SiliconGlen, Scotland. Tartan Tech Talk.

Having blogged about a more flexible e-commerce model for e-commerce before let me recap with some history.

The pioneers of e-commerce back in 1995 were Amazon and eBay. Both used a model that now forms the default business model replicated on nearly every other website. That is, you must register on the website and hold an account on the website with a login and password for you to buy anything. This is completely unnecessary, an invasion of users' privacy, does not help in any anti-fraud measures and is simply websites forcing users to hand over long term purchasing stats because they can rather than because it is an integral part of the transaction. We wouldn't tolerate this intrusiveness on the high street and we freely shop there without having to register with shops first, so why put up with this nonsense online?

This forced registration is excess data gathering and contravenes the third principle of the data protection act, namely that the information being handed over - the customer's buying history - is excessive for the purposes of the individual transaction. Sure it's convenient to have an account already set up if I don't want to enter my data repeatedly, but on the other hand it's really inconvenient having my every purchase tracked, and trying to log in when I'm required to have an account have forgotten the password and hate having yet another website where I have to remember yet another username and password.

Argos, a top 5 retail site in the UK is now bucking this 13 year old trend. You can register if you want to, but you don't have to. Well done Argos. Same goes for Visitscotland.com

Let me tell now the tale of two websites. When trying to buy a Chiminea Barbeque tonight, I found two very similar models at the same price.

One was on greenfingers.com which insisted I had an account or registered first, then when I went to register it said I couldn't because I already had even though when I went through the 10 minute forgotten password dance and logged in there was no account info there. The other was castironchimineas.co.uk which didn't require me to register and as an added triple bonus didn't have the other usual website irritations such as a mandatory courtesy title, needlessly separate first and last name fields (i.e. one field for the whole customer name) and finally allowed Scotland as a valid country. Naturally the latter site got my business, it was far simpler and easier to use.

Well done, castironchimineas, someone taking a leaf out of my book not only on flexible e-commerce, but also how to capture a customer name but also website usability guru Jakob Nielsen who said way back in 1995 that customer name fields should be combined into one.

Maybe 13 years after the e-commerce revolution started, we can start to get back to the basics of usability?

Craig

Labels: Business, Viewpoint

Lahore Kebabhouse, E1 1PY

Excellent food and service. Great prices, no pretentiousness. No mandatory tipping or service charge either.

Only slight drawback is that it's yet another place that has a VAT number but doesn't issue correct VAT receipts (with the amount of actual VAT paid on them).

Here's the link Lahore Kebabhouse.

There's also some rather excellent curry to be had at the Noor Jahan 2, 26 Sussex Place, London W2 2TH but again is let down by the inability to produce a correct VAT receipt showing the VAT paid, meaning that the tip amount gets paid to the VATman rather than the staff. Food is excellent here though and there is also a very good pub just across the road, the Victoria at 10a Strathearn Place which has great food (stops at 9:30pm) and great beer. Busy on Tuesday evenings in the pub. Anywhere that gets 5 pints on Fancyapint.com is worth a visit.

Craig

Labels: Restaurants, Viewpoint

I'm going to enjoy slagging off a few websites at http://www.reviewcentre.com/, especially next.co.uk who have about the most user hostile website I have ever used.

Let me just say that any website that doesn't use passwords by trying to do things its own way is off to a very bad start indeed. Mandatory dates of birth when they aren't selling age related goods and all I want to do is just pay by credit card is also questionable under the data protection act, 3rd principle.

"Personal data shall be adequate, relevant and not excessive in relation to the purpose or purposes for which they are processed". The wide definition of processing should be borne in mind when considering the Third Principle. In complying with this Principle, data controllers should seek to identify the minimum amount of information that is required in order properly to fulfil their purpose and this will be a question of fact in each case. If it is necessary to hold additional information about certain individuals, such information should only be collected and recorded in those cases."

So if I can buy age related goods on amazon.co.uk without telling them my actual date of birth, merely that I am old enough why do I need to hand over material for ID theft when I buy on next and they don't sell age related goods?




Craig

Labels: Business, Viewpoint

I've submitted a few ideas to the better regulation website. If you want to cut red tape in business and improve productivity, why don't you do likewise?

Craig

Labels: Business, Viewpoint

Every Friday night when I get back from work about 11pm, the shops have long since closed. The local shops all have lights out, the businesses all have lights out and the only store with lights on is the local Tesco.

Every light on, plain as day, just as if the store was open and full of customers. Yet, the store has been shut for an hour. No dimmer switch, not even just some of them on. Even the staff canteen lights are on long after the staff have left.

Tesco, you are constantly going on about how green you are and isn't it wonderful that your store in Wick is powered by renewable energy and how we'll get green points if we reuse our carrier bags and all that stuff. I actually reuse my carrier bags, I use them instead of bin bags meaning that I don't need to buy use-once bin bags. Back to the point though. Do you not think you might save on the 4.13m tonnes of carbon you eject into the atmosphere every year if you did one simple thing?

TURN OFF THE LIGHTS WHEN THE STORE IS SHUT

You know, like every one else is told to do. Or is your store security more important than the environment?

Remember Tesco, every little helps.

Craig

Labels: Business, Viewpoint

Paddington tandoori
Gloucester terrace, London

Avoid. Cash only, mandatory tip and no VAT receipt. Eat elsewhere.

Why do so many businesses rip off consumers with mandatory charges and incompetent billing?

Labels: Viewpoint

If you have a Paypal account linked to a bank account (i.e. so that you can withdraw money) then you are greeted with this abomination every time you attempt to pay by a credit card:

---

It's the default option to pay by bank account and you can't change it. However, I wonder if enough people wrote to customercare@paypal.com and asked them to change this spurious policy they might change their mind. When I want to spend my money, I'd like the option of specifying which account is debited by default, especially if I ever pay by mobile phone the contortions you have to go to to change the payment method from the default are a major pain. As someone with a bit of e-commerce experience (E-commerce lead for Scotland's tourism portal and Project Manager for Tesco.com grocery) I'd like to think that the laughable reasons Paypal gives could do with a bit of comment.

Paypal's text:

Before deciding to fund your payment with a debit or credit card, consider the benefits of paying with your bank account.

Paying with your bank account is instant and your payment will be completed immediately, as easy as paying with cash

My response: Indeed, however since paying with cash isn't an online option this is rather a bogus comparison, no? Paying with a credit or debit card of course is also instant as paypal gets an authorisation code when I pay with a credit or debit card, therefore the vendor can dispatch the goods immediately. No different to paying with a debit or credit card in a shop, as opposed to handing over my banking details there. Furthermore, if I could pay with cash online it wouldn't be as easy because then I wouldn't benefit from any Paypal or credit card protection would I?

Paypal statement:

Paypal keeps your bank account information safe and secure through military-grade encryption and 100% coverage of any unauthorised use.

My response: I hope you're not implying that my other info, such as my card details, isn't held to the same exacting standards? Which military-grade encryption would that happen to be by the way, Ancient Roman Army encryption of letter transposition or 256 bit AES? 100% coverage of any unauthorised use eh, you mean just like all the credit cards I have?

Paypal statemet:

Easy - use the same bank account for making payments and withdrawals

My response: This isn't easy at all. I want to make withdrawals to my bank account so that I can spend the money. I want to make payments from a credit card so not only do I benefit from up to 7 weeks interest free credit and have a few weeks notice of any fraud hitting my actual bank account when the payment is due, I also don't want to use my business bank account for payments because being a business bank account it is charged per transaction fees whereas my credit card is not. So, using the same account for payments and withdrawals isn't easy at all, in fact you trying to make me use the same account for both is a major pain in the arse.


