September 29, 2006
Orange meltdown?
I've been on hold to Orange this morning for 20 minutes so far. This is so I can chase them for the hundreds of pounds they charged me for calling their customer service line to sort out the problems they caused with my phone. Two weeks after faxing them, I've received absolutely no response to my correspondence by phone or mail.
It's lovely that they are experimenting with social media viral web 2.0 yadayada marketing projects such as the Orange Project, but the incompetent morons might want to spend less money on absurd marketing stunts and more on getting the basics right, such as properly staffing their call centres and looking after their existing customers.
Update: After 45 minutes on hold, I was told that my fax was passed to a team leader, who passed it to their billing integrity department, who replied just today (coincidence!) to say:
"the number dialled is always the number that will show up on the invoice, and I must have dialled 44 44 345 instead of 345".
They couldn't offer a reasonable explanation about why I would occasionally choose to add four 4s as a prefix before dialling. The customer service representative is going to email the department again, and they will get back to me.
I think in just two months Orange have surpassed Vodafone, O2 and T-Mobile in the appalling customer experience stakes.
Previously:
- Orange? More like an angry shade of red, to be honest...
- The twilight zone
- The future's bright
- An Orange-coloured hell
- Mobile phone networks: institutionalised stupidity
Pipelines
Over at the W3C they have just published a Public Working Draft of XProc: An XML Pipeline Language (via Norman Walsh). A cursory first glance suggests it duplicates much of the Cocoon sitemap, which yields two questions:
- Isn't there anyone from the Cocoon community taking part in the working group?
- How quickly and easily could the spec be implemented within Cocoon?
September 28, 2006
Surviving
Almost all the components of my travel marathon survival kit have now arrived:
In the picture: PSP, extra PSP battery pack, Worms, Grand Theft Auto, Firefly complete season DVDs, Sennheiser CX300 in-ear headphones, "One Hundred Years of Solitude" by Gabriel Garcia Marquez.
Not pictured: 2GB Sony MemoryStick, iPod, Macbook Pro.
Since I'll be spending something like 48 hours on planes in the next couple of months, it seemed like a wise investment. I'm not a big game player, but I figure they should distract me for a while, and when I get bored I will have a few DVDs ripped to the memory stick to keep me going.
September 26, 2006
GT redux
I present, without comment:
Oh go on then, I'll comment. Who is Joost, and why are they smiling?! The mystery of the dynamic signup image continues.
Anyway, If you haven't done so already, then run (don't walk) to the Cocoon GT website and register. The GetTogether starts on Monday with two days of hackathon, followed by an excellent program of talks on Wednesday. If nothing else, it should be interesting to see how I fit six densely-packed Cocoon talks into a 30 minute slot. It's going to be fun!
September 25, 2006
Journalistic (in)accuracy
I was reading an article on "Why Vista will mean the end of the Microsoft monolith" in The Observer yesterday (actually, it popped up in my RSS aggregator, but you get the idea). It was actually reasonably interesting, until I stumbled upon this bit:
"And yet while Microsoft engineers were trudging through their death march, the open source community shipped a series of major upgrades to the Linux operating system. How can hackers, scattered across the globe, working for no pay, linked only by the net and shared values, apparently outperform the smartest software company on the planet?"
I'm surprised that in 2006 we're still seeing articles repeating this same old refrain, containing misconceptions and factual inaccuracies.
Problem one: Linux is not written by "hackers" but by professional software developers, just like Windows. Just because they organise through "the net and shared values" does not make them any less experienced or qualified.
Problem two: Free software does not mean developers do not get paid. It may be given away, but people still pay for software to be created in the first place, and for support of those products from any of the many companies out there that provide it (for example Red Hat, IBM, Sourcesense).
It would be wonderful to see articles that represent both sides of the story fairly and accurately, but I guess that just doesn't sell newspapers.
September 22, 2006
Jet-powered hamster
Most people are quite shocked to hear that one of the presenters of Top Gear was seriously injured after crashing at 300mph in a jet-powered car. I think donating to the Air Ambulance charity that carried him to hospital is a very simple and reasonable way of saying "thanks for all the entertainment and laughs, get well soon" - and quite a few people agree. £41,154.50 donated so far. (Via Suw)Cocoon GetTogether update
Arjé just posted the final program for the Cocoon GetTogether - an astounding 13 sessions, with an awesome amount of topics covered. It's difficult to pick out which of the talks I'm most looking forward to.
As of this writing, we're up to 71 attendees from 12 countries. If you're thinking of going, sign up quick - there's only a few seats remaining.
(In hindsight, maybe the dynamic image of people signed up should have started in the way most conference rooms fill up - from the back to the front. With the bigger chairs at the back it somehow feels like there's more space free than there really is.)
September 8, 2006
September 3, 2006
Crossover Mac
I used to use Crossover Office on Linux many years ago, to allow me to meet corporate requirements to use Microsoft Office and still use my operating system of choice at the time. So I was quite intrigued and amused to hear the recent announcement of Crossover Mac, which might provide a more lightweight alternative to running Parallels or rebooting via Bootcamp whenever I need to use Windows software.
The only application I actually use these days on Windows is Quickbooks, so I thought I'd give it a go. It never worked too well with Crossover on Linux, and it's not supported by Crossover. Unsurprisingly it didn't work, but still I was amused to see the Internet Explorer install wizard running on a Mac desktop...
Assuming Crossover Mac works well with Office, then Apple machines truly are becoming one of the most flexible platforms to work on.
September 1, 2006
Orange? More like an angry shade of red, to be honest...
Remember all that fun I had last month, dealing with Orange, trying to get my mobile phone working? I kind of left things at a cliff-hanger, with all the excitement of will they fix it or won't they? Well, I was pleased to find out that after weeks of trouble, they finally got my number ported correctly and on August 11th I was back in touch with the world. In all the excitement of having a workable mobile phone, I forgot to post an update about it... so here's the latest installment. Read on...Since then, I've had quite a few problems with my phone dropping connections, and failing to register with networks. "SIM card registration failed" became a common sight on the screen. I spoke to Orange about it, and all they could say was "sorry, but we can't guarantee service on foreign networks", which is fair enough. Oh, the name of the foreign network I was trying to connect to? Orange NL.
Meanwhile, I returned home yesterday to find my very first Orange bill waiting for me. I ripped it open, my fingers trembling in excitement. Joy! I'd been charged for calls to their customer service number, where they regularly kept me on hold for an average of 30 minutes. My personal favourite is one call that was 46 minutes long and cost over £27. In total, something like £130 of charges for the pleasure of listening to their hold music.
A wise person at this point might ask why I didn't just call back at less busy times: I've called at times ranging from 6am to 11pm, and I have not yet found a less busy time.
I was just talking to a very helpful guy at Orange, but I got cut off. I'm now listening to the hold music again while I wait to get through the queue to one of their customer service representatives. I wonder if they are billing me for the calls to dispute my bill?
Update: I spoke to a different guy, who says he can credit back 4 of the calls (about half of the amount) but that was it. If I didn't accept I could write in to complain, but I might end up getting less or even no refund. Excellent way to win over your customers, Orange.