How Onward Taxi Solutions (UK) rip you off.

Over the last few years, when I had to get to the airport for a long haul flight that leaves very early in the morning I have been using Onward Taxi Solutions (OTS). That was until this last weekend when I had to cancel my trip and OTS decided that charging me for the cancellation is worth more than my future custom.

Literally minutes after I made the booking I spotted a problem with my flights and I contacted OTS to cancel the taxi booking. They charged me £14 for the privilege. Apparently they have transaction fees to cover. They did say £7 or 10% but then charged me £7 x 2 (which is about 12%) because I booked both my trip to the airport and the one back. So although it is one transaction, they conveniently split it into two so that they can make an extra couple of pound from the transaction.

Firstly I would like to know what kind of service requires so much time and effort that they need to charge £7 or 10% to cancel it. No service, that I know of, charges that much to take card payments, so the only answer to why they charge that much is to rip one off. They are obviously not to concerned about their customers because their policy and rip-off is apparently worth more than my future custom.

Obviously it took me all of 5 minutes (if that long) to find another airport taxi company that cost me even less for exactly the same service. When will I learn that companies don't deserve your loyalty?

Business must be really bad for an organisation to stoop so low that they have to resort to such desperate acts to hang onto money. 

Where have all the design rules gone?

Many years ago, when the web started out, it was soon discovered that if you keep the click-count down it makes for a much better user experience. I'm not a UX designer. As a matter of fact, a colleague told me that my stuff looks like it was made in Russia - make of that what you want. I'm a software engineer, I make useable stuff. I'm not into fashion, frills and pretty widgets. However, the one thing I remember is to keep the click-count down - three clicks at most, and you should be where you want to be. 

So why, when I go onto my university website and I 

1. click on "Staff" right at the top of the page (which I think is a good place), 
2. it opens to a general page where I have to click "Staff" again to get to the staff options?
3. However before getting the staff options I now have to log in which means I have to enter my username and password and click login
4. Then the Microsoft authenticator on my phone needs the number displayed on the screen.
5. To log into my phone I have to do the fingerprint thing
6. Find the the Microsoft authenticator and enter the number
7. Then do the finger print thing again to make sure, I guess, someone didn't grab and run my phone since the 15 seconds ago when I did the fingerprint thing the first time
8. For the live of me I can't remember anymore why I wanted to go to the staff web page ...

Why, when I want to go to the workshop admin to add or edit a workshop, do I have to:

1. Click sign in
2. Enter, my username and password, click Login
3. Click my name in the top right and then click Admin on the menu
4. Click on Workshops
5. Enter the workshop name and click Search
6. Click on the workshop name in the list
7. Click on the occurences tab
8. Click on the "Change" link
9. I can now edit what is there but I've lost the will to live ...

Someone, please help!

Stupid Is As Stupid does

I'll start by defining some terms I use because different people interpret some words differently. "Stupid" has nothing to do with intelligence. Intelligent people can do stupid things. For example, smoking. Everyone knows that smoking is bad but both very intelligent and less intelligent people smoke. Now that is stupid. A person that smokes deliberately does something that not only affect their own health but they also are perfectly happy to be selfish bastards and pollute the air for others. So it is knowingly doing something that leads to adverse effects.

I have lived in the UK for about 28 years. It is a tiny, rather soggy, somewhat overpopulated island. Actually, it won't feel so overpopulated if people would just consider the fact that they live on a tiny island with very narrow streets. Now if you know that, why do you buy the biggest car on the market? Why do people drive around in SUVs? 

No, you don't need an SUV to cart your son's cricket gear around. Considering that most of these SUVs have low profile tyres, neither the SUV nor their owner has every seen anything but a nicely tarred road. And the fact that you could save my day by pulling me out of the snow in front of the Co-Op because the council couldn't be arsed to salt the roads does not really justify it either. It happened exactly once in the 28 years I have been in the UK and it wasn't a life-or-death situation. Obviously I was really appreciative and it did avoid further inconvenience for me, but boasting about that being the reason for having a big gas guzzling air contaminating monster somewhat put a damper on it all.