Let me now redo the screen to say what Paypal is probably wanting to write

Dear Customer, please pay using direct payment because it costs us less in fees.

Which does strike me as rather odd, especially since I can go onto numerous websites and legally download MP3s for as little as 79p. Clearly these sites not only have to cover the artists' licensing costs and their own profits but also any credit card processing charges which let's face it must be pretty minuscule. Indeed, companies such as Protx offer flat rate transactions of 10p for high volume users and the kind reader is referred to realbusiness or even an article I wrote for further info on credit card charges and the options available.

So come on Paypal, come clean with customers and give us some choice instead of bogus excuses please. After all, it's our money.

thanks
Craig

p.s. I wonder if Paypal presents the same bogus arguments when you try to pay with one of their own branded credit cards?

Labels: Business, Viewpoint

I haven't written a long blog in a while so I thought it was time to post this missive now that I've been living in London for 7 weeks.

I last tipped in a restaurant in December and I eat out 4 nights a week. So strictly speaking I do tip, when there's exceptional service and I want to say thanks (the last time was at Benedicts of Belfast) but so far I've been pretty unimpressed with London. Yet, some restaurants demand a 10% tip, there's no way to remove it from the bill and the service is pretty average.

I don't expect London to be cheap, but working in Whitehall, I can pop up the road from Downing Street and the Palace of Westminster and eat near the corner of Whitehall and Trafalgar Square at the Wetherspoons "Lord Moon of the Mall" for about a tenner including a drink. That's about as central as you can get, a stone's throw from where all the distances to London are measured and a few minutes walk from both the centre of government, theatreland, The Mall and The Strand. A decent (if somewhat basic) meal, a pint of beer and about a tenner. You pay at the bar so there's no tip added to the bill either.

Yet eat at a restaurant, even in more outlying areas such as Aldgate, Pimlico, Bayswater and so on and you'll usually pay over £20 for a meal for one in a restaurant for much the same meal. Eat in a pub, even a good one with "5 pints" on the website fancyapint.com and you get decent food, a drink and it's still around £10-£12. There's clearly a rip off market amongst restaurants who seem to think it's par for the course to whack on at least a 50% premium then look surprised when I don't want to pay the mandatory 10% surcharge on on top of that just because someone has carried a few plates 6 feet from the service hatch to my table then asked me if the meal was OK, cue reference to the "Maharaja Indian Restaurant", Queensway London which indulges in this nefarious practice.

Then you get the bill and have to ask for a VAT receipt. Usually this is some sort of semi-scribbled effort that if you're lucky has the total and the VAT number. Sorry, not good enough. Because goods are rated at different levels, in order to accurately know what the VAT amount is, you can't just guess that 17.5% was added on to the net amount. The receipt actually has to show the amount of VAT paid, just like the receipts I get when I shop in major supermarkets. So even if I was thinking of giving a tip for outstanding plate carrying to my table, the amount of tip I was going to leave has more than been eroded by the fact that the said restaurant is incapable of producing a proper VAT receipt with their VAT number on it, the total VAT paid and the total of the bill. There goes their "tip" - off to the VATman because of incompetency.

So if I get a square meal like I do in Benedicts of Belfast (the sort of food where people come from miles around to eat there) or even basic food such as Wetherspoons and pay £12 then I figure for a restaurant in an expensive area it's going to be around £15 including VAT, assuming I get a correct VAT receipt. I know it's economic to run a restaurant on that basis, the Lord Moon of the Mall in Whitehall shows it can be done for much less.

Any restaurant wanting £20 for the same and especially those with no VAT receipt have just used up my budget and gone over by a fiver. The tip has already been spent on overpriced food.

So that's what I don't tip (in London at least). It's so completely different in the US, where eating in restaurants is much cheaper, the portions are much bigger, the service better and you actually feel tipping is worthwhile and the server deserves it rather than in London where it's a surcharge on top of a rip off.

Comments?

Labels: Hotels, Restaurants, Viewpoint

Why is it that Easyjet rip me off with a £4.95 minimum credit card fee when I buy something on their site yet I can buy a downloaded MP3 on most UK websites for 79p for no credit card charge at all?

Anyone else feel this is a rip off?

Labels: Business, Viewpoint

The BBC reports that as of just over an hour ago Scotland no longer has any bridge tolls

It took a Labour government to sit on this suggestion for nearly 10 years and an SNP government less than 10 months to make it a reality. See my proposal for banning bridge tolls as they simply penalised the communities they serve.

This suggestion was made to the Labour government in November 1997. SNP, time for change. If only all governments were this effective.

Labels: Politics, Scotland, Viewpoint

On 1st October 2006, the UK enacted a law to make ageism illegal. This is only for employment but nonetheless, despite privacy concerns, many employment related websites still ask for it or some equivalent field such as "career start" under the guise of data de-duplication. Today being data privacy day it might be a good time to remind them to get their unique numbers another way.

Anyway, for those sites and application forms that still request it, they claim that it is to ensure compliance with the new legislation. Funny that, before the legislation you didn't have to supply such information, now some agencies ask for it and cite the legislation as the reason. Furthermore, as I blogged in 2006 you are now forced to reveal your age for ID purposes when applying for a job.

So that's the background. Age when applying for a job should just be recorded for "checking purposes" and to ensure that recruiters are playing fairly. In that regard, it is no different to race, religion and other profiling characteristics that are illegal (and immoral) to discriminate on. Yet, the rest of society hasn't really caught up.

Let's take a typical news story from today where the people's ages have no relevance.

The original text:

By Andrew Hough and Michael Holden

LONDON (Reuters) - Five men were found guilty on Monday of kidnap and robbery in the country's biggest ever heist, a daring, 53 million pound raid on a cash depot in Kent.

The robbers, some dressed as policemen and most wearing prosthetic disguises, snatched the record haul after getting past tight security by kidnapping the depot's manager, his wife and son at gunpoint.

They were also helped by an "inside man", who not only provided details of the building's interior layout and security protocols, but also secretly filmed it using a tiny camera hidden on his belt.

Despite the elaborate planning, the gang was rounded up by police within days of the February 2006 raid at the Securitas Depot in Tonbridge, after detectives received a tip-off.

Stuart Royle, 49, Jetmir Bucpapa, 26, Lea Rusha, 35, Ermir Hysenaj, 28, and Roger Coutts, 30, were convicted at the Old Bailey of conspiracy to kidnap, conspiracy to rob and conspiracy to possess firearms.

Another defendant, John Fowler, 59, was cleared of those charges while Keith Borer, 54, was found not guilty of handling stolen goods.

The text if we removed the profiling information and replaced it with ethnic origin (these are made up)

LONDON (Reuters) - Five men were found guilty on Monday of kidnap and robbery in the country's biggest ever heist, a daring, 53 million pound raid on a cash depot in Kent.

...

Stuart Royle, black, Jetmir Bucpapa, white, Lea Rusha, asian, Ermir Hysenaj, black , and Roger Coutts, white, were convicted at the Old Bailey of conspiracy to kidnap, conspiracy to rob and conspiracy to possess firearms.

Another defendant, John Fowler, white, was cleared of those charges while Keith Borer, middle-eastern, was found not guilty of handling stolen goods.

Completely irrelevant, pointless and bordering on racist.


Maybe you could have an alternate version using other profiling information such as religion

LONDON (Reuters) - Five men were found guilty on Monday of kidnap and robbery in the country's biggest ever heist, a daring, 53 million pound raid on a cash depot in Kent.
...

