Greggs Kettering Sold Frozen Cream Doughnut

Last Saturday I purchased a sausage roll and two fresh cream doughnuts from Greggs The Bakers in the Newlands Shopping Centre, Kettering. There was no issue with the sausage roll (in fact it was quite nice as I ate it on the way back to my car). The issue was with the so called Fresh Cream Doughnuts.

When I got home I left the doughnuts in the box provided by Greggs and put them on the table whilst I made a sandwich. After eating my sandwich I started to tuck in to one of the doughnuts and immediately spat it out as the Fresh Cream was part-frozen.

As I was unsure whether or not it was safe to eat I immediately contacted Greggs on the Social Networking site www.twitter.com where I was asked to send an email to their customer services. They wouldn't tell me if it was OK to eat them or not so I threw them away and then sent them an email as requested.

On the following Monday I received a reply saying they would look in to it and again they didn't say if it was OK to eat or not and simply they would take 5 days to investigate it and get back to me.

Five days is now up, I have followed their advice on how to complain and they have failed to resolve the issue.

My concern is that not only have they refused to tell me if they were OK to eat but it looks like they may be selling goods that are not being stored properly and they may be advertising Fresh goods that are actually Defrosted goods – or worse, incorrectly stored goods that may pose a health risk to us consumers.

Kettering Asda Breakfast Review

I don't often go out for a cooked breakfast but today I fancied a treat and as I needed some shopping from Asda I decided to give one of their cooked breakfasts a go.

Now I have to be honest, they've not been particularly brilliant in the past, in fact it's been downhill at this site since they took over from the Co-Op who did fantastic cooked breakfasts!

On ordering my breakfast I was asked if I wanted one of the fried eggs (that had clearly been cooked a long, long time ago and had gone all hard) or a fresh one.  Obviously I opted for a fresh one.  After taking my money, the young whipper-snapper on the till started ranting out-loud to her colleague how much she hated eggs, both eating and cooking them.  Nice thing to say in front of customers when it's your job to cook them.

I was told to take a seat and she'd bring my breakfast over when the egg had been cooked and within a matter of minutes my luke-warm breakfast was brought over to me:

The egg was perfect, hot and runny just how I like it.  However as I started to tuck in I soon found that the rest of the breakfast was luke-warm at best and when I got to the sausages, well I was in complete and utter disbelief:

As you can see there was a thick-black burnt crust to them.  Surely the young girls who had cooked them had noticed this??  They clearly didnt have the gumption to realise they should not be serving substandard food items and should have binned them and started again, but no they served them to their customers.

After I scrapped off the barely edible part of the sausages I was left with two bits of charcoal that would be more at home in an artists studio than on a plate of food.

I dunked the now cold bacon in my actually yummy freshly cooked fried egg and left the rest.

Like I said before, Asda cooked breakfasts here have never been particularly nice, but they've always (just) been edible but this experience has put me off for life.

A real shame as everything else in this store is brilliant.

Wicksteed Park Recieves Grant To Restore Lake

Congratulations to the award winning Wicksteed Park on being awarded a £1m grant from the Heritage Lottery Fund to restore the fantastic lake that it has.

It was created between 1919 and 1921 and has got to be the biggest and best attraction that Northamptonshire has to offer!  People from all over the UK come to this fantastic Park that is about to get even better thanks to the Heritage Lottery Fund's grant.

It was a childhood favourite of mine and I still visit the park to this day - in fact I was there only 2 weeks ago!

One thing a lot of people don't realise it that Wicksteed Park is actually a charity.  No 'fat cats' here, as much money as possible (after wages etc) go straight back in to the upkeep of the park which offers a large Free play area, some great short walks and if you purchase some tickets you can even get a ride on the train that goes around the lake that is going to be restored!

A great day out for all the family.  More details here:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-northamptonshire-18739909

http://www.wicksteedpark.co.uk/

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New Fruit and Veg Shop In Kettering

Amongst a handful of new shops that are getting ready to open in Kettering, Northamptonshire we have a new Fruit and Veg store which is being run/opened by Palmers (as in Palmers the Butchers).

If their Butchers shop is anything to go by then we're in for a treat with their Fruit and Vegetable shop which is adjacent to their current shop in Kettering:

Palmers Butchers

It opens on the 8th of June and along with Fruit and Vegetables it will be selling Milk, Pasta, Frozen Fish/Prawns and Cold Drinks.

Why Do We Put Up With Poor Customer Service In The UK? - Part 2

McDonalds Kettering Poor Customer Service

Once, maybe twice a month I treat myself to a McDonalds meal as they're fairly cheap, quite tasty and I particularly enjoy their milkshakes!

Last weekend I was doing a bit of shopping at Tesco in Kettering and as it was lunch time I decided to pop in to McDonalds to grab a BigMac meal with a Milkshake!

On arriving home I unpacked my meal and as I took the fries out I immediately noticed that it was half empty.  I assumed that half the fries had fallen out in to the bag, but when I had a look I found the bag to be empty.

