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!