back to article Post Office complaints: Write to M.BARRASS

The El Reg Bootnotes soviet was tickled late last week by the entertaining tale of reader "Frank", who got in touch about a letter of complaint he wrote to the Post Office regarding its broadband service. We won't bore you with the details* of the scrap between Frank and the PO, but suffice it to say the former fired off an …

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  1. Anonymous Coward
    Happy

    was it signed-for by etch-a-sketch?

    Honestly, these 'leccy signature things are hilarious.

    Reminds me of a friend-of-a-friend on Facebook called Poly Esther. She's a synthetic bitch, I'm sure!! :-D

    1. Trevor_Pott Gold badge
      Heart

      @AC

      That's just...wow. That's B-movie levels of cult classic bad there. My brain can't decide whether to laugh out loud or groan. The result is horrifying.

      Well done and kudos.

  2. Mike Dimmick
    FAIL

    Use a proper control

    That kind of jagged mess is exactly what you get if you try to use a general-purpose image drawing control for signature capture. I wrote a dedicated control for signature capture for Pocket PC in 2001 which is a heck of a lot smoother than that.

    To be fair, it could be that the touch-screen is now horribly damaged and only reporting a few points - but it looks like the OS not reporting every point that the stylus went through, because the program took too long to process each point. No excuse on today's 500MHz ARM processors, a far cry from the 66MHz MIPS-based processor in the Pocket PC I wrote that control for.

    Pocket PC has an API GetMouseMovePoints to get all the points that the stylus went through - at the touchscreen resolution, typically four times the screen resolution - but I found I didn't need it.

    1. Chris Pearson
      FAIL

      title and such

      Last time I signed on one of those I couldn't make out a single letter in my signature, in effect any one could have signed.

  3. Anonymous Coward
    FAIL

    FACEPALM.

    Bridge Court is a BT building, not the Post Office. Thats up the road behind the railway station! There's no PO staff in the building.

    I'm sure M Barrass works in the postroom...

    AC because I work in said building.

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Barrass is a real surname and ...

      It looks like PO Homephone is just a reseller for BT Wholesale.

      So probably a funny co-incidence rather than a joke.

      It's also virtually impossible to sign one of those handhelds in a legible fashion, especially when someone else is holding it for you.

  4. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    T. Hanks is another good one

    Personally, I hate those signature devices like FedEX and UPS carry, since only 1/3 of my name fits in the space provided. "A. Squiggle' is another useful one.

    1. some vaguely opinionated bloke
      Joke

      so...

      ... do you sign as "Anony" or "Oward"?

  5. ChrisF18

    Post Office broadband

    Don't bother. Seriously. When I tell them my phone number, they say they've got a different one on file for me - even though they supply my landline too. It's beyond me how they can bill me, yet don't have that number on file...

  6. Mike Hunt 1
    WTF?

    What's in a name?

    For some reason people always snigger when I sign for stuff - what's that all about?

    1. Rasczak
      Joke

      Family

      How do your brothers Warwick and Isaac get on ?

  7. JaitcH
    WTF?

    Technology catches the technologist

    Just shows how unintelligent some people connected with technology can get.

    No doubt the fake signature writer will be identified in short order - then let's hope he learns his lesson. 7 days sitting in a park, without pay, should do it.

  8. AndrueC Silver badge
    Thumb Down

    Useless bleeders

    I sent a mobile phone back a couple of months ago (see the article on T-Mobile and Pulse Mini). All PO tracking ever said was something like 'This item cannot be delivered at the weekend, defer'. It was saying that several days after T-Mobile confirmed it had arrived.

  9. Jimbo 6
    Flame

    Don't blame the software

    The PO worker involved ALWAYS signs his name like that.

  10. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Martin

    I used to work with a Martin Barrass. He used to get pissed off with the number of people who thought it was a made up name.

    Having said that, it was nothing to the girl we had at another office called Michelle House. She signed for a package one day and the courier told her to stop taking the piss,

    1. Dave Gregory

      Barras

      He does the panto at York Theatre Royal every year, alongside Berwick Kayler.