Stuart Royle, catholic, Jetmir Bucpapa, muslim, Lea Rusha, protestant, Ermir Hysenaj, moslem, and Roger Coutts, athiest, were convicted at the Old Bailey of conspiracy to kidnap, conspiracy to rob and conspiracy to possess firearms.

Another defendant, John Fowler, Jew, was cleared of those charges while Keith Borer, protestant, was found not guilty of handling stolen goods.

Again, fairly offensive, pointless and quite irrelevant.

So why do we continue to accept the pointless and irrelevant reporting of the number of birthdays someone has had when it has no relevance to the story? It is just as offensive and wrong as other profiling information that it is illegal to discriminate on.

Comments?

Labels: Viewpoint

The UK government is currently consulting on income shifting. This is a consequence of losing the Arctic Systems case last year, the government didn't get its way so decides to change the law to suit its needs. Nice job if you can get it eh? Nonetheless, together with IR35 this is yet another tax on the self employed (e.g. IT contractors) many of whom have family members contributing to the success of the business but will be penalised if income shifting legislation is drawn up. The Professional Contractors group has a useful resource page on this for more information and is calling for people to sign the petition to scrap the proposed legislation.

Here is a summary of the Professional Contractors Group (PCG) position for more information. Incidentally, although Scotland has 10% of the UK population, 17% of the PCG membership is in Scotland, indicating that such legislation may have a disproportionate effect in Scotland versus the rest of the UK.

Introduction

The Government has issued draft legislation, intended for inclusion in the Finance Bill 2008, to place a new tax on what it calls “income shifting”. The result will be significant tax increases for hundreds of thousands of small family businesses.

At present, a business owned jointly by a married (and civil partner) couple can distribute profits equally to each: this allows them to use up their tax allowances efficiently, and can create a tax saving. This is a consequence of the independent taxation of spouses that was recognised and accepted by Parliament when it was introduced in the 1980s. Now the Government wishes to impose a tax increase on everyone who has set up a business in this way.

PCG believes that the proposals are unfair

• The Government seems to think there is something wrong with spouses setting up “non-commercial” arrangements and wants to penalise them: in the real world, married couples enter into financial arrangements on the basis of being married to each other and it is wholly inappropriate to expect them to enter into “commercial arrangements”.
• Profits are distributed as a return on risk: the Government fails to recognise that married couples are jointly exposed to the risk of their business failing, and is seeking to deny them a joint share in the rewards if they succeed.
• For years the Government advised people to set up businesses jointly when possible: now they are to be penalised for following the Government’s advice.
• The proposals clearly and directly discriminate against small business and in favour of big business: if a consultant is hired out by a large company, he will be paid for the work and the rest of the fee will go to the company as profit, which can then be distributed to shareholders in the usual manner. If a consultant took exactly the same contract with exactly the same client for exactly the same payment, but the consultancy happened to be one he owned with his wife, the dividends would be taxed more heavily than the dividends of the large company.

PCG believes that the proposals are unworkable

• The proposed measure will make it impossible for businesses to self-assess their tax bills. How can they value every single contribution made to a business accurately and with confidence? Businesses will be left perpetually looking over their shoulder in fear of an aggressive investigation by HMRC, in which they will have to prove that they have done nothing wrong.
• The Government claims that the new rules will not cost businesses anything to administer, and not cost HMRC anything to enforce: this cannot possibly be the case for such a complex and subjective set of rules.

PCG believes that the proposals are inconsistent with other areas of law

• Spouses are entitled to equal shares in the value of a jointly-owned business in a divorce.
• Spouses are entitled to equal shares in the proceeds, under Capital Gains Tax rules, in the event that a jointly-owned business is sold.
• Under the proposals, spouses will not be entitled to equal shares in the profits of a jointly owned business while it is operational.

PCG believes that the proposals are not justified by the consultation paper

Ever since the independent taxation of spouses was introduced in the 1980s, it has been common practice for married couples who go into business to set up the business jointly; the consultation paper fails to show that anything has changed since then to justify the new rules.

Labels: Business, Politics, Viewpoint

I blogged last year about problems with hotels and after a year of staying in them, I've got a good bit of first hand experience of what really works especially for someone staying for more than a few nights. In the same spirit of my gold standard for contact centres, I propose a similar standard for hotels.

1. Provide Wi-Fi, make it free and unrestricted. Anything password based via a webpage is a major irritation when all you want to do is use an email client, and it is time consuming and not guaranteed to work on a PDA. Wired internet in the bedroom is even better and almost makes it usable to webchat with the family back home.

2. Even if I prefer having a shower to taking a bath, having a room without a bath is cheap. It's a sign you are trying to cram as many guests as possible into a small a space as possible.

3. Provide FreeView, after all it's free.

4. Double beds (4ft 6" wide) are a bit of a joke in a hotel claiming to be quality. King, or ideally superking size is more like it.

5. Have showers that work and have constant decent pressure and temperature. Bit of a basic, but many fall at this hurdle. A glass partition next to the bath is far more preferable to a shower curtain that attacks you.

6. People have laminate flooring in their homes because it is easy to keep clean. Hotels with wooden bedroom floors get the same advantage. Carpets in bedrooms are fine but given the use they get in hotels with people wearing outdoor shoes, they get to look fairly shabby before too long.

7. Good quality pillows only cost a small amount extra and can make a huge difference to the comfort in the bed. The same applies to the duvet. Please provide a sheet under the duvet (comforter for those of you in the US).

8. The sports complexes at Village Hotels in the UK are fantastic and exceed even those I have seen in specialist keep fit centres. Something for other hotels to consider.

9. Friendly, helpful staff really make the hotel. Staff that are willing to engage in conversation rather than just act like robots make a huge difference.

10. Hotels that have bars that locals want to drink in are a huge plus. Not only is this a sign of quality that people choose to drink there because they want to rather than just because it's convenient and they are staying that night but with locals in there as well there is likely to be a decent atmosphere. Most hotel bars have about as much atmosphere as an airport departure lounge.

11. Providing the noise isn't a problem for guests, having a bar with decent live music is a major plus since this certainly relieves the boredom if you are travelling along and unless you are very sad you probably want to do more with your long term stay than just be cooped up in your room watching TV every night.

12. Provide healthy cereals for breakfast. Muesli for instance is supposed to be healthy, so why not supply it in a sugar-free variety but leave a bowl of sugar so that those who like sugar can add it if they want to.

13. The card that opens the door is usually also used to activate the room lights. However, the room light panel is not tied to a specific card, anyone will do. It pays to have a handy card handy (e.g. a gym pass or expired bank card with VOID written on it) so that if you want to go out and leave the laptop charging, you can do so by leaving said card in the light panel thus ensuring the electricity to the room doesn't cut out when you pop out for a few hours. It's handy when you can force the electricity to stay on in the room even when you're out.

14. Just because you provide a quality service there's no need to rip off customers. It's perfectly possible to charge only £10-£20 a night more than the absolutely most basic of hotels and provide outstanding quality and service. I know, I have stayed in such places and not surprisingly they were almost permanently fully booked.

15. Try and make the decor and room layout distinctive. I get a bit tired of the rectangular bedroom with the square bathroom in the corner just next to the door, the beige decor and the dull design. I've stayed in rooms with the bathrooms had windows (nice) and the room was triangular. Makes a nice change.

16. In 2008, there isn't really much excuse for a hotel still having 4:3 ratio CRT TVs. Widescreen TFT should be the norm.

