Mail Down

Posted: Wed 2 July, 2008 | Author: | Filed under: Charm School, Customer Services, Geeky | 2 Comments »

Currently, it’s looking like the mail server for 34sp.com is totally down. [UPDATED : The service was broken on my reseller server, rather than 34sp as a whole. It’s also now fixed.]

I can’t send or receive email at all when using their services/servers, and haven’t been able to since last night.

Calling their support line, it does amuse me that the musical hold I ended up with was the Muppets theme song. Somehow you’ve just got to love a company with that kind of humour.

BT’s Wonderful Anti-Spam Measures

Posted: Tue 1 July, 2008 | Author: | Filed under: Customer Services, Cynicism, Domestic, Geeky | 2 Comments »

I got an email from BT this morning…

Urgent- BT is making some changes to its email service. Emails you send from alternate BT Yahoo! Mail addresses may be blocked. (Additional comment from me: It’s not just from alternate Yahoo! Mail addresses – it’s anything except your default BT Yahoo email name)

Dear Customer,
We’re upgrading the security of your BT Yahoo! Mail account to help prevent identity fraud and spam.
These enhancements will help protect you from ‘spoofing’ – when people use alternate addresses to disguise an email’s real sender, possibly to commit fraud.

Making the improvements work
For the security improvements to work, we need you to take a few minutes now to verify each of the alternate email addresses you use in BT Yahoo! Mail. This will confirm that these email addresses are genuine. If you don’t verify your alternate BT Yahoo! Mail addresses, you may get an Error 553 message and have difficulty sending emails.

Please verify addresses now to avoid blocking of your outgoing emails.

Simply follow the step-by-step instructions at www.btyahoo.com/verify. You won’t be asked for any personal information, but you’ll need to log in to your account to make the changes.

We’re committed to helping you get the most from your award-winning BT Yahoo! Mail. The changes we’ve made will help reduce spam on the network and improve your enjoyment of the service. We hope this doesn’t cause any inconvenience and appreciate your co-operation.

Kind regards,

BT Total Broadband team

Please note that this is an automatically generated email for your information only. Unfortunately we cannot respond to ‘replies’ to this address.

Of course, this would have been much more useful if they’d sent it back in March, when they actually did the work, and fucked up my email so badly I had to set up my own SMTP server instead. As it stands, we’re two-plus months down the line, and all this does is make BT look like the bunch of contemptuous customer-hostile fuckwit bastards they truly are.

Even better, I can’t even reply to that email and tell them what tossers they are.

Customer Service as it should never ever be done…

Anti-Spam

Posted: Mon 2 June, 2008 | Author: | Filed under: Customer Services, Cynicism, Geeky, Own Business, Work-related | Leave a comment »

Over the last couple of weeks, I’d started receiving a significant (well, more than previously) amount of spam through the contact form on one of my sites. (the photography one, not that anyone cares)

As a result, I added in a small dollop of anti-spam input on the form – I’ve done this on several forms over the years, and it’s never caused me any problems. It’s probably now only about ten to twenty minutes work (including testing the entire thing) so it’s no hassle – and every time I wonder why I didn’t just put the damn thing in place when I created the original, rather than slamming it in as an afterthought.

In short, I just never remember. And in some cases that’s fine – some forms just never seem to get hit in the first place, whereas others pop up fairly quickly and get hit by spammers. It’s all very odd.

I know I should just put it in with anti-spam by default. It’s just I never remember.

Then again, on one particular form I did for a client, I added in a whole bundle of anti-spam features including the ability to ‘blacklist’ the IP and poster-name/email automatically by clicking on a link in the forwarded message – and that client never makes use of the features. I know for a fact that they get a whole bundle of spam through it – and I do on occasion run through and block a whole load of the IPs for them myself – but it seems equally bizarre for people to not even make use of the tools they’ve been given.

Faster Payments

Posted: Tue 27 May, 2008 | Author: | Filed under: Customer Services, Own Business, Work-related | 3 Comments »

At long last, the banks are introducing a faster payment system for phone and internet banking. I’ve often wondered how they can continue to get away with claiming it takes three days for money to transfer between banks/accounts – and the truth is, they really couldn’t continue to get away with it.

So they’re now gradually phasing in this new Faster Payments Service – which will (eventually) mean that you can do transfers on the same day, rather than waiting three days. Money leaves your account immediately, and is in the recipient bank account later that day.

