One thing that consistently annoys me is when seemingly reputable companies decide for some reason that the rules on unsolicited marketing communications, that is to say, in the United Kingdom, the snappily titled “Privacy and Electronic Communications (EC Directive) Regulations 2003“, don’t apply to them for some reason. The latest organisation to suddenly conclude it [...]
Archive of posts filed under the Fail category.
Yes, I Would Like a Refund
So I recently cancelled one of my credit cards – it was an AMEX card with an annual fee that I had only ever intended to hold for one year to get the signup bonuses, and once the fee for the second year came due I cancelled it. Today I got the final statement which, [...]
Important Information
Apparently my bank had some important information to share with me. I know this because they put an extra page in with my statement headed “Important Information for you” which I reproduce here: I wonder how many million of those they’ve just sent out…
Rails Warning Fail
Recent versions of rails 3 have started spitting out a new deprecation warning: String-based interpolation of association conditions is deprecated. Please use a proc instead. So, for example, has_many :older_friends, :conditions => ‘age > #{age}’ should be changed to has_many :older_friends, :conditions => proc { “age > #{age}” }. Now call me confused if you [...]
I think Quidco have a bug
I think Quidco have a bit of a mail merge bug. I just received the following email: I wonder how many of those they’ve just sent out…
BT Want to Borrow £8.97
In a strange twist in my ongoing battles with BT it seems that they have decided they would like to borrow £8.97 from me for the next three months. The situation is that a year ago I changed my package and the new package includes a discount of £2.99 a month if you agree to [...]
User Generated Negativity
I was trying to use BT‘s web site to contact them about an issue with my bill and the first page of the contact section includes a little box called “From the forums” which shows recent discussion topics. The titles of those are, of course, chosen by the users that start them which in this [...]
How not to credit OpenStreetMap
I recently received my copy of The London Cycling Guide by Tom Bogdanowicz, which I bought both because I was interested in the routes it shows and because it uses OpenStreetMap maps throughout. As an example, here’s a part of one of the maps, showing the Isle of Dogs:
Closed With My Agreement?
I think the following quotes from my email exchange with BT speaks for itself. First my email to BT last Thursday: Whilst this clearly addresses the question of how the second call came to be made after I had been placed on the opt out list, and I am quite happy to accept that explanation, [...]
BT: The Unstoppable Phone Spam Machine
After my last run in with BT when they called me (in breach of the regulations on unsolicited marketing calls) to offer me a Visa Card I filed a complaint with the Telephone Preference Service. I few weeks later I got a letter from BT Complaints Managment saying that my complaint had been passed on [...]