Matthew Revell

BBC Watchdog - the consumer programme - said tonight during a piece on con artists using a psychic front:

“…because of course there are genuine psychics out there.”

What?! Come on. Surely, even if you’re being kind, this is debatable. I thought Watchdog’s purpose was to help viewers avoid getting ripped off.

Over the past few years, companies and government agencies (but of course) have seen fit to rip us off through 0845 and 0870 numbers.

Inaccurately called “local” and “national” rate respectively, since their introduction the charge for calling these numbers has drifted so far from the actual cost of local and national calls that they are effectively premium rate numbers whose primary purpose is to generate a revenue for the called party.

Ofcom, our industry-friendly communications regulator, almost took action and as of 1 February 2008 a change was due: they were no longer able to generate revenue for the called party. It’s now looking unlikely that the change will take place but, nonetheless, the law of unintended consequences has kicked in and the situation is now worse for us poor fools who have to call customer services departments, GP out of hours services and local councils.

Many of the “national” rate numbers (around 8p per minute) are now turning up as 0871 (10 p per minute) and the 0845 numbers as 0844. The 0844s are interesting: they can be just about any bloody price imaginable and you’ll have a hard time finding out exactly what you’re paying until your phone bill turns up. And, of course, the 0845 and 0870 numbers will more than likely continue to be a rip-off.

There is a way around this, in some cases: SayNoTo0870.com is a superb resource but, and through no fault of the community behind it, incomplete. However, if you have to deal with an organisation that wants to charge you extra for the privilege of calling them - perhaps to complain about a faulty TV they supplied - tell them you’re not happy.

Judging by the DVLA’s response to a freedom of information request (PDF) and the general contempt in which many public services hold tax payers, I hold no hope that any tax-funded service will offer you an alternative. However, that good old magic of capitalism - competition - may just give us some sway with privately held organisations.

For the second time in two years, our main TV has shifted out of focus: headache inducing, eye straining, Mr Magoo out of focus.

TV repair bloke says it’s not worth fixing a second time; apparently it’s well known that Samsungs have dodgy tubes and it’ll only go out of focus again. Might as well put the £50 repair fee towards a new set.

Trouble is, now it’s nigh-on impossible to buy a decent-sized CRT TV. Currys, Comet, Argos all have a few portables but, in-store, I haven’t seen anything I’d consider living room size.

I could, of course, give in and buy an LCD TV; after all, everyone else is. While I wouldn’t go so far as saying that HD is the answer to a question no one asked, I am nonetheless astounded that CRT TVs have disappeared from bricks and mortar shops and that people are happy to believe that standard definition images are anything but awful on the current crop of LCD TVs.

While I stand in Comet and marvel at compression artefacts, pixelation and motion blur, other shoppers - seeing precisely the same image - appear happy to ignore the evidence of their eyes and instead listen to the sales person who tells them they too can be a part of this great leap forward. I know too many people who have congratulated themselves on the replacement of their perfectly good CRT with an LCD set. Either I’m over-fussy, the shops have poorly configured their display TVs (quite likely) or everyone else has found a source of LCD TVs that aren’t entirely shite.

I know, the whole point of these sets is HD. I admit that the HD images on the demo sets have been impressive. Equally, the HD sports broadcasts I saw in the States a couple of months back were an improvement over dodgy old NTSC. Thing is, I have no HD video sources: no PS3 or Xbox 360, no Blueray or even an upscaling DVD player and there just isn’t that much HD TV available, even if you pay Sky’s £10 monthly premium for their HD service. And besides, I’m even a little underwhelmed by the performance of some sets when they’ve got an HD source.

Perhaps standard definition just isn’t the strong point of the software in the LCD sets. After all, software’s pretty much the only differentiator between brands, particularly when one company produces a huge chunk of all the world’s LCD screens. And yes, LCD displays never do particularly well when displaying an image not in their native resolution. But I’m not expecting to watch a 625 line image on a 54 inch. I just want what I have now: a non-pixelated, non-jerky, crisp image on a screen around 30 inches. I’m quite happy to have a CRT, if there really is no way an LCD screen can handle those modest requirements.

So, I’ve bought a 28 inch JVC CRT TV from the Dixons website for £150. The one that’s turned up is buggered - purple strip in the middle of the screen, image pin-cushioned - but, assuming the replacement works, I feel as though I’ve been lucky to grab one of the last opportunities to buy a TV that can actually handle standard definition inputs.

After nearly four years, I’m switching away from Bloglines.

