email : poor relation of communications … or just plain rude?

I've held off on writing this one to let the guilty party have time to come good - but time has been called on my patience.

I am subscribed to Auto Express, which arrives through my letterbox every week. Normally it is a good read - it keeps me up-to-date with all the new cars that I can't afford!

So, come the edition for the week commencing April 6th and I noticed a couple of errors.

The first was in a review for the Toyota IQ, bemoaning the fact that it has no luggage cover. Well, it does, but it is hidden under the boot floor.

The second was in an article about the UK's car tax system which failed to tell readers that two of the new tax brackets were being held at a lower rate for the next two years, with quite a hike in price after that. Pretty important I feel as the article advised folk to buy cars in those brackets for the 'lower' rate of tax.

So I sent two separate emails addressed to the relevant contacts listed at the front of the magazine.

In both I was polite, informal and in the cases of the second article expressed that I was going on information gathered from a number of sources which might be wrong and Auto Express might be right.

If you follow this blog you will know what is coming next.

Yep, no reply. Nothing. Not even an auto-response acknowledgement that they received my emails [I'm sure they did, my University's email system lets me know of any 'un-deliverable' mailings].

There have been two editions of the mag since I sent the emails - and there is no mention of any 'corrections' to the original stories.

Of course, their email system might have been down for a while or giving them problems - if this is the case a message in the mag apologising for any inconvenience would be nice.

So Auto Express, as I have said on this blog before; do you ignore a ringing phone? No? So if you are going to list your email addresses I assume you are inviting communications via that medium - an assumption based on the fact you have an 'email of the week' on the 'readers comments' page - so reply to them. Not to do so is bad for business.

It is also rude.

Footnote, August 4 2009 - it seems poor, or no, response to emails is [still] a widespread problem, see Businesses still taking days to respond to website enquiries

not quite online booking

I need to visit Cleethorpes - my home town - on business next month. So I thought I would see if I could get a room at my favourite hotel on the sea fron - the Kingsway. Now, the hotel's site doesn't do online bookings at all - not too unusual as many independent hotels find it more cost effective to let third-party agents handle this rather than buying in and running the necessary software.

So I put the hotel's name into Google and perused the various third-part listings. Several offered online bookings, but I was looking for the best price so I kept looking - and came across lodging-world.com. Now ,I do not know their business model, but their booking form looked like this:Yep, that's not a booking form, it's an email form. Not only would I have to wait for them to return my enquiry with room rates, availabiliy etc, but they expect me to give them more details than is necessary [phone number?]. Being the old synic that I am I wonder if I would end up on their mailing list?

Any-whoo ... I went back to one of the other sites and booked online with a confirmation of price and availability done and dusted there and then

informality pays dues

I always advise organizations to match their web presence to the ethos, style or character of the organization - and here is a good example. Acre Resources is a recruitment firm specialising in CSR, Sustainability, Climate Change and Environment. As befitting a company in that industry, they adopt an informal approach to the way they go about their business - which is reflected in their website's design.

I particularly like the 'meet the team' page on which staff are represented not by their pictures or avtars, but 'jelly babies', clicking on each figure brings up the bios of the various staff. Nice touch.

phone me and I'll pay

It is still beyond me that folk will hand over their credit card in a restaurant and let a member of staff take it away, but are unwilling to use the same card online. However, such people exist, and if you are selling on the web you have to facilitate them. Here is an excellent example from petfoofdirect.com - you fill in all of your information [order, delivery address etc] on the online form except your credit card details - then click on the link and someone phones you up. Nice.

'ello John, want a new motor?

I was looking for cars on the generally excellent autotrader website, which seems to work OK even though it keeps telling me I need 'additional plugins'. Following a link for a particular car I was taken to the website of Arthur Haslam Motoring - and got this ...

And do you know what Arthur? I really was looking for a car. And the car you had was of interest ... but there were others on sites that downloaded on my PC.

What is the opposite of kerr-ching?

lazy like a Fox journalist

OK, perhaps mis-guided rather than lazy, but take a look at this sentence in a report on SEO and terrorism [I'm not commenting on the story, just this description of SEO]
So SEO is 'arcane' [definition: mysterious and secret] and 'makes sure your site is near the top ...'

