Stuck with the bad : Humax Foxsat-HDR

OK, my next gripe, recording from TV in the digital age. So in the age of VCR, we put a tape in, pressed record and viola, it recorded.

We still have some VHS tapes, namely home videos, many that have been transferred to DVD, and some that haven’t. Yes we still have a VCR to do this with. I gave my Stargate Collection, recorded from Sky Digital, with the breaks painstakingly removed, to a local charity shop some two years ago. They were heavy and bulky, and the picture quality looks awful in the hi-def age. Oh and what a waste of time it was to record them so diligently, what was I on back then?

Anyway, back to today, and here’s my problem, all I want to do is this:-

Watch the odd series pre-recorded on a series link, preferably in HD, and maybe the odd movie once or twice a month.

Keep a series or, shock horror, two, on a hard disk based system.

I don’t want to pay a subscription charge, the free to air stuff is fine thank you.

Not throw endless money at trying to achieve the above.

That is pretty much it.

Cable  TV is not an option, despite living just a few miles from the centre of one of Britain’s largest cities, the road was dug, a cable laid, and then the company putting it in went bust, so whilst people all around us have cable our little pocket doesn’t, thought we do have a gigantic ugly green BT fibre optic broadband box right outside our house. 18Mbits suit us just fine, I am not interested.

So a satellite solution is the only option. To this end I own a Sky HD Box and a Humax Foxsat HDR (500GB) box.

The problem? In a word, both can’t do what I want, I feel like saying they’re both rubbish etc. but that would be how I feel about them, and not really nailing down the why.

So the ‘why’….

Interruption to thread : Oh good grief! I kept the shift key pressed a bit too long thinking of the next word to write and that Sticky keys nonsense started up and locked my keyboard up until I found the tray icon and turned it off, another one of life’s little nuisance thanks to modern technology (Windows 7).

.. anyway, the ‘why’ short version…

The Sky HD box, likes to crash, and you have to pay for the recording feature to work, £10 a month I’ve been lead to believe.  So I’ve no idea yet how a series link will fare on it, as once or twice a week, you turn it on, and it’s dead. Time to unplug and wait a few minutes. It’s a bit better since the more recent firmware updates. Cost was £80 (used).

The Humax box clips recordings that are on series link, at least a quarter, probably more like a third of the episodes I record have their last few minutes missing and few have their start clipped instead. That’s a deal breaker, makes programmes not worth watching. Humax support just ignored my e-mail about it, and yes the firmware is up to date, but it’s 6 months old, so they don’t update often. Cost me £250, and I paid this because the reviews were so glowing, e.g. What HiFi gave it 5 stars no less.

Long (boring) version.

The Sky HD box’s crashing syndrome, I doubt it would be improved upon significantly by having a newer box, when we did have Sky Digital and Sky+ subscriptions, it was much the same story, the boxes (yes some were replaced, Thompson, Amstrad, Pace, had ‘em all in various guises) did like to lock up needing a mains plug pull followed by a good long wait whilst it redetected  channels etc. The recorded media is not organised, other than one large list of recorded programs, that are just ordered chronologically, and that’s it. However until I used the Humax box, I didn’t appreciate what it does very well, which is work very well in every other respect. It’s fast and responsive, hardly any lag ever, and when I had Sky+ many moons back, and I can’t remember it ever cutting off the end of a recording. I did have vague memory of it doing so maybe more than once, but I can’t remember the incident. I know there are millions of Sky customers who are using Sky+ and the series link works all the time, and there are no or very few crashes. Then again people love the Humax box…. It’s me as well, not wanting to pay the fee, and here comes the worst bit, if you decided to stop paying, you can’t watch your recordings anymore! Another big turn off. In the age of people happily paying £45 a month for Sky, I probably look like some form of luddite. Well we had such packages and we ended up with a humongous amount of stuff recorded that we never had the time to watch. So we cancelled it.

