blog @ pebbl

Dear Amazon,

I would like to highlight an issue that has recently caught me in regard to your confirmation step. My reason for complaint is that I actually find your ordering process very good and was surprised to be caught out by a problem, and would like to improve the process for others if possible.

Put simply, the attached order has an estimated delivery of a month, there was no prior mention of this on the Seller's item page — I have contacted them in complaint of this — and when going through to purchase there were no alarm bells triggered by your system. Unfortunately I do not have a screen shot of the page I saw when ordering but I am very certain it was similar to this one:

It should be noted the actual seller I purchased from is different to that pictured in the screen shot.

As you can see the estimated "dispatch" is larger than anything else, and gives the illusion that the item will arrive quickly (especially as this text can change between estimated dispatch, estimated delivery with no colour difference — I originally understood that date to be delivery). When I purchased the item it was along with a number of others, which means spotting the small 7-23 days is even more unlikely, added to the fact that 7-23 days might be standard for them, but is in no way "standard" to me.

It is my feeling that anything that could take longer than a week to deliver should come with a warning note, or perhaps a highlight icon, or even just a colour difference in the text. Even when I scanned the other pages of order information, or the final order email nothing really stood out:

The problem was exacerbated by the fact that the range was a month long, because even the days matched up. Most other items I ordered had a range between Monday to Thursday of that week, whereas the attached order was Monday to Thursday of next month.

Basically it would have helped a great deal just to have some notifier that things were out of the ordinary. I've put a number of orders through Amazon, over a number of years, and have never had an unexpected delivery period of that length. Perhaps I've managed to avoid ordering from Sellers in China before, but that could bring me on to another point that Item pages are generally location agnostic, and perhaps should mention the Seller's origin.

Thanks for your time,

I look forward to your response.

Reply — received in under an hour

(I think they may have misread the tone of my email, it was not such a big deal, but good to hear that comments have been passed on.)

You'd..

Just thought I'd write a short post about the pointlessness of trying to get a refund from the differing UK train operators; for one to blow off steam, and for two to laugh at the whole ridiculousness of the situation.

Like..

I have tried a grand total of three times — across the entirety of all my thirty one years — to get my money back from these purveyors of uncomfortable journeys. Time that would have been better spent, it would seem, learning to yodel. I would have ended up with the same result, no money back, but at least I could communicate the reasons why I might be running late across vast distances.

A..

It seems that for most companies, where there is an actual public facing staff — that are not locked away behind glass — and a realistic threat of competition; you can get a refund if the service you paid for was not provided, or was just less than satisfactory. I have experienced this across a wide range of businesses, almost instantaneously upon asking, from supermarkets, to cinemas; clothing retailers to gadget emporiums... and even decent train companies like Eurostar.

Unfortunately, all that many of our prized transport hubs can generally offer is a worried, ill-prepared individual encased in perspex — or hiding in a cupboard — who can rarely give any help beyond pre-scripted issues. It can be even less fortunate for yourself if you happen to trigger one of these pre-scripted responses, because it will usually involve being handed a thin leaflet of some kind. This is exactly what happens when you mention in passing that the specific train you've opted for has unexpected evaporated, and that due to communication being so bad — what with all this new fangled technology lying about the place — you haven't been able to find out when and from which direction the next chariot of standing-room-only will be coming from... All of which has led you to the curious but surely understandable feeling of wanting your money back.

..What?

All I can say is, DO NOT FILL OUT THAT FORM! You will be wasting your precious life, and unless we are talking hundreds of pounds, where the hope alone of getting it back might be worth it, you will really just be exercising one arm of a business that makes it their business to hold on to as much money as they possibly can. You know, for share-holders and the like...

Instead — if you can — go back to the leaflet wielding helper and ask for your ticket to be shifted to another day, that is if you can face the possibility of the same thing happening all over again.

If you decide not to heed my warning though, and it isn't a snow day, I shall tell you what will happen next. After an indeterminate amount of spacetime you will get some, little or no correspondence kindly informing you that your request has been denied, rejected, forgotten about, then — and only then — buried in soft peat BY the Ravenous Bugblatter Beast of Traal... Feeding the beast alone has cost more than the £24 you wanted back, so you now in fact owe them money.

... either that or they'll just tell you your journey wasn't delayed for more than 30 minutes, when quite obviously they were there and you weren't.

With special thanks to Southern Trains, South West Trains and Clapham Junction.

