Tuesday 28 May 2019

Zvezda - English Medieval Ship Thomas

Another "it´s gonna take more than a couple of days" Project finished
This one completes the Collection of the Revell/Zvezda Cogs
24 Crew from Valdemar, Caesar, Airfix and LW (the hooded priest)
I added some Holding rings to the aft Castle for the tent. Tent on a ship? I suppose it has a stable thicker wooden Frame inside instead of a couple of tent Posts otherwise it would keep blowing over.
I also added a rope ladder. Two threads and bits of stretched sprue for the rungs. Took feckin ages to make!!! but how else would they get up there. At least the crusader Version has some sort of pulley System that theoretically would  allow someone to be hoisted aloft.
The kit come with Transfers for the sail but they were;
A. too shiny. I know, there´s all those new fangled matting agents but I´m a model builder not a scientist :-)
B. Fell to bits as I tried applying them. Even if they hadn´t fallen to bits, they wouldn´t have fitted to the curvature of the sail...so I binned them and handpainted the Emblems.
The entire fleet.

Rant time...I apologise for any bad language used
HERMES is SH*TE!
I ordered this model from a dealer in Holland..just over 200 k´s away. I noticed on the Tracker that my address had been Computer generated and was slightly wrong so immediately contacted the carrier per E-Mail and telephone...did this have any effect? None.
Only the Road Name was wrong and not by much..everything else was ok, Name, Post Code, house number,  town..
A Monkey with Basic reading skills could have worked out where it was supposed to go. The post Code shrinks the area down massively then a quick guess at the address would have been possible and then the Name and number on the door would have confirmed it. I tried tipping the incorrect address into a Navi and what came up? My feckin address!!!
Their so called customer Service is, IMHO, a load of bollocks!! It took them over 24 days to eventually realise the error and deliver it. Even  after the address was corrected and on thier advice,  I made a specific delivery day,  it turned up when I wasn´t at home. Tossers! Useless feckin tossers!!

I had to send at least 6 E-mails, phoned 3 times. One actually read my correct address back to me and another ignorant git on the other end hung up! I complained on thier blog and applied to a lawyer (of which I notified Hermes of) put up three Reviews of thier toss Service on various sites  (which in one E-Mail I linked back to them) before the useless A-Holes actually reacted.

200 k´s! It would have been faster if I had literally crawled there and back. Crawled whilst pulling a hay cart behind me and being excessively drunk. I know that since the digital expansion the post is refered to as snail mail but they don´t have to take the saying   literally. Or, Maybe they are so thick,  they do.

Hermes was the Greek god of trade, Heraldry, Merchants etc. .This lot using the Name for thier Dis-Service is an Insult to the Name. Mind you, he was also the god of thieves and trickery so Maybe that´s what they are referring to.
Still theyéd be better of with the Name of the Greek god Ouranos,  the latinised Version that is,  Uranus but they could write it  Ur-Anus.
Basically, it´s easier to  swop the M for a P of thier present Name.  The result is an STD which transmits way faster than they do and is a lot more efficient.
No wonder that  thier ex logistic executive is taking the Ur-Anus´s to court for fraud etc (Link in German but it Shows how scheming they are)
https://hermessubunternehmer.wordpress.com/category/frank-rausch/

Anyone selling anything, even if I really wanted it and thier carrier is Hermes,  then they can keep it. Hopefully Herpes,sorry, Hermes  will end up going bust.

This guy probably got promoted for initiative.


24 comments:

  1. That's a nice squadron!
    Great job on the sail.

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  2. Sail the sails! Ansolutly awesome, excellent!!

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  3. Paul that ship is spectacular - and I have had some terrible dealings with Hermes as well in the past - one was throwing a parcel up onto the neighbours balcony as a delivery!

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    1. Thanks Oli. The vid Shows one of the delivery bods doing just that. He gets the packet "delivered" on the 3rd attempt but what state the Contents were in..who knows. There´s loads of vid online of hermes Workers being rude, insulting customers, nicking stuff, smashing stuff. If the culture from the top is fixated on Returns no matter what then they will pick that up. I don´t blsmre the poor Workers,that´s why i stopped phoning them, I was too annoyed not to loose it with them and also, each phone call, they make Money. A strtegy perhaps ?