Back to the Humax box. It’s difficult to live with. It has one awful remote control, a really turgid user interface and operates in two modes to give you something approaching Sky’s free to air coverage, that are a pain to switch between, normal satellite, where the planner no longer allows series link etc. or go back to setup, and find the option to go back to a limited subset, under the Freesat banner.

Slow to start…

First up it takes an absolute age to ‘BOOT’ up, unless it was already recoding something scheduled, in which case it’s instant. If you feel like eating something in front of the telly and think you’ll watch a few minutes of something, well you won’t. You’ll end up watching the word ‘BOOT’ on its LCD for a while, and will probably have finished a packed of crisp by the time you get a picture.

Slow to use… and that remote…

I've played with a good number of PVR's and this is by the slowest I have ever used. Initially you can't tell if it's the remote control causing the lag, or whether the box is slow. Well it's both. The remote is badly laid out and the rubber keys do need a firm press, the nice looking silver ring used as a directional cursor more so than the rest of the keys. The ‘play’ key for example, which is one that's used quite a lot, is placed in a cluster just above the center to the left. This is frustrating in the extreme, on most PVR’s it is a LARGE key, why they made it so small and placed it in such an awkward to reach place is beyond me, it appears to defy common sense.

So I set up a multi-remote a cheap but functional One 4 All jobby. It was then that I noticed that the unit itself is also slow to respond. At least now I know it’s the unit and I could now stop repeatedly pressing keys harder in hope of a quicker response. You fast forward an ad, and oh no your left pressing the play button repeatedly as it whizzes past, then you rewind. Repeat three times, and you end up spending quarter of the time the das would have taken, so your ahead in terms of time saves, but it’s annoying.

The guide looks fantastic, but is again turgid and slow in use, worse still it buffers key presses, as one makes one too many key presses, it goes way past the target timeframe one was looking for. The media section that keeps the series you record in nice neat folders is quite nice, and not quite as slow, but still no match for the speed of a Sky HD’s episode list.

It chops things, and we’re not talking about your fresh veg…

So you can set up a series link to record all the episodes of a particular series. Nothing new and this is what I bought it for in the first place. It is this feature’s implementation that provably breaks the camel’s back. Almost every other recording it makes is truncated. The end will be missing! Fantastic, so you have an episode of the Big Bang Theory recorded (oops’ I’ve fessed up to one of the two series I have recorded, the 2^nd one is much more embarrassing, but not Rules of Engagement or desperate House Wife’s, it’s not THAT bad), the full 20 minutes or so of actual program time after you skip the ads, it didn’t bother recording. It ends a few minutes short, and you don’t get to see the punch line. This is more frustrating still when the following episodes may reference what happened at the end, and one can only make an educated ‘guess’ at what actually happened. Crummy firmware.

One interesting thing is that it has never locked up or crashed, ever. It has twice failed to make a recording at all, i.e. recorded a few minutes and marked the recoding as having had a failure, but that’s it. But any good ‘features’ this box has are largely irrelevant if it can’t even make complete recordings.

The worst thing is that it wasn’t immediately obvious. We had already watched nearly all Big Bang Theory episodes, and just wished to have a collection on the hard drive in HD, so we hadn’t watched them yet. Then I recorded another series that I wished to watch later with my wife. So we had 40 odd episodes recorded, and that’s when it really hit us, that a great many had their ends cut off. After watching about 12 episodes we began to wonder if it was worth watching anymore. We would off course skip to end and see if it’s there in the first place, but really? Oh and then the ultimate kicker, once in a while, it will cut the beginning off, i.e. start recording too late.

Obviously I contacted Humax support (allegedly UK), and had no response. Oh well, so much for customer support. This is clearly not fit for the purpose it was sold, and I am now wondering how much time I will now need to waste in clawing back some money for what has been a very poor investment. I could complain to Richer Sounds about it and see what they have to say, but as its well over 30 days, they are probably within their right not to be interested. Then there’s the manufacturer, who doesn’t even reply to e-mails.

