review
Be Broadband – a tragic end to a lovely relationship
This is a rant – and one that I hope ends up in the MD of Be Unlimited‘s lap. Sir, this is directed at you & your organisation.
I was a customer of yours for years. I took my connection to 2 or 3 properties whilst a student in Southampton, and then on to my new house in Wiltshire when I’d finished Uni. I then bought a new house, which was in an area you couldn’t service. I cancelled my contract (reluctantly), and sent back my modem. Then, suddenly, without any notice whatsoever 11 MONTHS LATER, I suddenly get a letter from a debt collection agency telling me I owe you money. It’s only £30-odd, but did I hear from you first? Did I receive any letters, emails or calls (you have all this information)? No. The first I hear is a debt collection agency sending me a letter. A final notice letter, all in red. Beautiful. So I call you guys, explain my problem to an agent, who tells me you did send me emails etc – and SMS messages, apparently. I said I’d never got them, and asked to be resent any/all of these messages – which he said he would. That was 3 or 4 days ago, and I’ve still not received any. I KNOW you have the right details on file because you confirmed them to me when I called.
I used to be an evangelist of your products: I even recommended one or two customer. Now I’d recommend people stay away, which – dramatically – is a most terrible and tragic legacy of this relationship. Well done. You handled this break-up really well.
That’s it. Thanks for reading. I guess I’ll just pay this scary debt for fear of being credit blacklisted – which is exactly what I don’t want right now given that I’ve just bought my first house and just become a new father. The issue of whether I owe the money isn’t in question here: it’s the way in which I was never told and referred to a debt collector.
:: Update (26th September): Progress? ::
So, after getting in touch with the MD Chris Stening directly via LinkedIn, I’ve already received a missed call from Be customer services who want to talk to me again about the situation. This feels like progress: I’ll update tomorrow when I’ve spoken to them.
Transcript so far below:
Hi Chris, Thanks very much for the reply. I am sorry to trouble you directly with this, but you seem to be the only way I can get anywhere with this situation. I did indeed receive a call from your billing dept, and have just had a chat with them. Over a week ago, when I first spoke to them, I asked them to resend the emails that I should’ve received alerting me to the amount I owed – bearing in mind this is money supposedly owed from nearly a year ago. I didn’t receive anything. Having just spoken to them, they’ve resent me some billing PDFs (to a different email address). These PDFs are confusing, in honesty: I moved house in October 2010 – which is roughly when I called to cancel because Be couldn’t service the area I’d moved to.
These bills:
- Reference charges for December…
- With a phone number I had in my last residence…
- For a physical address I lived in back in 2009
For a company that relies on accurate address data to actually provide their service, this is a pretty crap customer experience, I’m sure you’ll agree. No wonder I didn’t have any warning before being sent to a debt collection agency. I’d appreciate your intervention here. I’d love to become an advocate again for Be’s products: right now, I’m doing the opposite. Thanks again for your help. George
On 09/26/11 11:02 AM, Chris Stening wrote:
Hi Sorry about this. I’ve asked our Billing team to call you to resolve – apparently they have left a message this afternoon. Please let me know if this is not quickly resolved for you. Apologies again and I hope one day we can welcome you back as as a customer
Thanks Chris
On 09/26/11 7:09 AM, George Rosier wrote:
Hi Chris: sorry for the unorthodox comms method – but I keep getting messages from a Debt Collection agency on Be’s behalf. I’ve not been a customer for over a year now so this is surprise to me I’d like to add you on LinkedIn to discuss, seeing as your call centre can’t/won’t help – G Rosier
0AXA Sun Life – usability issues
Recently, I had cause to help someone manage their life insurance account online. This isn’t hugely exciting in itself, and actually points to my somewhat misguided tendency to try and ‘help’ people with the Internet…but what it did uncover was a frankly terrible online journey for AXA.
Given their wide-ranging portfolio of insurance products, and indeed the propensity for customer churn in that market sector with the rise & rise of price comparison sites etc…well, you’d expect their online presence to be pretty good in order to give customers one less reason to defect to another brand.
Are they redefining standards? No.
AXA, you failed. And I reckon you failed because you’ve become complacent with your website (or haven’t ever done any usability studies on it). Read on and find out why!
The scenario
Existing life insurance customer wants to login to change some details.
