We’ve had out family iPad for some time now and whilst it truly is a ‘magical’ device it still falls a little short of being the perfect family computer. For many the iPad is a ‘personal’ device but for others it serves as a ‘shared’ device. Ours is used by all members of the family and often found in the lounge on the coffee table, or in the kitchen, or in one of the kids bedrooms!
What the iPad (or more specifically iOS) really lacks is multi user accounts though. Both my wife and I use the iPad a fair bit – I’d love to be able to check my mail on it but that means giving 3 young children access to my work mail account (hmmm!). By the same token the girls hate having to wade through screen after screen of ‘boy games’ and well myself and my wife can’t both be signed into Facebook at the same time.
The iPad is a social device which lends itself naturally to being shared, here’s hoping Apple makes more of this in a future software update! :)
The fact that just over a month after switching from Santander to HSBC I’m already compiling a list of annoyances with their ‘online’ banking system says something I guess. Maybe I’m a bit of a moaner or maybe I just expected more from someone that claims their online banking system is ‘award winning’.
- Standing Orders: Don’t be fooled in to thinking that you are actually adding, editing and deleting your standing orders ‘online’. The reality is that changes are not live despite what the online banking interface might lead you to believe. The reality is that an email request is sent to some chap somewhere is HSBC and he manually processes these requests as and when he’s at his desk. Heaven forbid you might want to change a standing order on a weekend or any other time when ‘stand order man’ is away from his desk… you’ll just have to wait an unknown amount of time for the change to happen, meanwhile you’re in standing order limbo unaware of if the change you requested is actually going to happen or not.
- Beneficiaries: Want to use the HSBC online banking system to maintain a beneficiary list where two beneficiaries might have the same sort code and account number, forget it. You can’t do that. As much as I hate to say it – even Santander could manage this one. The problem here isn’t so much that the ‘legacy system’ behind the front end can’t handle multiple beneficiaries with the same account number and sort code, the problem is the user interface… rather that spouting a useless error code (HE7) at me why not just tell me what the problem is and advise as to how I can work around it.
This is an ongoing list which I’ll no doubt be adding to!
Update: I had a rather lovely letter back from HSBC advising me that they are currently working on a development to improve the beneficiaries system but that there was no planned further development of the currently ‘manual’ standing orders facility. If these issues bug you too why not send them an email to let them know...
Email signatures are a mess, every email app handles them differently… you have to jump through hoops to set up an email signature and heaven forbid you want to roll out signatures across a small or large business, there’s no simple method of integrating the darn things. If only the likes of Apple, Mozilla and Microsoft would add the option to specify a URL for an email signature.
Signatures could live in the ‘cloud’ and you could pass variables in the http request to determine exactly how the signature should be returned. A web service could be used to serve signatures with dynamic content or you could simply place a static .txt or .html file on your web server.
Would it really be that hard to sort this out?
15 months ago we purchased a brand spanking new Kia Sedona from our local dealership in Reading. Right from the day we took delivery of the car things have just not been right. Initially it was ill fitted and scratched dashboard panels but after a week we also noticed that there was an intermittent problem with the electric sliding doors.
The electric doors simply failed to close correctly on regular occasions. This fault would manifest itself in a number of ways:
- On attempting to close the door from either the fob, handle or internal controls it would slide to a closed position and then open up fully immediately of it’s own accord. Sometimes it would take up to 18 attempts to get the door to close. So much for the convenience of an electric sliding door (one of the features that attracted us to the car in the first place).
- On attempting to close the door (as above) it would close fully but then open by about 1 inch of it’s own accord some 5 or 6 seconds later. Giving you just enough time to get in the car and drive off with the children in the seats. The door then ‘flinging’ fully open once in motion.
We reported the problems to the Evans Halshaw Kia dealership and arranged for the vehicle to go back in for repair. The fit of the dashboard panels was rectified but the dealership claimed that they could not reproduce the problem with the doors yet for us it persisted.
The car was booked in again, again returned without a solution and booked back in again and again and again… we even provided the dealership with video footage of the fault since we felt they simply did not beleive us.
On one particular occasion we drove to the dealership to drop the car off and collect a courtesy vehicle with all 3 kids in tow only to discover that the courtesy car had no petrol and a faulty petrol cap, making it impossible for us to fill the vehicle.
Again and again we were fobbed off by the Evans Halshaw Kia dealership in Reading. We then discovered upon trying to book the car in one day that they had lost their franchise and that they would no longer be able to deal with the issues we had with the vehicle (Great!).
It took us some time to find a new local dealership that could provide a courtesy car. West London Motor Group Kia in High Wycombe in this case.
We booked the car in with them to see if perhaps they could resolve the issues with the electric sliding doors. Initially we encountered the same problems, they were unable to reproduce the problem with the doors but did replace a number of parts. Another visit later and still no joy. By now as you can well imagine the situation was no longer in any way amusing. We were having to ferry our children about in a car which we simply no longer felt safe in and were well and truly fed up with the frequent visits to and from the dealership.
We decided to contact Kia customer services in the vein hope that they might be able to sort things out for us and let us enjoy the car which we had paid good money for.
