Poor customer service - in this day and age!

In this day and age of bloggs and web-savvy users, especially those buying technical services - who would expect a DNS company to have poor customer service? Customer service is pretty much the most important part of a company - it is so important and influential that it can even make up for or mask a lesser product. By customer service I don't just mean the support department, but also accounts, pre-sales, sales, website - anything which services a customer's needs.

I needed a new DNS provider as my old one no longer replied to support tickets and seemed to be disappearing. I was recommended Namesco by someone; "I use them and they are OK." They did not appear to support IPv6 so I contacted their support and they said that although it's not on the control panel, I can contact them and they will add the glue records for me. So I moved my 24 domains.

But then I found out that they could not support IPv6 DNS glue after making a ticket to ask for it to be added. So I put up with having only IPv4. I've now got to the point I no longer want to run my own DNS servers (SaaS FTW) so I've been looking around and gandi.net seem to offer a good promise of customer service, full IPv6 support and free DNS serving. They also responded to my first ticket in minutes.

Back to the irritating Namesco control panel and I find that to transfer each domain I have to pay £10+VAT. I've never had to do this before when I transferred the last three times (I've had my own domains for 13 years). But not only do I have to pay £240+VAT, I have to repeat the process and go through a checkout TWENTY FOUR TIMES. Fail!

Don't they know a happy customer tells maybe three people. But an unhappy customer tells ten!

If the customer service staff at Smoothwall acted like this to our customers, I would have words with them, or their manager - and then make sure they got the training needed not to make the mistake again.

Now I am off to repeat an annoying loop 23 more times, get RSI and probably have VISA call me up and say there's suspicious activity on my card...

ICANN approve XXX, Domain Registrar In Line for $$$

ICANN have finally approved the controversial .xxx top level domain. Apparently all the porn on the Web is suddenly going to up sticks and move to this new domain. Whilst our jolly pornographers get to grips with that, lets take a moment to leave fantasy island and consider the real world implications of this move.

Who is the new TLD going to help? Will it help those of us trying to keep impressionable youngsters away from pornographic material? Not really. At Smoothwall we have been blocking this non-existent domain pretty much since we started making web content filters. It is not hard to do, but it certainly does not get you much traction. Most porn sites will keep their existing domains, and even if legislation eventually forces the US and EU sites to consolidate under .xxx, there's still the less salubrious porn sites whose owners are less than concerned about that sort of legal threat. Will it help the porn industry? Unlikely. It might lead to the odd fracas over a contested domain name, where two skin merchants try to muscle in on the same .xxx domain, having come from, say a .com and a .tv. No, the only people it will help are those selling domains, and the really unimaginative self-abusers who have a hard time finding porn (if this is you, please write in at the usual address).

Entertainingly, whilst we've been fannying around trying to find a new home for our hardcore, looking at pics of naked people has finally been relegated to second spot in the "internet usage highscore table". Yes, you guessed it, social networking, that digital white noise (that this blog almost certainly counts as), has overtaken porn in the UK web traffic stakes. I'm not sure what sort of a message this sends about our society as a whole. Idle chatter probably appeals to a wider demographic than the soon-to-be denizens of .xxx and is less likely to be blocked at web filter level, despite contributing to huge levels of timewasting in offices the world over. Maybe we should lobby for a "social notworking" tld - .poke? .trivial? .inane? .waste?

It's not technology, nor is it cricket - Homeserve nightmare

For the past two weeks we have been suffering two leaks caused by a Homeserve plumber. He fixed the original problem of a problematic flush, charged us £90 and gave us two free leaks.

A bit of history. We used to have our house serviced by Homeserve. They used to pop around once a year and spend a few mins doing the minimum work. The thing that really made us stop using them was one year the cowboy plumber checked a couple of things and then asked me to sign a form to say he had checked all the radiators. He had not even been upstairs!!! I asked him how he could have checked them without going to see them. He grunted and then checked them. We cancelled after that.

A few weeks ago our main bathroom toilet stopped flushing easily so my wife, without asking my advice, booked a plumber from Reactfast. He turned up in a Homeserve van. Oh dear I thought. I also thought "that guy looks familiar - is he the one who did a slack job of the radiators?"

