PDF files are excellent, but do they save paper? How many emails do you receive that ask you to consider whether you need to print it out? Our environmentally conscious age is trying to save paper. PDFs are excellent as one can highlight them, annotate them, remove the annotation, change them, add to them, etc. …
Category: Consumer affairs
The risk in disposing of electronic devices
When you buy a new electronic device, do you consider how you will dispose of it? When your computer dies there are implications for identity theft if you do not dispose of it properly. You may have heard about hard drives from disposed computers being examined in distant countries to discover the identity of the …
Continue reading The risk in disposing of electronic devices
Fighting for consumers
My long battle on behalf of consumers continues. Consumers are receiving a raw deal nowadays. Whereas the internet and online shopping is excellent, there is a down side to which retailers and consumers are not giving enough attention. This downside is experienced by many consumers, too many of whom simply accept it and move on. …
Market research surveys
Do you know when you are filling in a Market Research survey? Some people are happy enough to do so, but what if you do not know if you are doing so? Today I was asked by a well-known retail chain for my email at payment. Okay - it is in the public domain. I …
Browbeating by secularists
From referendums to climate change, secularists will not tolerate differences from their opinion. The failure to accept election results is a manifestation of the teenage tantrums of modern society – recent well-known examples being the Scottish Independence Referendum on 18/9/2014, the Brexit referendum on 23/6/2016 and Donald Trump's Presidential election victory on 8/11/2016. The secularist …
Gmail disarray
Can anyone explain why editing an email in the Gmail editor may look okay when you send it, but the recipient may receive it with altered editing - font, font size, broken lines, etc? This is a general problem known since at least 2011 but never solved by Gmail. It is so unpredictable that one …
Jump to attention
Many public bodies think that their authority allows them to call the public to jump to attention. Take the tax office. One will wait weeks and even months to get a response from them, but they expect you to answer them within so many days, with the threat of penalties - even although you may …
BT and identifying cold callers
Following my blogpost on cold calling, another issue is the problem of identification. Occasionally British Telecom (BT) phone me. The most recent call was to remind me to renew my broadband with them. This needs serious consideration because tonight I sent an email which did not go through. What was the reason? This is what …
Dealing with cold callers
Many of you have probably had cold callers wasting your time. Rather than putting the phone down on them, you might want to waste their time. My most recent call (the second one today) went like this. First, he asked about 'my recent minor car accident'. So I asked him what made him think that …
Copyrighting our language
Language barriers and language battles are very real features of modern society. Now Google is taking over our alphabet. The world famous search engine company is rebranding itself as Alphabet. Can Alphabet be seriously trademarked? Will others be allowed to use the same name? Walt Disney once tried to get Dr Donald Duck, a Scottish …