Initially it’s just being trialled on smaller amounts – I think the average ceiling is about £20 at first – before it ends up going up to the maximum transaction value of £10,000 in a few months time. If you want to check whether your payment recipient can handle faster payments, you can check the sort-code on this site.

I wonder how this will affect the entire BACS and CHAPS system over time? It’ll be nice to be able to have same-day transfers without paying the extra £30+ for a CHAPS payment, that’s for sure.

Ongoing

Posted: Fri 23 May, 2008 | Author: | Filed under: Customer Services, Driving | 3 Comments »

Well, yesterday’s trip to the body shop didn’t go so well.

In fact, from what I could tell, they did fuck all. The Ford garage had to go over and collect the car, in order to get it serviced – and that went fine. They then took it back to the bodyshop (next door) for the work to finish and for me to collect it at half five.

Only when I got there at half five, suddenly it had become a two-day job. I’m not sure how – the guy who gave us the estimate definitely said it would be able to be done in one day, and when I booked it in nothing was said about it being two day’s work – but there it was. Two days, not one.

Oh, I could take it home, and they’d book it in for the work to be finished another day. Only when they got the car out for me to collect, the old bumper and wheel arch were still there, and it certainly looked (to my admittedly non-bodyshop eyes) like absolutely fuck-all had been done. At which point I went slightly orbital. The reason it was in yesterday was so that everything happened before we go off next Friday to Ireland. Also, it meant that the bodyshop hadn’t had to find me a courtesy car for the day, as I’d organised one from the Ford place. They’d done fuck all, and it was now a two-day job instead of one. In short, they were taking the piss.

So the car’s still in the bodyshop, and they’re supposed to be doing the work today. And I’ve been lumbered with a shitty Toyota Yaris as a courtesy car. It’s an utter heap of crap – I wouldn’t touch it with a bargepole usually – but there we go, at least it means I’m OK for getting to and from work today. (and, of course, getting home last night)

I’ll be in there again at half five tonight, seeing what they try to over-charge me for this now. Should be fun.

Another Extension

Posted: Thu 8 May, 2008 | Author: | Filed under: Customer Services, Own Business, Work-related | Leave a comment »

I’ve just had it confirmed that I’ll be staying on with my current contract until the end of the month.

That’s two extensions now – and this three week one is for a completely new project, which is even better. The agency’s ecstatically happy, and I’m pretty pleased too. Considering the initial contract was for 2 weeks and 2 days (i.e. 12 days all told) it’s now been extended for a further seven weeks – and that’s all because they keep finding more stuff for me to do, rather than because of anything negative.

I must be doing something right…

Mains Restored?

Posted: Tue 6 May, 2008 | Author: | Filed under: Customer Services, Cynicism, Domestic, Health, Thoughts | 2 Comments »

It’s possible that today we will be finally re-allowed to use mains water for drinking and cooking. It’s not certain yet, because they’re doing ‘final’ tests today to decide. (Of course, if we still can’t, it won’t be final tests, but there we go)

We’ve been on bottled water since 17th April.

In that time, we’ve had a dropped off leaflet about why we couldn’t drink the water, and one letter – addressed to the previous occupants, who moved out at least eighteen months ago. And that’s it. It really hasn’t been Anglian Water‘s finest hour (three-and-a-half weeks. Whatever) in terms of customer service.

Any information that’s been acquired has been gained by us calling them. In fact, we wouldn’t know about today’s tests if I hadn’t spoken to Anglian Water‘s customer services people on Friday. And because they couldn’t be bothered to tell us, it would’ve meant that all the access to the back of the house (where there’s an outside tap they could use to test the water) would have been locked, so they couldn’t test our place.

We also took the opportunity to get them to deliver more bottled water to everyone on the road, as on Friday there were two six-packs of bottled water left on the pallet dumped on the roadside a couple of weeks ago. For a bank holiday weekend. As it is, I’ve been dropping off some of those six-packs of water to the older people on the road (and bear in mind that a good 50% of the people on our road are at least sixty) rather than them having to try lugging bloody heavy loads of water back to the house.

All told, it’s been a total farce from start to finish. And once we’re actually back on the mains service I’m going to be having a serious conversation with Anglian Water about why the hell it’s been such a fuckup. That’ll be a fun conversation, for sure.

← Older Entries
Newer Entries →