The journey
Armed with a paper copy of the account details, I’m already a bit mystified as to where to go. Nowhere on any of the documentation does it mention a web address to visit. However, plastered all over the docs are the AXA logo – proud and blue with a lovely red stripe on it (not the Jamaican beer, unfortunately), so I bash that into Google and the .co.uk site appears top. Off we go…
Click to enlarge
That massive white letterbox there is the crap Flash banner that’s been adblocked by Chrome. Tip #1: if you’re going to use shitty banners, make sure they are hosted on your site so that adblockers don’t block ‘em.
So, on this homepage I’m looking for a way to login. Here’re the problems:
- There is no obvious login area: there’s nothing in the top right (the usual place for login functionality), and nothing in the footer
- There’s no clear hierarchy: loads of similar-looking links, and nothing stand-out to draw the eye
- Ooh look – an ‘Existing customers’ box on the right: except…I’m looking for a login for a Life Insurance policy, but there’s nothing like that in the drop-downs
- Ah, ok – there’s a drop-down in the Insurance top-nav for ‘Manage my policy’ – this could be it!
So, according to this it’s only Travel & Home. Dammit. Ok ok, so there’s another link in the top-nav to ‘Life & Protection’…let’s try there. I’m then treated to this message:
On 15 September 2010, Resolution Limited acquired the majority of AXA’s UK life assurance businesses. Both AXA and Resolution would like to reassure customers that your policy terms and conditions are in no way affected by this acquisition
We’re then given a link to the Sun Life Direct website. Is this where I’m meant to go? I don’t have a Sun Life policy. ARGH!
Conclusion
AXA, if the user can’t login to manage their life policy, you need to tell them. If they can, make it obvious. This infuriated me and the person I was trying to help (not least because I’m supposed to know what I’m doing On The Internet – and now you’ve made me look silly).
Oh yeah, and your footer still says ©2010. That’s soo last year.
1Site review: Legal & General
The Legal & General site (www.legalandgeneral.com) has undergone a rebrand, as has their offline material. As one of the largest life insurance brands, their new brand guidelines should be pretty good. I thought I’d review the site in terms functionality, design and usability.
Smith & Milton were appointed to do the work. How did they get on? Is it an Apple-esque poem of usability and customer-focussed design? Or have they missed the mark? Read on and find out!
0Mrs B’s Caring Catering – review (offline)
I got married a few months ago. The day was great, and we’re happy…therefore it’s with regret that I post this (rather scathing) review of the caterers. Clearly this isn’t a website review, so if that’s all your here for, you can skip this. If not, read on.
We hired Mrs B’s Caring Catering for our wedding reception. They were local, and have been around for a while. They have catered for other events at our reception venue, and therefore know the ins & outs of the place…so it all seemed like a good plan.
Our first meeting was disorganised from the start: the receptionist/secretary had told Mrs B we’d be meeting at our house – whilst we’d actually arranged to meet her at a local pub. So not off to a good start, but hey – nothing lost yet.
After that…well, it’s probably best explained by copying & pasting the letter I’ve had to send to the company:
Dear sir/madam,
We have phoned your office three times since the event on the 24th September to discuss the fact that the invoice you sent was for too much money. The key items in question were:
- 30 covers @ £10 per head (£300)
This was never agreed: it was explicitly discussed that the 50 covers @ £15 per head would be made to last the day by bringing them out in two lots/servings. This is evident on the written notes. - Cake stand & knife hire (£625)
According to the invoice, you have billed for twenty five cake stands @ £25 each, coming to a total of £625. We only needed (and indeed received) one. - Overall costs were agreed at the meeting
It was explicitly outlined that our budget was around £1,100 – £1,200. Whilst we appreciate there may be the need to go a little over budget to accommodate the event, £925 extra is unacceptable. If this kind of overspend was looking likely, we should have been informed before any decisions were made.
When we contacted your office to discuss, Ruth was never available to speak with but we had been assured that she knew of our concerns, and that:
- She would contact us directly to discuss
- We would receive an amended invoice to reflect the errors
To date, we have received neither. Therefore, we have had to adjust the invoice amount manually ourselves. Please see the following page for the final – correct – breakdown. Please also find enclosed a cheque for £x,xxx.xx to cover the amount.
We cannot wait for your billing department to realise that there is still a payment outstanding, let alone correct the errors.
It is unfortunate that this is how business has concluded, since the staff & food on the day were great: to be let down by fundamental administrative errors is a shame.
