Smokers

You will see from this rant that I don't smoke, however this rant isn't really about the act of smoking, whilst I hate being in a room full of smokers, its not an illegal activity and I have to put up with it, this rant is more about littering.

You see, smokers think its OK to throw away their fag ends into the street, you see it's not, it's littering, I eat Crisps but I don't throw away the packet, I put it in a bin. It seems to me that it's almost socially acceptable that smokers are allowed to throw their fags anywhere, well it shouldn't be, smokers choose to smoke and they should also choose to deposit their leftovers from this activity sensible in a bin once they have put out the fag.

Weather Forecasts

OK so we all know that weather forecasters are rubbish at their jobs, I can't think of another job that allows you to screw up as much as being a weather forecaster, look below, the first is from www.bbc.co.uk/weather , look at Monday, then look Mondays at www.weather.co.uk, spot the difference... what a joke.

BBC

Weather.co.uk

Sky & BT

OK so I decided to take Sky Talk, looked like a good plan, £5 per month for free calls to normal landlines, brilliant I thought, but no.....

For a start BT started charging me £4.95 for Caller ID because I was no longer making calls on their network, then I discovered that 0870 numbers are more expensive on Sky Talk and we seem to call these rip off numbers frequently, over all I was paying more, so I decided to cancel.

Everything went well, apart from it taking me 30 minutes on an 0870 number to cancel, it would be cancelled within 4 hours.

Tonight I discover that my phone no longer works, I get a Sky message saying that I have a reduced service and to call the rip off 0870 number, on what !, my phone isn't working... of course at a stupid cost on my mobile.

Sky now inform me that I need to speak to BT as my line is dead and reactivate my account with BT, Sky - why didn't you tell me this when I cancelled... great. So I call BT, they tell me I need to set-up a new account, with new costs etc..... but hang on, I already have an account with you, I pay line rental, also if I prefix my number with 1280 I get billed by BT instead of Sky, so I have an account... why do I need to do all this, but of course my ranting made no difference and I had to set-up a new account, guess what.... it takes 48 hours to set-up a new account so I have no phone for 48 hours.

Sky as bastards, BT are no better.... I am going to move everything to Virgin.

Hiring a Car

Has anybody ever had the misfortune of hiring a car ?

Its the most unfriendly experience I think you can have, firstly you stand at the counter for 20 minutes whilst they type in all your details, come on how hard can it be, name, address, driving license details, why does it take so long.

Then you get your car, you need to go over it with a fine toothcomb, as if you miss that little scratch you can be sure the bastards will find it when you take it back. The thing is, the onus is on me to find it, if I don't I have to pay, this is just wrong, it has to be the other way around, the car hire company should have to prove the scratch was not there when you hired it.

I do have an exception to this, Dragon Cars in Spain, we hired a car and crashed it (not me somebody else !), there was a massive dent in the side of the car (actually this happened whilst driving it out of the airport, 2 minutes after we had hired it), when we took it back, they look at it and said... well that's why you have insurance and that was the end of the matter, brilliant service.

Hotel Rooms

Something has always puzzled me about hotel rooms. What’s the first thing you want to do when going into a hotel room, is it to switch on the Toilet light ? well No.

So why the hell do hotel designers always seem to put the toilet light switch as the first switch when you enter your room, wouldn’t it be nicer to actually have the main room light switch, I think so.

eBay

I read with interest the changes that eBay are making to the feedback system, basically stopping sellers from leaving negative feedback.

I believe the current feedback system is being abused by Sellers and this is why eBay are introducing this, today almost all sellers will not leave feedback until they have received feedback, thus they are abusing the feedback system. They are trying to protect their feedback rating by effectively bullying people into leaving positive feedback, if the buyer leaves negative feedback they will retaliate with negative feedback, this whole system is wrong.

When I purchase something my deal with the seller is over as soon as I pay, tt that point, assuming I have paid promptly positive feedback should be left by the seller, its then up to the seller to promptly deliver the goods and for the goods to be in then exact condition described, if they are not then they deserve negative feedback as they have not kept to their end of the deal (assuming the seller is not willing to put things right).

What eBay is doing though is wrong, as there are some bad buyers out there and these deserve to get negative feedback, I believe what they should do is not allow a seller to receive feedback unless the seller has given feedback to the buyer, however, if the seller gives bad feedback, the buyer should not be able to leave negative feedback for the seller as clearly the buyer has not kept their end of the deal.

iPod Touch

OK so I have bought one of these little beauties, why I have no idea, for me its a waste of money I should of bought a hard disk version but I fancied the ability to surf the web over wi-fi.

Anyway apart from being upset by my stupid choice of the Touch, something has really annoyed me, and that's Apple charging £12.99 to get some applications that I feel should be free, namely, email, maps, weather and stock prices, however it doesn't stop there.

The main rant is over these new applications, firstly email will not connect to my STMP server because it requires SPA security, secondly maps searches America first, so I have to put UK after everything, Weather doesn't find Timisoara in Romania (when Yahoo weather does and that feeds the link) and Stock Prices doesn't give me monthly charts for half of my stocks, overall for something I had to pay extra for its rubbish and I am seeking my cash back from Apple.