As you can from the above photo, it's not like there are just a few fries missing but in fact most of them!

I was too hungry to be bothered to drive all the way back up to McDonalds so I decided I would make a complaint online and took a photo with my iPhone as evidence to backup my complaint.

Newlands Shopping Centre Closed

I've just got back from trying to do some shopping in the Newlands Centre in Kettering.  Unfortunately all the doors at all the entrances are locked.  Standing outside all the entrances are bemused members of the public trying to get in and do some shopping.

After wandering around for a while I finally worked out what is going on.  It seems that a water pipe has burst so the Security team have decided to close the whole of the shopping centre.  How did I find this out? Not from the Newlands Centre itself but from a hand scrawled sign in Specsavers window.

As per normal there is no communication from the people looking after the Newlands Centre.  As they are clearly unable to write anything on a piece of paper I no longer park in the car park on a Sunday.

It is free parking on a Sunday but they do not communicate this at the entrance so you have to queue up to get in as the car in front tries to press the button for a ticket, but as it is free parking you don't need a ticket and the machine wont dispense one.  As they never put up a sign letting you know it's FREE PARKING on a Sunday and you DON'T need a ticket people keep pressing the button and wait as nothing happens as the machine wont dispense one as you don't need one!

Anyway, on peering through the windows/doors

Appeal Accepted - Penalty Charge Notice (PCN) Cancelled

As per my previous blog post, on Saturday (despite paying for my parking using my mobile phone) I found a Penalty Charge Notice stuck on the window of my car.

It was the first (and last) time I had parked in the St Andrew's Parade car park in Kettering.

I'm please to say that the matter has now been resolved as I have received an email saying the Penalty Charge Notice has been cancelled and they apologised for any inconvenience and stress caused.  Although the charge has been dropped and the matter is closed, I wont be returning to this car park and I certainly wont be paying using my mobile phone as I can no longer trust this payment method.

St Andrews Parade Car Park - Kettering

DO NOT PARK HERE

If you ignore my warning then BEWARE - do not use your mobile phone to purchase a parking ticket as not only will you pay an extra 45p for doing so but (if like me) you will end up with a bill for £70.

This is a relatively new car park and up until now I've always driven past it.  Yesterday I decided to park my car in it as it was pretty much empty and to be honest I can now see why...

I didn't have any change on me at the time so I was pleased to see you could sign up to Dash Parking and pay using your mobile phone.

I downloaded the free iPhone App, registered and then paid for my ticket.

Halfway through shopping I decided to drop off the couple of carrier bags I had to my car before I continued what I was doing and to my horror when I returned to my car I had a £70 parking ticket stuck on my window.

I immediately called the number on the back of the ticket to explain their mistake but I was told they only collect payments at the weekend and I would have to call back on Monday!

I have an invoice in my email and a screen-shot of the text I received confirming that I have paid for my parking yet they still gave me a ticket - it seems they may have the technology to allow you to pay by phone but they don't seem to have the technology to check it.

NOT happy, NOT impressed and will NEVER park here again or use Dash Parking ever again as £70 to park is far too expensive.

:(

**UPDATE**

I've had a response from the company involved, you can read all about it by clicking this link:

St Andrew's Parade Update

Why Do We Put Up With Poor Customer Service In The UK?

In 2010 when Best Buy opened its first UK Store I thought great!  We'll now have an electrical store that has as its best selling point, excellent customer support and technical knowledge.

Sadly at the end of 2011 they announced that they were closing all their UK stores and would no longer be trading in the UK.

It seems that we don't want good customer service and we are happy to carry on with the poor customer service we tend to receive in the UK.


At the moment we're having a new kitchen installed so we've been out buying a couple of electrical appliances.

Times are tough at the moment in the Retail Sector so we decided to support a locally run shop that has a reputation for good customer service.

Within 2 days of our brand new Fridge Freezer having been delivered the Frost-Free freezer section from Frosting up so we called Supervision and was told to call Hoover.  We rang Hoover who said it would cost us £100 plus parts to fix the problem.

ITS TWO DAYS OLD AND THEY WANT TO CHARGE US TO FIX IT!!


We went back to Supervision who MOANED at us because they would have to sort this out with Hoover which is a painful process for them.

We had to threaten legal action before they would finally do something about - they didnt want to repair it and gave us our money back instead - they didnt even appologise and offer to sell us something else, clearly they are doing so well at the moment they can turn away customers and their money.

I would stronly recomment that you DO NOT BUY from SUPERVISION as despite their website claiming "Excellent Customer support" their customer service is appauling.

We need to buy an under-the-counter Freezer as well so not only have they lost out on one sale, but two.

We ended up buying a Fridge Freezer from Currys and the small Freezer from Comet.

Both of these have a fantastic Customer Services department at their Head Offices that are just one phone call away and whenever we've had problems with them in the past (and there have only been 1 or 2 over the years) they have always sorted them out straight away and we have purchased several items from them again because of this.

We will NEVER be shopping at Supervision again and strongly recommend that you don't either, unless of course you like poor customer service.