On Dealing With FitBit
Posted: Fri 2 June, 2017 Filed under: 1BEM, Customer Services, Domestic, Health, Stupidity, Thoughts Leave a comment »This week, I was unlucky enough to have to try and deal with FitBit‘s idiotic e-commerce system. I’ve had a Fitbit for several years now (well, two or three devices over that time, but all Fitbit devices) and the strap on the current one is getting a bit ropy, so I wanted to order a new one.
The ordering part is… OK, I suppose. Then we get to entering addresses. It tells me that it can’t validate my preferred delivery address at all, and won’t progress the order any further. Not “Would you like to add this address to the system?” or “Please confirm the details, and we’ll accept your word for it that you know where the hell you work“. Just point-blank ‘Computer says No‘ dead-end. So far, so unhelpful.
In fairness, that should’ve been the warning sign. But I carried on. Rather than delivering to my office, I’ll set it to deliver to home. That’s OK, except for the standard “Royal Mail PAF says this address should be in [nearest city], so do you want to use that, or the info you’ve entered”. I’m used to that – it’s ridiculous, but it’s PAF, so I’m used to it, and it’s not going to change.
Enter in the card details, all well and good. Do the ‘Verified By Visa’ bag-o’-shite verification, and complete the transaction. Get the email saying “It’s on its way”. Happy day, job done.
Or so I thought…
Half an hour later, I get another email. “There’s a problem with this transaction”, saying that either…
- The billing address provided doesn’t match the address on file with your financial institution (No, it matches fine)
- Your financial institution denied the charge for unspecified reasons (OK, maybe)
- Your financial institution denied the charge due to insufficient funds (Nope, definitely not)
- Your financial institution doesn’t recognise Fitbit.com as a vendor (that sounds like cock to me)
I call the card company. Nope, all fine, not even a declined transaction. And “doesn’t recognise the vendor” is a bag of cock. To quote them, “If it were for ISIS-Iraq.com, we might be blocking it, but not standard stuff”
I call FitBit, who are *massively* incompetent, unable to understand basic English, and can only “resubmit the transaction”. Can’t change the card details, just ‘resubmit it’.
“OK sir, that’s gone through fine, so you’ll get a confirmation in a minute”
“Has it actually gone through the card company this time?”
“Yes, it’s gone through fine”
“What’s the transaction authorisation code?”
“We don’t know yet, it hasn’t gone to the bank”
“……”
So…. Fitbit, these <sarcasm>masters of eCommerce</sarcasm>, don’t do the card transactions immediately. They cache them, for some fuckforsaken reason. And no-one knows ’til then what’ll happen.
When I checked the resubmitted one, the phone cretin had also decided to change the address for billing and delivery to the PAF-recommended one (without even asking) so I ended up talking to them again, they edited the order, and ‘confirmed the transaction’ again (i.e. re-submitted it, and played wait’n’see with the cards)
That failed too, unsurprisingly. Same email, you need to speak to us, same list of possible reasons. Card company re-confirms that absolutely nothing has touched the account – they’ve had a 1p pre-authorisation amount go through, which verifies the card details, but after that, nothing else has been received by them at all.
In the end, I’ve called Fitbit (again!) and just cancelled the order. There’s better and quicker ways to do this. Hell, I can get a pikey knock-off strap through Amazon for a tenth of the price, and it’d be delivered tomorrow.
The really telling thing though, for me, was that when I cancelled the order, there’s not even a process for it. No questions about why I want to cancel, no attempt to keep the order, nothing. Just “OK, that’s cancelled. You’ll get an email telling you so”. That tells you everything you need to know about whether a company gives a shit or not.
Bank Holidays
Posted: Mon 29 May, 2017 Filed under: 1BEM, Cynicism, Domestic, Noise, People, Thoughts Leave a comment »Here in the UK, today is a Bank Holiday – and that link is an interesting read, if you want to know more about why they exist etc.
Since moving to the current house – in my head it’s still the ‘new’ house, but that’s patently untrue, having been there five years now – I’ve become far less of a fan of Bank Holidays, mainly for one significant reason.
I live near(ish) to the only pub in my village. Usually that’s fine, there’s little-to-no trouble, and it’s all pretty decent. I’m yet to darken its doors, but that’s a different thing entirely. People come, people go, and it’s all good.
On Bank Holiday weekends, however, people seem to become fuckbags. The pub itself usually has some kind of event on – a band or whatever – and opens a bit longer, and both of those things are fine. But by the time we’re mid-evening, there are always people screaming and shouting, having arguments, and generally being cocks. And that goes on ’til gone two in the morning. Every Damn Time.
You can hear these arguments all around the place – the people involved try walking/stomping away, only to be followed by the other party, screaming and yelling to “get back ‘ere” and whatever (or my favourite, chasing after them yelling “Go on, fuck off then!”, which I still can’t get my head round) Fortunately, it rarely gets nasty – once or twice it has, but usually it’s just loud and twatty.
For me, it’s unavoidable. I live close enough to be in earshot, and to be on the main route back to most of the rest of the village, so short of being away on Bank Holiday weekends, I can’t miss what’s going on. It’s not a huge thing, just an annoyance, and it grinds on me after a while. The thing is, it also makes me not want to visit the pub at other times – and to be fair, I don’t need much of an excuse on that score anyway. It’s just another factor that adds to my Reasons Not To Bother.