What to do…

Pay Sky…

I am loathed to do this, but assuming I claw back some of the cash by getting rid of the Humax box, I could pay Sky that money, and see how it goes, how often crash leads to an episode, or series of episodes to be missed.

Hope Humax get their finger out…

.. and fix the clipping problem, I can live with the rest.

Out of the box idea, DVD Box-sets…

Forget the whole recording mumbo jumbo, buy them cheap on ebay as boxed sets, eventually, I can wait. I bought seasons 2, 3, 4 (to add to the 1 and 5 I’ve had for years) of Babylon 5 for abour £5 each, bona fide originals.

Only caveat is that it needs to be bit more of a ‘planned’ viewing activity, i.e. get DVD, put in box, watch the copyright messages etc. get to episode selection. Or put on HDD and watch using WD-TV, that then requires WD-TV to be turned on, it scans the hard drive etc. etc. Even the Humax at its worst is more convenient, turn on, wait, wait some more, go to media pick series, select next unwatched episode (with the risk that it won’t have recorded the end of the recording…).

Give up…

Then there’s my friend who makes the point, why bother watching TV at all, one day his argument might just win the day. I have enough unwatched, original DVD’s to last me two years at my current rate of viewing.

A new Corsair, and its wandering key.

So the replacement arrived. I opened it. Within seconds, what the!? The sound mute toggle key’s missing! Oh good grief, not again. Closer look, oh there it was lying next to the NumLock key! So I took a photo, and suddenly discovered an appreciation for all those ‘silly’ unboxing videos. Maybe they are not so silly as the process could end up being the only proof that you really did receive an item that wasn’t quite what it was meant to be after you break open the seals and have a look inside. But it takes time, which I would rather not waste even more of.

Click HERE to see the full sized picture.

I picked the key up and pressed into place, and it clicked in firmly. There appears to be no easy way to displace it once it’s in, as it’s one of the non-mechanical keys that are not backlit, and hence not meant to be removable either. Basically their key pressing employee or robot just didn’t push it in hard enough.

So all that was left to do was to pack up the old one and take it the Collect + connected (or not as was the case the last and first time I went down) newsagents around the corner. I know the guys quite well, and they scanned it with their bar code reader, and we waited with baited breath, it’s a bit hit a miss apparently. But it worked, hurrah, no need to bike or car the mile down to the next nearest one.

So very nice of Amazon to provide an ‘in-place’ replacement, the only thing that could go wrong is that they don’t receive the one I sent today, and charge me for it. However all shouldn’t have happened in the first place. I do feel a bit sorry for them, as the postage costs will eat into their retail margin, which is great, but they make a huge amount of money on volume to more than compensate for it. Corsair though really needs to pay attention to their quality assurance, I hope the keyboard lasts, at £95, it better had.

Am I unlucky or what? The Corsair K90 Keyboard.

OK, after what seems like a year of indecisiveness, watching on eBay, looking at alternatives etc. I finally bought a Corsair K90 Keyboard, my first 'contemporary' mechanical key switched keyboard. I did once have an Dell mechanical one, about 10 years ago, and it was good, but the keys were so hard to press, it tired out my hands typing on it! Sold it on eBay to a Swede in the end.

So the K90, when I first saw pictures of it, it was a dream come true, you see, I hate wrist rests, and like my keyboard's front lip to be as low as possible. This appeared to have a really low lip, and keys that were directly set into the base, no bezel type surround. So obsessed was I with lip height, that I looked at large photos, watched videos and even Googled 'lip height k90' etc. but alas, no one talked of the lip, that I could find.

However it was £100! Ouch! Now a friend’s wife once said to me, your relationship with keyboards is the same as the one that women have with handbags. I put my hands up and said, guilty as charged. My children get the hand me downs, so they have the Saitek Eclipse, the Eclipse 2, and the totally ostentatious Cyborg V5. I loved the latter but gave it up when I did a typing test and found that I made fewer mistakes on current, prior to the K90, keyboard.

