Mr Daz

In January this year I posted about the delivery company ‘Home Delivery Network’ (HDNL) and how they’d chucked my parcel over the side gate, which was 6 ft high, into a puddle in the pissing Manchester rain, to be soaked through all day.

The post really touched a nerve as it has now received over 100 comments from people who have also been angered by HDNL’s failure to deliver parcels, their lies, their blatant disregard for property and their driver’s utter stupidity. The post has also received comments from HDNL drivers attempting to defend their actions and their company, yet coming across as total morons (one even tried to spell moron and failed).

Now, to the serious bit. Whenever you order something from Amazon, and let’s face it most of us have, you run the risk of HDNL trying to deliver it. When, oh when, will Amazon drop this utterly useless, incompetent excuse for a delivery company? I’m reluctant to use Amazon anymore, and will always check any website’s delivery terms to see if they use HDNL before ordering.

I urge anyone and everyone to do the same. Do not use any website that uses Home Delivery Network for its deliveries.

This is my plea to Amazon, for your own sake, drop HDNL like a hot coal. They’re costing you orders. They’re costing you money. They’re costing your customers time, they’re harming your reputation. Drop them, drop them now, if you care about your customers.

Tags: Internet, Rants by MrDaz
10 Comments »

For a Sunday afternoon thought provoking post I’d thought I’d post about the current mortgage crisis in the UK, and what mortgage companies are doing about it. I hope none of this info has changed, because this post was written last Tuesday and set to go live because I’m on holiday this week.

Yeah, I’m probably pissed right now.

Anyway, back to my point. I recently looked at getting a mortgage through C&G for a property in Manchester, and a few months ago was told that I could get a 90% mortgage, which would mean I’d need a £9,000 or so deposit. No problems.

However, C&G, despite offering the 90% mortgage package on their site, aren’t actually offering 90% mortgages at the moment. Instead the best they’ll offer is a 75% mortgage, which means I’d need around £22,000 for a deposit, which I don’t have at the moment. Who does?

But… Lloyds TSB, who are C&G for the sake of arguing, will offer me up to £25,000 as a personal loan, which I could use as a deposit! So, they won’t offer me the £77,000 as a mortgage, secured on a property, but they will offer me the amount if it’s split up, and £25,000 of it is unsecured.

What the heck’s going on there?

No wonder there are people being repossessed left, right and centre. Lenders are giving the people the money, but in two lumps, making repayments higher, interest rates higher, and offering them unsecured.

Sort it out C&G and Lloyds TSB.

Tags: Rants by MrDaz
1 Comment »

The recent Watchdog programme on BBC1 showed a great number of students in Leeds who were unable to get their deposits back on lettings they’d taken out with Providence Properties and Tariq Zaman. We’ve received a great many comments and emails on the subject, with some people suggesting that Providence Properties had setup under a new website, Myhomez.co.uk.

In the Watchdog programme, Providence Properties stated that the deposits paid by students were paid to a company called Providence Lets, who they said were nothing to do with them, which is why students were unable to get their deposits back.

This all sounds fair enough; Providence Properties, Providence Lets and My Homez are all separate companies.

However, if you’re a bit of an expert online you can find out certain things that many people wouldn’t be able to. For example, Providence Properties domain name, providenceproperties.co.uk, is registered to Mohammed Ishaq. According to the Whois database, the registered address for Mohammed Ishaq is: 72, Victoria Road, Leeds, LS6 1DL, GB.

Nothing strange there.

Myhomez.co.uk however, is registered to Mohamed Ishaq, with the registrant’s address of: 72, Victoria Road, Leeds, LS6 1DL, GB.

The same person, with the same address. If you think back to the BBC Watchdog programme, where Providence Properties distanced themselves from Providence Lets, you might wonder if there is a website for Providence Lets as well. There isn’t, but there is a domain name: providencelets.co.uk.

Have a guess who that’s registered to… that’s right, Mohamed Ishaq. The registered address for providencelets.co.uk is 72, Victoria Road, Leeds, LS6 1DL, GB.

Incidentally, the website for Providence Properties, providenceproperties.co.uk, is hosted with 1and1 Internet, on the server with the IP address 87.106.210.120. An IP address for a server signifies the specific web server that the website is hosted on. If it’s a shared server there could be dozens of websites on there, if it’s a dedicated server there might only be one or two.

Domain Tools shows that there is one other website hosted on the same server as providencelets.co.uk… care to hazard a guess at what that website is?

That’s right; myhomez.co.uk is also hosted with 1and1 Internet, on the server with the IP 87.106.210.120.

They are the only two websites on that server.

If you look at the source code for the website providenceproperties.co.uk, you’ll see that the meta tags for the Keywords and Description form thus:

<meta name=”description” content=”Leeds student and professional letting estate agents providing student & professional accommodation and commercial property in Leeds City Centre, Headingley, Burley, Hyde Park and the surrounding areas.”>
<meta name=”keywords” content=”providence, properties, providence properties, letting agents in leeds, estate agents in leeds, student lettings, professional lettings, commercial lettings, professional accommodation, student accommodation, commercial property, corporate property, property for sale, sales, leeds, headingley, burley, hyde park, city centre, west yorkshire, uk”>

Nothing strange there, a letting agent in Leeds would have keywords like that. I wonder if the meta tags for myhomez.co.uk are very different. What do you think?

<meta name=”description” content=”Leeds student and professional letting estate agents providing student &amp; professional accommodation and commercial property in Leeds City Centre, Headingley, Burley, Hyde Park and the surrounding areas.” />
<meta name=”keywords” content=”MyHomez, properties, myhomez properties, my homez, letting agents in leeds, estate agents in leeds, student lettings, professional lettings, commercial lettings, professional accommodation, student accommodation, commercial property, corporate property, property for sale, sales, leeds, headingley, burley, hyde park, city centre, west yorkshire, uk” />

That’s pretty similar. It’s almost as if they were the same company, but of course they’re not.

In my industry, SEO, it’s very important that if you want two websites to appear unrelated from each other that you register them with different Whois details, with different registrars, host them with different hosting companies and on different servers. Otherwise it’s very easy for someone, or indeed Google, to identify that the websites are owned by the same person.

I’m not suggesting that that’s what Providence Properties and My Homez have done. I’m sure they’re completely unrelated websites, unrelated companies and have just been unlucky to end up on the same server, at the same host, registered to the same person, with the same meta tags.

Just unlucky I guess.

Tags: Rants by MrDaz
11 Comments »

You can tell I’ve got a week off when I’m complaining about Bargain Hunt, but why are they all so stupid? It’s a simple premise, you buy something cheap and sell it for a profit, yet so many of them fail. Why?

Bloody simple, they keep buying ‘antiques’ from dealer stalls at markets and from antique fairs, and try to sell them at auction. Where do they think the antique dealers bought the stuff from in the first place? From the auction!

If you want to make a profit in that game, they’re doing it the wrong way round. Buy from the auction and sell at the antique fair or market (like I’ve done in the past, and like my brother still does now).

It’s not frickin’ rocket science. If they want to sell at auction, they can do that if they buy cheap enough. Knocking a dealer down by £20 on a £100 vase isn’t going to make a profit at auction. If they buy the vase from the back of someone’s car outside the market, in the car boot sale area, for £5, then sell it for £80, they’re quids in!

You can’t buy from an antique market and sell at auction to make a profit. Idiots.

Yet still they keep doing it, week after week, almost always losing money (note the spelling, one ‘o’ in losing) or if they do make a profit it’s not enough to cover their seller fees and petrol.

Leave the antique dealing to the experts!