Monthly Archives: September 2008

Google, Internet

Computeach reviews?

27 Comments

When I posted about the IT Training company Computeach last year, I was slightly shocked at the number of negative comments the post received from people who had received bad experiences with the company. It’s one of my most commented blog posts.

Just last week however someone commented on the post asking where you can get legitimate reviews of Computeach, so I had a look and found a website that offers Computeach Reviews.

When you search for ‘computeach reviews’ in Google, you’ll see a sponsored link (on Adwords) for a site that offers:

Read real stories and experiences from students of Computeach!

When you click through to the site you’re presented with Computeach Reviews from supposedly real students, however all is not what it seems. The website computeach-reviews.co.uk isn’t a website offering genuine balanced reviews from people who have taken Computeach courses; it’s a website owned by Computeach.

The whois details show thus:

Domain name:
computeach-reviews.co.uk

Registrant:
Andrew Jones

Registrant type:
UK Limited Company, (Company number: 1242854)

Registrant’s address:
University House
Jews Lane
Dudley
West Midlands
DY3 2AH
GB

These are the details for Computeach… interesting isn’t it? If you’re genuinely looking for real reviews for Computeach, you’re better off going to a truly impartial source, such as ciao.co.uk.

It’s important before you spend any money on a product or a learning course that you seek out reviews online from impartial sources, and people who have already experienced what you’re looking for,

Internet

BD Recruitment reply to my post

6 Comments

A while back the recruitment agency BD Recruitment sent out a spam email to every SEO in the North West, with the contact details visible for all of them. A schoolboy error to say the least. After I posted the tale of how they’d done that, I was contacted by BD Recruitment via Linked In.

The message said thus:

Hi Darren,

I saw your little piece on BD Recruitment on Mr Daz. What can I say apart from everything you said was right. However, Sandra is a trainee and didn’t really think about what she was doing with that email, and will certainly not do it again.

I have worked very hard to get BD Marketing to where it is today. We have testimonials from Mediacom, Mindshare, OMD and many of the top agencies in the World. I have placed many very senior SEM specialists in to various successful agencies around the UK and have also placed people that you know personally.

I’m sorry that you have had this experience with BD but I assure you that this will never happen again.

Paul Lewis

Now that’s all fine, but following this BD Recruitment were contacted and asked not to try and poach our staff by contacting them direct. However they have done this again, via a woman named Stephanie Pender from BD Recruitment.

Just what is it about recruitment agencies and their desire to poach staff from businesses, even if they’ve dealt with the business themselves in the past? They’re just ruining relationships they already have.

Paul, thanks for the apology, but do stick to your word and steer clear. Tell Sandra and Stephanie to do the same.

Direct Line Insurance

Direct Line Insurance try to con me

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My experiences with the liars and cheats at Direct Line have been well documented on this website, when they paid out the wrong person after my car was stolen and how they refused to admit their mistake. Well now they’re at it again. My insurance (with Direct Line Insurance) expired in August and I’d never received any sort of renewal notice from them. It seemed as if they weren’t interested, so I simply went to a new company for my insurance.

I probably should have done that years ago in truth, Direct Line Insurance are woeful. Now, I received a letter this week from Direct Line saying I owed them money! It seems they renewed my insurance anyway without telling me, and wanted me to pay them.

I just phoned them (recording the call of course) and they said they’d sent me a renewal note, a reminder about payment and my documents! Bollocks had they. I have one letter from them here, a demand for money saying I owe them for two months.

They claim that someone from their accounts department will call me, though I won’t hold my breath. They seem to forget that I record everything.

I am not insured with Direct Line Insurance anymore. I am not giving them money. I had no renewal notice, I do not even know how much they think I’m paying for this supposed year’s insurance. I am insured with someone else, Direct Line can piss off and die.

