Rob’s Blog

My hatred of Vodafone, I would say, is long running. It started when we were first introduced to one another, and has continued unabated to this day. Let’s start with the basics, shall we?

Calls are Shambolic

I know in this modern world very few people use a mobile phone to make a phone call, but it might surprise Vodafone to know that some people actually do. Me, for example. I expect a phone to work as a phone. For this to work, network coverage is required (discussed below) along with your ability to inform me of a call arriving. If you don’t inform me, generally with the traditional method of making the phone ring, then I have little chance of answering the bloody thing. Sending me a text message six hours later is of little use. Especially when you use that message to place the blame on me! I did not miss the call - you did. Please, in future, make the phone ring when I have an incoming call more often than 50% of the time.

Your Network Coverage is Useless

At home, signal is somewhat hard to come by. In Exeter (a city by all accounts) you also fail miserably to provide the required signal to use your services. I would check this against your map of network coverage, but this is currently replaced with the less than helpful error message:

Sorry, unfortunately the Vodafone Coverage Viewer application is not fully compatible with your web browser or platform, and therefore not supported at this time. Please try to use another web browser.

Is Firefox with Flash, Java and every other add-on really that odd that you can’t support it? This brings me to my next issue…

Your Website is Diabolical

NB: Do let me know if you have any other synonyms for “awful”, as I will soon run out. Cheers!

It’s slow. Clicking from page to page means a wait of around 30 seconds to two minutes. This is not my Internet connection or computer - every other website works just fine. This would not be so bad if things could be reached in a number of clicks that doesn’t need expressing in standard form. However, in your bid for complexity, confusion, bogglement and discombobulation of the consumer, everything is burried in a labyrinth of submenus unrelated to the topic at hand.

Also, none of it works. The map of coverage, as mentioned, just keels over and dies at the meerest possibility of being asked to appear. I decided to do as the error suggested and try another browser. I decided on Lynx. Think of the Internet being displayed as Teletext. To my amazement it actually displayed the troublesome map!

Mobile Coverage Check
Our coverage maps allow you to check network coverage anywhere in the UK. We expand our coverage area and improve the capacity of
the network every month and the maps also show you these forthcoming improvements.
Using Coverage Check
Simply enter a postcode, place name or location and we will show you a detailed coverage map.

Postcode or Place name
____________________
[uk.jpg]
[Postcode_______________]

[search.PNG]-Submit   [reset.PNG]

Click to centre the map

[loading.gif]

Move the map North

Move the map South

Move the map West

Move the map East

Current or Future Coverage
(*) Coverage today
( ) Future Coverage
Coverage Maps

[X] [sq_red.gif]        3G broadband
Video Calling, Mobile TV, Music Downloads, Mobile Internet & Mobile Office.
[X] [sq_blue.gif]       Standard Services
Voice, Text Messaging, Picture Messaging, Mobile Email
[sq_light_blue.gif] Variable quality service

Well, it got a bit further than before. Congratualtions Vodafone in designing the only interactive map that works better in a plain text browser! The rest of the site, unfortunately, is just as crap in plain text as in a normal browser.

It also fails to process debit card transactions. Every time I attempt to buy credit online I am presented with the same error, or something worded similarly, but slightly different, to give the illusion that someone might be screwing it up in a different way this week.

Useless Messages

The following message was sent to my phone last time I topped up:

From Vodafone: çç   We?ve added 300        Texts/100Minutes packs to your account on31/05/2009 & 12:01. çç   This pack will expire on      29/06/2009.

I’ve always liked the latin letter c with cedilla. Underused, I think. Spaces seem a little unnecessary, and even after you correct the punctuation and attempts to text me in HTML, it still doesn’t make much gramattical sense. And the 29th of June is not one month after 31st July. And I topped up at 12:57, not 12:01. And it took six attempts to get it to work.

Charges are Astronomical

10p for a text message is a little much. No, it’s a hell of a lot. 10p to send 160 characters. Sending Romeo and Juliet would take 972 text messages and cost £97.20. Or 39 copies of the actual book.

It’s also more expensive than sending data to and from the Hubble space telescope. A text message is 140 bytes of data, so 7,490 text messages to make up 1MB of data, at a cost of £749. Getting data from Hubble, according to NASA, costs £8.85 per MB. So, Vodafone is 84.6 times more expensive than getting data from space. Marvellous.

(Also, I have only just noticed the awful pun in the title of that section. Purely unintentional and accidental. Honest. Feel free to ignore it.)

Danny Piccirillo posted the following on his blog yesterday:

If it hasn’t happened to you, you’ve heard the stories. Facebook can suspend or disable your account at any time with or without warning and/or explanation. Although there are some legitimate reasons and spammers who should be banned, most of the time honest users are victim.

Well, I can’t really see the logic of Facebook disabling the accounts of honest users. What possible benefits would it bring Facebook? All it would do is stir up controversy and make people hate them, which is not good for business. The question of their selection process also pops into my head. If they are disabling the accounts of honest users, how would they pick which accounts to disable? I can’t see them just randomly browsing Facebook and disabling people at random. Again, what’s the point? So, why does it happen?

