Never Use Airport Angel

I got Airport Angel membership with my bank last year. They give you access to airport lounges (for a fee) which seems like a good deal.

However, they’re one of the most irritating and incompetent companies I’ve ever had to deal with.

This month, my good friends MattandDebz left to go travelling with the plan to end up living in Australia. As a send off, a group of us got together to buy them Airport Angel membership. They’re both flash gits, so we thought they’d enjoy relaxing in lounges and not mixing with the proles.

Two weeks before they left, I spoke to a senior person at Airport Angel to ensure that a single membership would cover them both, to work out how we could go about booking them into lounges without them knowing and to iron out a few details. She even went in to change the email address after I signed up so that my friends wouldn’t get emails that would give the game away.

The biggest problem was getting the membership card to them – they were leaving in 13 days. The lady promised me she would personally intercept the card from manufacturing and post it out within a week or so.

It didn’t happen. My friends had enough to worry about, and didn’t realise until they got to the airport to fly out to Singapore and tried to get into the lounge. However, they did have a window of 10 days in Singapore in which we could DHL a card to them.

I contacted Airport Angel this morning, and a helpful chap said he’d get a new card made today and post it to me. I could then DHL it to my friends. He also said they’d refund the passes that they couldn’t use, so I could book a couple more for them on the next leg of their trip.

Then I got a phone call.

No, actually. They can’t send the card to someone else. Data Protection, innit.

I asked could they send it to Debs at my address?

No. Data Protection, innit.

I said I’d log in as Debs and change the address details.

No. It can only go to the original address.

The lady said that Debs needed to authorise them to do anything. I pointed out that I could get any woman in the world to phone them, give all the same details that I’ve got and they wouldn’t know whether it was Debs or not. I pointed out that they only knew I wasn’t Debs because I’m a bloke.

She said I was on very dodgy ground even discussing that. Data Protection, innit.

I pointed out that they could do whatever the hell they liked to keep two customers happy. That in these circumstances, clearly the spirit of the Data Protection Act wasn’t being breached because I’d set the account up and paid for it in the first place, that I had all the account details and to all intents and purposes as far as they’re concerned I was the account holder, even though my name isn’t Debs. It was even under my email address until they changed it for me! I also pointed out that no-one would even know about this incredibly minor breach to the Data Protection Act, since it’s what the account holder wanted.

The lady said she was very sorry. Though, of course, not actually sorry enough to help.

Then came the killer blow. Because I’d signed up for an account in someone else’s name, I’d ticked a box accepting Terms and Conditions in their name too. And that’s illegal!

I pointed out that a senior person at Airport Angel knew full well what I was doing, as I’d had two or three detailed conversations with her to discuss it.

I told them that I didn’t know when my friends would next be on email to contact them and that even if I got the authorisation in 24 hours, it’d still mean I probably wouldn’t get the card until Friday, meaning I wouldn’t be able to arrange DHL in time.

So I asked could I cancel the whole thing.

Nope. Apparently I couldn’t. Data Protection, innit.

As it’s not my account, I need authorisation from the account holder to cancel. Even though it’s my credit card!

Shower of jobsworth wankers.

PS – I tried to use my own membership in Cancun last year. The people on the lounge had heard of Airport Angel, but been told by management not to let anyone in as the agreements weren’t in place. I can only speculate that Airport Angel were advertising lounges that they hadn’t go fully on-board. Though at the time, Airport Angel denied this but couldn’t explain why I’d been refused entry.

Cow Cam

I love cows. But what’s it like to actually BE a cow? More than that, what’s it like to be a cow, getting an affectionate lick from another cow?

Museum of Animal Perspectives

Now you know.

Garnish Overkill At Bill’s

Pineapple, coconut and apricot juice. With half a watermelon for good luck.

Good Turns Never Pay

When I bought my laptop a couple of months ago, I was offered a free printer. I ummed and ahhed in the shop, because I love genuine free stuff and the printer was pretty good.

But on the other hand, I had a reasonable printer at home. I didn’t need a new one and didn’t really wish to add to the mountains of junk in the world. Plus I’d rather have had £60 off the computer.

As I stood there, another chap was looking at the very same printer to buy. So I gave him my free one. He was overjoyed and gave me £20 for it.

I felt really good about myself and he went home to Ireland very happy.

This weekend I wad looking to get new cartridges and set up my old printer again, when I discovered that it was so old (2004 – ancient in the computer world) that it wasn’t compatible with my computer. Which meant I’d need a new one.

I’ve ended up with the same model as the free one – although it was in special offer for £35.

My good turn has cost me £15.

Nando’s Rewards The Low Spenders

We went to Nando’s for some dirty chicken on Tuesday evening. It’s wrong, but so right.

They’ve introduced a reward card, where you get a stamp for spending over £5.80. After 10 stamps, you get a free chicken. There are other rewards on the way if you’d rather cash in before obesity kicks in.

We spent just over £20 for two of us. I asked for a second stamp, but the server refused. I then asked if we would have got two stamps on two cards had my wife come up separately to order and pay for her meal. The server said no.