After applying a fair degree of pressure we eventually convinced Kia customer services to provide us with a like for like replacement vehicle for a period of a week while they had our vehicle in to resolve the issues with the doors.
Alas nothing with Kia is simple (or enjoyable)…
On dropping our car of at the dealership we realised that the replacement vehicle that they had provided would not accommodate 3 children in car seats. We called Kia and informed them, they claimed that the rental company had contacted us to ask if the car was ok and I had confirmed that it would be fine (a complete lie). I requested that they provide us with a new rental car that would accommodate the children such that we could actually go out as a family in one car (not an unreasonable request when we have purchased a £20k family car from them). They claimed that they could not provide a suitable vehicle (not what I had been told when they promised a like for like replacement in the first place) so I suggested that I could find a suitable rental vehicle myself and they could reimburse us the cost of said vehicle.
Whilst this seems like a reasonable suggestion and a logical solution which would leave them with a happy customer they initially refused to cover the costs. A couple of heated phone conversations later they finally did the right thing and agreed to pay for the rental vehicle that we had located. The rental firm that provided us with the unsuitable vehicle (via Kia) tried to sting us for damage to the rental car totaling £150 but that’s another story.
By now I’ve spent a considerable amount of time and energy trying to resolve the issues with the car and have had to take time off work on numerous occasions to deliver the car to the dealership and collect it again. By perhaps what can only be described as a stroke of luck, after having the car for a full week, the dealership managed to fix the problems with the door. Ironically this was the result of following instructions from a technical bulletin that had been issued by Kia regarding the lot from which our car was born… something which we suggested that both dealerships investigate a number of times.
You might think that this is the end of the story, alas it is not. Since collecting the car we have discovered that during icy weather the rear sliding doors now often refuse to open at all (again an intermittent issue) and the air conditioning has stopped working completely so we have the car booked in with the garage for ‘another’ visit on the 2nd of January.
Today (1st of January) whilst out with the whole family in the car I realised that the engine was not responding as it should, the car was loosing power on hills and struggling to maintain motorway speed. We managed to get off the motorway (not a great place to stop with 3 small children) and pulled up. With a burning smell and smoke emanating from the engine bay we decided not to proceed any further. Thank god we were following friends so they helped us to ferry the children back home and the very nice man from the AA came out to tow the car to the Kia dealership.
So the question now is what next… can we really ‘endure’ this car any more. We seem to have a lemon… a car built on a Friday perhaps? In any case the stress associated with this car has us considering our options… even if that means selling the car at a huge loss just to get into something reliable and safe for our family.
Kia are unwilling to even consider replacing the vehicle or making any kind of good will payment to alleviate the trouble we have had… apparently all we can expect from them is a free service and I simply don’t think that’s good enough.
Whilst dropping the car off at the dealership today with the nice man from the AA I happened across a chap eying some of the cars on the forecourt, he was looking to buy a new Kia Sorento. I advised him strongly against purchasing a Kia and relayed the story of how reliable and well built our Sedona is, he seemed convinced… so that’s about £20,000 I’ve just lost Kia.
I’ll continue to relay my story to every person I know and meet until I’ve lost Kia at least £1,000,000 in sales. With 5,000 unique visitors to this blog every month and an extensive social networking contacts list I’m pretty confident in my quest.
Update:
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As a business (Nine Four) we have used Staples to purchase office supplies on a regular basis for the past couple of years. The last time I used the Staples website to place an order I noticed that the total for my goods was a little higher than I expected, I reviewed the basket again and noticed that a line had been added with the label ‘OrderCare’ and a small additional sum, between 2 and 3 pounds if I remember rightly.
What is ‘OrderCare’ you may wonder… here’s what Staples say on their website:
Staples OrderCare is a premium service which allows you to return unwanted items to us anytime within 12 months of purchase, for whatever reason.
and a little later on the same page:
- If you are returning unwanted items between 3 and 12 months since your order, that are not in a resaleable condition, we reserve the right to charge a minimum restocking fee of £15 or 20% of the item’s selling price.
So basically Staples are (without first asking) charging all online customers (not sure if this also applies to phone and mail orders) a small additional sum for a service which they have not opted in to and that will in 99% of cases be of zero use above and beyond what is already offered in the basic returns service.
Now consider that I’m a scrooge and that as the business owner I look for every opportunity possible to reduce costs where suitable. In the vast majority of cases the individual ordering stationary will be an employee who does not really care if they are charged an additional small nominal sum (how do they calculate it!).
Add to all of the above that there is no way to have ‘OrderCare’ default to off on your account, you have to turn it off every time you make an order and this involves navigating to a pop-up window and checking a box to opt out rather than just giving the user the check box on the basket screen itself.
Imagine how much cash Staples are making every day out of businesses that are totally unaware of the fact that they are paying an additional charge for something they did not ask for.
I’ve taken our business elsewhere, perhaps you should do the same. Viking Direct also offer a similar ‘extended warranty’ service but as you would expect, it defaults to off and can be set at an account level. Good job.