Regards,
George & Alice Rosier
So, all in all, a shame that it ended this way. £625 for cakestands?! An extra £300 for covers that we explicitly said we didn’t want? And, just to add to the sham, a disorganised admin department that:
- Messed up the bill
- Doesn’t ever seem to know what the owner is doing
- Apparently doesn’t pass on messages
- Doesn’t chase invoices
- Hasn’t responded to the above letter
- Still – to this day – hasn’t cashed the cheque we sent them
They’ve got until the 1st January to cash it: if they’ve not cashed it by then, I’m cancelling/stopping it.
Rant/review over. My advice? Avoid them.
2Site review: easyjet.com
Firstly, apologies for the silence: Real Life seems to be happening, and Twitter has taken a backseat – as have reviews. Anyway: I’m back! 
I was recently looking at flights to Greece, and as part of my research phase I visited the ubiquitously-orange EasyJet site…and I bet you can guess what’s coming up next! Yup – Review Time! God, my life’s incredible.
How did it fare? Do the bargain-basement brand values carry through to their site? Read on and find out!
Disclaimer: I’ve used false dates for the purposes of this review – so don’t bother coming to my house to steal my pants on the dates shown in the screenshots. I will be in, and will summarily execute underwear thieves. Unless you come bearing fig rolls, in which case you’ll be robbed of them first – and then executed. Understood? Good.
Another disclaimer: If you don’t like the colour orange, don’t read this article.
1Microsoft’s User Experience kit
I was about to go have a look at the new MS ‘User Experience’ kit – but what an amazing quality user experience I’m having before I’ve even loaded it:
Great user experience for me...
I’ll review it later when I’ve been forced to install bloody Silverlight (*vomits into his own shoes*)
0New Firefox 3.6 themes: completely pointless?
I am a long-time user of Firefox, and generally think it to be a good browser. I’ve toyed with Google Chrome, but generally find myself coming back to Firefox.
As such, I recently updated my version of Firefox to 3.6. Having successfully upgraded, I am taken to this page:
Click to enlarge
(http://www.mozilla.com/en-US/firefox/3.6/whatsnew/)
How pretty! It proudly tells me:
Thanks for supporting Mozilla’s mission of encouraging openness, innovation and opportunity on the Web!
It’s here that I start to have issues (other than the ones you are abundantly aware of).
Issue 1:
How exactly have I “supported Mozilla’s mission of encouraging openness, innovation and opportunity on the Web!”? Because I’ve updated my browser? Feels like Mozilla are disappearing up their own sockets.
Issue 1a:
In addition to the above, if you click the link for ‘Mozilla’s mission’, you’re taken to a page that explains who they are and what they do. Point #2 on that page says:
We’re a public benefit organization
dedicated not to making money but to improving the way people everywhere experience the Internet.
Um: so what about all that kick-back revenue Mozilla get from Google by having them as the default search engine for Firefox? 
Issue 3:
From a web usability angle, this is the bigger one. On this ‘update’ page, the user is informed they can choose from over 35,000 themes for Firefox. At first, you think “That’s awesome!”
And then you mouseover some of these themes to try them out – only to realise that, for anyone other than a basic user with no bookmarks on their toolbar, or any toolbar extensions – the majority are unusable. Check out the screenshot below of how one of these themes looks on my version of Firefox with various extensions:
Click to enlarge
How is that any use to anyone?!
Rant over.
4Virgin Holidays: your homepage needs prioritising
Is it just me, or is this homepage a bit bonkers? I can just imagine what the eyetracking results from this would look like: a crazed bluebottle bouncing around a windowpane.
Click to enlarge
I feel another review coming on…watch this space.
0Route One review – redux
Back in 2008, I reviewed the Route One website (here). Aside from that being ages ago (time flies), I recently stumbled across the site again – they’ve undergone a redesign! That’s cause for a) celebration, and b) another review.
To recap, the main issues with the old site were:
- Crazy homepage with bonkers messages
- No hierarchy in terms of buttons, messages, actions or otherwise
- Badly-built (all in tables)
- Strange combination of design templates
So has the redesign gone well? Did they sort out those issues? Or have they become Route Bum? Read on and find out!
0Site review: Virgin Holidays ‘Weddings’ section
Hello! I’ve not written a scathing review of a website for a while, so I thought I’d drop this little gem on you.
For one reason and another, I was recently forced inclined to look for more information regarding weddings abroad – specifically in the Caribbean. Drop ‘caribbean wedding‘ into Google, and the Virgin Holidays (www.virginholidays.co.uk) brand appeared top of the results. Having worked for Mr Branson in the past (and generally thinking his products are pretty good), I went and had a look.
How did I get on? Was the site virginal, or did it more resemble a loose woman of the night? Read on…
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