Just Jack

Lots of places are reporting that Amazon are selling music from every member of the ‘big four’ as DRM free mp3s. Can’t quite believe it’s happened but it’s not before time. Anyone dare to predict whether the p2p/torrent hordes can be persuaded to return to legal music purchases? Perhaps it’s enough to entice new downloaders who haven’t discovered p2p or torrents yet as computer based home entertainment systems and media centres become more common.

I’m having difficulties getting through to customer services on 0845 454 1111. I can navigate the menus (joy) but get a (engaged?!) beeping noise when I would expect to be put on hold for 1/2 hour. Any other Virgin customers experiencing the same?

In the run-up to Christmas play.com is offering free delivery on all purchases, no minimum spend.

I saw a couple of things on my stay in Barcelona that caused me to think about our attitudes towards energy usage and recent attempts to conserve energy for environmental reasons.

I visited a fountain display of lights and music at la Font Magica near the Placa d’Espanya. Such a display that I found both impressive and enjoyable also struck me as an entirely frivolous waste of energy. Surely no real benefit could be claimed to be derived from this regularly repeated displays?

Of course I am not suggesting that anything that has no clear or measurable benefit should be banned or avoided but it made me wonder which energy (or any other important resource) consuming activities should be deemed acceptable and which should not. The doors on the metro didn’t open automatically, a minor inconvenience perhaps but a similarly insignificant energy saving.

How annoying does something have to be before it is deemed worthy of an energy consuming remedy? How impressive does something have to be before it is deemed worthy of spending our precious resources? Is there a metric we should be using to make these decisions?

I noticed a few things in Barcelona that are different from Blighty that I thought worth a mention.

• Large bins in the street have foot pedals to open them removing the need for (presumably full) hands to do the opening.
• Some steep hills (for instance near Park Guell) have street escalators.
• Street and metro escalators slow down when not in use. Is this to save energy?
• The metro isn’t plastered with adverts like the London Underground but they do have TV displays in the stations and in the trains that display metro information and ads.
• Metro train doors don’t open automatically. Another energy saving trick?
• Metro trains are very much like London’s ‘Bendy Buses’. Carriages are connected and individuals can walk from one end of the train to another unimpeded.
• Arrows in the carriages light up before a station is reached, indicating which side of the carriage to exit on.
• Metro security (ie. not the police) carry large truncheons.

Ben informed me of this at The Register.

The company has now admitted that this change to its billing is significant and therefore enables customers to get out of their existing contracts.

Customers … have one month from the receipt of that message to get in touch with O2 if they want to cancel their contract. O2 has told us that such requests will be honoured, but only if received before the end of September.

Update: I just called 02 and they confirmed that if I ended my contract I would be able to keep the handset free of charge. I’m thinking close the contract and get my hands on some sim only goodness.

After I went through the pain of setting up a new bank account (a post regarding which is to follow) it now appears HSBC is backtracking (via El Reg) on their plans to charge graduates for their overdrafts. Thanks Ben for the heads up.

While HSBC will no doubt retain many customers that would otherwise have left due the charges, I’m pretty pissed off that they tried it in the first place; I simply can’t believe they were so willing to alienate such a high earning potential group. Rest assured that this Graduate will keep his business elsewhere.

I just received a text message from 02 that reads:

02: from 28 Sept calls starting wth certain numbers e.g 0844&0845 will be charged outside your incl. mins. & cost 20p/min. Details at o2.co.uk/specialnumbers

The inclusion of 0844 and 0845 numbers was one of the reasons I chose 02. Do I have any recourse for compensation?

Update:
The Carphone Warehouse / 02 terms and conditions state:

15 Changes to the Agreement
15.1 We may change this Agreement and the Charges at any time. If we increase our Charges for the elements of the Service you are using or change the terms and conditions of this Agreement to your
significant disadvantage (in our reasonable opinion), we will give you 30 days’ notice in writing before the change takes place. We will notify you as detailed in clause clause 19.7 below or we may
notify you by text (SMS) to your Mobile Phone number and/or by email where you have supplied your email address to us for this purpose.

This does not undo the fact that they are changing a key feature that I chose their service for. This is not the way to keep my custom.