17. Hotels provide TVs for people to watch, including films in the evening. Yet what are we supposed to sit on for 2 hours watching the film? The bed? No thanks, I stopped doing that as a student and the alternative is those uncomfortable hardback chairs. Any hotel that provides a chair on a par with what you might find in a living room (ie soft and comfortable) actually provides something you might want to watch that film in.

18. When I am booking online, give me the option of specifying whether it is a smoking room or not. Surprisingly many hotels still don't do this.

19. Have a help-yourself buffet for breakfast. Saying I can have a yoghurt or cereal for breakfast but not both is penny pinching.

20. Don't hardwire the TV to the aerial socket. I want to be able to unplug the aerial and plug it into my laptop so that I can record TV onto my laptop via the TV card.

21. If you run a busy pub as part of the hotel, you'll want to provide more female toilet capacity than male, otherwise there's a good chance that women will have to queue and the men won't. This is unfair.

22. Friendly, helpful staff really make a huge difference. I want to feel at home, not just that I'm stuck there for the night because I have no other choice. So important I said it twice.

It's also worth mentioning here that the best hotel I've ever stayed in is Benedicts of Belfast. So good, I lived there for 7 months. Everything they do is of the highest standard and it's the sort of place that other hoteliers aspiring to be distinctive, quality hotels with a friendly welcome should visit to learn how it's really done. It's no surprise it's consistently near the top of the trip advisor recommended hotels list, currently it's #2 although #1 doesn't have a bar.


That's all for the moment.

Craig
The author worked for the Scottish Tourist Board/VisitScotland from 2000-2006 although is writing in a private capacity here.

Labels: Hotels, Viewpoint

Argos (a top 5 e-commerce site in the UK) reports on its website when you go to buy something:

Remember, you don't need to register to purchase on this website!

Glory be and hallelujah.

About the only site I know of that allows people to log in if they want to (potentially saving time in the long term) as well as not logging in (thereby saving time for one off purchases and especially if you have forgotten your password etc)

When I go to shop in a normal high street shop, I am not required to log in. Nor am I required in the main to have their store card and use it allowing every purchase I make to be tracked on every visit. Nor am I required to set up a username before I think about putting stuff in my basket. Nor am I required to give my date of birth before purchasing non-age related goods from them.

Yet on-line retailers indulge in this nefarious data gathering just because they can. Tesco.com requires to have a clubcard before purchasing with them (thereby allowing all your purchases to be tracked). Toysrus.com requires a date of birth when registering, even though the vast bulk of their products are non-age related and even though all they need to know is whether I am over 18 or not, see this analysis of their site in terms of the data protection act.

Argos were reviewed as Pants back in 2003 and still persist with the silly practice of requiring everyone to have a courtesy title even when many prefer not to use one. But nonetheless, credit where it's due for being courageous enough to say no to the marketing department's endless quest for customer data "we take your data because we can" and having a site that gives the customer the option of a quick purchase without having to log in as well as using their account if they have one.

A site that offers true customer choice, how long before others follow this lead?

Craig

Labels: Business, Computing, Viewpoint

The Scottish Government has just spent £100,000 apparently to come up with a new slogan for Scotland to replace "The best small country in the world". The new slogan is to be "Welcome to Scotland" with the Gaelic translation of "Failte gu Alba" as you can see from the picture in the BBC article.

100K pah, I could have done it for a fraction of that figure. Oh, I already did.

See the comment dated 9:11pm 27 Aug 2006.

The comment was obviously far too ahead of its time and didn't take full account of inflation either.

Aye, right

Craig

Labels: Politics, Scotland, Viewpoint

I find a good part of my lunch hour is spent dealing with fairly useless contact centres. I would probably get more out of my lunch break and be able to do more interesting things than listen to boring hold music if contact centres improved their quality of service. Things haven't improved much in many years, I recall spending long hours on the phone to Alliance and Leicester in 2001 - often it was half an hour before they even answered the phone.

In response to the lack of initiative and progress in contact centre customer service, I propose the following initial list as targets that contact centres should aspire to, in order to offer gold standard customer service rather than the poor quality crap we have to tolerate at present. No particular order here and feel free to add your own ideas.


1. For an independent company to assess contact centres for typical and peak wait times until you get to speak to someone (including having to work through the menus). Then customers can make informed independent choices regarding which companies waste the least amount of time. These timings should then be published centrally with the worst offenders named and shamed.

2. For companies to aspire to a high level of standard rather than unacceptably long queues and to publish their standard on their website (and on the site mentioned in 1). e.g. "We aim to answer 90% of calls in less than 10 seconds". A standard that some companies actually meet, yet others would laugh at the idea of answering a call within 10 minutes.

3. For information to be available on what the busiest and quietest times are for the contact centre and their hours of opening so that I can make an informed choice about when to call them.

4. To have a facility to turn off hold music. This means that if I am in a long queue I can put my phone on speakerphone and get on with my job without annoying the rest of the office with a tinny version of Vivaldi's concert for hold music annoying everyone around me.

5. When using phone menus, every menu must have a "help" or "none of the previous options apply, I'd like to speak to a real person rather than a robot" type option.

6. Again with phone menus, they must have information on how to go back to the previous menu.

7. An option that if you have waited more than a certain length of time (e.g. a few minutes) in a queue, that there is always the option to leave your number and have someone call you back where your call has reached the front of the queue.

8. A fast track menu system so that you don't have to wait for all the announcements before you can progress to the next menu - you should be able to interrupt any menu and advance quickly without having to hear all the options. Many contact centre menus already do this but it's worth mentioning anyway.

9. To publish the contact centre menus on the company's website so that I can work through them quickly via a web browser, click on the relevant menu option and then to open up Skype or similar and jump straight in the the relevant queue that I've just clicked on.

10. Not having to repeat my details every time the call is transferred, including when I have to transfer from an automated system to an operator. Surely the IT systems at the contact centre can do this?

11. The ability for the contact centre to text or email relevant information in the event that you can't write things down very easily (e.g. driving, walking down street carrying mobile and briefcase, etc.)

12. An acceptance that excessive wait times is not only exceptionally poor customer service but in the false economics of saving money for the company, it actually wastes time for the customers of the contact centre. Since cc operators are usually on less than the average national salary, the implication is their customers' salary average is near to the national average and thus more than the contact centre operator's wages. This means it is a false economy employing insufficient contact centre operators and transferring the consequent wait time onto people whose time is more "expensive" and who would probably be happy to pay a higher premium for shorter wait times.

13. being able to access my account via the same lookup procedure and security procedure used by operators (i.e. if I don't have my policy number, I can just enter postcode, security answers etc). Banning the use of "usernames" for telephone access. My address, security details etc are enough.

14. If you end up in the wrong queue, the centre should be able to transfer calls for me without me having to hang up and start again

15. When the contact centre phones me, they use a legitimate number that accepts return calls and which announces the name of the company (i.e. not like Powergen). This implies the said number is not withheld, a very irritating practice.

16. Operators that have a good command of English. This especially applies to companies thinking of outsourcing their contact centre to Asia.

17. If I don't select a menu, then the options are only repeated twice before I am put through to an operator. They are not repeated indefinitely, nor does the system hang up on me.

18. Being able to easily speak to a manager/supervisor/complaints department.

19. Being able to dial straight into a relevant queue so that I don't have to pay to wait on hold. 20 minutes on hold on a mobile calling internationally is not funny.

20. On completion of a call, being given the option to provide feedback there and then on what I thought of the service given (e.g. press 1 for delighted to 9 for unhappy, etc.)

21. Being able to email the contact centre without having to go through menu spaghetti.

22. Using a phonetic name field (in addition to the usual name fields) in the customer record so that people with names like mine, difficult foreign names etc can have the correct pronunciation of their name recorded, thus meaning that time isn't wasted explaining how to say the name.

