Daily Archives: October 25, 2007

Internet

Littlewoods recharge customers for online discount vouchers

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High street store Littlewoods have committed some PR suicide today by retracting a £25 online voucher that was redeemed by customers some months back. It seems the voucher was intended for a small portion of customers, but as is the case with these things was passed around like a cheap tart.

This code was then circulated, without our authorisation, through a number of websites resulting in around 3,000 customers obtaining a discount for which they were ineligible.

As a result, in accordance with clause 2.3 of our online terms and conditions we have re-charged this discount back to their accounts and have written to them individually to explain.

Recharging the customers for the extra £25 ensures that no one will ever trust any online vouchers Littlewoods offer in future. I certainly won’t. You never know if they’ll simply recharge your account some weeks, months or even years down the line if they need to increase the profit margins.

This all seems highly murky to me as obviously Littlewoods wouldn’t have had these sales had it not been for the voucher.

Putting their customers first? Not bloody likely

Direct Line Insurance, Royal & SunAlliance

Mr Daz becomes an affiliate of More Than Insurance

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If you remember a few weeks ago I applied to the affiliate scheme for Direct Line Insurance, the company who paid out the wrong person after my car was stolen and then recovered, and placed a stolen car marker on it refusing to release it for over a year. Consequently my car was in limbo while I continued to pay the loan on it and Direct Line refused to speak to me, save for to insist I hand the car over to them.

Well they refused this website’s entry into their affiliate scheme, which at least shows they pay attention when someone is going to ridicule them some more.

Royal & SunAlliance on the other hand, owned by More Than Insurance, haven’t been quite so careful. I’ve just been accepted into the More Than affiliate scheme, so can monetise my Royal & SunAlliance blogs with More Than adverts.

In case you’re unfamiliar where Royal & SunAlliance come into this, they’re the company who should have fixed my car after it had been recovered, and still haven’t done it some 15 months later.

If you would like a full recap on just how Direct Line Insurance and Royal & SunAlliance have cocked up simply read all of the blogs under the stolen car tag.

Halloween, Michael Jackson

Michael Jackson Thriller costume for Halloween

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If you remember last Halloween I bought two costumes, not sure if they’d both arrive in time. I bought a Michael Jackson Thriller jacket on eBay and a Jedi Knight Star Wars costume from Cloth Ears.

I decided to wear the Jedi costume, as it was marginally more expensive, and that proved to be a wise choice (as the photos in last year’s Halloween blogs show).

Well this year it’s the turn of Jacko and the Thriller costume. Now, I only have the Thriller leather jacket as I didn’t buy the full costume pictured here, so I’ll need to find some red trousers from somewhere, and a mullet wig… who do I know who has a mullet? Hmm…

Any road, it’ll be a good night and I will no doubt end up drunkenly busting some Thriller dance moves at some point, so expect the photos to make it here eventually.

Google

Google Penalises Blogs

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As the SEO Ninjas reported yesterday Google have been penalising websites all over the Internet in terms of their visible PageRank. Some sites have been hit as hard as dropping from a PR10 to a PR6. Perennial Google victim John Chow, who due to a previous Google punishment doesn’t even rank for his own name, has dropped from a PR6 to a PR4.

The popular theories for these punishments range from selling paid links to simply removing Google’s Adsense (not much chance of me doing that ;)). It must be said though that even with PageRank penalties such as these it shouldn’t effect your SERPs at all.

The fact that MrDaz.com is unaffected is actually slightly offensive. Why haven’t I been penalised? Ah well, never mind.