I am tired of the - usually - small but always annoying problems I encounter with each use of Bloglines. From timeouts, through their awful “we’ve got the plumber in” maintenance screen, to the increasingly frequent Apache error pages, it is now more hassle to use Bloglines than it is to find an alternative.

Of course, I don’t have to look far. Google provide my work and personal email, let me edit documents wherever I have a net connection and help me plan road journeys; oh, the search is pretty good too. The important thing, though, is that I don’t remember having felt particularly let down by any Google app. Downtime is very rare and errors are handled in such a way that I continue to have confidence in the service.

Google Reader looks good so far. A quick OPML download from Bloglines - glad to see they offer that - and an import into Google Reader mean that I have all my subscriptions. It also appears that the UI is much improved on its days as a Google Labs project.

Starting on Friday 27th July I’ll be presenting a new weekly show on WCR FM.

From 7pm to 8pm I’ll cover what’s going on in Wolverhampton politics and also look at the wider political scene from a Wolverhampton perspective. Each week I’ll have a couple of studio guests, interviews, debate and reports from around the city.

I’m going to take a fairly broad view of what counts as politics; it’s not going to be party political yawn-inducing tribalism. Of course, politicians will be on there: Wolverhampton South West MP Rob Marris is a guest on 7th September, for example.

I think Wolverhampton deserves a show that scrutinises the city’s politicians, that has an open debate about different ways of doing things and that represents the broad sweep of opinion and life in the city.

Some names familiar to readers of this website will pop up, too: Jono will be on to talk about free software and Stuart will be talking about digital rights.

If you’re in Wolverhampton, you can get WCR FM on 101.8 FM. Alternatively, you can listen to a live stream from the WCR FM website and I’ll be making the show available as a podcast from www.wolverhamptonpolitics.co.uk

So remember: 7pm - 8pm UK time on 27th July! There’ll be a phone-in each week too - 01902 57 22 57

Wolverhampton City Council collects glass, paper, metal and garden waste in its kerbside recycling collection.

Note: not plastic or cardboard.

A few weeks back, I asked one of Wolverhampton’s Conservative councillors why there was no kerbside collection for plastic and cardboard. Apparently, he told me, the ruling Labour group were planning to introduce it in the next few weeks.

According to The Stirrer, though, we might have a longer wait, citing an additional cost of £500,000 (presumably annually) to fund the service. The reason? Well, The Stirrer makes the suggestion that the cost is linked to Wolverhampton’s municipal incinerator. Plastic burns well and generates lots of electricity, so says the article. Recycle that plastic, rather than send it into the already sweet air of the city, and the council loses money from electricity generation.

£500,000 is roughly 1.25% of the council’s annual budget. In a city where - as I understand it - only 10% of households actually pay council tax and the council has long had a reputation for financial incompetence, that’s a lot of money.

I’ll have a dig around to see if I can find out anything more concrete.

Update 27.07.2007: See the comments for Political Penguin’s stats on council tax in Wolverhampton. I’ve been unable to get corroboration for the 10% figure and so please disregard it. I still think it’s an interesting question: should we recycle plastic or burn it for energy?

Apparently, British people are more likely to remove their eyes, rinse them in vinegar, roll them along a saw-dust floor, then pop them back in the wrong sockets than they are to change bank.

I regularly switch providers of all sorts of services: electricity, gas, mobile, insurance and, rather than mutilate my seeing-spheres, I’ve been searching for the right bank.

This month, we’re moving from Nationwide’s FlexAccount to First Direct’s imaginatively named Bank Account. So, what’s so bad about Nationwide?

Why we moved to Nationwide

I admit it: I fell for Nationwide’s Proud to be different tag-line. I suffered a naive delusion that being a mutual - i.e. notionally owned by its customers rather than shareholders - would result in not only outstanding customer service but would see the customers’ interests put before all else.

After all, the FlexAccount’s charges seemed to back up my impression: no additional charges for using the debit card abroad, no charge to stop a cheque or, from what I remember, for duplicate statements. The in-credit and overdraft interest rates were good.

After horrendous service from Alliance and Leicester and years of silly mistakes from Lloyds TSB, I wanted to believe that Nationwide could be different.

The switch

The switching service offered by UK banks seems pretty labour-intensive but not exactly difficult:

1. New bank writes to old bank, asks for a list of direct debits and standing orders.
2. Old bank sends details to new bank.
3. New bank checks with you that they’re all correct.
4. New bank sets up standing orders and writes to direct debit beneficiaries to alter the direct debits.
5. Within a couple of weeks everything should be switched over and, optionally, your old bank will close your account.