23. Treating email as important as fax and phone and providing a response within a "phone call" order of magnitude turnaround. It can be done for a phone call, yet for email response some companies take 5 days to respond. I'm mailing you via a medium that works at close to the speed of light because I want a quick response, not because I want it to sit in a backlog for a week.

24. Employ operators in the contact centre that don't talk over me, listen, and have a good level of knowledge of the topic I am phoning about.


Any more to add to this?

Craig

Labels: Business, Viewpoint

Continuing the theme of e-mail/Internet security.

Tonight I wanted to set up a new bill payment. The bank, in response to customer paranoia about Internet security and phishing attacks now require me to carry my bank cards and their calculator like number generator that I now have to take with me on business if I want to set up a bill payment. No thanks. No, I don't want to trail a variety of calculator like devices around with me one for each account or service I might want to use. I think the encryption offered by the bank site together with the random letters and digits from a security password is secure enough.

However, aside from that, let us now look at the two options the bank presents:

1. Log onto the website, have it over a secure encrypted channel, type in a customer number securely, random digits from two separate passwords securely and use the calculator device to randomly generate a number. Pretty secure huh?

2. Alternatively, use a phone, have the conversation in clear text, have the audible key presses recordable by anyone in earshot with a microphone, no need for the card reader calculator device either. Set up bill payment successfully.

Does the analogy of having 50 billion million trillion zillion locks on your front door and only 1 on your back door apply here?

Which way do you think a burglar would want to break in?

Why do banks and other sites continue to believe that the phone is a secure means of communication?

Labels: Business, Computing, Viewpoint

I have already blogged about rude e-mails. These are emails sent by allegedly reputable companies who consider email to be a good enough medium to communicate with you, but not a good enough medium for you to reply. In other words, they are rude. Instead of a simple easy reply using the tool you used to pick up their mail, they incorrectly assume you have access to the web (you might be using a slow mobile phone/PDA), they incorrectly assume your device must be compatible with their website (usually not, especially if you are disabled) and they incorrectly assume that you enjoy playing "contact us" droplist spaghetti just as much as people hate playing contact centre multi-option phone queue and hold music hell. "I'm sorry, I didn't get that, please listen carefully to the following options again".

Powergen are one of the rude companies when it comes to email, sending their emails from a "do not reply" email address, however they completely excelled themselves in rudeness when they called me yesterday, hung up the phone and didn't leave a message. So I called them back using the number presented to my phone 01158434900 (0115 843 9400 just to ensure it appears in the search index) only to be greeted with an even ruder "This number does not accept incoming calls". Not even an announcement saying which company it was. Not even a "Thank you for calling Powergen, we'll direct you to someone who can help". Nope, sod off hang up the phone.

Guys, this sort of "crap on the consumer" is completely unacceptable. It's the telephone equivalent of leaving a pile of shit on someone's doorstep with a note saying "left by anonymous ha ha". People actually want to be able to reply, people don't want to be called anonymously by companies hiding behind dead email addresses or phone numbers. People shouldn't have to go to a PC, type the phone number into Google (other search engines may still exist) to find out who it was because the company was too rude to say so.

Dead email addresses, "contact us" drop list spaghetti, long contact centre queues and dead phone numbers may be really convenient for the company but they are really INCONVENIENT for the customer and I for one am getting fed up using a good part of my lunch hour playing these silly games just to get in touch with you (including 3 hours to Demon's contact centre recently trying to figure out why my 5 day broadband service was down for 26 days, my website wiped and my email bounced.

You want to know how annoying this rudeness is? The next time you want to contact me, I'll not give you my email address and any phone calls will go via a service that makes you wait for 20 minutes in a queue listening to "Your call is important to me, please hang on while we try to connect you" without the option of leaving a message, without the option of being called back when you've reached the front of the queue and without the option of hearing a valid email address that works.

Your productivity would go down somewhat and rather than being able to call 20 customers an hour, you might be able to call 2.

Annoying isn't it? SO DON'T DO IT TO CUSTOMERS THEN. In any case, if my phone call was really that important to you, you would make more of an effort to answer it quickly.

DONT email me from dead email addresses, instead email me from a working email address and include a reference number so that my reply goes back to the right place.

DONT phone me from dead phone numbers (or withhold your number like a dodgy scam artist might). Instead, call me from a real phone number than when I call you back allows me to speak to someone.

Don't tell me that you can pick up the phone, deal with my enquiry and resolve it in well under an hour but somehow for an email it takes the best part of a week. Just because I use a different communication method, it makes my issue no less important. I actually had a sore throat recently and preferred to send email rather than speak on the phone. Goodness knows how any disabled people with speech problems put up with this second class service. Can't speak because of a very sore throat? No web access? You might as well not exist.

Above all, don't be rude. You might even find customers being more polite to your contact centre staff when they eventually reach the end of the queue....

Thank You.

Craig

Labels: Business, Viewpoint

I got called by Dell today. Several times I had to correct the person on how to pronounce my name. Cockburn is a 700+ year old Scottish name that is pronounced Coburn. It is even advertised on national TV, Cockburn's special reserve is the UK's best selling Port (Fortified wine) and every advert details how to pronounce the name.

Yet I get countless contact centres who ask me for my name, I pronounce it correctly and then they pronounce it the way it is written in front of them, seemingly deaf to the fact that the owner of the name has just told them how to pronounce it. Some even say "well it must be spelled incorrectly here, I'll just change it for you", not realising that doing so would then mislabel my addressed mail.

Goodness knows what difficulties they have with pronunciation with some of the more difficult names from Eastern Europe, Africa, Arab speaking countries and so on. How embarrassing it must be for those customers and how needlessly difficult for contact centre operators.

How much simpler life would be if the customer record had a separate field where the phonetic spelling of the customer's name could be written in.

At last, no more mispronunciations. It also has the other advantage that if the company ever starts using voice recognition then the phonetic encoding of the field is likely to be more accurate than the original.

Why does no one do this? Sounds like a good idea to me.

Craig

Labels: Business, Innovation, Viewpoint

I hate companies being rude to me. This includes Amazon.com, Dell and other companies that supposedly pride themselves in high quality customer service.

They are rude to me by sending me emails and then denying me the opportunity of replying via the same channel. Obviously they know I have an email address, as they are using it. Obviously they know I have access to the Internet because I can use it to collect said email. They then assume incorrectly from those two assumptions that my preferred means of response is via a secure web form. It isn't.

They write to me via email, they get a reply via email. That's the way it works.

Problem 1.

You are disabled and although some sites might be web accessible it's a slow process navigating round them. Every site is different. Your email client is laid out identically regardless of who you email, it's convenient. Companies that deny you the opportunity to use email waste your time.

Problem 2.

An increasing number of people pick up email on PDAs (Blackberry, Nokia E61 etc). Said people have no problem connecting to pick up email, a few Kb if you have a decent spam filter. Sending a quick reply is less than 1K. Fast and cheap. Bring up a web browser on a small screen and wondering where the relevant link is an then navigating drop list spaghetti to find the right option, and then eventually getting to the right form and typing in all your details whilst staying connected the whole time is extremely wasteful of time and it only takes a few such instances to use up several Mb of bandwidth which isn't much if you are on a fixed package. It's astronomically expensive if you happen to be abroad (or even close to a border as your phone can roam to the foreign network even though you are inside the border). A huge waste of time and money compared to the 1K email. There's a vast difference between broadband access from a fast PC and "dial up" speeds on a PDA in another country. Make no assumptions when dealing on the net where your customers are or how they are accessing the Internet.


