Category: Rants

Agent forwarding – with Putty

Note to self – when setting up putty, change the “Default Settings” profile to turn on Agent Forwarding: Connection -> SSH -> Auth -> “Allow agent forwarding”. Also, on servers you will be forwarding through, edit /etc/ssh/ssh_config, and turn on “ForwardAgent yes” for either all or set hosts needed.

Virgin Mobile: Unlimited Web is not 25 MB / day.

Hello Virgin,

I have a smart phone. Its mine – I paid for it outright, and I use pay-as-you-go for cell service. Your web site says I can get “Unlimited web access” for 30p/day:

So… why did all my credit disappear. Well, it appears that when I “surf the web”, the Virgin call center seems to think that this is just “Facebook”, and downloading anything (even over HTTP) is not included. In truth, it seems that for Virgin, Unlimited is a mere 25 MB:

I’ve made this a little larger (150%) to ensure you can read it!

Sorry, but “unlimited” should be measured in “gigabytes” these days, not megabytes. Its 2010, not 1990. I’m using Maps, reading email, potentially trying to watch YouTube (which is delivered over HTTP – which Virgin call center doesn’t seem to think is the web. Indeed, the mere fact that the data would have to be downloaded over 3G is a limit in itself for fair usage purposes. *sigh*

Open letter to Singapore Airlines

Dear Singapore Airlines,

I have a few suggestions with regards to your handling of the current (at the time of writing) handling of the cancellation of flights across Europe. I’m sure you have contingency plans for cancellations to your service from any number of possible causes that could happen at any time for any period, so a few changes may mak handling this a little easier.

Website updates
You’ve actually had some information on your web site. It’s a little slow on the update and a little lacking in details, but this is the ONLY method of getting informtion out of Singapore Airlines right now – as see below…
Your contact telephone numbers
You listed a Singaport +65 number, and a premium rate 0844 UK 5/min telehone number. I spent 1:45 trying to get through on Friday night, giving up around 1am. My wife sent another few hours split across 4am and 5am. I am on the hone to you now again for another 1:48 in a queue…. have spent £10+ on getting nowhere….
Announce queue positions when on hold
So as I said, thats a total of 3-5 hours on hold now, and I have no idea if I am close to being served… would be nice if you could tell me how many peole are infront of me
Have your phone system ring me back
Check out OrderlyQueue; instead of me holding on for 5 hours, how about your phone system takes my contact number and calls me back when you’re ready?
How about you call me from your web site?
Even better than having us call in, how about I enter my phone number, maybe email address, and perhaps ticket number or flight number, and you call me? You could then email me every 30 minutes to estimate when you’re going to call me back
Enough of the useless messages when I called in
You’ve repeated the same advice on hand luggage to me about every 60 seconds. It’s a little useless when flights are cancelled. You also have a second message that you’re playing to me in the queue, and you’re interrupting that one to play the second message about hand luggage. One at a time please.
Quality of the hold music
You need to turn it down a little. You’re distorting the audio, making it painful to listen to. It should be BACKGROUND music. I didnt call up to listen to your advertising. And play some music, not just the same advert for Singapore Airlines.
Twitter
You have a twitter account, but you only seem to put offers on there, not status updates – which would be really useful

O2: don’t call me to tell me to stop using an unlimited broadband!

Dear O2 Broadband,

I’ve been a customer now for about 3 months. In this time I have experienced:

  1. Spontaneous reboots of the O2 broadband wireless router every 30 seconds, forcing me to put my own router in; support forums are full of plenty of people talking about this
  2. Very slow Speedtest.net speed results of around 1 MB/sec on an 8 MB/sec line in the evenings; I live around 300′ from the Poplar, London exchange (that’s the copper run, not line of site)

Now you’ve rung me to tell me to use my broadband less. Now, I’m familiar with fair usage, but quite frankly, the poor performance of the service is enough to throttle any usage.

So, here’s a couple of tips:

  • Work out how you can not suck badly in the evenings. Ther’s supposed to be a 21CN upgrade from BT for this exchange in the Q2 2010; get some of that roadmap out and publicised as to what this means for your customers? Anything? Nothing?
  • Accept that you have a bad fimware on your routers. Confirm it as a known issue. Apologise for this. Advise people of workarounds. Stop using these crappy Thompson devices. You choose, just don’t keep burrying your heads in the sand.
  • Don’t hassle your customers for using the service they are paying for. You say Unlimited. You say “No matter which O2 Home Broadband package you’re on, there aren’t any limits on how much you can download or upload in a month. So you can use the Internet as much as you like, within reason. Our network’s been designed to cope with people downloading large files (like music or films) and watching video online. But if you’re using the service excessively – like continually downloading large files at peak times – then we do reserve the right to warn you to lower your usage. In exceptional circumstances, we can even terminate your account. This is because excessive use by a few people can reduce the speed that others in the same area get with O2 Home Broadband. We just want to provide everyone with an excellent level of service.” I am not on a 100 MB/s fibre link here, its an ADSL link. It is limited already at… well, you say 8 MB/sec, I see 1 MB/sec. That’s enough of a limit already. Indeed, for central london, E14, less than a mile from some of the biggest internet exchanges in the United Kingdom, how about you actually get some performance in here.

You suggested to me that you may terminate my account; well, you’re offering has performed pretty poorly, so I am tempted to leave anyway.