Just give me the long number from your bank card

My mother makes notes. Not always, just when there's something to tell me. Her latest contains a name (Natalie) and a telephone number (0800 0119290), along with the words 'stop all calls' and 'pay with Visa, give a password'. Apparently Natalie had phoned and had offered to help protect mum against unwanted sales calls. The irony of Natalie herself being an unwanted sales call was apparently never addressed.

"Just give me the long number from your card" was one of Natalie's preferred phrases, mum tells me. Given that mum treats her bank card as being more precious than the money it offers access to, that was never going to happen. Besides, she's already registered with the Telephone Preference Service (TPS), which is (a) a free service and (b) the official opt-out list for avoiding unsolicited sales or marketing calls.

So what exactly was Natalie offering? Well, it seems she was promising to sign mum up to some kind of minimum-term contract deal. For a recurring fee, Nuisance Protect Ltd would register mum with the Telephone Preference Service and the Mail Preference Service (which is free if you do it yourself) and would contact companies that ignore the TPS or MPS regulations (although there was no explanation of how they'd find contact details for these errant organisations).

And - according to their website - "if a company contacts you and asks you for banking information over the phone", they will "search government websites and do as much research as possible on these companies to ensure that you are not going to fall victim to fraud and they are safe and reputable to be dealing with".

So I imagine it would tell me that Nuisance Protect Limited was incorporated on 18th June 2014 and the registered office appears to be a terraced house at 29 Nimbus Close, Littlehampton, BN17 6RX. It would also point out that Nuisance Protect had the status of 'dormant' when it published its last set of accounts (30th June 2015), with company director Mark Strange noting the business had assets of just £1. I don't think mum's going to help them increase that figure.

Thanks for visiting our online shop, please don't come back

I've done a spot of online shopping this morning. I bought a collection of cables & leads to connect my computer to my TV. It was all pretty straightforward; I found what I wanted in the online shop, added the item to my 'basket' and paid by using Google Checkout.

Got an email receipt from Google and another from the retailer. All's well.

Half-an-hour later I get a second email from the retailer.

"Thank you for stopping by", it says "We noticed that during your visit to our site you placed the following item(s) in your shopping cart, but did not complete the transaction."

It then describes the item I've just bought.

Oh. Perhaps the purchase didn't work. But hang on, I've got a receipt for my payment via Google. Perhaps there's a problem with the online shop.

There's a "Recover Your Basket" link in the email. Maybe I should click that.

"We are always interested in knowing what reason made you decide not to purchase at this time. If you could be so kind as to let us know if you had any issues or concerns, we would appreciate it. We are asking for feedback from you and others as to how we can make your experience better."

That's nice. But what about those cables and leads I've ordered?

"If the price was an issue, we can provide you with 5% off this purchase with us, if you come back today!"

You WHAT? I've already paid for the goods, you're telling me you've already mislaid my order and now you want to give me a discount.

"PLEASE NOTE: If you selected either PayPal or Google Checkout as a payment option, or purchased from our Ebay Store then please just ignore this email!"

Oh, that's alright then. I'll ignore the discount I could have had if I'd prevaricated. I'll ignore your poor attempt at customer service. That jolly exclamation mark makes it all okay. Thank you. I won't be back.

The trains looks so beautiful in the snow

Yesterday morning I received a promotional email from Southern Railways.

"Ho ho ho Amigo!", it said. "Merry Happy Christmas! I so excited! I never see the snow before. The trains will look so beautiful. And Southern trains give you so many great Christmas offers, like off-peak tickets for only half price but only to Christmas."

That, by the way, is the voice of Loco Toledo, the fictional Mexican wrestler promoting rail travel.

I wondered whether talking about trains looking beautiful in the snow was such a good idea, given that heavy snow was forecast for the south of England later in the day. Beautiful, possibly. Moving, possibly not.

Sure enough, this morning there are cancellations, short notice alterations and delays... along with Loco's recommendation that Santa should take the train (even though Christmas Eve services start closing from 8pm). All of this hasn't really been thought through, has it?

The way of the car salesman

I’ve just been to look at a new car – well, not a new car*, a second-hand car – and I was particularly struck by 'the way of the car salesman'. Having searched online and found a car, I turned up at the car showroom… only to find a car that looked very similar to the one I’d seen on the web but costing £500 more. When I mentioned it to the car salesman, he said – without the bat of an eyelid – "we put those prices online to make the cars look more attractive".

"Hang on", I thought, "what about people walking past" – and then I realised that many people probably don’t just ‘walk past’ anymore but browse online first.

Even so, it seemed a strange assumption that someone would look online, find a dearer price at the showroom and wouldn’t think “this is a car salesman being deceptive before I’ve even started talking about purchase prices and part-exchange values”.

An odd technique… and what’s probably just as odd is that I didn’t dislike the salesman for admitting it!




* despite the temptation of the scrappage allowance; a word that's been in the dictionary since 1949