Remarkably, then, it seems Nando’s is operating a reward scheme that encourages customers to spend as little over £5.80 as possible.

By dining alone, I could get a free chicken after 10 meals and £58.

By dining with my wife, I’d have to spend £200 for the same reward.

Brilliant. Well done, Nando’s – your reward scheme actively discourages me from visiting!

Choking On An Apple

The Brighton Apple Store opens in a sparkling explosion of fuckwittery:

Nye Wright, 35, the store’s American-born manager, motivated his staff with a cheering, clapping and hugging routine shortly before the doors opened at 10am.

Then staff ran out of the shop giving high fives to people in the queue which stretched around Churchill Square’s upper level.

Back inside the store they lined up clapping and high-fiving their customers again as they entered the store to receive their free T-shirts and to get their hands on the Apple products they had come to try.

Twats

Why I Loathe iTunes

I’ve just moved my media off an internal drive on the desktop onto a nice big NAS, and added all of Penny stuff that used to be separate. So naturally, that means rebuilding the libraries on the various media software, including three separate iTunes installations.

It’s all organised in a music folder: music/artist/album. Except, of course, you can’t just add or drag the music folder into iTunes. The prospect of adding 6000 tracks makes it go wobbly and fall over. I guess creating 60,000 line XML and library database files is just too much.

So, you have to select a couple of dozen folders to drag in at a time. This takes a couple of hours – yes HOURS! – per drag. It clicks through, ‘processing’ each track for a few seconds. Then, and only then, it starts ‘processing’ album art. Why? It’s right there in the folder and in the ID3 tag! So a few seconds more per album (274 in the last drag) before you can drag in another lot.

It took most of the afternoon to do this on my PC, slightly longer on Penny’s laptop and about four times as long on my new MacBook!

Appletards would say “let iTunes organise your music, just trust it”. But they are dickheads. It’s my machine, I’ll do what I damn well like with my files. One program that I only need for the iPhone should not be dictating how I run my machine. Not only that, but it would only help on one machine, not the other two.

I should point out that I directed WinAmp, MediaMonkey and Songbird at the new drive and all three had indexed the lot, ready for use and with album art in place, within 5 minutes.

iTunes slows itself with it’s bloody stupid library databases. They add nothing, except locking iTunes to your library, your library to one machine and your iPod to iTunes. Every other media player offers the same, and better, functionality without them. But no, Apple want complete control.

All other media players will keep watch on your drive. If you add some files from elsewhere, they’ll index them straight away.

iTunes won’t. You have to add them manually – rubbish for a shared media drive.

Other programs don’t care if you delete
something – after all, if you put it back they’ll quietly re-index it anyway.

iTunes goes mental. It gives a little ! for each missing track. But can you just say “remove all missing tracks”? Can you buggery. Yup, you have to select and delete them individually. You can’t even list all the missing tracks, you have to go looking for them.

I only use iTunes for my iPhone. That and there are no real alternatives for straight media playing on Mac because everything Jobs does is wonderful. Songbird is nearly there but not quite yet.

I wish I didn’t have to use it. And when Jobs’s shrivelled liver finally passes through his urethra, I will line up to piss on his grave for the days I’ve lost doing iTunes job for it and adding my own bloody files.

Almost Busy Weekend

Both the Loop festival and Brighton Carnival took place this weekend, bringing the city nowhere near to a standstill.

Did anyone notice these things were happening?!

Royal Mail Are Shit

I needed to send some important documents through the post, which I also needed safely returning to me.

So, I pre-paid a Recorded Delivery and put the envelope inside with my documents. When I asked for the tracking number of the return delivery, the lady looked at me blankly.

She can’t put it on the system now, she told me. They’ll have to bring the package in to be registered when they post it.

That’s no good to me. I’m sending it pre-paid so they won’t have the inconvenience of going to the post office. I want them to be able to pop it in the box, and I’ll have the tracking number ready. The system will know the postcode and tracking number already, and it can be scanned in at the sorting office as normal. The person returning my documents cannot and will not go to the post office for me.

But that’s not possible. Apparently.

So, I’ll have to trust first class post to deliver irreplacable documents to me. I have no other choice.

What does it matter if the package only enters the chain a day or two after the number was registered? The process is surely only triggered when the bar code is scanned anyway? It’s not like I was paying for a time-critical “by 1pm tomorrow” delivery that might bugger up their targets with a delay.

Any of the courier companies will issue a tracking number for a package being picked up in a few days time.

I used to believe wholeheartedly in a nationalised, public run postal service. But they’re shit.

Twitter Without The Witter

While the rest of us use Twitter to tell the world about a particularly excellent snack or impending toilet trip, some people are using it on another level entirely.

Follow @Change_for_Iran, @IranRiggedElect, @NextRevolution and @persiankiwi for real people in Tehran, risking their lives to post news and information.

Powerful, scary, moving. I hope they find the freedom they deserve.