Problem 3

The website isn't compatible with your PDA. I can't use Jobserve with my PDA web browser as I get a crippled version that is totally unusable (it is impossible to log in and actually apply for a job without having to write to the job link sent to me in email manually and hoping I have entered it correctly). So much for click and go. I can't access the full site as they have disabled access from PDAs.


Problem 4

The website requires you to log in. Since you access hundreds of websites that require log ins and for security reasons you have a different log in for each site, more time is wasted while you fire up the browsers, access the forgotten password feature, wait for the mail to arrive and then try again.

Problem 5

Amazon gave me this reason

The reason that Amazon.co.uk do not provide customers with email addresses to respond directly to us is to prevent spam and viruses from getting onto the Amazon system. This policy also protects the integrity of our customers' accounts, keeping their details secure.

OK, My email is secure. My system has no viruses. I assume that a company the size of Amazon can buy a decent spam filter, virus filter and can assure me that none of its employees will ever introduce a virus directly. However, since Amazon have told me that email isn't secure, why are they sending me correspondence via email? I want a web form right away. I want every company on the planet to have to use my webform to contact me. I want every company to have an annoying random graphic to decipher before they get anywhere near my mailbox, oh and they can have 10 annoying drop lists like ebay to fill in before they get anywhere near the webform. I'll even throw in a useless wizard to hinder and annoy then. Then when they have filled in their details on my secure webform I'll even give them an auto generated response that tells them to get lost if they even think of replying to it. Yeah, that'll do nicely. I'll be secure then. I wonder how bloody inconvenient the companies that send tens of thousands of email each day would find THAT. Then when they reply they might appreciate how valuable MY time is with all this secure webform bollocks nonsense.

I sent my comments to Amazon who then changed their tune somewhat and wrote:

In response to your comments on our email communications system, email is not necessarily a "risky medium". But by not having a direct email address, we can prevent time consuming spam and junk mail that is often automated and sent indiscriminately. By not having a direct address, we avoid this, and spend our time replying to relevant customer queries.

Yeah, right. Like you can't get a decent spam filter? How many billions are you worth? Here's my response if you still have problems, even with a spam filter.

1. Send me an email using a custom reply address with the issue number in it. e.g. amazon-helpdesk-abcd1234@amazon.com

2. Only accept emails to the above address from the email address used to log the particular issue (in this case, my address)

3. If you like, you can expire the above address a few weeks after the issue is closed.

That's it. Didn't take a brain the size of Jeff Bezos' to work out that one. Indeed if they did implement such a system, rather than trying in vain to navigate PDA hostile webforms at great expense, I might actually have more free time when I get back to a real PC and use that time on the Amazon site buying that Harry Potter book etc. that's coming out soon. We all want more free time and certainly I would have more if I didn't have to waste it on webforms when email should be good enough.


I have worked on a large number of help desk systems that deal with responses to emails, filter them correctly and then file them against the relevant issue provided the subject is left intact. It works. Big Rude Companies Please Pay Attention.

I realise it is somewhat ironic having to fill in a webform to reply to this blog, but this blog is a web based medium, so using the web to reply to a web based medium doesn't contradict the above.

Thank you for listening to Rant Of The Day.

Labels: Business, Computing, Viewpoint

I just got another one of those Very Annoying messages. One where you send an email to the very useful customer service email address for a company and they respond with a stock template

"We are unable to discuss account matters via email, please call our contact centre".

Which is of course another way of saying "we live under the mistaken impression that email is less secure than the phone, so please contact our contact centre, press loads of irritating buttons, pay a premium rate, listen to annoying hold music and adverts and generally waste your time". Especially when I can send email for free then read the response at my leisure but taking up 15 minutes of my time listening to hold music on my mobile is certainly not free.

I wrote about this in 2003 and the arguments are just as valid today.

Since getting email in 1983 and sending on average 30 emails a day (would have been less in 1983, considerably more since 1987 when I've used it on a daily basis for my job) I figure I must have sent around 260,000 mails. In that time, I can't think of a single instance where one has been maliciously intercepted en route.

Consider those odds of 260,000:1 versus the odds of calling from an open plan office or in the street and everyone hearing the login details that you have to speak down the phone or indeed hearing the gist of why you are actually phoning and then using that to commit fraud.

I accept email isn't 100% secure. However, I believe the phone to be less secure than email. So why can't we move on and accept email as a valid communication channel for secure conversations and then build the appropriate support and encryption channels around this rather than sticking our heads in the sand and resorting to plain text expensive 19th century communications technology?

Craig

Labels: Computing, Viewpoint

I am growing increasingly tired of paying increasingly high "credit card surcharges" which are little more than a front for certain companies to make extra money at the consumer's expense.

Although it is as a consumer faced with notices such as "use a credit card and you will be charged a minimum £4.95 surcharge" which prompts me to write this, let me give some background in my experience.

During the height of the dot com boom I was an e-commerce consultant. When the market peaked in early 2000 I was in the middle of gaining e-commerce accreditation for the Scottish Tourist Board's project Ossian. Scottish Tourism employs about 8% of the Scottish workforce, and the industry is worth approx £4.5 billion to the Scottish economy. Following my stint there, through three separate e-commerce platforms I went on to be Project Manager for the tesco.com grocery site, the world's most successful online grocer. I won't bore you with further figures, you can read them here. So I have a bit of an inside perspective on the whole credit card transaction fee nonsense. These days, I'm currently self employed and doing quite well.

visitscotland.com when I was there only took 10% of the value of a booking for automated sales (via the web). Therefore for a typical £40 online booking for a night in a cheap hotel, the actual value visitscotland.com would process would be £4. The remainder was paid direct to the establishment. No credit card fee was charged by visitscotland.com. Indeed if you compare this £4 charge it isn't that far off the core price of some Easyjet flights if you book far enough ahead. Yet, Easyjet charge a minimum credit card fee of £4.95 for an online booking - a fee that visitscotland.com, also in the travel business, managed to do entirely without. If it wasn't for the government taxes, the credit card fee would be pretty much doubling the cost of some Easyjet flights. Visitscotland.com incidentally did charge a 2.5% credit card fee for self catering bookings via the contact centre after pressure from the industry, however for serviced accommodation bookings there was no fee yet both bookings were going through the same payment gateway (SecureTrading). Apart from putting the Self Catering industry in a bad light (see bank of Self Catering Ltd), it is inconsistent that a £500 hotel booking should have no charge but a £500 self catering booking had a 2.5% fee, yet the payment for the latter was often taken several months in advance.

When I was in Skye last year, the local shop Ragamuffin had a £50 minimum for a credit card transaction. This would have been bad enough in the middle of Edinburgh where their other shop is, surrounded by banks and cashpoint machines and alternative methods of payment. However, in my case I was in Armadale, Skye. Approximately 40 minutes round trip by car (if you have one) to the nearest town (Broadford) where there is a cash machine. So cash was at a premium as I didn't fancy spending my holiday driving up and down taking money out and clearly there were some things such as ice creams that I genuinely needed cash for. Like many people, I don't ordinarily carry a cheque book either as so few places accept them now, however you can see from this list (PDF) that for a business paying in more than one cheque at a time, the additional cost is a mere 25p per cheque. This 25p is a charge I would happily pay if the alternative is a 40 minute car journey. 25p is also a lot more reasonable than the £4.95 easyjet credit card charge - bearing in mind that cheques are a manual payment and credit cards are automated it certainly makes me question how reasonable a credit card charge should be. I also don't accept the concept of a "minimum fee" for a credit card transaction as the fees for credit cards are usually either a flat fee per month or a fixed percentage per transaction, meaning that 100 £1 transactions would cost the merchant the same as 1 £100 transaction in fees.