He did a fairly quick job and showed me the toilet flushing easily and that he had replaced the cistern. Great.

Two days later, just before going to work, I noticed water coming out of the ceiling of the garage. This was not there when he was there as I would have noticed as I was doing a lot of work in the garage the same day he was breaking the toilet.

So we called Reactfast aka Homeserve again. A second different plumber turned up. He showed me how the first plumber had left the overflow pipe leaking and had fitted the float badly so it would get stuck. He ‘fixed’ it and left. He said the dripping would take a few days to stop.

Several days later the dripping was still going just as strong and the bathroom floor was now squelching with water coming between the tiles. So we called Reactfast aka Homeserve again. A third different plumber turned up. He showed me how the second plumber had left the overflow pipe leaking and removed it. He showed me that the first and second plumber should have removed the over flow pipe as the new cistern has an overflow built in. He said it was zero percent chance that it was not caused by the first plumber.

Five days later the dripping was still going albeit about half as strong. So we called Reactfast aka Homeserve again. A fourth different plumber turned up. He showed me how the third plumber had not spotted a leak under the tank behind the toilet. He replaced a rubber seal. Minutes later the dripping was almost gone.

For want of a working flush I have wasted time and effort and ended up with a ruined bathroom floor. Now I will have to go through all the time and effort getting my insurance company to argue with Homeserve’s liability insurance as to who’s fault it is. They already refused to send out a plumber “because it’s not an emergency”. Then when that is all done I will have to arrange people to come in and re-grout and fix any other damage which turns up.

Assuming of course this is the end of it.

I recommend never ever ever using Homeserve (or Reactfast). They clearly employ coyboy jobsworth useless plumbers.

NOT Finding and accessing a Google Docs collection shared with your group

Today Google Docs annoyed me. A lot. Google have put a nice new UI on Docs and it is generally much better. However they have still not fixed an important usability issue - if someone shares a collection (previously known as folders which was a misleading name) with a group and you are in that group you would expect to be able to search for it and actually find it. Not quite...

Yesterday someone I know was struggling to put a collection shared with their group in their My collections. They were used to the old convoluted way. But it's simpler now. Or so I thought. I had not realised one extra bit of information. If one shares a collection with a group, no one in the group can see the collection until they are given a URL to the collection. So they can't see the document collection until they see the document collection. Chicken and egg.

The work around is either click on the link in the original sharing email just once. Or have someone IM, email or list on an internal wiki, the URL to the collection. Just click on it then close it. Now the collection will appear when you search for it and you can then follow the simple steps in my video.

Rubbish.

I am told a solution is being worked on. While they are at it I would also like logins to automatically strip the domain when users insist on typing their full email address when only the name part is needed. And the ability to not allow normal users to share stuff as they just mess it up. And the ability to disable "Off the record" in Google Talk. Basically I would like some polish on the Google Apps product. Stop working on fun new clever stuff and do the last 10% of what you already wrote.

Orange Money Launches NFC Credit Card, Still Years Behind Africa

According to el reg, Orange is launching a new service, under the name "Orange Cash". I must admit to being a bit disappointed when I read the article though - it turns out this is just a pre-paid card (the article calls it a credit card, but that's stretching a definition since it is pre-paid!) with NFC (near field communications). While this is fun tech - Pete, a sysadmin here at Smoothwall Leeds described his first NFC shopping experience as "the simplest shopping I ever did" - it is hardly revolutionary. Indeed many people will already have NFC cards if they've recently been issued a new debit card.
So, what was I expecting? Well, being a regular visitor to Kenya, I noticed in december there were adverts all over Nairobi for Orange's "iko pesa" ("there's money" in kiswahili) service - a rival to local operation "mpesa" by Safaricom. Mpesa and iko both allow users to easily transfer money using mobile phones. I can see why this might be more useful to Kenyans than it would be in the UK - there's relatively little in the way of "infrastructure", especially outside of Nairobi, and many people have little ready access to cash, so this is a great way to pay for things, or send some cash home. On the other hand, i'd really find this useful in the UK - just for paying small sums to friends and family. Yes, I know I can access internet banking, but I might not have their details (how may of your colleagues do you have bank details for?) - so if I find myself owing Carol a fiver for a box of noodles at lunchtime, I either mess about with internet banking, or take a stroll to the ATM. If I already have her phone number, I could simply send her mpesa... much better, no?
Both these technologies raise interesting questions for security. NFC type devices are now used for opening car doors and allowing the engine to be started. We recently saw articles (see yahoo)suggesting that thieves might "range extend" proximity keyfobs to break into cars. It would be interesting to know if this could be done to NFC cards, but it seems a lot of work for transactions which are limited to a relatively small sum. I've not yet heard of any interesting mpesa fraud - although allegedly you can pay kenyan police bribes with it!

