Rant Over, Now To Our Opening/Birthday!

Moving swiftly on......  On Saturday we had our new unit official opening and 3rd birthday celebrations!  Yay!  Had some great people turn up including our good friend Buster from Brecon Brewing and much merriment was had by all.

We had a couple of AMs (political types don't you know) and lots of lovely locals.  Nothing but good feedback for the new branding and the bar looked splendid!   Beers all went well, think First of the Summer Waen was narrowly the favourite on the day.

The Llager was also a big hit.  It will be on at The Royal Oak in Welshpool but they are having to wait for the next batch as we, well, sort of used it all before giving them any...  they are willing to wait though, and they'll have a super duper lager tap for it so's you can all spot it immediately on the bar. In the meantime they'll have to make do with having just our fabulous ales!

The band 'The Klezmonauts' were (were, was?  Who knows?  Who cares?), as ever, fab.  Great sunny day music, and they played all afternoon.  The kids all had fun, and so did we :)


Lastly, I feel I have to mention that Paul, who works for us made some fab bread from BB Stout spent yeast, and a veggie chilli.  I made a meat chilli which personally I think was better.  However, I have to take on board the views of our customers and I did get a lot of people coming in to tell me how fantastic the bread and veggie chilli was, and it did run out before mine.....

Hold on though, I was inside serving beer, Paul was outside serving the chilli and bread.....

Hmmmm.............

Photos to follow :)

BT's Unholy Twattinesss

Those of you who follow me on twitter may be wondering why I have been so quiet on the blogging front lately... well, that would be down to the fact that every single minute of spare time, of which I have very little, has been taken up with trying to undo the incredible wrong doings of BT to enable me to actually get back to running my brewery!

On 2nd of May this year I turned up to the brewery to find my business phone and therefore internet was disconnected.  There began 2 weeks of no phone, hour upon hour of phone calls, going round and round in circles to actually try and find out why this had happened...

I so badly want to bore you with every minute detail of this total disaster as it unfolded,because it does make me feel a little better to rant about it, but I also know you probably don't want to know.  Needless to say, having realised their mistake, they set about trying to put it right, hastily, as if the 'Oh shit, we've ballsed this up' moment had hit.  But in total, I was without a business phone for 2 weeks and only I seemed to know what they had done wrong.

Shortly after re connection I received a bill for 'disconnection and re connection outside of contract' for £523. Upon phoning I spent yet more hours pointing out that I didn't owe them this money as they had disconnected in error.  'Oh yes Mrs Hayward, because it is our mistake, that bill will be cancelled immediately'  I asked 'is that a promise?' 'Yes'.  'You can plainly state and give me your word that this WILL be cancelled and that no payment will be expected?' 'Yes.'  

Approx 2 weeks later the full amount was debited by direct debit from my account, using a direct debit not even associated with my business phone, but my internet account.

Hours more spent on the phone and I am still awaiting the by now promised refund.  I was told it was processed on Friday, 3 - 5 working days, then told 2 weeks, then back to 3-7 days, and today 3/4 hour spent on the phone, armed with reference numbers that meant absolutely nothing to today's billing personnel, to be told I will have to wait for a call back from original staff member, as they could not trace any account with a refund pending....... At the end of my call the operator said, 'Have a really great day'  oh the irony.

I have shouted, screamed, hit my head hard on tables, broken a phone, and more recently cried.  I do however gain some pleasure from retweeting everyone else's issues with @BTBusiness, which did in the beginning prompt a phone call re my complaint immediately.  They have now taken to completely ignoring me.  Do I care? No, I have solicitor :)