Dear Sadiq Khan MP,

I am writing wrote to you the other day as your constituent to request your support for the legal recognition of humanist marriages when it is debated and voted upon at the Report Stage of the Marriage (Same Sex Couples) Bill on 20/21 May.

It seems baffling to me, as I'm sure it does to you, that people should still be discriminated against in particular terms of law solely based upon their sexuality or religious beliefs; where those beliefs in question neither hurt or discriminate against others.

If those who believe in a particular religion are allowed to be married in the way they wish, then so should every and anyone else, even those who follow no religion. I for one have always disliked the idea of a registry office wedding, precisely for the fact that it cannot be easily personalised and always seems to be held in places that have a similar feel to that of polling stations or classrooms. Not in a nice place to remember for the rest of your life. Obviously it is possible to have a registry wedding and then an event elsewhere, but this is where the problem lies, why should certain people have to do this... when others do not.

This simple change to the aforementioned bill would harm no one, yet it would enable people like myself to have the same choices as other human beings who — due to the simple randomness of life — just happen to hold differing belief systems.

Thank you for your time.

Dear George Osborne,

For once I felt as though many countries around the world were doing the right thing.. obviously ignoring the UK — I haven't seen us do much of anything right for a while — and now I hear that we, as a country, are trying to get in the way of other countries doing what they think is best. Why??

I keep hearing arguments against the "Robin hood tax" idea, and none of them hold water, especially when the number of countries involved is high. In fact all I see, as I have done with much of the financial issues of late, is big business and the very wealthy protecting their own interests. Now I totally understand the need for people to protect their own worlds, but you have to agree that the current way of existence is rather skewed towards those with deep pockets; and those with money have far more resources to fend for themselves than anyone else. They do not need any further help, and should remember they would not have got where they are without many of the little people underneath.

So I am writing to ask you to please drop your legal challenges with regard to the Robin Hood / Tobin Tax. You are not standing for my interests — as a UK Voter — in any way, shape or form. In my mind this tax is a small change that will make a large positive difference to many the world over, way beyond the foolishly imposed boundaries of "Country".

Believe it or not, we are all in this [Life] together, silly political catchphrases aside.

Thank you for your time.

Another rant post I'm afraid. After finally managing to submit my first VAT Return online, I spotted a link where I could give feedback to HRMC. It's only after merrily filling out a short complaint in their textarea that I spot the words "350 character limit"... forget how simple it is to limit a textarea, or to give a character counter... as usual I'm not supposed to expect the same level of quality from a government run website to that of the rest of the commercial world, or so it would seem, but I keep falling into that trap. So rather than completely truncate what I wrote I thought I'd post it here:

350 chars is not enough!

As usual, whenever I end up having to do dealings with any branch of the HRMC online it's as if only those who have studied Tax law could navigate and understand exactly what is expected, and only those who spot small links at the top right (a very bad location for western eyes) will find some of the most important navigation items. After your tenth page, third dead-end and twentieth bullet point starting with a complicated "IF" statement, you are already lost as to what applies and what doesn't.

My main complaint is that there is hardly any tailoring to the individual user, or type of business, something that the business world has to do otherwise they face losing custom. The whole experience when dealing with anything tax related is so impersonal I spend most of my time unsure if I've actually managed to do things correctly -- which is all I wish to do. This has been so much to the point that I have now taken on an accountant, and even now, things are still murky.

If the above wasn't bad enough, you even have inaccuracies in your forms. I've recently signed up to the flat-rate VAT Scheme, and if I had gone ahead reading your nine box VAT form myself, I would have filled out the values as it was asked. Thankfully my accountant advised me that I should be filling out box 7 with gross figures... there is no mention of this on the form itself.

Overall, I got the same experience from the VAT system as I have done with the Self Assessment system, the only positive is that the VAT form is much, much shorter.

Anyone might think this complication is done on purpose to create jobs...

Oh and one more thing...

The form doesn't even allow for return characters...!?! It doesn't tell you this however, it just gives you an error back saying "incorrect format" — good work HRMC.

Ok, so the title is rather the opposite of self-explanatory, put simply this post is just a complaint really, it has no technical content—I'm still just baffled as to why I expected anything different...

Just recently, due to hitting the VAT threshold as a self-employed web something or other, I had to—yet again—open communications with the creaking bureaucracy that is the HMRC.

When is a website not a website?