ISPs: Your Customers Are Not Idiots

Well well. That's a first. Today I picked up a Huawei ADSL 2+ modem/router from my local post office, where it had been imprisoned for the crime of being (only marginally) too large to fit through my standard sized postbox. After walking home in the Yorkshire drizzle, I decided to have a poke around in the box, despite the fact that my new Internet service doesn't kick in til Tuesday.

New Internet service. Sore point. My erstwhile ISP UK Online have given up the ghost, and are encouraging well-known bastion of customer service Sky as their natural successor. I was sad to lose UKO - as one of a handful of LLU providers, they're part of a limited number of "real" ISPs, rather than marketing bacon wrapped round the tiny cocktail sausage of BT wholesale. Anyway, I liked UK online. Their customer service guys were helpful and smart. Their prices where a bit rich, but not too bad. Their service was beautifully reliable. I never felt "capped", and I never had a peep out of any of the many and various VPN types I used on the connection. So - sad to see them go.

A lot of people raised an eyebrow at my choice of talk talk. I'm a techie.. and they're very... con sumer, no? Well.. to be honest, it was them or Sky! I already have a relationship with both companies for TV and phone, and my experience of talk talk for phone over the last ~5 years has been good. I know that may put me in a minority, but it has been. I had a mixed bag when I rang to order my new service - UK call centre, answered quickly... but I needed to give far too many details and was treated a bit like a new customer. Overall, a wash on customer service there.

Anyway - that's enough warbling.. what prompted me to post? Oh yeah. In the modem box there's a leaflet. This leaflet gives you a choice - you can use the enclosed CD to configure your new modem.. or get this - you can follow the manual, and here's your username and passowrd. Crack on. This is new to me. As techie-in-residence for family and friends, and as a long-time Smoothwallite I have set up more DSL connections than most BT engineers, and one of my pet hates is the unwavering adherence to "Put the CD in and follow the prompts". This sort of thing naturally gets my back up - a kind of presumption of moronicity, if you will. On top of that, I am a Linux user, and of course user of vaguely unusual firewalls, sometimes "Put in the CD and press buttons" just won't answer the brief.

So - big props to Talk Talk - you didn't treat me like an idiot, and come go-live day, your little modem might well just chill on the shelf whilst I use the information you chaps handily provide to configure my trusty-but-sadly-discontinued linksys am200.

Farewell Peter

It is with some sadness that we learn this week of the resignation of Peter Robbins OBE, Chief Executive of the Internet Watch Foundation. On Wednesday Eve Salomon, Chair of the IWF Board, announced that Robbins had tendered his resignation, effective July this year.

Robbins tenure at the IWF began in 2002 and it was with great pleasure that we at Smoothwall worked with he and his colleagues. Having met personally, I can say that he is true gentleman and clearly possesses a great understanding of technical and political nuance of work the IWF are involved in.

Media coverage of Robbin’s resignation reached The Register today and we were pleased to see kind commentary from Jane Fae Ozimek.
An interesting aside is Ozimek’s comment on the quantity of items in the IWF’s URL list. I believe that the supposedly “low” headline figure is a indication of the IWF’s success in their ‘Notice and Takedown’ role of tackling Child Abuse content at source, rather than a suggestion that the IWFs work may soon be complete*. Additionally, it is worth pointing out that unlike most URL lists, IWF’s list has a high degree of entropy, reflecting the rapidly changing hosts of abuse images - further testament of course to the takedown efforts of the IWF and other international Hotlines.

On that note we wish Peter every success in future, as Smoothwall continues to work with the IWF throughout 2011.


* - The IWF’s Annual Report for 2010 is due out later in the year. This yearly publication is an illuminating read and a great reminder of why we continue to support the IWF.