I thought those days were over...

[triskellian]

"Unfortunately our website is not compatible with Macs or firefox. Is there any way you can get to a PC with Internet Explorer?"

Umm. Words fail me. (Admittedly I'm even less brain-engaged today than usual at this time of morning, but still.)

I have in the past written all kinds of reples when receiving such 'explanations' for why a site won't let me give it any money, but today I'm getting no further than *boggle*. I could possibly run to some inarticulate spluttering, but that tends not to come across very well in email :-(

Comments

[bateleur.livejournal.com]

Yep. And do you know why they phase them out?

Because otherwise people would carry on using them!

[bopeepsheep.livejournal.com]

Heh, but no. They phased them out because practically no one was using them (2 in 1,000, at best). It cost too much money to process them at the admin office/banking stage, not because it was difficult at the checkouts. Next time you're stuck behind someone writing a cheque for their food shopping a) consider shopping somewhere cheaper *g* and b) marvel at the endangered species you're witnessing...

[bateleur.livejournal.com]

Perhaps we should recommend triskellian to marvel at this website she's found? ;-)

[bopeepsheep.livejournal.com]

I don't think she'd necessarily appreciate the suggestion. Although I have previously found that an "isn't that marvellous?" reaction to utter stupidity in the workplace, while not actually solving the problem any more than rage would, does wonders for my blood pressure, so maybe a little Pollyanna-ism is useful on occasion.

Anyhoo, ~330 in 1000 is somewhat more impressive than 2 in 1000, if the estimate above is to be believed. A company that voluntarily cuts out 1/3 of its potential customer base has some cojones, if nothing else.

[bateleur.livejournal.com]

<bogus comparison alarm>

Nononono! You have become confooozed!

The company's customers are not the 2 in 1000 (where did that figure come from?), it's the company itself. Or more precisely, their website.

The company has cut 1/3 of their potential customer base not because they want to, but because they lack the competence, understanding and general cluefulness to do otherwise. Most likely their website was Nice And Cheap (TM) and they have no intention of shelling out for a new one.

[bopeepsheep.livejournal.com]

2 in 1000 - people who used cheques in supermarkets before they were banned. Do keep up, old boy. :)

[bateleur.livejournal.com]

<rolleyes>

Yes. Thanks. Where did the figure come from?

[bopeepsheep.livejournal.com]

According to Boots, cheques currently account for just two purchases in every 1,000 of its stores, yet cause it the most problems and many similar but better-worded sentences in press releases from all the companies who have stopped taking them. Money Saving Expert (which I just typed as Monet Saving Expert, a more specialised site no doubt) has dozens of the things quoted and archived.

[bateleur.livejournal.com]

Monet Saving Expert

Superb! :-D

(The quote you have dates from 2006 and in fact is not typical, with cheques accounting for 6% of retail spending at that point.)

[bopeepsheep.livejournal.com]

*nod* It was the first hit in Google; I knew the stat from a August 2007 press release, one of a dozen or so lying around in my office when I was writing a piece about cheques two weeks ago. It's a bit tricky to point you at a good internet-available source equal to "the managers of eight stores in the shopping centre where I work (about 2 minutes from triskellian's house)", however. :)

[bateleur.livejournal.com]

Although really your source is better in a lot of ways, since it's based directly on real world data. Google, like Wikipedia, is a great place to go for data provided you don't need to trust it.

[bopeepsheep.livejournal.com]

This is part of my (mild) beef with Wikipedia and its insistence on sources - stuff you can see on dvd any time you like doesn't count as a primary source (according to rows-gone-by about pages on certain tv shows) but some awful webpage knocked up badly by a half-hearted PR company wonk who never saw the show does?

Blargh. Anyway, now I know triskellian was talking about the NUS I'm not in the least surprised at their attitude to web presence. >:-{

[onebyone.livejournal.com]

You misunderstand the purpose of Wikipedia, which is to perform a number of related Google searches around a particular topic and summarise the first page of results, then add a bunch of random uninformed opinion. A source counts if (and only if) it can be linked to from the article. You'll note that while there are NPOV and verifiability criteria for Wikipedia, there is no truth criterion.

Now that Wikipedia occupies on average 8.2 of the top 10 results of any
Google search, contributing has become much faster, so they've started to really rack up the article count in the last couple of years.

[onebyone.livejournal.com]

Also, Wikipedia doesn't want you to use primary sources, it wants you to use secondary sources (see "No Original Research").

Not that I'd personally argue that watching a DVD is research, or that the rule doesn't have a lot of perverse results. But I sort of see the point of it, in that there are certain kinds of bad behaviour that it prohibits.

Unfortunately, Wikipedia can't have a rule "No Original Research, unless it's something that any fool could reproduce for himself, use your common sense", for reasons which become rapidly obvious if you ever try to follow VfD for a week.