I have a 2 Mac keyboards (there is a Mac mini to go with them, though one of the keyboards was used with a PC for a while, more on that another time) and my main keyboard, the Alienware Tactx keyboard. I like the latter because you can go do funky backlight colours, and that the keys have outlines on their top edge that also illuminate. It has good key action too, so great for typing on. However disaster struck, a cup of coffee, or rather its contents distributed around the keyboard, made its cursor left key unresponsive. I preformed some surgery and fixed it, but it was a fudge. With certain devices, such as my laptop, it doesn't work, with others it does (probably due to the wiring I rearranged inside, to compensate for where the membrane was damaged). If it wasn't for the coffee, no new keyboard was needed.

So why wait for months to buy one? Because I couldn't try a K90 anywhere in Manchester. The nearest one was in Bolton. I did try the CM Quick-fire in a shop last week, and thought, wow, must go mechanical! In fact I wanted to buy it there and then, but it had a big fat lip!

So I did it, bought one on Amazon for £95, ouch. Turns up in the morn, and I open it up, it's really compact, and wow, the lip is so low! Fantastic. I type on it, and it doesn't seem that amazing, not as good as the CM Quick-fire did. However when I plugged it in, any doubts were swept away, this is the business.

Some seven hours later I showed my wife the blue backlight, she had an interest, as she had tired of my trying to get a cheap on off eBay and was relieved to see me buy one, eventually. And then I noticed it.

 

 Click HERE to see a larger version.

 Click HERE to see a larger version.

The backlight behind the cursor up key was off. Strange. So I pulled the key top off to confirm. Yup it's dead. I give it a wiggle, oh please work, please not another return. But it's dead Jim, no sign of life. Head over to Corsair.com and updated the firmware (yes a keyboard with updatable firmware). Still no sign. So that's it, a few day before I was going to take it aboard with me, it's defective on arrival.

Booked it in with Amazon, who will apparently send me a replacement and expect the current  one to be returned in the next 30 days, though this was not explicitly clear. So I've printed off the labels etc. to send it off.

Sigh.

Update.

I checked on-line and yes, there is a replacement due to arrive tomorrow. However on plugging the keyboard in again, the light started to work. Oh no! A restocking fee and postage cost will now be charged. However a few minutes later, it started to flicker, I started to make a video, and eventually it died again. Phew.

The 'Good' HP Envy experince... update.

Yes, I never did follow up, for the one or two people who read the blog, as to what happened with HP. Basically, it went well.

Remember as I didn't have 'premium' support, I was required to call them. So when back home in the UK, I rang them. Initially, UK call centre, British lady, who wanted to go through all the basics, have you plugged it in etc. I went along, briefly, and then became a little short, pulled the 'tech' rank on her per say. 'Look I build my own PC's and worked in IT, can we not go through this', type of thing. The Blu-ray drive is dead, completely. She then, rather unexpectedly, decided that I can be put through to 'premium support'. Sounds good I thought. Now I was through to chap who was clearly, abroad, probably Indian, and yes so was probably the Google weirdo e-mailing me. The chap had one very odd Indian accent, but he was perfectly legible, and didn't patronise me one bit. He went through some Q & A's which he said were mandatory, and within a few minutes he had booked a collection. Impressive.

A few days later a delivery, rather collection, man turned to collect it, he had a big padded box into which I was meant to place it. It was quite a sturdy nice looking box, but I wasn't quite ready!

Drat, I had to delete some personal stuff of it sharpish, and no time to wipe the free space. My fault, should have been better prepared, or better still, should have had a small hard drive on standby to place in the machine with a restore from the system discs on it.

The chap really was on a tight schedule gave me minutes within which to do this, and at one point threatened to leave, but I completed what I could in time and gave it him.

It was returned about 10 days later, which wasn't the quickest of service, but as it is not my main machine, tolerable under the circumstances.

