Oct 12
Are piles the eight wonder?
Whoever asked number 5 is probably sitting at home all day asking google these things.
priorities…
I hope ALL of these questions are part of a job interview somewhere
Try and imagine one person asking all these questions in under a minute
So what have we learned from our Google Answers? It seems Google is most frequently used (in this country) by unemployed, bored women who are killing time between soaps by trying to get pregnant.
…and also idiots.
Just tweeted about this.
I’m playing with GeoLocation code, I tested out this example http://bit.lyJEs6h. It gave me the coords of ‘my location’, which actually shows the exact location of the fastcom wifi tower I’m on, a couple of miles away. Fair enough.
The coords came up in a javascript alert dialog which I couldn’t copy, so I just glanced at them, opened up google maps and typed in as much as I could remember. I just wanted to see roughly how accurate it was.
I actually didnt remember the whole thing and ended up typing in numbers that were off by .002 lat and .07 long. Imagine my surprise when google maps showed me my house. The map coords in question were a mere 100ft from my house. In other words, I mistyped both the latitude and longtitude by the exact geographic offsets between my house and the wifi tower.
I am now turning off the computer for the rest of the day, I’m just too freaked out.
I’ve been screwed over by pixmania, and I feel like blogging about it.
In July I ordered something from pixmania.ie – a USB to SATA/IDE Converter Cable. Its a little thingie that connects SATA/IDE harddrives to your PC – like a disk enclosure without the enclosure part. It cost me €15 euro. A bargain I thought. How wrong I was.
The thing worked on arrival, but failed within 10 minutes of being used. I returned it straight away (end of July) at my own cost (they claimed they would refund postage costs if I sent them a receipt for postage, but I sent it and never received a refund). In September, I got an email back saying that I the item had arrived in the returns depot, and been ‘accepted’. In supplier speak this means it was merely delivered to the returns depot. By October I had still received no updates on the status of the return. Then in November I received a replacement unit, with no explanation or documentation. “Great” I thought to myself. “It took almost 4 months to process and replace this single, small item, but at least I now have a working one”.
A few weeks later, the replacement unit failed. It had been used approximately 3 times at this point (its not something one would use every day afterall). I tried to return this replaced unit only to discover that the item was still marked as ‘accepted’ by the returns depot. The item status was never updated. There was no way for me to return it.
Their customer service is a bad joke.
Trying to log in to www.pixmania.ie threw a password error, even after recovering the correct password through their own password recovery system. It was only possible to log into www.pixmania.CO.UK. No email addresses are listed on the site for direct email. Contact forms are hidden away and obfuscated under confusing category names (“for partners”, “suggestions?”, “join our team!” etc). When found, they only allow a maximum of 700 words, and despite filling in my complaint under several categories, I never got a reply. I have tried emailing fotovista (pixmania’s parent company), and the pixmania press department, also to no avail.
I logged in again a week or so later to discover that the original order is now marked as in ‘preparation’. Underneath this it says ‘Your package is ready to be sent’. Next to the USB/IDE cable, it now says ‘Discontinued Product’. Both items in the order also show 0 items waiting for delivery. This is further evidence that the side is designed to be misleading and confusing, to discourage users from attempting to avail of any kind of after sales service.
I tried complaining to the National Consumer Agency who told me :
The registered business address for www.pixmania.ie is in France and therefore where consumer complaints relate to companies located outside the Republic of Ireland but within the EU, the European Consumer Centre (ECC) in Dublin can most appropriately handle your query.
Fine. I contacted the ECC (www.eccireland.ie) who were very helpful, but informed me
[]…we depend on the willingness of a trader to co-operate to resolve complaints.
Obviously that’s not going to work, since they couldnt be bothered to answer my emails. At this point, I’ve spent too much effort trying to get a refund for something that only cost me €15 and I’d feel a bit of an eejit chasing it up. However, I’m sure I’m not alone in my experiences with pixmania, so I thought I’d tell my story to warn people away from this dishonest company.
So to sum up, Avoid Pixmania this christmas!