’s and other Kellogg’s consumers, are helping provide food and care for your monkey as well as the upkeep of the sanctuary where your monkey lives.

So there we have it, the Kellogg’s adopt a monkey promotion is a complete scam.

How can you help?

Although you have to share a monkey, I do believe that Kellogg’s gives the Born Free Foundation a financial contribution to their sanctuary when you sign up.

But the good news is, you don’t actually have to purchase three boxes of cereal to register – I just filled in the same code three times and was accepted into the programme.

Here’s what you need to do:

• Go to  this link and select the monkey you want to adopt.
• Press ‘Adopt now’ when you’re happy with your choice.
• Fill in an email address and password (doesn’t need to be a working email address, as long as you can remember it when you need to log in).
• Choose the ‘Format 1′ code format.
• Type in ‘03′, ‘03′ and ‘MC’ in the boxes. Use this same code for the other two boxes.
• Congratulations, you’re done. You can now download your certificate of adoption and print out a large photo of the monkey you – along with 1000s of other people – have saved from a life of misery.
• Note when you log back on to the site there’s a cheeky ‘personalised’ message about your monkey, along the lines of ‘Blur is doing great!’…

Friday night in out-patients

The Cittie of Yorke

Due to myriad reasons I don’t visit pubs as frequently as I did during my Cardiff days – not least the outrageous price of a pint here, but perhaps also my marriage to a person who feels I have ‘alcohol dependency issues’ just because I have one (1) beer at dinner once in a while… ok I’m kidding about the latter.

But one thing I did find lacking in London, when we just moved here, were decent pubs. Sure there was that funky pub in Bounds Green (The Ranelegh) in the beginning, but it was in Bounds Green, so I’ll just leave it at that.

Over time though, I discovered the pubs operated by Samuel Smith – a Yorkshire brewery – of which there are around 30 in London.

The Sam Smith’s pubs are great not only because their pints aren’t much more than £2, but mainly because they exclusively sell their own brews.  For someone like myself, who prefers a nice lager over an ale, it makes a nice change to the continental shitty lagers served in other pubs (which do not taste like they do on the continent anyway…).

The pubs could perhaps be compared with the Wetherspoons chain, also known for its cheap beer, but it definitely does not have that nasty corporate feel to it. The independence of the Smith’s pubs extends itself to their entire range of drinks – there are no soft drinks or spirits on sale from major corporations. Sure, to keep costs down they don’t play any music, but who needs loud music anyway?

Here are three Samuel Smith’s pubs that I can definitely recommend:

• The Chandos, 29 St Martins Lane WC2N 4ER, is right next to St Martin’s church. Took me a while to make it in here as I initially thought that any pub opposite the National Gallery would have extortionate prices. Have been told that the cubicles here are the remnants of the building being used as a whore house, but don’t quote me on this.
• The Cittie of Yorke, 22 High Holborn London WC1V 6BN, is located at the boundaries of the City. It usually fills up quickly after office hours, but can be a bit deserted during the weekend (when the photo above was taken).  Oddly, this pub also features the same wooden cubicles as those in the Chandos but not sure about its whore house credentials.
• The Duke of Argyll, 26 Great Windmill St W1D 7LQ, located just behind Piccadilly Circus in Soho. Found this place by accident when visiting London in 2006, but it has remained a firm favourite when I am in that neck of the woods.  Also check out the ‘Vintage Magazine Shop’ opposite this pub, which has a great collection of pop culture posters, greeting cards etc.

It’s not you, it’s me

Am getting a bit fed up with how desperate companies become when you want to cancel their services. A few months ago, I had NatWest (owned by those RBS wankers bankers) begging me to keep their credit card.

Yesterday, I tried to cancel a free two-week trial of an online DVD rental service. This is the actual conversation I had with one of their call centre staff:

Me: Hi, I’d like to cancel my free subscription.

Agent: Ok, what’s your name and address?

[agent finds account]

Agent: So, may I ask for the reason why you want to cancel.

Me: I just don’t think it’s working. It’s not you, it’s me.

Agent: [pause] ok… but what if we make you an offer: if you pay the first month, we’ll give you two months of DVDs.

Me: No really, I’m not interested.

Agent: [threatening] You do know that if we don’t receive back your DVDs by Friday, you’ll be charged for the first month. So you might as well take our offer, as that gives you an additional month.

Me: Well, if my credit card gets charged I’ll have to take it up with the online fraud department of my credit card company, and I’m sure I’ll be able to recover the money. Ok, goodbye, please cancel my account-

Agent: Wait, don’t hang up, we haven’t cancelled your account yet.