One Minute
Posted: Fri 26 May, 2017 Filed under: 1BEM, Advertising, Cynicism, Domestic, I Don't Understand, People, Thoughts, Weirdness Leave a comment »Yesterday, a lot of people held a one-minute silence for the victims of Monday’s bombing in Manchester. Personally, I don’t really understand why this appears to have become one of the “done things” to do for any tragic event.
Yes, the bombing is awful, and should never have happened. The people who did it are unutterable motherfuckers, and deserve to be damned to whatever eternity their religion believes in. The victims shouldn’t have been victims, because this shit shouldn’t have happened.
But it did, and so we go on.
But what do these silences actually do? They re-focus attention on the event (but of course we’re not going to give terrorists the air of publicity that they crave, except when we then have every news broadcast for the next 72 hours focused pretty-much-purely on that event) and make people think about it even more. But we’re not going to let terrorists change our lives, are we? Except when we do, when there are now more armed police on the streets, and even more security on the streets, in airports and elsewhere – all of which changes our lives, and makes us think about terrorism even more.
I know the silences started off from the two-minutes-silence on Armistice Day – and I’m fine with that. But when did they become the done thing, the marker for every event?
I feel the same about the huge numbers of bouquets at the sites of deaths and tragedies. I get that people want to voice their sympathies, but when did a bouquet and gifts become the way to do it? It’s almost enough to make you wonder whether it’s not the florist industry behind it all, in a similar way to Valentine’s Day, just to improve their own profits – but this time out of the grimness and death of others. And the sodding cards that go with it – the ones that get read out in news broadcasts, that all seem to be suspiciously “on-message” for whatever’s been being reported.
The real start for the floral stuff seemed (to me) to be the death of Princess Diana, when flowers appeared everywhere, in true Damien Day style. Since then, they’ve accompanied every bloody event known to man.
Fine, people want to show their concerns, voice their sympathies and so on. But surely it’s better to do so with donations to a particular cause, with speaking up about (in the case of Manchester) terrorism and the like, to actually do something, rather than pay lipservice through a wallet and a minute’s silence?
Missing The Point
Posted: Wed 24 May, 2017 Filed under: 1BEM, News, Stupidity Leave a comment »A brief extra post, containing the headline of the day (from this story on Metro) …
Someone may have just missed the point there…
PIDU : Missing the Main Attraction
Posted: Mon 8 May, 2017 Filed under: 1BEM, Cinema, Gigs, I Don't Understand, London, People, Seeing Films, Sweary, Thoughts 1 Comment »[PIDU = People I Don’t Understand]
There are many, many types of people I don’t understand – or at least whose thought processes are beyond me. That’s the theme of the PIDU posts (as mentioned here, although I’ll probably repeat this a few times) and may also become a bit of a throwback to the rants of yore. It may also just fade out. We’ll see.
Anyway, one of the many things that are beyond me are the people who turn up for a concert – indeed, a performance of any kind, really – or a film, and then keep on going out, or chatting, or really doing anything that doesn’t involve focusing on that main act.
In the cinema, it boggles my mind. People will rock up late, when the film’s already started. They’ll sit for a bit, eat their sodding popcorn, slurp their bastard drinks, and before you know it, they’ve got to go to the toilet. (I assume. They never come back having purchased more food or drink, anyway) Seriously, what the hell is wrong with people, that they can’t manage to control their bladders for a couple of hours so they can sit and watch a film they’ve paid good money to see? Personally, I don’t think I’ve ever had to walk out of a film in order to have a slash. Even in the five-ish hour Alien/Prometheus double-bill the other week.
I get it, some people have bladder issues, or continence issues, and there are other complaints along the way. But I haven’t been to a film in years where no-one walks out at some point in the showing, and then comes back. Yes, those issues exist, but a) so do preventive measures and things to cater for those issues, and b) I truly don’t believe that the issues are so prevalent that it affects that many people in Milton Keynes.
And then, of course, we get to the fuckknuckles who go to concerts and performances, and chat to their mates all the way through – a lot of the time barely even looking at the stage. If they are looking, these self-absorbed vacuous twatwoggles are filming the performance/act on their bastard phones and tables, and screwing things up for everyone behind them.
What’s the point? Why would you pay £20-50 per head to go to a concert and then not bother watching/listening? If all you want to do is drink beer and talk bollocks, you might as well save the ticket money, and fuck off to the pub. Let more people in that want to see the actual gig, rather than making them listen to your braying laugh and piss-awful “banter”. (speaking of which, anyone who uses the word “banter” or “bantz/bants” to describe their interactions with friends is a fuckwitted jizzwizard by definition) Just cock off and spend your money on lukewarm piss at a Wetherspoons round the corner.
At some point, it’s all going to annoy me enough that I walk up to one of these spaffbuckles and just ask what went through their minds, why they decided to go to a gig and then ignore it all, and just chat. It’s happened before, and all I got in return was a look of blank incomprehension (I’m pretty sure it was their default expression, in fairness) but it fascinates me, I want to know why they’ve decided that those actions are a good plan.
Maybe one day I’ll find out. But I can’t see it being any time soon, because those doing it don’t have the introspection or self-awareness to be able to explain those processes.