Rev Peter Mullen: homophic idiot show Church’s true colours
Two years ago, I posted of the intellectual incompetence of one Rev Peter Mullen. It looks like in addition to being an idiot on a purely intellectual level, he’s also a homophobic bigot. He suggests that gay people need to be tattooed. Perhaps he should follow historical tradition and tattoo gays with a nice big pink triangle?
In a move likely to stifle me doing anything useful today, I went on to Archive.org and checked out the other stuff on the blog. Here’s a doozey: All three main political parties in Britain have declared that climate change is their priority. Can anyone think of anything more senseless, less rooted? Global warming is a politically-motivated myth put forward by the anti-capitalist brigade, associated nihilists who want to drag us back to the stone age: people who actually hate humanity and dress up their malignity in phoney idealism. Green is the new Red. And of course it’s a great funding bonanaza for research departments
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Yes. All those scientists are just political hacks and anti-capitalist nihilists. Perhaps once we’ve got the gays all tattooed, we should send all those nasty empiricists off for their tattoos too. There’s more fun and giggles in the blog’s back catalogue, but I can’t guarantee the rampant idiocy contained therein won’t make you want to jam a bloody icepick through your eyeball.
PayPal: inflexiblity, incompetence and irratiting the living fuck out of your customers
It’s official: PayPal Sucks! I’ve just spent fifteen minutes on the phone to someone at PayPal, trying to convince them to let me add my debit card to my account. Apparently, when you add your seventh Maestro/Switch/Solo card to your account, you can’t add any more. It gives you a message saying: This account may not register any further Switch or Solo cards
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Well, I want to add another card to my account, and little red-text error boxes don’t phase me. So I try and get in contact with a PayPal customer support agent. What methods have we got to actually deal with PayPal? There’s “Louise”, a virtual customer support agent. It’s like those irritating ‘live chat with a human being’ things that some sites have instead of a phone number, only less useful because you don’t actually get connected with a human being but an Eliza bot trained to answer the same customer service questions that a damn FAQ page does. What’s the point? All the man hours that have gone into the creation of this utterly useless gizmo could have gone into making it so I can add another debit card to my account.
The other customer support option is e-mail. That way is a route to pain. Been there before, and it takes them weeks to respond to customer support e-mails. Well, I want to sort it out now… in like ten minutes. So I pick the phone.
There must be ways of getting to PayPal through their advertised number - 08707 307 191 - but I can’t for the life of me find them. Instead, you go through some security checking - using an issued security code, and the last four digits of your bank account (which is, of course, public information - what with it being printed on the bottom of your cheques!) and your phone number (also public information, and not tremendously difficult for a phreaker to impersonate). Not that it’s worth bothering or anything: when you finally get through the security, all you have is a robotic male voice who reads you the same information that you get on the website. It’s like talking to Louise, the PayPal Eliza bot, but it’s clocking away at full 0870 rate, as well as potentially inspiring homicide amongst anyone listening to it.
Instead, I took this approach - I called the Irish customer support number - +353 14369001 - and explained that I was a UK customer who couldn’t get through to a UK customer support agent. They then transferred me to someone in the UK who could answer my questions - or at least, feign mutual irritation at the unfixed problems with PayPal. Hint: if “open a new account with a different e-mail address” is the solution given by customer service to a user’s problem, then you have a big problem that you need to fix. I didn’t go through the long-winded verification process for nothing.
There are other ways of getting through to PayPal - their London number - 020 8605 3000 - may be one. I also saw here that saying “I want to speak to an operator” during the automated bullshit on the main line is another approach.
Why can PayPal not fix these two problems? They’ve been around since 1998. Do they honestly think that people are going to be using exactly the same card for a decade or more. The average debit card lasts for three years - so, over a six year period, you could quite easily have three debit cards, plus, say, two replacements because of loss or theft, and maybe having your bank change your card type over from Solo to Switch, say. Or you might change bank. Six cards is pretty easy to get through. Why, exactly, does me having a debit card registered with PayPal five years ago prevent me from having one registered now? I have no idea.
What I do know is that if they wanted to fix this problem, it’d probably only take a few man hours. I mean, for chrissakes, it’s an online payment service not a graphics engine, a gene sequencer or a fighter jet - fire up your favourite text editor and flippin’ fix it! Recompile and deploy! What’s the damn holdup?
I still don’t understand how PayPal can be so incompetent. It takes some doing. Perhaps it’s all some elaborate plot - seeing whether it’s possible to be totally incompetent and still survive. Well, here’s hoping this market can have a bit of competition and force them all to raise their game. Sadly, with the credit crunch looming, I’m guessing that’s not likely.
While we are on the topic of ineptitude, I have to say I love this one: my bank sent my new debit card via Secure Mail Services, a courier company. They sent my credit card via good ol’ Royal Mail. My debit card only lets you spend money I do have, while my credit card lets you spend money I don’t. Guess which is the larger of those two sets? Anyway. Secure Mail Services delivered my card today - they attempted to the other day when I was out. When I phoned them up to arrange the redelivery, they stated on the phone that I would need to present identification to the courier driver. When I asked the courier driver this morning, I was told that it wouldn’t be necessary. Very secure.
