House.co.uk

As most readers of d4d™ know, I’m going to be moving house between Christmas and New Year (although a lot of it will be going on through January, but that’s just the way it’s worked out this time) so as part of that I need to close off my account with British Gas (who also supply my electricity). So I thought I’d make my life easier and do it all online at the site British Gas created for this kind of thing www.house.co.uk. Dear Christ, I wish I hadn’t.

The site is bloody awful. Not content with making it so it only truly works with Internet Explorer, the style sheets are so fucked it means that using Opera or Firefox with it is nigh-on impossible – text is superimposed over other text, and it’s basically just a sack of shit. To rub salt in the wounds, they bang on about how accessible the site is.

So I sent a complaint email to them, asking why it couldn’t be used in anything except IE. And the reply I got was – shall we say – complacent.

Thank you for your enquiry regarding the problems you have encountered on our web site when attempting to register impending house move. Please accept my apologies for not being able to give an earlier response to your enquiry.

Unfortunately the web site is only tested for Internet Explorer and at present you would not be able to use Firebox or Opera. When you have moved out of your property if you could take a reading from the meter and contact our Home movers section on 0845 6091133 and they will take the reading from you.

I hope this answers your enquiry

Perhaps rather more incensed by this than I should be, I enquired about how they could justify banging on about accessibility when they blatantly didn’t give a shit about anyone using any other browser than IE.

No, this doesn’t really answer the query. Your site blathers on about being accessible and so on – so why is it only tested on IE? And (from the look of it) designed with only IE in mind?

As someone who works with accessibility issues all the time, I’m interested to know how British Gas justifies their claims against the simple fact that the site isn’t accessible to those who prefer to use a browser with as many known security issues as IE.

Today I got a response from the scrofulous twadgeknockers.

Thank you for your email to house.co.uk, my apologies for any inconvenience caused regarding this matter.

Website designers will build their sites around the Internet browsers they expect their websites customers will be using. However, their expectations can be incorrect.

Microsoft Internet Explorer version 4.1 and above is the only browser that is fully supported by the House website. This is detailed in the website terms and conditions section under the heading Using the website. Whilst you can access the site using other browsers, the availability of some parts of the site may be limited.

We are constantly updating and upgrading the site to ensure that people using other currently unsupported Internet browsers can access all areas of the site. This is backed up by our commitment that all new areas added to the site should be fully compatible with a wide range of Internet browsers and once this has been achieved, then the compatibility will also be made fully retrospective.

Once again, please accept my apologies that you have experienced regarding this matter

I know there’s going to be another reply (perhaps something about “Well check your CSS layouts then, fuckface”) but maybe that’s slightly aggressive.

Finalé

Yesterday was my final weekend of big train journeys to and from Berkshire. I can’t even begin to describe my feelings about that – I’ve still got some train journeys to do, don’t get me wrong – but the one that’s become a regular fixture over the last six months is no more. That’s quite something – if nothing else it means that I’m not going to be paying Gitboy Branson £200ish per month!

I spent a fair amount of the final journey looking out the windows, watching familiar landmarks go past, wondering when I’ll see them again – and in some cases I wonder if I ever will. One of the things for 2005 will be to pass that bloody driving test, and then the train travel is likely to be a much rarer thing. I’m sure I’ll still do it on occasion, but it’ll be far less common.

I won’t miss the journey that much – there’s going to be a lot of good things happening anyway, and another advantage is that I’ll be getting seven or eight hours per week back simply from not doing this all the time. So far 2005 is looking deeply positive, with many life-changing things going on. I’m currently working on a post about that, and about the changes I’d planned for ’04 and what’s happened with them. That might take some time to write though, so don’t hold your breath.

But in the meantime, life is changing hugely – has already changed hugely. Between now and 04/01/05, I’ve got to do Christmas, move basic stuff between Manchester and Berkshire, sort out things like computers and email, tell loads of people/companies I’ve moved, and start work with a new company. There are bits about Manchester I will miss, and people, but I’ll see them on occasion, and stay in touch. And I’ll be close enough to London that I’ll be able to do most of the stuff that I’ll miss doing in Manchester.

But I won’t miss the bloody train travel.

Faithless

Last weekend I was due to be seeing Faithless in concert at the Manchester Apollo, but because of the interviews that I had down in London and Bracknell (and particularly once I’d discovered I was having a second interview on the Monday) I ended up missing the gig. Absolute bummer, because I’ve seen them several times before, and love their gigs, even when the albums haven’t been superb.

So now I’ve just booked tickets to see them at London’s Alexandra Palace on Saturday 30th April. 8.00pm ’til 2.00 am. It’s going to be blinding.

Waving

So there goes Blunkett, riding off into the sunset. I wonder how many journalists were wanting to use the phrase “Blunkett was shown the door”? I’d love to say I was sorry to see him go, but at the end of the day Blunkett scared me for the simple reason that he actually managed to make Jack Straw look reasonable. An impressive task, but not strictly a positive one.

I wonder what this’ll do to the “need” for identity cards?

Kept Hanging On

No news. Still. Grrr. I hate this stuff, waiting for other people to get their acts together in order to tell me what the shit is going on.