Me: What more do you want, look I want to cancel the trial, please cancel it.

Agent: Well to make sure you won’t get charged, mail your DVDs via the post office so you can get a proof of postage.

Me: Is that it?

Agent: Yes that’s it. Is there anything else?

Me: No. I hope you have a great day. Bye.

———————————————————————————————

If these companies don’t want customers to take advantage of their free trial, why do they offer them in the first place?

The funny thing is, I really wanted to take up a subscription with them once I get back from Australia, but the threatening tone of their call centre staff has just really put me off.

Out and about

Close to Chinatown

In Soho

On the way to Hampstead Heath

Things to do in London

I think this was mentioned in 1000 things to do in London : ride the DLR and pretend you’re the driver.

As its name suggests, the DLR (Docklands Light Rail) runs around the Docklands area. The difference with the tube is that it is mostly above ground and the driving is controlled by a computer. This means there’s no driver, although often a bored DLR employee will occupy the front seat and push a button to open and close the doors.

This video was shot by my friend Menno when he visited us last year. We were lucky to get the front seat because as you can imagine there’s more people who like to pretend they’re the train driver. We got on at Bank and continued down to Canary Wharf.

On the way back we walked under the Thames in the pedestrian tunnel that runs between Greenwich and the Isle of Dogs.

I didn’t find out about this tunnel until a year or so ago, but I think it should also be included in 1000 things to do in London. The tunnel was built in the late 19th century using the same tunneling technique as was used to build the tube network.

Entrance to the tunnel

The tunnel itself

Amazon scam

It seemed like a perfect idea: buy a cheapish DVD – £5 or so – from Fopp, watch it, then flog it on Amazon market place for slightly less, meaning you’ve ‘rented’ a DVD for £2 or so.

The target market would be individuals in rural communities in the UK with no access to chains such as Fopp. In case you don’t know, Fopp sells DVDs, CDs and books for cheap. The difference with chains such as HMV is that they actually sell good stuff for cheap, not just Sleepless in Seattle or Shaving Ryan’s Privates.

Sadly, Fopp went into administration a couple of years ago and there are only a handful of branches left. The small Covent Garden store is still always heaving with people and it’s such a shame that they had to sell the large Tottenham Court Road flagship store.

Anyway, after returning home with my copy of In Bruges – a decent film, despite the fact that it features Colin Farrell – I immediately listed it on Amazon market place for £4.49 (£0.50 less than a new copy from Amazon!) and started waiting for the punters to come in.

They didn’t arrive. After some research I found out why. It seems these days, Amazon has also been credit crunched and they’re now offering free delivery. It’s basically unfair competition with market place sellers like myself, as Amazon forces my customers to pay £1.21 for delivery.

Having dropped my price to £3.49, it didn’t take long for someone from a rural community (Wales in this case) to snap up my DVD.

After paying commission to Amazon, I’ll be receiving just over £3, which means my ‘rental’ cost me £3. Not such a good deal I think…

Has UCC lost the plot?

Apologies for readers only interested in London stuff. This week it’s time for Richard E. Weed’s guest spot. In case you’re wondering, that ‘E’ stands for Easy.

For those who are not familiar with Manila’s coffee chains that do not have the words Seattle, Jeans or Star in their brand name – UCC is a Japanese coffee chain. It’s short for Ueshima Coffee Co. They’ve actually been active since the 1930s, and as you can imagine there must have been quite some expansion in Asia in the 1940s…

According to PR, UCC in its earlier guise was seen as an attractive alternative to the coffee chains with Seattle, Jeans or Star in their name. She says it was more about coffee and desserts in the beginning.

However, having returned to Manila in 2008, we’ve noticed that UCC has completely lost the plot. Their menu consists of close to 1,000 different options to drink as well as eat. It takes around 10 minutes to just get through the menu.

Perhaps that’s why their outside tables come equiped with a radio-controlled button, to call for your waiter. Understandably, staff do not like to waste their time on customers who still haven’t made their minds up.

Having watched programmes such as Gordon Ramsay’s Kitchen Nightmares, we’ve noticed that a lot of catering establishments go wrong with their overly complicated menus. The trend is now for simple menus and there’s no need to put 50 variations of a sandwich on them.

This is what has happened at UCC. Having diversified from their core coffee activity, UCC now has a confused brand identity and their baffling menu choices have made them uncool. Also, PR would like to point out that the design of aforementioned menu is cluttered and absolutely unappealing.

The whole experience comes close to that offered by the UK’s Little Chef chain, a down market experience if ever there was one. Perhaps soon, UCC may also start offering microwaved scrambled eggs.

"cluttered"