There should be a law against these vehicles in this country. If you have ever been to the UK and seen the roads - especially in the older villages and cities - you'll know how narrow they are. I live on an estate that was built in the 70s so you would think that is would be somewhat better. But no, 2000 years later, experience hasn't taught anybody in the building industry anything. People park in the street because garages are typically to small to even fit a VW Up and many people have more that one car. So even if the road has two lanes, since there are cars parked on both sides the roads are reduced to fit only one car. Then you also have the numb-skull who lives on the bend that parks his van right on the bend (which should be illegal and if it is it is not enforced). Now you have traffic from both directions having to go through a blind bend and people in England do not typically look further ahead than the bonnet of their car or slow down appropriately when they can't see further than the bonnet of their car.

It is no wonder that England doesn't have a working public transport system. Even if the buses are running (no thanks to ongoing strikes, snow or icy weather and breakdowns) the traffic is so bad that there is absolutely no chance of a bus being on time. 

Oh, and this one takes the cake. The bus that I take runs between Bishop Auckland and Eldon Square (Newcastle). These are the two big bus stations and then there is another big bus station just before Newcastle, Gateshead. But Newcastle is the main city. When Go North East decides the bus is running too late, they have the bus turn around at Gateshead, leaving up to 50 people stranded at Newcastle. Maybe stupid is way to generous to use on that one.

Word count: 619

Ranting makes for lots of words

Ranting makes for loads of words. I figured that if I struggle to write some days I could just pick something from every day life that is tripping me up. I could probably write at least a hundred words on British public transport every day. That might become boring eventually but, for today, I'll start with that.

Why is public transport such a difficult thing to get right? It is not like it is impossible. There are countries that actually manage to have buses and trains that run and run on time. 

It takes me about 90 minutes to get to work. Either I drive 5 minutes to where I get the bus or walk there which would take me 20 minutes. Then I get the bus, if it shows up (but never on time), which takes sixty to seventy minutes and then I have a 10 minute walk to the office.

Towards the end of 2023 the Go North East bus company's employees went on strike. After weeks of being sardined into the, one and only, bus that ran on my route to work, people completely lost sympathy for the union that was still rejecting a 10+% increase in salaries. I was considering the train but despite the fact that I live on a massive estate just outside the city, I have no reasonable way to get to the station. I could get the Arriva bus to the station but that only runs every 30 minutes and is not synchronised with any trains. Well, you can't really synchronise any one thing, in England, with any other thing because none of the things are ever on time. I could take the car to the station but the parking fee would exceed most people's mortgage payments. I was just about to consider the cycling scheme to buy a folding electric bike to the station when the Go North East strike ended and the trains went on strike. I decided to put the cycling scheme of to the summer.

A couple of weeks ago I make all the reservations for trains and hotels to attend the FOSDEM conference in Belgium. I was so pleased with myself. Everything is organised and done and dusted. I can relax, get a taxi to the station on the day and in the meantime look forward to FOSDEM. Then, last night, I have to read about more train strikes again. So I had to re-reserve a different train and cancel my existing reservation.

My get-up-and-go just got-up-and-went. I would SO like to live in a first world country! And not just one that looks like first world when you compare it to the third world but one that actually shows how things can be done.

Word count: 458

Writing A Little Every Day

Writing is one of those things that I would really like to be good at, but I really struggle with it. Unlike most people, when I had to write my PhD thesis, I did not have to reduce my word count but rather had to try and be more verbose about things. I tend to be very succinct. I say a thing and then it has been said. Why elaborate? So I have to learn to elaborate. At the time, my supervisor suggested I try writing 500 words per day but I found that almost impossible. 500 seemed to be an impossible number when I was trying to reach it as my word count.

We have team meetings at work every Monday and yesterday one of my colleagues discussed the setting of goals. For me, the big take-away was to set small reachable goals. So if 500 words a day are to much, how about 100 words a day or (as someone else on the team suggested). If I don't make the 100 words for a specific day I can make up by writing a bit more on another day. Perhaps also top the limit to 500 words per week which means I have weekends off or I can use it to catch up.

I'm going to give this a go on this blog. Let's see how this goes.

(Word count: 229)