Rant: The Price of Postage

Something has angered me. Confused me also, but mainly angered.

I went to my local convenience store today to buy some stamps, as I need to post a letter to HMRC about my taxes. It's not an urgent letter - in fact the taxman has already admitted he'll take up to 6 weeks to even read it - so I decided to do the cost-conscious thing and buy a book of 2nd class.

£6 later, and I have a book of 12 stamps - that's 50p each. I remember when, not so long ago, a 1st class stamp was 34p. Now, it turns out, a 1st is only 10p more than a 2nd, at 60p.

Forgive me for noting this, but is the whole point of 2nd class to be an inferior service for the price-conscious consumer? Yet the Royal Mail website boasts that even 2nd class mail is to be delivered in a couple of working days.

I'd much rather have the price dropped back to, say, 30p, with the expectation that my not-very-important letter will get there in a week, maybe 10 days, and most likely be stained with whatever the postman has been eating that day.

And the Royal Mail wonders why less and less people are using their services...

DEAL ALERT: 30 Free Facebook Credits

I'm not sure how long this offer will last, but provided you're willing to let Facebook have your bank card or PayPal details ("incase you want to buy more credits in the future"), you can have 30 of the things for free.

I think you can use them to buy stuff for Zynga games, if [insert-word-here]Ville floats your boat...

Click here for the scoop.

Oh, and once you've linked your PayPal account to your Facebook account and claimed your free credits, you can unlink them again by clicking here.

Amex Posts Customer's Card Details on Twitter

In this day and age of identity theft and card fraud, our banks are always telling us to be secure, keep our cards safe, and protect ourselves against online nasties.

It's comforting to know, then, that American Express have seen it fit today to pick up on a customer posting a photo of their kid eating their charge card, forgo the sensible thing of actually warning the customer and sorting them out with a new card, and instead RETWEETING THE PHOTO on their own @AmexUK feed.

Here's the offending tweet and picture: (click it for larger)

On the full size photo (which I'm not going to post for obvious reasons), you can clearly make out the full long card number, as well as the expiry date and the cardholder's name. I've managed to read off the entire card number and verify that it's a real card number, as the checkdigit and numbering conventions match - so no security-photoshopping has gone on either.

Indeed, the 4-digit CVV is hidden inside the little child's mouth, but you don't need that to buy things at places like Amazon.com or Walmart.com - they simply don't ask for it.

Let's just hope that Mr Marc Lee finds out about this before his (I presume) wife Jilly, who tweeted the photo, has caused him to rack up a lot of debt. Remember Amex chargecards don't have a predefined spending limit... Oops.

Samsung Focus S and the Case of the Phantom Signal

I've been using a Samsung Focus S for the last few months. It's normally an AT&T exclusive, but I won it in Las Vegas so I got it unlocked.

However, it's been doing something weird. See if you can spot what, from the following photo.

Yes, your eyes do not deceive you. It's receiving a call while it's got no service.

It's worth pointing out that the unlock was a code-unlock, so the firmware hasn't been changed in any way, and it's not been jailbroken or hacked about at all.

The problem lies in that it thinks it has no service when it actually does, so it will receive calls and texts, but won't allow anything out - complaining that it has no signal before actually checking to see if that's really the case.

Very frustrating.

Bridgwater - Land of No Fun

Something the locals have known for ages, Bridgwater is generally not the most fun place in the world.

In a bid to change this perception though, the Town Council decided to put on a "Family Fun Day" today - where people could turn out in their masses and have a bit of a get together.

They were greeted with this scene (click and drag to look around). Now, there were definitely people about, but see if you can spot any fun...