Member Info for D-Geeman

JWd; This must have been mentioned here a week or so ago but just in case..

Breathless people with long covid shown to have possible lung problems revealed by inhaling xenon gas during MRI scan. I hope they recover quickly but if their lung problems persist then sng001 may well be a life saver when they next catch flu or a chest infection.
https://news.sky.com/story/coronavirus-lung-abnormalities-discovered-in-long-covid-patients-suffering-from-breathlessness-12527843

And how many people have long-covid?

https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/healthandsocialcare/conditionsanddiseases/bulletins/prevalenceofongoingsymptomsfollowingcoronaviruscovid19infectionintheuk/6january2022

Main points

An estimated 1.3 million people living in private households in the UK (2.0% of the population) were experiencing self-reported long COVID (symptoms persisting for more than four weeks after the first suspected coronavirus (COVID-19) infection that were not explained by something else) as of 6 December 2021.
Fatigue continued to be the most common symptom reported as part of individuals' experience of long COVID (51% of those with self-reported long COVID), followed by loss of smell (37%), *shortness of breath (36%),*

Try these Companies House links
https://find-and-update.company-information.service.gov.uk/company/11513891/filing-history
https://find-and-update.company-information.service.gov.uk/company/11513891

Or google 'Companies House brook and wilde' if my links won't work

It seems that I know someone who has a little involvement with Brook and Wilde, who are a direct competitor to eve. I've seen them mentioned more often than they used to be so took a look at their site. They do other things such as sofas, but similar to eve with their mattresses and beds etc, and bedding. Interestingly, one can buy their mattresses in soft, medium or firm.

https://brookandwilde.com

On TP they have more positive reviews than eve, but fewer reviews. They began business in 2018.

You can view a PDF of their latest accounts here:
https://find-and-update.company-information.service.gov.uk/company/11513891/filing-history
(I don't claim to understand their accounts but interesting to see the differences)

They are clearly in the same 'space' as eve. They must see a profit to be made or they wouldn't bother.

' apply to Boris Johnson for a job :) '

Just think, the next several Downing Street incumbents have to live with Boris' refurb taste https://www.thesun.co.uk/news/politics/17238503/boris-describes-downing-st-flat-as-tip/

French brother-in-law mentioned a short while ago that supermarkets in France are now selling LFTs (so there must still be a decent market if AVCT have a working best-test).
The French were a bit late to embrace self testing as the nurse lobby wanted nurses to be administering the tests, as is the French way.
'France began letting supermarkets sell them late last month.' as reported in the NY Times https://www.nytimes.com/2022/01/12/world/antigen-tests.html

This came up in a search. For background, there's a US company called Mattress Firm.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mattress_Firm

Mattress Firm seem to have a new ad campaign and, of passing interest is the reference in this article https://www.adweek.com/agencies/mattress-firm-junk-sleep-life-of-crime-liev-schreiber-returns/

to eve sleep (and Nectar)
'The need for rest
Mattress Firm is not alone in committing to help Americans find better sleep in the past two years. Since the pandemic started, more brands such as Eve Sleep and Casper have come out with similar messaging that focuses not just on sleep, but overall mental health as well.'

It looks as though eve was ahead of the curve (whether ‘sleep wellness’ is an important concept or 'just marketing' is another thing!) with their emphasis on *Sleep Wellness* and other are now following.

Incidentally TP in Feb; balance between 'Excellent' (23) & 'Good' (2) V's 'Bad' (5) & 'Poor' (1) reviews might be getting back on track. Early days for sure but a better start this month. If things carry on at that ratio we might perhaps expect 230 positive reviews against 56 negative. Whilst not great it's better than January. Maybe things are about to get better for eve customers..

The job description of the customer service role shows that they want people to deal with almost all the problems that get talked about on TP (problems with deliveries and replies to direct messages etc.) so eve are fully aware.

I also notice that CS role ads don't have a closing date so eve are more or less after people all the time and CC did say that people had left recently.

TBH, pay of just over £20k for a full week's work when you have to be near Camden two days a week is not great pay in London. It would only suit someone young (living with parents) or someone who doesn't need to work but still wants to work. It would hardly be enough cash to pay the rent. Giving perks is perhaps a way of enticing people to work at a lower rate than competitors. If you do have a dog it'd mean not leaving the dog at home so might entice some people.

To me it does look like expansion but also a coping mechanism for a certain amount of churn is CS.

Working at eve:

My memory has been jogged. I looked at the glassdoor site quite a while ago and eve staff were talking about the office environment. It was before Sturrock so 3 years ago perhaps; under the original management. People were not at all happy and only stayed for a short time. They said the managers would ignore people with the more basic jobs; not acknowledge their existence all day long. It was said to be cliquey, those inside the clique and those outside.

It could explain now why CC tries hard to get people to be happy. Not only does it make for a happier crew and better environment but there should be less loss of experienced people and the associated costs.

Eve just posted this:

' We're recruiting for several fantastic roles this month across several departments, ready to welcome some new faces to help drive our sleep wellness journey!??

Performance Marketers, Analytics Engineers and Supply Chain Managers, take a look at our opportunities and see if anything tickles your fancy?