There are many potential failure points. The greatest potential for failure lies with the direct debit beneficiaries, as communication between the new and old banks must be complete within regulated time-frames.

For whatever reason, Nationwide had a hard time in switching our account from Alliance and Leicester. Wherever the blame lay, Nationwide passed-up the opportunity to turn me from a disappointed customer into someone impressed by their concern for my happiness.
Rather than update me with reasons for the delay, they appeared to ignore the problem.

Calls to their customer service team invariably resulted in 20 - 30 minutes of hold music and, when the call was finally answered, a total lack of useful information.

It was only because our previous bank - Alliance and Leicester - had been so horrendously inept that I was determined to plough on with Nationwide. Eventually, though, I had to do something.

As one of Nationwide’s owners, by virtue of being a customer, I felt I must have a better course to complaint than with a traditional PLC financial service provider. The Nationwide website cheerfully told me to phone with my complaint. Rather than wait 20 - 30 minutes in yet another queue, I wrote directly to the Head of Member Service, explaining my dissatisfaction with the switch process and lack of staff in the call centre.

He didn’t reply. Instead, my local branch’s manager phoned me. Not good enough. I had taken my time to write to the Head of Member Service, not the branch manager. I was a member and so part-owner of the business. The least he could have done was reply to me to say that he’d asked my local branch’s manager to help me.

The branch manager did his best to help and gave his direct number, despite it being against Nationwide’s policy to do so. Eventually, after much chasing, the switch went through.

An unexpected debit for £18,000

Following the switch, things went smoothly until a statement arrived with an unexpected debit for £18,000 to AA Savings. £18,000!

A quick call - to the branch manager on his direct line, of course - and it became clear that Birmingham Midshires - the provider behind AA Savings - had mistakenly used our bank account details in setting up another customer’s direct debit.

Two things worried me:

• the ease with which Birmingham Midshires could take £18,000 from my account
• Nationwide’s nonchalance to such an obviously atypical transaction.

Many other providers, I believe, would have contacted me, via their fraud team perhaps, to question such a transaction. Nothing in my history with Nationwide suggested this transaction was normal.

Nationwide had carefully raised my expectations of their service, insisting through their marcomms materials that I should expect to have my needs put first. Nothing in the way they handled this error, or the switch, suggested that they had the infrastructure or institutional culture necessary genuinely to put customers first.

Member TalkBacks and the end of free banking

Nationwide holds regular, online feedback sessions, where pre-selected customer questions are answered by the society’s middle and top management. Unfortunately, I can’t find logs of these sessions. However, the evasiveness of some the responses seemed to be in direct opposition to the claims to be different.

But then, how different is Nationwide? Pay-offs to retiring directors and a call for the end of free banking from the incoming Chief Executive make it hard to see.

The Portman merger

I can see benefits from Nationwide merging with Portman, the UK’s second largest building society. Portman has a largely unspectacular product range but many customers. The merged society will be in a better position to compete, hopefully offering better products and pricing.

However, the merger is heavily weighted against Nationwide customers. Here’s why:

• Nationwide members had no vote in the matter.
• Portman members had the say over whether the merger went ahead.
• Nationwide members will receive no payment following the merger, even though as the larger group the cost of the merger will inevitably be born largely by them.
• Portman members will receive a windfall payment following the merger, despite losing nothing whatsoever as a result.

So, where does mutuality get Nationwide customers in this case? If Nationwide were a PLC, I wouldn’t expect to have any say in whether or not it merged with another organisation. However, as a Nationwide member I’m expected to accept the board’s wisdom, while Portman members get a vote.

Of course Portman members will vote “yes”. Not only do many of them have no loyalty to Portman itself, having only recently joined Portman as the result of other mergers - with the Lambeth and Staffordshire societies, for example - but they get a few hundred quid in the bank in exchange for precisely nothing. If the customers of a company I don’t use were offering to give me free money, I’d say yes.

Final straws and all that

The windfall for Portman customers was the last straw, for me. Graham Beale’s assertion that free current account banking is unfair wasn’t a good precursor of how the newly enlarged society would operate.

So, when First Direct offered me £100 of hard, cold cash to switch, I worked out that I’d still be better off despite their lower interest rate. I’d also heard many good things about First Direct.

So far, the difference has been remarkable. Indeed, here I am remarking on it. Phones answered almost immediately by knowledgeable, friendly staff. Good communication. A hassle-free switch. It’s early days but looking good so far.

I think the sad truth is that Nationwide is complacent. It believes its own advertising - i.e. that being customer-owned makes it better. It doesn’t. Being customer-focused makes for good service and, right now, Nationwide feels too much like a bureaucratic local government department.