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    2. Yes it could be from the top, I had to deal with their management in a previous job regarding a matter unrelated to deliveries and they were very difficult to track down and engage with!

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    3. At one Point I tried to phone thier local Distribution centre. 8 times during one day..did anyone pick up? Nope. I assume the lack of reliable contact or answerable Service personal is a deliberate Policy. Bot created answers to E-Mails. Telephone centre staff who can, with the tracking number and post Code, see exactly what you can see but do sod all About any error apart from come out with soothing platitudes. They´ve got a blog upon which I´ve written. Obviously it´s moderated otherwise there´d be a sh*t storm of bad comments. All that turns up on the blog, comment wise, are suck up internal Workers Posting A-licking comments to the articles written (if I were to believe they write it) line Managers.
      Crap Thing is..it´s the way the Worlds going. Ever less human contact. Me, I´m for everyone putting on a yellow vest and telling em all to sod off.

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  4. Hafen von Schlockenberg28 May 2019 at 10:47

    "hand painted the Emblems". My God, those are fantastic! I dread to think what mine would look like, if I tried that.

    Hermes -- yup, "patron of thieves" was the first thing I thought of -- and not in a good, Gandalf-like way.

    Really lovely stuff, Paul.

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    1. The Emblems are not that difficult. I drew them on first..using a HB2 pencil. If it looked ok it stayed, if not it could be gently rubbed out.
      Hermes. When they actually called, they left a note cos I wasn´t in which gave me a couple of choices to have it delivered. One was in the Garage but it said if that was done and it went walkies I was responsible for the loss. basically a free Licence for the poor overworked poorly Paid delivery bod to thieve the paket and make out they had delivered!! Un feckin believable.

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  5. Very impressive models , love all the rigging etc .

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  6. Excellent model but a fecking well deserved rant my friend!

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    1. I´ve toned the rant down here..what I send as E-mails to them and what I´ve written on other platforms could possibly be classed at least as viscious cynicism :-)

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  7. Guess I'll steer clear of Hermes!
    Love the ship though, especially those beautiful sails! Hand painted indeed!

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    1. Hermes is the utter Bottom Feeder of delivery Services"
      They Sub to a Sub who Subs to a Sub and so on until the end Sub is Paid feck all and run off thier feet until they go bust, Clearing the market of any small competitors. The link to frank Rausch Shows how it´s done and who was taken on to do it.
      Me, I won´t ever have anything to do with them ever again.

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  8. very impressive, it's beautiful

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  9. Excellent ship. Very well done. 😀
    I enjoy rants.

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  10. Beautiful work on the ship. I too have had issues with Hermes, and the standard of driving of some of their liveried vans leaves much to be desired too.

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    1. Thanks Tim. I´ve started a bit of a war with them...not just to do with the previous delivery but with the second! When I feel like it I send an E-Mail telling em how crap they are. Nowt else, just that.

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  11. Very nice modeling, Mr. Bods.

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  12. Some great looking Cog Boats here Paul,they sure look kind`a cool painted up nice including little people and well based. They would look great too at FIGZ, but perhaps on that soon to come occasion two boat builders in the same room is one to many. Best Regards BB

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  13. Great boats...

    Creative rant... Not had any issues with Hermes (yet)m'self, but avoid DHL. I particularly "liked" one occasion when the vendor (after I queried a non-delivery with him) wrote to say that DHL had told him they were "unable to deliver the package as the address is incomplete/incorrect". Given that this was only a week after they had posted a "We tried to deliver but you were out" notice through my letterbox box the vendor and I agreed this was a bit rich.....

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  14. I`m writing a historical fantasy series where part of the story involves a young woman cutting the rigging on a cog. Your models are super helpful and represent exactly what the cog looks like in my book!

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    1. Hi Kyrie :-) Glad my Models are of help and I wish you success with your Fantasy series :-)

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