Blog of Ian Parr » whine

Dumbass ParentPay website still down at start of new school year

ian — Wed, 07 Sep 2011 08:14:26 +0000

parentpay, a photo by zippysticks on Flickr.

What’s the point of logging in if you can’t use the website ? – morons.

UPDATE – they have changed their message on the website – unhelpful as ever.

For those that have no idea what ParentPay is – its the cashless system that many schools have been duped into using for children to pay for their meals, school trips etc.

PayPal really are a joke

ian — Wed, 08 Dec 2010 19:37:30 +0000

Wanted to close my PayPal account, tried to do it online but discovered I had $0.01 remaining from a gift voucher present from my former FT.com colleagues four years ago.

Got an email from them this evening:

Dear Ian Parr,

Thank you for contacting PayPal regarding the problems you are
experiencing closing your account.

Firstly, Mr. Parr allow me to apologise for any inconvenience this
situation has caused you. I can see that my colleague had disabled the
voucher however it is still not allowing you or me to manually close the
account until this redemption code ************** for $0.01 has been
used.

In this case I can advise that you send a payment of $0.02 to a friend
or family member using this code in order for the voucher to be disabled
from the account. Only when it is used will you be able to close the
account.

Please let us know if you require any further assistance.

Yours sincerely,
Siobhan
UK Top Customer Department
PayPal

Copyright © 1999-2010 PayPal. All rights reserved.

PayPal (Europe) S.à r.l. et Cie, S.C.A.
Société en Commandite par Actions
Registered Office: 22-24 Boulevard Royal L-2449, Luxembourg
RCS Luxembourg B 118 349

Local papers vs BBC

ian — Wed, 02 Jun 2010 08:01:42 +0000

This Guardian blog post by Roy Greenslade annoys me.

Here is a screen shot of my local news paper website homepage.

As you can see four ‘article’ teasers and a HUGE volume of advertising. Actually the articles are more often than not a single line or paragraph long – like this:

Take careful note of the quality of the text.

Here’s the FULL text of one article:
“ONE person was taken to hospital last night (May 30)after a car crashed on the A24 at Warnham.
The incident happened shortly before 8pm with firecrews from Horsham and Crawley attending the scene.
No-one was trapped but one person was giving first aid and then taken to hospital.”

Link to original article

And another:
“AN ELDERLY woman was helped from her Handcross home and given oxygen by firefighters after mild smoke logging this morning (Sunday).
Two fire crews from Crawley were called to Windmill Platt about 10.20am.
Green watch commander Simon Le-Galloudec said food had burnt.
He urged people not to leave cooking unattended.”

Link to original article

Honestly, both these articles are a complete load of bollocks.

And Johnston Press who own hundreds of these local sites covering the whole of the UK have the cheek to complain about the BBC filling the void left by an organisation that has ample money and time to do a better job.

This is about as ‘local’ as the BBC currently gets for me:

Its at a county level only but at least the articles are well written and amount to more than the ‘cat stuck up a tree’ variety that seem to dominate the local press presence.

Crap Ebay seller #1 greenenergyuk

ian — Sat, 15 May 2010 08:38:29 +0000

This time its grenenergyuk selling the Mastervolt Soladin 600 grid tie inverter.

Bought one at the bargain price of £360 only to find that they dont respond to emails and when I eventually manage to get them by phone it turns out they don’t have any in stock.

This while they are still advertising dozens of them on Ebay.

Annoyingly they are advertising that they ship them overnight using a 24 hour courier.

Avoid.

company umbrella:
www.vistaire.plc.uk
Bouldr developments

unimpressed with r4i.co.uk (memorybits)

ian — Tue, 13 Apr 2010 11:30:29 +0000

Ordered and paid for an r4i card (for research purposes) from r4i.co.uk ( a web property of memorybits.co.uk) on March 28th.

Still no sign of the darned thing despite a 2-4 working day delivery estimate – I’m distinctly unimpressed with their customer service team who tell me it must have been lost in the post and they will therefore resend the item – then turn around and tell me that they won’t do this until 15 working days have elapsed.

UPDATE
Still no sign of the card and no response from r4i.co.uk – I have now had to escalate to PayPal in order to get a refund. I’d recommend that potential buyers stay clear of this company.

UPDATE 07/04/2010
Finally got my money back from this waste of space company.
Had to do it through PayPal though as memorybits.co.uk a.k.a r4i.co.uk customer service is non-existent.

AVOID THIS COMPANY !