Well, there might be an element of secrecy about the algorithms - but mysterious? Much of SEO is science - and by definition science ain't mysterious. Even the 'art' elements [eg picking the keywords] are as mysterious as painting a picture - skill isn't mysterious. And it tries to get you to the top of search results pages, any competent SEO practitioner will tell you there is no 'makes sure' about it.

I suppose this just hi-lights to me that what I think of SEO is not shared by the general public - but then I should know this from teaching the subject - even web-savvy 20 year olds who have grown up with the Internet are largely unaware of how search engines actually work.

problems with the BBC ... again

After using the BBC as a model of good online practice for years, I am coming across too many examples of dubious practice - and here's another.

This time it is the fact that some radio programmes seem to have two web pages - depending how you get to them, the 'Pick of the Pops' show has two seperate websites. Hmmmmm?

it's that airport geography problem ... again

Virtical search engines are great. Take finding a holiday for example - simply select the key elements that you are looking for and click on search. Which is what I did on Expedia. Sadly, Manchester is around 120 miles from Newcastle, my chosen departure airport - and the only place I want to fly from.

Update warning ...

... but at least I can read it.

As you might expect from a publication called 'Internet Retailing', this website addresses the issue of the user not having the latest version of software by offering a 'limited functionality' version. I would still prefer the older version, but this is better than nothing.Footnote: I was able to a read the online publication - it seems - with nothing missing, omitted or not working ... so why did I need Adobe 10, and why wasn't the site developed in version 9?

Well, I'm convinced ...

... OK, so I lied - I'm not.

This email is trying to get me to join this registry by suggesting that I am 'being considered for inclusion'. Wow, what an honour ... inclusion in a registry where the MD uses a gmail address instead of that of the organization and that cannot even address me by my name.

Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses ...

... but make sure they have Adobe Flash Player 10.

Yet another in my growing list of websites that insist on using the latest versions of technology that I can't download onto my computer - see it's that old locked [virtual] door ... again.

As a footnote - I have said previously that many folk like me do not have 'administrator' access to their work PC and so cannot upload new software without calling in someone from IT support. Well ... I finally got round to arranging a visit, but our IT guy said that Adobe Flash Player versions 9 & 10 are not [yet] secure enough for them to run on domain/networked computers - so I can't have 10 [Note that it is OK for independent computers, so I'll have to look at these websites at home].

public service - password protection?

I'm assuming it was some kind of temporary glitch, but today it seems that the BBC didn't want to add me to Terry Wogan's listening figures.

it's that old locked [virtual] door ... again

It's quite ironic that just this week my e-marketing lecture included a section on how stupid [yes, not bad management or poor design - STUPID] it is to design websites that require software that not ALL users have - and up popped an example.

But this story gets worse - this is the 'above the fold' view of the website that was on my screen. So I thought 'something is amiss here' and noticed that the page had room to scroll down [the red arrow is my addition].
So I scrolled down a bit and got this message

As I have said before on this blog [and a thousand times in classes/seminars etc I do not have administrator access to my 'work' computer - it's very common in the workplace] so I cannot download 'adobe Flash Player 10'.

So guess what, you people at academia.edu that were responsible for this stupidity - all that work you did to publicise the site to such an extent that it came up on my radar - it was wasted.

Might your website have been useful to me? Don't know. Might I have made a meaningful contribution to the site? Don't know. Might I have added a link from my website and advised students to access it for its content? Don't know. And do you know what - we will never know.

Oh and by the way you will see a spike on your site visitors from the UK this week as I will be telling all my students to take a look at an example of online stupidity. And finally, talking of looking at your site's metrics - I assume you don't need to be told that all of those visits [and how many others?] will show up as 'bounces' from your front page ... because you have locked the door.

See also previous comments on the subject in this blog - 1 & 2.

email - [still] the poor relation of customer service? #2

I'm beginning to think that this might become a continuing subject for my complaints [see #1 about ASDA]

On my credit card statement for this month there was payment that I did not recognise. So I rang the Post Office’s credit card services. They were very helpful, but ultimately I was asked to write in to request that they pursue the issue further. Yep, write a letter and post it to an address in Dublin.

It’s 2009 – wouldn’t an email address not only be easier for all concerned? If nothing else, it would give both parties a digital record of the communication.

this ad gets your attenshun

On the face of it this is an ad with a call to action - but the response to the call was not a click, but to sign a 'pledge' using your cursor. As you can see, that's not too easy - but seconds after this screenshot I was taken to the next stage of the the ad.