Let's now look at the actual charges merchants pay that they use to justify these "minimum transaction amounts", "credit card fees" and so on.

Here is a selection of popular e-commerce payment solutions. At the high end, it's 3.8% per transaction but 1.5%-2.5% is more typical and as the article shows, for a flat fee of £20 per month you can get away with no transaction charges at all. Indeed this can be as low as £10 for a lower volume mail order set up. For the top end, Tesco uses Commidea. Commidea also caters for the smaller retailer and like Protx charges no fees per transaction, just a low monthly fee. So with either system it doesn't matter how much the customer spends. Indeed, I would like to put small amounts on my card to keep all my business spending in one place. JD Wetherspoon's in Belfast however wouldn't let me put £4.99 for a meal on my business card due to their £5 minimum card fee. Perhaps they are with the wrong payment system?

Clearly there is a lot of variation in card charges to retailers (merchants) but a simple bit of shopping around can round these up into one simple, fixed fee. Nowhere have I seen any card processing company that charges a minimum card fee of £4.95, so there appears to be no justification for Easyjet's excessive charges.

So consumers, if you feel that "minimum credit card transaction value" or "credit card surcharge" or the like are annoying you, just vote with your feet and shop elsewhere and give the retailer a copy of this posting. After all, if the retailer chooses a more cost effective payment method, not only will we hopefully see minimum fees and surcharges disappear but retailers themselves will move to more cost effective solutions and make more money generally.

Craig

Labels: Business, Viewpoint

30th April: Northern Ireland gets smoking ban. The island of Ireland is smoke free and England remains the last part of the UK without a smoking ban in place, highlighting the democratic deficit in England.

2nd May: the 10th anniversary of Labour coming to power. This will intentionally be a low key affair given their unpopularity in the polls.

3rd May: Scotland goes to the polls. The SNP are widely tipped to win and significant steps towards Scotland becoming an independent country, ending 300 years of union will ensue. Like Wales, the SNP are proposing abolishing prescription charges. How long will England remain socially and politically behind the rest of the former UK?

Labour are expected to lose control of the Scottish and Welsh parliaments and do badly in the English council elections, all on 3rd May with their support approaching a 20 year low.

Tony Blair is expected to resign shortly after the polls, realising that the disastrous showing of Labour UK wide and the loss of devolved control in Scotland and Wales is largely down to continued resentment over Iraq, cash for honours sleaze and it is time for a fresh start. Sources indicate 31st May as the favoured date, but in practice a poor showing in the polls would bring this forward significantly.

Prime minister in waiting Gordon Brown has his own problems to deal with though. On 10th May, the Bank of England raises interest rates again. Normally set on the first
Thursday of the month, the Bank of England which was allegedly set free from political control is curiously meeting on the 10th, rather than the day most of the UK goes to the polls. Higher than expected inflation and a strong pound will hit the manufacturing sector and the balance of payments. The economic joy ride that Gordon Brown has enjoyed is coming to an end and the Tories are riding high in the English polls. Whilst the Dow Jones is now at an all time high, the FTSE100 is still some way off the level reached in 1999.


8th May: The devolution picture completes. With the Scottish and Welsh results in a few days ago, today see the Northern Ireland assembly assumes full powers and a nationalist party, Sinn Fein, sharing power. A struggling Labour government has at most three years to recover from a disastrous showing in the polls. Behind the scenes the Labour government has to discourage prominent Labour MPs from Scotland for seeking election to English constituencies as the SNP seeks to hold an independence poll in 2010 and remove Scottish MPs from Westminster. The UK looks to be on course for a SNP government in Scotland confronting a Conservative government in Westminster from 2010 elected almost entirely from English constituencies.
Such a prospect not only favours the SNP but also sees Plaid Cymru and Sinn Fein increase in popularity.

The UK, heading for part of one island (England and Wales) and part of another island (Northern Ireland) needs a clear rethink of its structure as the nationalist movements in Northern Ireland and Wales look to Scotland and the previous negative arguments levelled at Scottish independence fail to hold much ground as Scotland heads towards being a sovereign nation.

From the end of April to the end of May, it will be an interesting month with reprocussions for years to come.

Labels: Politics, Scotland, Viewpoint

OK, a simple question and one that someone with 9 billion pounds profit ought to be able to answer.

Why is it that I can take out money from an entire banking network, including from other bank groups, 24 hours a day, 7 days a week and the money is debited immediately from my account irrespective of whether it is a banking day or not? I have access to my cash immediately, regardless of how the banking network works behind the scenes.

Yet, when I receive a cheque and want to pay it into a branch of the same banking group in the same country they can't tell me how long it will take to clear and it is well over two weeks before I can guarantee to access my money?

Here is the issue:

On 2nd April I received a cheque which I went to pay into a branch of the Royal Bank of Scotland group. I bank with the Royal Bank of Scotland, (that's the company making nine billion pounds profit by the way).

The said branch was with the Ulster Bank, who proudly display the Royal Bank of Scotland logo as their corporate logo.

Ulster bank wouldn't accept my pay in because despite the RBS group having 9 billion pounds profit, their IT systems are not fully joined up and they need a preprinted credit slip to pay something in. Long gone are the flexible days of fill in your own slip, also there are none of those flexible cash machines that accepted pay ins - no instead you have to carry a massive pay in book (this is for a business account where the pay in slips are bigger than a standard account). Never mind the fact that irrespective of who I want to pay online I can just send money direct to any bank on the BACS network. Never mind that when I ran e-commerce systems I know that all you have to do is send the details of the account code, name and sort code to debit. No, when you actually go into a real bank you get a substandard service where despite 9 billion in profits you need a special bit of paper to pay money into your own account.

So, there being no branches able to take my money I had to rely on the good old Bank Giro Credit system known as the Post Office to physically post my cheque to the bank. Three days later the first class letter, posted in Belfast arrived at my bank. So, then I phone up and they say that it takes between 3 and 6 days before the cheque will clear and that even when it appears as cleared funds online, the cheque might still bounce and I would be liable for any charges if I took out money based on the cheque having cleared. This counter starts the banking day after the cheque is paid in. The cheque arrives on 5th April and the next banking day (thanks to Easter) is 10th April. I have no doubt that if I wanted to take money out on the 6th, 7th, 8th and 9th that I would have access to my money right away, so why do pay ins have to take a holiday?

6 banking days after the 10th is the 18th. 16 days to fully credit my account. Taking money out takes less than 16 seconds to authorise.

How much money is actually needed to solve this problem and why do none of the banks consider it a priority? Is it really such a leap of the imagination to treat a cheque like a debit card, authorise the amount in real time and credit the account with the same zesty speed that I can take money out?

Said bank might even make more money if people actually got a speedy service from it and then it gained customers as a result. In the meantime, I'm going to scan in a preprined pay in slip, shrink it to a sensible size and store it on the net so I can print a decent sized one when I need it.

Funny how the people paid millions to run said bank haven't come up with a real solution yet.

Labels: Business, Scotland, Viewpoint

Bored with excessively long software licences that just get in the way when you want to install something in a hurry? Not got a lawyer handy when presented with War And Peace when installing an application? Here's a software licence agreement that is actually short enough that people will read it and are more likely to follow the terms therein.

