Order of the Bath

If you are one of these people (like me) who can’t pass a skip without peering in to see if there is something useful, then now is the time to walk the streets of the student district in your town. It is incredible what they throw away come the end of the year. Either it doesn’t fit in daddy’s Volvo or gets left behind for the landlord to chuck out. This weekend is going down time in Bristol (other Universities may vary). Do the council (and the environment) a service and pick up the useful looking things. If you don’t want them, put them on Freecycle.

When a colleague and I sent almost identical emails simultaneously, our instant reaction was to shout “SNAP!”

looking in various dictionaries both paper and online, this use of the word doesn’t seem to be defined. There are dozens of uses for this heavily overloaded word, but not this one so here goes…

Snap interj. — An exclamation made when two independent events are perceived to be the same. Derived from the children’s matching-card game where the word us used to claim a win.

About this time last year, as a foot note to a post about Traffic Management, I remarked that I had been overcharged and how that was resolved.

We take what they now call “Broadband Size L” with “Phone Size M” which is a bundle which offers 10Mb/sec internet (and comes close to achieving it), a phone line and free calls at weekends. We don’t use the phone enough to be worth taking any of the other packages. At the time I made the complaint, the published price was £16 + line rental (for a 4Mb/sec service). When we originally signed up the cost was £25 + line rental (and only 2Mb/sec I think) so the way they “fixed it” was to put a £8 rebate on our bill—not quite right but close. As I reported, they also gave me the £5.50 “new customer discount” which I wasn’t expecting but was, none the less, welcome.

On the last bill received this second discount expired so we are now paying £17. In the mean time the advertised price for this service, after all introductory offers have expired, is £14 + line rental, so we are now paying £3 a month too much. I am going to contact them again and this time I am going to try and get the base price changed, not just discounts applied

This is reminiscent of how the banks pay interest on old savings accounts—unless you keep moving your money into the latest accounts, the interest rate dwindles to almost nothing. And we know how popular banks are at the moment.

Update: Later the same evening I rang them—they are completely bonkers! As before, trying to convince the customer service department that the price is wrong is only good in as much as you get forwarded on to someone else. Not that there was anything wrong with the customer service girl, just that it was beyond her script. After being forwarded to another nice girl who had more latitude I discovered that the prices on the web site are assuming that you want to use ebilling (which we don’t do at the moment) so that would add another £1 onto the expected cost—still £2 too much though. She acknowledged that it was far from clear on the site and they have already asked for it to be made clearer.

It was at this point I discovered that her department was called Account Retention and is clearly there to persuade existing customers not to leave. After having discovered that the services we had were the ones we still wanted, she made an offer of £22.20 including the £11 line rental. This was not only a lower price than I was asking for (£3.80 less), but doesn’t bear any relation to any published offer. I sort of think that they make up the figures on the spot. The only string, once again, is a 12 month contract which is what she is there for. Again I have no problem with this as, at that price it is a good deal. And I was proved right—they work the same way as the banks—unless you complain they will continue to rip you off.

Ireland’s police have been searching for an elusive foreigner wanted for 50 or more motoring offences but seemingly able to alter his/her appearance and address. This was finally resolved when it was realised that “Prawo Jazdy” was not his name but just means “Driving Licence” in Polish. I wonder how many cases that solves on the PNC here in the UK?

Seen on the Gloucester Road for the last few months.

Like many large companies, the place where I work has three flag poles out side which they like to use for a bit of decoration. Usually they get this right and fly the Union Jack from the middle one and two company flags, one at each side. When they get distinguished overseas visitors they like to honour them by flying their countries flag—and I think they get this wrong—they replace the Union Jack with the visiting flag.

I like to think of it as if it were a ship. You fly your countries flag from the main mast. If a French admiral comes on board you fly the Tricolour from a place of honour—I think it is the foremast. You don’t take the Jack down otherwise you are saying it is now a French ship.

I think the correct procedure (at the office) is to leave the Jack where it is and fly the visitor’s flag at the pace of honour, the right hand pole when looking from the road. If you get two visiting countries then you forgo your corporateness and fly the second one from the left hand pole. More than that and you have a party so I think you revert to just the national and company flags so no one is offended.

A practice known as Astroturfing is where someone affiliated to a product or party writes reviews in glowing terms and pretends that they are spontaneous from members of the public.

It looks like a Belkin employee has been doing just that to products that previously only had poor reviews at Amazon. If you follow the links through you get to a statement from the president of Belkin which, although admitting there is a problem, doesn’t fully answer the charges. Others have investigated and found many more suspicious reviews under various names, some very thinly disguised.

It always used to be the case that you needed a licence to watch live TV or to watch recordings made from live TV. e.g. if a friend gave you a tape of a program that they had recorded, then you needed a licence to watch it (unlike hiring a film from a video shop).

This seems to have changed. The BBC now says that a licence is only required for viewing “at the same time (or virtually the same time) as it is being broadcast.” Catching up via iPlayer is specifically excluded and by clear and unquestionable implication (in my opinion), also in the case I outlined above.

So how do you get into the package?