See all open roles here: https://lnkd.in/dVE-u_P '

(about these jobs https://app.beapplied.com/org/1264/eve-sleep )

Many thanks Dontgive. Just me and middle-daughter escaped so far! Other 3 have it (or have had it) without any problems at all.

I highly recommend www.freecycle.org When I go to the dump (with real rubbish) I see things being thrown away that others would love to collect. And people wouldn't have to drive to the dump so save themselves a journey. Last week people were throwing away a perfectly good pine dining table and chairs, a kid's scooter in good condition.. Heartbreaking really.

I recently gave away a under-the-counter fridge (medium condition). Also, we now have a traditional church pew in oak here too, off freecycle.

Have people heard of Freecycle? We often give and have taken a few things too. On our local site now, looking back over the last 3 days, there have been offers of 16 mattresses, or beds and mattresses; people getting rid of old ones and presumably the new ones are arriving. This is a big industry. Mattress are the number one item by post-ranking over the last couple of days on Freecycle.

My common sense is in short supply today. Eg, an hour ago I ate the third of a banana my covid infected daughter didn't want to finish.

Dontgive, you got a better price than I would now. I shall attempt to trade up to a round number..

not topped up yet wyn! My conscience is stopping me :)

To get a 'round number' of shares while the price is low.

Yes, I've been considering it this morning. Would only cost me £125..

Hi Wyn,

Maybe eve need to add a bit of meat to their initial auto response message. I copy it below (I've always received one) and obviously eve feel that it's enough to show they've heard there's an issue. (Some reviewers claim there's no response from eve so perhaps it goes to junk / spam sometimes.)

Hi D,

Thanks for getting in touch.

We’ve got your email (worry not) and our customer service team will do their very best to get back to you as soon as they can.

If you’re getting in touch in regards to your delivery or return, we’ll aim to get back to you within 1-4 working days. For anything else, please allow up to 5 working days for a response.

Thanks.

the eve sleep customer support team

Then eve follow up with an email to ask you're happy or not with their response:

Hi DG,

We'd love to hear what you think of the support you received from our customer service Agent. Please take a moment to answer one simple question by clicking either link below:

How would you rate the support you received?

Good, I'm satisfied

Bad, I'm unsatisfied

Here is a reminder of what your ticket was about:

Wyn, obviously there's something in what you said, but I do have an alternative theory that hasn't just arrived in my head today.

Going back to your first point, I think they said (in an email to me or during the webinar) that 95% of orders go out without a hitch. Or I could have misheard and it was 90%. One would hope that the 95% figure is the one closer to the truth.

When I've written to eve 'hello' address (once with a pillow problem) they've usually responded within 24 hours and most often on the same day. So they are mostly reading them.

I think they only like to write back once they have an answer (like they did over my trustpilot 100 day v 365 day trial observation). They looked into it, sorted it out, and only then came back to me.

Just suppose a customer writes and says 'where's my delivery, I've been in all day and it hasn't arrived, I'm furious'. We do know that there's sometimes two sides to a story. Eve won't write back saying 'that's terrible, we're very sorry' (thus accepting blame) without doing a little research. Research would mean getting in touch with DX office, and then DX office has to contact the warehouse, or the driver(s) (who are now out on another day's delivery and shouldn't answer the phone while driving). It could actually take a couple of days and since DX seems covid hit too, maybe 3 or 4 days atm. By then the customer is livid and possibly the eve CS reading the emails has another 80 stories to research before replying. Being human, they may even forget to follow up an old email which was particularly complicated to get to the bottom of.

I should think one or two customers are not always straight with their reviews. I've certainly had problems recently with renewed passports being delivered here as dedicated passport delivery drivers have read the situation here differently; one posted said passport without a signature but one drove away without delivering as he wasn't sure he'd found the correct door.

I am not making excuses. I am just saying that it's possible to see that they do have the time to respond to 20 emails but want to get to the bottom of the story first.

The truth is probably a mixture of all our theories...

Dontgive, I can't agree that fewer staff is the answer.. If they use the money they have wisest way to do anything in the business, having enough staff in CS (CS is what we are talking about? New products / product development and web people in India, too) is crucial.

'Hi D,

Thanks so much for getting back in touch with us.

It seems that this (TP still had 100 day trial flagged) had escaped our team's eagle eye. We've raised this with them and our Trustpilot page has now been updated to reflect the change in our trial policy. Thanks for flagging this to us. ??

In regard to the gift card idea - this is definitely something we'll raise with our team as we're always trying to expand our service and provide sleep solutions to as many people as we can reach.

As always, we'd like to thank you for your continuous support and feedback and for your active interest in eve.

Late burst of reviews which helps, and well ahead of Jan 2021. However we are now down to 4.1 stars; used to be 4.3, and 4.2 didn't last long.

Expect a push by eve to get it rising not falling I should hope. Sub 4 would be very poor.

My biggest 'if only' share was not buying Tesla when I bookmarked it. I bought Boeing instead (made 4% by the time I sold) as they were low after problems (understatement) with the 737 Max and I thought they'd recover sooner or later. They probably will.

Anyway, I only bookmarked Tesla at around $500 and thought I'd buy some if they came back into the £400s. Since then they've gone up so much that each share was divided into 10 and these 1/10 shares are now $941.29.

So that's around $500 to effectively $9412.90...

It does show what can happen but has also had the effect of making me stick with things longer than I should, just in case.