My first port of call was obviously their website, which, to anyone—well at least anyone who has the slightest semblance of what good design, good content and good navigation should be—is always a disappointing, if not aggravating experience. Especially if you know how much money it cost to build.

Do not try and find anything specific on hmrc.gov.uk, you'll waste more than just time. I was hunting around for information with regard to already being set up in business, but needing to become VAT registered (probably one of the most common requests). I just ended up following link after link, trying to piece together the little bits of useful snippets dispersed amongst the backdrop of much repetition and information about rare scenarios.

Within at least the first few seconds of landing on the "Introduction to VAT" page and navigating around you'll be hit with hundreds of blocks of bullet points and more "if statements" than a popular JavaScript library would contain. After reading through and working out what seemed to be where I needed to go, I just ended up with dead-end paths... an example of this is the option to register for VAT Online. Sounds great, until you get to the "What you'll need" section, where it states you need a VAT Number! (so not what you actually think it is then). Even if you try and actually get to the Online VAT system (to hell with the VAT Number), I found I just jumped from anchor, to page, to anchor again... the destination just wasn't to be found.

Skip to the end...

So, after much bounding around, I finally decided that I'd send my registration via post—as I managed to find the seemingly correct form (that would actually open on my MacBook)—besides their phone line was consistently busy anyway. I'd also been burnt before by signing up for Government services over the phone only to be told that the conversation never took place. With post, the good thing is, you can make a hardcopy.

So, after a few over-the-top questions, and a few first-class stamps, I had my form filled out and posted. Then I waited...

and waited...

and waited...

An entire two months went by with nothing back. So I called up, and after a while of more costly waiting, I got through to a lady who could hardly tell me anything about my own registration — all in the name of security. Despite me being able to tell her everything that she could ask for, and that there isn't really anything that needs to be kept secure. How could knowing someone has applied for VAT registration be useful in any way? In the end all I could find out was that it was being processed and that my certificate would be sent out to me by second class post; which could take two weeks to reach me.

So I waited...

and waited...

Two weeks later and still nothing. So I called up again, and again could be told nothing about my registration. This time it wasn't even possible to confirm if the original certificate had been sent out... the only option offered was for the certificate to be resent (although this choice of language gave the game away). I wasn't able to pay for a courier or even a first-class stamp, nor could they email the original email address I registered with to notify me of the certificate being posted. All in all rather pathetic, and as usual way behind the services and abilities that the business world offers — yet further annoying fodder for those pesky Conservatives to argue for privatising everything.

And finally.

At time of writing I'm still waiting and am having to write Pro forma invoices, which will have to be followed up with a VAT invoice when I finally get the simple 9 characters that all this has been in aid of. The simple 9 characters that could have been sent to me securely, electronically, and not to mention — in an instant.

This world is in the state it is in due to a large number of people doing jobs that are obviously not worth doing... because they don't do them well. Namely the people who set these services up, and whose job it is to keep things improving and progressing inline with technical ability.

And before I get lynched by those who will correctly say keeping real life up-to-date to the cutting-edge is an expensive way to exist; and should not be the first goal of government or a publicly run service... surely, at the very least, we should be allowed to request a first class stamp?

They've been around a while and I'm quite sure they've been thoroughly tested, perhaps we're still waiting on the results of a royal mail feasibility study.

</rant>

Ok, so this isn't a tech post... I just felt the need to complain - please ignore me if you don't give a damn about the environment.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-scotland-business-19708915

If you read the article above, it is written with the view that "isn't this great, a renewable source of energy that will be good for everyone!". But aren't renewables supposed to be produced and used with little or no negative impact to the environment?

From what I've read butanol (and ethanol) still burn producing quite a bit of CO2, true, they burn cleaner that typical petrol (gasoline), but they still produce gases that we are supposed to be cutting down on... and now they've found a never ending way to produce a fuel that pollutes in this way. A fuel that will run on existing car systems, so there will be no reason for peope to change their habits or invest in better alternatives (i.e. hydrogen fuel cells).

How is that good news?

Actually, whether this is good news or not is probably all down to how Tullibardine was already "disposing" of it's by-products... If they were just chucking them into a never-ending bonfire then not much is lost.

I guess we don't really believe in all this CO2 "nonsense" after all, do we...?

Just tested this recent social video system out from the RobinHood tax people - not the most dynamic of dynamic videos I've seen - but at least it all seemed to work and looks good :) Plus I'd say a better "product" than a lot of the more standard advertising campaigns I've seen.