Newsweek recently ran an article on Facebook’s ‘internal police’, looking through reported content and deleting what has to be deleted. Out of a staff of 850, 150 make up this group - over 17% of Facebook’s payroll. Most of the content they review seems to be reported by users. I imagine many of the reasons accounts are disabled is over this sort of content. As the article says, they have rules on what is and isn’t allowed. Whether they tell users those rules is another matter.

Again, from Danny’s blog:

We’ve entrusted Facebook with a lot of our information. Our groups, our schedules, our friends, messages, pictures, videos, etc, etc, etc. They can’t have the power to remove us and erase all of our stuff for no reason!

They do have that power though. When you sign up, you grant them that power. Everyone blindly clicks “I Agree” or ticks the little checkbox “Yes, I’ve read the terms and conditions” for every website, but how many people actually read the Terms and Conditions, the Privacy Policy, the Terms of Service and whatever other legalese is around on the site? Perhaps everyone should in future.

Also, providing a list of groups you’re a member of, your full schedule, a list of your friends, your private and public messages to one another, your photos and videos and whatever else people are giving to Facebook, is entirely the member’s choice.

This just made me laugh:

Please join this group in protest:
http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=111455542032

If I was that annoyed with a company, I stop using them. Perhaps drop them a message like I did with Virgin Mobile. I certainly wouldn’t just carry on using it, especially against itself. People have got too hooked on Facebook. So much so that even when people truly hate them for whatever reason, they just can’t give it up. Perhaps we need some form of Facebook Rehab?

I know it’s not specifically tested on the driving test, either in the Theory or Practical sections, but a basic grasp of numbers is something many drivers seem to be in need of. Somewhere between 29 and 31 is a number many drivers seem scared of. Come on, “thirty” is not a bad word. As a number it’s quite nice: atomic number of zinc, lowest Sphenic number, number of days in June. But for some reason people don’t like to drive at it.

I don’t really understand why people have this trouble. Generally, when you’re driving at 30mph you are only travelling a short distance. Speeding up does not really gain you much time, yet greatly increases your chances of death. Also, considering most people’s skills (and I use that term most loosely) behind the wheel, I would recommend most are limited to a maximum speed of 3mph and a pair of comfortable shoes.

For the benefit of people who seem to have a right foot made of lead, you can lose your licence for travelling at 50mph in a 30mph zone, along with a £1000 and being forced to take your test again. Worth getting to the shops a bit quicker for? I think not.

Next point. Has anyone noticed those big stripey bits painted on the road with big orange flashing lights on the pavement next to them? We call those zebra crossings. Traditionally, the rule has been that pedestrians have right of way, especially if they are already on the crossing. The rule is not “speed up and swerve dangerously around two pedestrians”. Especially when you’re in a bus full of passengers. I’m looking at you Stagecoach. Try fitting your buses with brakes and telling your drivers how to use them. It’s much the same as that accelerator they love so much, they just need to move their foot a few inches to the left.

Finally, is it that much efford to move your left hand an inch or so to reach the indicators? They’re very helpful. They tell people what you’re doing so you don’t all crash into each other. If you’re worried they’ll run out if you dare to ever use them, try sticking your arm out of the window instead. Or did you not bother reading that bit of the Highway Code? It also prevents me screaming at you as you drive into me at the junction between The Queen’s Drive and Stocker Road because you’ve failed to use your indicators, ignored the Stop signs, sped up the hill and haven’t bothered to look before pulling out.

Sorry for that rant, but when I’m driving I manage to keep to the rules and not kill people. Yes, it always seems to surprise people when I say that. I recommend the following plan of action:

1. A national plan to repair all the clearly broken speedometers;
2. A campaign telling people to glue their indicator stalks back on;
3. Replacing those road signs that light up if you speed past them with Stinger strips that activate if you speed past them;
4. A policy of providing all pedestrians with shotguns to shoot motorists that clearly don’t know what the Highway Code is.

Depending on the effectiveness of this policy, there are further steps that could be taken. For example, large spikes that prod the driver if they exceed the speed limit fitted to all cars. Or tyres made of jelly that deteriorates above 30mph. Or coating the wheels of speeders’ cars with nitrogen triiodide.

The government has now decided that tracking absolutely everything you do, where you go, etc. is not enough. Now they also want all the information from social networking sites:

http://news.zdnet.co.uk/security/0,1000000189,39629479,00.htm

So, anyone else disturbed by this? Or do people value the ability to tell each other that they’re currently bored and watching Eastenders above their right to privacy?

Also, hello and good day to any future employers, government spies, etc.! Thanks for dropping by! Soon we really will reach the point where you can expect to walk into an empty room and say “hello” and someone will hear you…

If only Mr Bean was really used to advertise iPods…

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8HhncO6w4Pc