So it all works fine, the track pad is a nuisance as ever, if I install the Windows update version (I must remember to hide that some time!) it goes epileptic again. Then I have to install the Synaptics one, and reset it to its default settings too. But the right click is still a pain; it has to be quite near the bottom edge to work, pain, and total pain. Having been through that Synaptic's bloated setting programs, I couldn't find where to change the zone areas, that I was sure I had seen before, I will look at it again some time when I'm using it and don't have a mouse handy, that I nearly always do.

Oh one fly in the ointment, the HP report claimed that they found no evidence that it scratched discs, despite my having a few of them, as photographed in the original blog entry. Naughty naughty, not admitting it so that they wouldn't have to pay out a possible claim for damaged software discs. Or  was the laser head somehow better positioned not to scratch discs by the time it reached them? No idea.

My Google ‘Wallet/Play/Checkout/Whatever’ account ‘experience’

So what a fantastic blog, a whole year, and no entries! So without further ado, here’s my Google ‘Wallet/Play/Checkout/Whatever’ account ‘experience’. I initially opened a Google Checkout account over seven years ago, and used it time to time, most recently to buy Android Apps.

So how did it start to go wrong?

I tried to buy a book like app, for 80p, that revealed that my credit card had expired. So I put a different credit card on. Tried to buy it again, but it was rejected.

A few hours later I get an e-mail, allegedly from Google, badly written with simple spelling mistakes. Oh, obviously I’ve not put my real name in, I mean Great Furby, really? Though I DO own the frubian@gmail.com address, it’s not my personal Google one.

From: Checkout Compliance [mailto:checkout-compliance@google.com]
Sent: 03 June 2012 05:20 AM
To: furbian@gmail.com
Subject: [#1042226094] Your Google Checkout Account

Hello,

During a recent review of your Google Checkout account, we were unable to verify th information of "Great Furby"

As a result, your account has been temporarily suspended and you will be unable to place orders. In order to resolve this situation, please provide us with the requested information within 3 business days by filling out this form https://checkout.google.com/support/sell/bin/request.py?contact_type=verification_gmri

Please note that failure to provide us with the requested documentation may result in account closure.

Yours Sincerely,

The Google Checkout Team

The link asks for proof of ID, i.e. my passport and proof of address, a bank statement. It has a threat of ‘account closure’ (it was already disabled!) and a ‘3 business days’ time limit. It looked no different to a fraudulent phishing attempt e-mail, although the URL given in it looked OK, I could not get to the same URL if I logged into my Wallet account and then tried to reach it. Besides the whole “we were unable to verify th information” isn’t true, my card had expired, and it was pretty much verified for the best part of a decade, so why not be a bit more truthful about what’s wrong? So I ignored it.  But I was perplexed, how on earth was the timing so good, that I get this odd e-mail, so soon after a failed purchase, had my e-mail been hacked? Are my Google/Android purchases being intercepted?

Next I updated the expiry date on initial credit card that had expired, but it was still rejected. Now I wanted to complain, but there’s no phone number, no e-mail, just a bunch of Q&A’s which lead to an answer which is always that it’s your card issuer, it can never be ‘us’. There’s no mention in ANY Q&A, and or FAQ’s saying that ‘oh we might want to see your passport and credit card bills’.

So  I just used a different ‘issue’ type so at least I can get a form up to fill and send to them. I received a ticket number on the 8^th, and then waited. Four days went by, nothing. So I created another ‘issue’ in the same manner.

Then at last, an e-mail, the issue number was there, fantastic, but the e-mail itself, well see for yourself.

From: Google Wallet Support [mailto:wallet-support@google.com]
Sent: 12 June 2012 03:27 AM
To: furbian@gmail.com
Subject: Re: [#1048299504] Google Wallet Payment and Delivery Information

Hello,

We understand you have a question about accepted payment methods and we think the information below will be useful. 

For information regarding accepted payment methods, please visit

https://www.google.com/support/wallet/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=105916

If this information did not address your question, please feel free to reply to this email and we'll gladly assist. 