      1. Neoc

        Wayne

        I used to know a Wayne Kerr. Wayne Bevin Kerr, to be exact.

        1. Anonymous Coward
          Anonymous Coward

          I knew a Richard Head

          But the Head family were "well hard", so no one dared call him Dick.

    2. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Real names

      Used to know a girl called Sarah Nade...

  11. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Why does it matter what name is on it?

    It's been signed for, and delivered to the addressee.

    What difference does it make what name is used?

  12. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Just imagine

    How bad it could get if the Post Office was privatised!

    Oh...

    Well.... you idiots voted conservative, it's your own fault!

    1. Apocalypse Later

      If only

      I remember when British Telecom was part of the post office. It is still pretty crap, but nothing like as bad as it was. Privatization will either improve or destroy the post office, and if destroyed it will be replaced by a better, private sector, business. Really up to the workers which.

    2. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      The Post Office is not being privatised..

      The Royal Mail Group consists of a number of separate entities ... UK Letters, Parcelforce and Post Office Ltd being the well known ones ... that's 3 independent but related brands. Although millions was spent on attempting to unify the brands under the Consignia name people kept on referring to the 3 brands and I guess a majority of people don't see any difference between them ... maybe they should have renamed it The RoyalMailParcelPostOfficeForce Ltd?

      Post Office Ltd (the stamp selling, passport checking, car taxing, currency swapping, insurance, telecoms and offshore [soon to be onshore] banking arm) is NOT currently down to be sold off and will remain in state control along with the RMG pension deficit.

    3. LinkOfHyrule

      Urm excuse me!

      Some of the idiots actually voted Lib Dem too!

      Oh and some voted Labour

    4. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Tory?

      "Well.... you idiots voted conservative, it's your own fault!"

      And what exactly was Mandy up to with the post office? Oh that's right he was trying to privatise it. Wasn't he part of a labour government? No doubt voted for by idiots.

      And no you can't wiggle out of it by reminding us that nobody voted for Mandy. Maybe they didn't, but they still voted for the government that made an unelected liar it's business secretary. A business secretary that seemed for some reason to have at least as much power as the prime minister. The whole Mandy thing was more sinister than anything else more that particularly sinister government got up to.

  13. An ominous cow heard
    Flame

    "Bridge Court is a BT building, not the Post Office"

    Post Office Broadband is, as another contributor already speculated, provided for the P.O. as a "white label" service from BTwoolsale. Therefore any incompetence should come as no surprise at all, although customer-facing incompetence is probably down to the P.O. rather than BTw.

    BT is of course the classic example of how privatisation automatically and inevitably cuts costs and improves quality. Isn't it.

    http://www.thinkbroadband.com/news/3251-post-office-broadband-service-up-and-running.html

  14. xj25vm

    Title

    Two years back (or so) I had a whole bunch of letters with signed-for delivery not showing up correctly on PO website. Even months after, the website kept on saying that the signature will appear only after the things were delivered - or some non-sense like that. I know the letters did actually make it to the recipient. But I needed the signature as a proof. I finally got around to calling their complaints department, who seemed quite helpful. They sent me about 7 forms to fill in (one for each unsigned letter). As I kept the receipt/stickers with serial numbers etc., I dutifully filled in every form, with the recipient's name and address for original letters, the content of each letter and all other details. After two weeks or so - they sent me back seven more identical forms, asking for all sorts of details they already had in the first forms. I stated quite clearly in the initial forms that there were just paper letters in the envelopes, nothing else. It was like they were just taking the piss. After I have paid several times more to get the letter signed for, then taken the time to wait on their 0845 number for their complaints department, then given them all the details on the phone, then filled in the initial set of forms - they expected me to spent the entire rest of my life following a mesmerising paper trail. Like I needed the £1.28 refund or whatever it was. I thought they might take the opportunity to look into why all those letters were never signed for. So much for customer service.

  15. Anonymous Coward
    Happy

    data capture

    interesting comment regarding the PocketPC crappy CPU and capturing of data points...there was an Android developer doc released last month pretty much devoted to this issue..showing the resolutions resulting from calling of the API cant recall the URL now but there should be no excuse

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