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Bad news: This blog has pretty much run its course. Nothing very interesting (to me) has happened in this space for a long time. I won’t be updating twopointouch anytime soon. Good news: I’ve started a new blog, called gamethinks.com, which is about computer games. I know this won’t interest a lot of my regular readers, but it does interest me, a lot. Give it a go. Maybe I can convince you. image credit: C J Isherwood
I’d hate to think that anyone imagines this is some sort of attack blog about Carphone Warehouse customer service. It really isn’t. The difficulties I had (that still figure quite prominently on Google searches) were resolved and now we’re all happy. However, a friend of a friend is having similar difficulties getting through to anything human. If you’re out there and listening, and care about the reputation of the company — please look after Anjali.
Somehow this sort of thing, which I see everywhere, doesn’t entirely work for me. Maybe I’m fussy.
So what’s the plan with these sorts of sites? I can see how they can (and do) climb to the top of Google. But you’d only visit them once, wouldn’t you? I guess there’s three possibilities:
But I suppose it doesn’t really matter whether I like it or not, or whether it really works, because the content farms and idiots are already winning. Conducting a search for product advice is likely to yield dozens of rubbish reviews on the first page. The web starts closing down again, whereby learning the name of a decent source of information becomes a matter of word-of-mouth. Thank goodness, we now have the social web etc. to help us find those things. It’s something I’ve historically been a great fan of, and still am, theoretically. But, when push comes to shove, and I want to know which telly to buy, it becomes very clear how basic those things still are. image credit: freezelight I’ve been with BT broadband about five years. But my service has been getting slower for about six months or so. For the last couple of months, it’s been too slow to play any of the Web TV services or even a regular 360p YouTube video live. But I lived with it. I let light bulbs die for about two years before replacing them – if it’s the summer, I can live without light for weeks. I’ve been known to use the fridge for kitchen illumination. Today, I reached the end of my patience when I couldn’t take part in a Skype video call. My downstream had plunged to 446kbps, as opposed to the (already pretty feeble) 6mbps I had 12 months ago. For a little while, when I first noticed this drop, I was told it was because I had downloaded too much stuff. I probably had. But not within the last six months. So anyway, I got on the phone.
No, I don’t think so. Give me a workable internet connection and then I might trust you. So, no – can I have my Mac code [this lets you move more easily to another provider] please? Him: Can I tell you about the best offers we have for you right now? Me: No, I’d like my Mac code. Him: Well, the best we can do is… [actually a quite good offer] Him: … and shower you with loads of free stuff. Me: Can I stop you there? Because I was told I’d have to take out a new contract to see my broadband connection fixed. And I don’t want to do that. Him: Ah, yes. That is the case. Me: Well, I don’t want to do that because I don’t trust BT to be able to deliver, based on my experience. Him: Ah OK. Me: So can I have my Mac Code, please? Him: Just getting your code now. Two minutes pass. Him: The system’s just generating it now. Another five minutes – no joke. Him: I’m just going to go and get it Another two minutes. Him: I’m sorry about the delay, Mr Delaney. I’m just getting it now. Another two minutes. Or was it ten? I am dazed now. I don’t like to be mean about call-centre people. I don’t think it’s fair. They have a rulebook that was written by people hundreds (sometimes thousands) of miles away. They are the ones to blame, not the first woman I spoke to or Iqbal Hani (actually he was a total dick – really rude) or the other guy in retrieving-really-angry-people I spoke to today. But really. You lost a customer today because you were too inflexible and you don’t really care about your customers. I’m paying my bills, why didn’t you just fix the problem? Why didn’t my router get upgraded years ago? If you have this new speed enhancer doodad, why didn’t you send it out to your existing customers? I know why, of course. Because subscription businesses are based on customer inertia. Because you make more money putting effort into converting or acquiring new customers than in showing great value to existing ones. But that’s shit. And there, I said it. You were shit today, BT.
Will our mobile phones continue to evolve at the rate they have done over the last fifteen years? Most technology sort of runs out of steam after a while. Computers today aren’t really much better than they were five years ago, for example. Televisions haven’t particularly improved for about ten years. However, there are some reasons to believe that mobiles have a bit more scope for improvement than those things. Like all the other recent posts, this piece first appeared in the Nokia Conversations newsletter.
The idea of mobile as a media platform is both very modern — by definition, it couldn’t have been conceived of before about 1985 and colour screens didn’t arrive until the mid-90s. But it’s also something that people seem to have been banging on about for ages, without anything in particular happening. At the start of every year, we’ve been reading “this year mobiles become an entertainment and information hub” in everyone’s list of predictions. At the risk of ridicule in a year’s time, I think it’s going to happen in 2011. It was originally delivered as part of the Nokia Conversations newsletter. |             | |||
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