1. You have purchased 1 one licence for the ABC software from xyz Co. XYZ Co retains all intellectual ownership of the software and you aren't allowed to copy the software in any way or to resell it. Reverse engineering is not permitted

2. We have tested ABC software and if it causes problems on your computer after you install it, XYZ Co isn't liable for any damages or loss that may arise as a consequence of using ABC software.

3. If you want support please mail us at <support@example.com> or call <insert a number here that actually works for people outside the US>. Call/Support charges may apply.

p.s. If you speak American English, it's license.

Labels: Business, Viewpoint

As a contractor living away from home Mon-Thu in hotels, I am now experiencing the joys and delights of living in hotel rooms for up to 200 nights a year and gaining a completely different perspective of what does and doesn't work from a business traveller point of view. This experience also relates to using Wi-Fi on trains and at airports.

In much the same spirit of when I launched Britain's first guide to getting online with a view to publicising how different services work and driving down price I thought it would be useful to do a wish list for hotels to improve quality and mean that I don't have to negotiate special terms whenever I turn up somewhere and use the "I'd like to stay in your hotel for 200 nights what can you do for me" card.

First off Internet access. For me this is a #1. Yet, can someone find me an accommodation search engine that mentions it? It needs to be available in the bedroom so that I can make free VOIP calls, as there is no privacy in the public areas if Wi-Fi is public areas only. Secondly it absolutely must be free from logins, this means that it is either free or included in the room price. The cost is not the issue here, the login screens are the issue. I would quite happily pay £5 a day for a service that was free of login screens because frankly I waste about 30 minutes a day logging in to do stuff between the PDA, the laptop, getting login details, typing them in over and over again.

The other important point is that PDAs with Wi-Fi just don't work the same way as login screens on a laptop. On a laptop, if you want to surf the web, you connect to the wireless network, open the browser and then some magic happens that instead of going to your homepage there's a redirect to a page for the WiFi network you are using so that you can log in and use it. Great. On a Symbian PDA that doesn't happen. You open your browser, connect to the WiFi network and then all you get is a timeout because you haven't been authorised. Hotels, trains, and airports take note! If I want to set up a connection string to allow the WiFi to work on the PDA, I actually need you to publish the web page I have to go to in order to get authorisation.

Without that info, I can't use the service. Doh! You should maybe try it on a PDA sometime just to experience the irritation factor of the login screen.

What happens when it is set up simply:

1. Open email client on PDA

2. Connect

3. Smile, that's it.

What happens when you have a login to the Wi-Fi set up on a PDA:

1. Open email client on PDA

2. Attempt to connect

3. Experience timeout

4. Read instructions on how to use connection. Note point about the login screen hasn't been published.

5. Borrow someone's laptop and get them to try it.

6. Note down the web address.

7. Park your email client and open your web browser

8. Manually enter the web address making sure it is 100% correct. Book mark it.

9. Wait for browser to display web page

10. Navigate to the username box, click in it and type the username in manually (no facility to save usernames). Some extreme panning and scrolling may be required to locate it because the developers won't have developed it for a PDA browser.

11. Navigate to the password box, click in it and type the password in manually

12. Navigate to the "accept terms and conditions" box, click it.

13. Navigate to the "submit" button, pray that the version of JavaScript is compatible with your browser and click submit

14. I have been thrown out at this point by sites that didn't support Symbian browsers, so if you reach this far then well done. You may need to close your browser down at this point if the connection offered is only single channel.

15. Go back to the mail client, possibly restarting it and try again.

Pain in the neck compared to the simple solution. Repeat steps 9-15 ad nauseum several times a day whenever you want to collect email. Get thoroughly fed up with the whole affair, noting point above that Internet access is #1 priority. Annoy guests even more if you decide to change their password unannounced every day (yes, some places actually do this).

Providing free Wi-Fi access probably costs less than the cost of the two free biscuits I find beside the kettle in my room each night. Now I know the pain that hotels must be feeling as the techno savvy traveller using Skype no longer has to pay the glorious rip off telephone rates that have been the mainstay of hotel income for decades (at least 5 times the cost of a domestic phone rate is not unusual) but Wi-Fi should not be viewed as a telephony income replacement. It is dirt cheap to provide and free Wi-Fi that is simple to use will actually bring in business rather than cost the hotel money.

Indeed if you're in the city centre, you might get free Wi-Fi through the hotel window, which certainly puts paid to any plans the hotel might have to make life difficult.

Next, let me talk about breakfast, my total cholesterol level hasn't changed for over 10 years and is still around 2.5mmol/l, well under the 4.0mmol/l recommended under European guidelines. However, despite this I feel no particular need to over indulge on the heart attack on a plate which commonly passes for the typical fry up British breakfast. Continental breakfast is fine for me. When I have a coffee I choose not to put sugar in it. The hotel very thoughtfully leaves the sugar separate such that those who want sugar in their early morning hot beverage can choose to add as much or as little as they like. Why then don't they do the same for supposedly healthy breakfast cereal? The standard options that all hotels seem to have bought into generally have sugar as one of the top 5 ingredients, even on so called healthy options such as muesli. Rather than spend most of the year in a hotel and end up putting on the pounds, why not just buy sugar free varieties of muesli etc and then leave out the sugar for the tea/coffee such that guests can have sugar on their cereal if the want and as much or as little as they like. Besides the obvious weight gain factors, there is also a clear advantage in catering for diabetics etc.

Moving onto showers. If you are lucky enough to have chosen one of the minority of UK establishments that actually has a decent water pressure rather than the pathetic dribble that sometimes passes for a shower you need to look out for the attack of the dirty shower curtain. Yes indeed, many 3-4 star hotels think that a plastic shower curtain is good enough. However the problem with this is that if the water pressure is anything above a pathetic dribble you find the draught from the water pressure makes the shower curtain flap inwards and you end up having a fight with it for anything more than 2 square inches of foot space. In this case, I find hanging the shower curtain outside the bath is the best way to guarantee being free from curtain attack, however the ensuing flood on the floor is something I am still trying to resolve. A rigid shower partition in sections would be a major improvement. Another major improvement would be a mixer tap with separate volume and temperature controls so that I can set the temperature and not have to fiddle around with it every morning. While I am on the subject of bathrooms, it may be a legal requirement to have an extractor fan if there is no external window but I wasn't aware that it was a legal requirement for the fan in the adjacent room to sound like a noisy hoover being on while the person in the next room takes a 30 minute bath and I'm try to watch TV.

And so to room rates. You can tell how much money a hotel is making by looking up the town's biggest employer (let's call them Acme Big corp) and turning up to a hotel in the same town and saying "What's the corporate rate for employees of Acme Big Corp then?). Typically discounts of 30% off the rack rate will be offered and you can bet that the hotel is still making money on that, not to mention the additionals such as the evening meal. If I’m staying more than a week there’s also the additional cost of laundry which at £2 per pair of socks or £6 for a pair of shorts after a trip to the gym is not a cost to be taken lightly for a week’s washing. £30 a week for washing – it’s almost cheaper to parcel it up an post it home and have a clean set ready to post back.

The evening meal. Back in the 80s you often struggled to find vegetarian options in hotels and had to specifically ask for them and get a separate menu. These days, such options are included on the menu and marked as such. How helpful for vegetarians. However anyone wanting a healthy, dare I say it, low fat menu option in 2007 is in much the same position as the vegetarians were 20-30 years ago. Menus typically dominated by steak might have a potentially healthy fish dish but the opportunity is lost when it comes pre-drowned in cream sauce or similar. Trying to discover the healthy option involves some careful choosing and if you have stayed in the hotel for a week without eating the same healthy dish twice then you've discovered a place that is very much in the minority.

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