Internet, Rants

Facebook backlash over redesign, millions of chavs set to fuck off back to MySpace

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Regular users of Facebook will have noticed that the website introduced a new design a few months ago, but gave the option to revert back to the old one. Naturally, as many people dislike, and in many cases, fear change, quite a few people did revert back to the old one.

However, the new design is now compulsory, and it’s caused those people who prefer the old one to complain. There have been Facebook groups, complaints and even threats of leaving the website, all from these people who dislike the new design.

Now, I can’t keep calling them ‘these people’… I’ll need something more descriptive, more accurate. I know, tossholes.

Tossholes such as these:

“This layout is garbage,” writes Andrew Wadup. “Why fix what ain’t broken? Keep the old version,” pleads Eddie Santos.

Those were comments left on the notice board on the site.

Facebook meanwhile stated about their new design:

We set out to make Facebook simpler, cleaner, more relevant, and easier to control. With your feedback and participation, we believe we’ve gotten to the best Facebook yet.

The new design is different, and we understand that some people will be uncomfortable with the changes. But over time, we think people will appreciate the advantages of the new design and the new features it offers.

You see, Facebook redesigned to stop all of the crap that idiots add to their profile pages appearing whenever you click on their profile. I for one was fed up of clicking on the profile of someone who came from MySpace (you know the sort of person I mean) and they had twenty million applications added to their page, which meant the page took eight years to load. Shit like the vampires app, the pirates app, the superwall, funwall, superpoke and other such crap that idiots felt they needed to add. All of it garbage.

Well, the new Facebook hides that shit away in tabs, so the MySpace crowd can be as dumb as they like and add as much shit as they like without bothering the rest of us. Now the MySpace crowd are complaining, and are even threatening to leave Facebook.

Good, fuck off back to MySpace you chav scum shitbags, take your shitty applications with you.

This is what happens you when let anyone join, I say keep Facebook elite and demand at least a university degree before people sign up.

Complaints, Internet

BD Recruitment send email ccing every SEO in the North West

8 Comments

Anyone who sends bulk emails to customers knows the importance of the ‘BCC’ field. It means Blind Carbon Copy, when you use it, everyone who receives the email doesn’t see everyone else’s email address. However, occasionally, you get idiots who send emails in bulk, and forget to use the BCC field, or in some cases don’t even know what it means.

One such idiot was Sandra Wong of BD Recruitment, who last week emailed every SEO in the North West area touting for people looking for a job, and visibly cc’d everyone in. So, we could all see which companies they emailed, who they emailed and, in the case of this particular peice of spam, the replies from the not so happy recipients.

Sandra Wong, from BD Recruitment, sent the following spam email to me, and many others:

Hi

I’m just checking to see if you are looking for a new career opportunity at the moment.

If you’re not, and know of anybody with a similar skill set to yourself then please refer them to me because if they secure a position through us we will give you a £15 HMV voucher.

This offer will be running until the end of this year so please save this message in your email account because for example if you recommend just 3 friends who all secure positions with us that’s £45 of vouchers for yourself, the more you recommend the more likely they will secure positions and the more vouchers you will get as a result.

I deal with online marketing but if you know of anybody in the technical department i.e. web developers or creative i.e. web designers. Any referrals who secure jobs with these departments also guarantees you £15 worth of HMV vouchers per candidate placed.

I look forward to your reply.

Sandra Wong
Specialist Online Marketing Recruitment Consultant
BD Recruitment Ltd

Consequently, dozens of people replied and slated Sandra Wong for her error, and demanded that they be removed from BD Recruitment’s database. Myself included. I imagine that BD Recruitment made a lot of enemies because of this, and lost an awful lot of potential clients.

That is of course, IF they removed the people who requested it. I wouldn’t be surprised to see an email from BD Recruitment again soon, as anyone stupid enough to CC in their entire mailing list also would have the bad taste to email everyone again when they think the heat has died down.

Rants, Star Wars

Want a Nintendo Wii? Become a child murderer!