I hope that First Direct - which answers to HSBC’s shareholders - will use the profit motive to provide me with a good service. After all, what motive does Nationwide really have? Other than a handful of demanding customers, who is really pushing Nationwide to deliver? With no shareholders, perhaps there’s no real accountability.

BBC News has the story of a student who, whilst using a sat nav to aid her journey from Redditch to Camarthenshire, drove onto a railway line directly into the path of an oncoming train.

The good news is that Paula Ceely is alive and well, having stepped back from the car when she heard the train’s horn.

What astonishes me is that, according to the BBC’s quote, Paula commented, “I can’t completely blame the sat nav because up until there, it did get me where I needed to go”.

It seems it went like this:

1. Paula followed the sat nav’s directions until she came to a gate with a sign saying to proceed if the green light is lit; the BBC report doesn’t tell us if it was lit or not.
2. Paula opened the gate, drove her car through and stepped out to close the gate behind her.
3. As she was about to open the next gate, she heard a train and noticed the tracks in front of her and, presumably, realised she was on a level crossing.
4. After briefly considering getting back into her car, she stepped back as the train smashed into her car and took it half a mile down the track.

We’ve all made mistakes whilst driving and it’s good to read that Paula escaped unharmed. It’d be nice to think that Paula will now be a safer, more cautious driver but do her comments to the BBC suggest that she’s learnt from the experience?

“I’ll never use a sat nav again. You rely on them and if it all goes wrong, you’re horribly stuck.

“People should be more careful with them - you never know where they might lead you.”

Come on, it’s a sat nav, not an autopilot. It says, “Turn left in 200 yards”, not “I can’t do that Michael“.

It’s comforting to blame someone or something else for our mistakes. Surely, part of adulthood is the realisation that most of the time you shouldn’t look for someone to blame: you should learn from your experiences.

It would be unfair to highlight Paula’s story without also mentioning the “I tripped over a bit of wood that shouldn’t have been there” testimonials in “no win, no fee” accident claim ads and the numerous other, “it wasn’t me guv, it was the sat nav” stories of incompetent driving.

I don’t want to be harsh or to laugh at other’s misfortune. Instead, I want us to shake off the tendency to find a whipping-boy because once we acknowledge our failings we can work to fix them and have a better life.

Thanks to Techdirt for highlighting the story.

I’ve written before about being a Virgin Media customer.

I recently chose to leave Virgin Media, after receiving the first bill featuring their ridiculous £1 itemisation charge. I did it the quick way: I rang BT, asked to port my Virgin Media number to them.

Next day, Virgin Media called. They didn’t want to lose me. They thought I’d want to stay when I heard their offer. £19.95 per month for broadband, unlimited landline calls and their basic TV. And the best bit? This offer was for 12 months.

Add in the two mobiles I have with them, which would double in cost if I ditched the cable service, and it works out both cheaper and easier to stay with them. So, I agreed.

Today, I got a letter welcoming me to my new 12 month contract. At no stage did I agree to a 12 month contract nor was I warned that it was a condition of the retention deal.

I rang to complain. The guy apologised but could do nothing and the minimum contract applies to all retentions deals. He also let slip that my new deal was actually £20.95 because the £19.95 didn’t include itemisation. I asked, politely, if he was serious. He changed me back to the £19.95.

After telling him that I didn’t and don’t agree to a new 12 month minimum term, I said I’d consider my options.

So, two things:

• Watch out: if Virgin Media offer you a retentions deal, you’re stuck with them for a further 12 months.
• Question: Do I stick with them, despite them treating me in this underhanded manner?

The deal’s not bad: it gets rid of their rip-off phone tariff and their broadband is, on the whole, reliable. But they hid the truth from me, part of their increasing tendency to treat customers with contempt.

In a comment on Aq’s site, Paul Freeman mentioned the NTL virus. The virus has eaten into the previously excellent Telewest and made a mockery of everything Branson has claimed for the Virgin brand.

This year’s LugRadio Live is going to be the best yet. Everyone knows that
As usual, we have an exhibition space. This year we want the exhibition to be about doing things. So, hardware hacking, video production, ancient games consoles ready to play, crocheting penguins.

We already have some cool ideas lined up. My favourite so far is a green screen vox-pop stand, where people can record their thoughts about the event, complete with comedy background.

So, if you’ve got something cool you want to do in the LRL exhibition space, email show@lugradio.org. If you wanna run a standard exhibition stand, send us the details too!