1 Comment

In ten days the Star Wars game comes out on the Wii, and I’ve been planning on getting one just for that game. Thing is, the Wii is £179, which isn’t cheap. I’d quite like one for free.

Wouldn’t we all?

Of course getting a Nintendo Wii for free isn’t really going to happen, unless I murder two ten year old girls. Yes, that would do it.

No, I haven’t got mad… but I am pretty mad, there is a difference. You see, the Soham murderer Ian Huntley, who tortured and killed the two ten year old girls Holly Wells and Jessica Chapman, has a Nintendo Wii, and he had one for free.

Worse yet, the taxpayer, me, paid for it!

It seems that the murdering scumbag was given a Wii by the government to stop him going through with his threats to commit suicide. Call me heartless, but so what if does? Does the world really need to keep a child killer alive and entertained in the lap of luxury?

A spokesman for the prison service stated:

Huntley has been asking for a Wii for months.

When he moved to Frankland in February he was given a Nintendo Game Cube – but after only a few weeks he began complaing it was out of date.

Management are desperate to stop him going though with threats he’s made to kill himself and by giving him a Wii they believe they can take his mind away from harming himself in any way.

Many of them don’t want to get involved with him because of his crimes.

But they know it’s more than their jobs are worth if they don’t comply.

I can’t imagine why nobody wants to get to know him, he seems like such a nice chap!

He has almost everything done for him and is waited on hand and foot by the officers assigned to his care.

He lives in luxury – yet the parents of Holly and Jessica are living a nightmare.

How sick is this world? Kill two young girls and get a free Wii.

General

To buy or not to buy

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A few weeks ago I tried to buy a house. I wasn’t particularly looking, I just so happened to notice that the one a few doors down was for sale, and as I’m renting it seemed like an idea. A mortgage would be cheaper than my rent currently, and the house was something of a bargain.

In fact the house was a serious bargain. I checked the land registry and found that the most expensive house in our close was over £180,000, sold in the last 18 months, and is the one I’m living in right now! The house for sale is identical, except that’s it the other end of the row, so it’s in reverse, if you get the drift. It last sold for around £146,000 18 months ago (quite a price difference).

Now, it was up for sale a few months ago for £120,000 – the housing market has caused a serious problem in prices, as you can see. However it was then reduced again, to £99,950.

Ruddy hell, that’s a loss of £46,000 for the vendor. As it turns out though, they sold it to the housing builder, in exchange for a larger property, so they probably did OK as the larger property would have come down in price too, probably by more than this one. No doubt they did OK, whoever buys this house would also do OK, the only loser would be the house builders… a plan with no drawbacks then!

To be cheeky, I offered £89,950 – some £56,000 less than it sold for 18 months ago. It wasn’t accepted, but they did accept my next offer of £91,500. Great I thought, that’s a real bargain. Then I heard someone had bid more than me and they’d accepted that offer too, could I increase my bid? No, I couldn’t. I was sure they were having me on and trying to get some more cash out of me.

I stood my ground, and now, some five weeks later, the house still has ‘for sale’ on it, even though it says ‘under offer’ on Right Move.

So has the house sold? Has the new seller pulled out? Did the new seller exist in the first place?

I wonder, but I’ll try the estate agent again in a week or so and see how things are progressing. It’s a good buy, if you can get a mortgage, so I wouldn’t mind owning it… We’ll see what happens. As I didn’t have any problems with the mortgage when I spoke to my mortgage advisor, who’d completed his CeMAP training years ago, I could go higher in price, I just didn’t want to.

Complaints

Messy people at work

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Some people just can’t help leaving their rubbish everywhere. I just popped into the kitchen and found that there’s a load of drinks cans just dumped in a cardboard box. How messy is that? Furthermore, whoever put the box there can’t even spell ‘bicycle’ – it doesn’t start with the letter ‘R’!!!

Though why there’s a box full of cans and the attempt at the word bicycle on the side in the kitchen I don’t know.

Suffice to say I threw them in the bin, where they should be.