Sincerely,

The Google Wallet Team

Very useful, so I replied in kind.

From: Great Furby <furbian@gmail.com>

Subject: RE: [#1048299504] Google Wallet Payment and Delivery Information

Date: Wed, 13 Jun 2012 01:34:00 +0100

No it does not help one bit. My bank, rather banks, as I have tried to use several different cards, all in good standing, have confirmed that YOU are rejecting the payments that the bank has authorised, for example:-

"In response to your query, I have looked into your credit card account and

 I am able to see that the transactions to Google were approved by Santander.

The merchant was returning the amounts back into your account. I have

checked you account and there are no blocks or restrictions on your account.

If you do have any further queries, please do not hesitate to send us another message, or alternatively you can contact our card services team at your earliest convenience on 0845 602 1582 and any of our advisors will be able to assist you further.

Kind Regards,

Santander Customer Services "

In support of Google, even Santander have dropped a little clanger in there, “you” instead of “yours”, but is doesn’t quite match what Google had sent, and was only readable in their own secure website. So Google replied:-

From: Checkout Compliance [mailto:checkout-compliance@google.com]
Sent: 16 June 2012 05:14 AM
To: Great Furby

Subject: Re: [#1048299504] Your Google Checkout Account

Hello Furbian,

Thanks for your email.

However, we were still unable to verify your information.

As a result, your account has been temporarily suspended and you will be unable to place orders. In order to resolve this situation, please provide us with the requested information of "Great Furby" within 3 business days by filling out this form https://checkout.google.com/support/sell/bin/request.py?contact_type=verification_gmri

Please note that failure to provide us with the requested documentation may result in account closure.

If you have any additional questions, please reply to this email and I'll be happy to help.

Sincerely,

The Google Wallet Team

Why am I receiving an email from Google Wallet?

Google Checkout is now part of Google Wallet. Checkout users can now manage their accounts at http://wallet.google.com/manage. To find out more about this transition, visit

http://www.google.com/support/wallet/bin/answer.py?answer=1691527

Again, the usual phishing attempt e-mail type, with threat a of account closure, and suspension, again, on an account, that, wait for it, I couldn’t make payments from anyway and the appalling English “your information”, OK, next sentence “the information of”. Grief. Part of me was thinking, well it’s them, but then I thought, Google, the multibillion dollar giant, working for whom requires one to go through 11 interviews, yes I knew someone who does work them, cannot be producing this. Is this a rouge employee in call centre, in the country that is the mother of all call centres trying to get documents for himself or herself, I thought? Why did I think it came from this ‘country’ because the grammar was structured as if written by someone from there, I am quite familiar with the cringe worthy, “Please be informed..” type of English they use. What followed was quite self-explanatory.

So time to ask some questions, and let them know that I’m not comfortable sending them “the information of”...

From: Great Furby [mailto:Furbian@gmail.com]
Sent: 16 June 2012 06:42 AM
To: 'Checkout Compliance'
Subject: RE: [#1048299504] Your Google Checkout Account

Dear Google or phishing artist,

You do realise that the last messages you sent like this looked exactly like spam phishing e-mail, it even had spelling mistakes in it, e.g. " verify th information of "Great Furby""

A multi-billion dollar company sending out e-mails asking for your personal details that haven't even been spell checked, never mind having a grammar check? Doesn't seem likely.

Even this message is badly written and vague, e.g. " However, we were still unable to verify your information." Which 'information' needs to be verified? Then you say ".. us with the requested information of "Great Furby" within...", first you address me as 'you' then as "Great Furby", not very consistent is it?

So if I don't give you ALL of my personal details (what you are asking for is sufficient for a criminal to steal my identity with) you will close my account within three days, please explains the ramifications of this. What happens to my Android applications, ones that I have purchased? Do you steal them back?

I've had google checkout account since before 2008, what has prompted this extra need for information all of a sudden, just because I tried to make a purchase for 80p?

Is this a phishing attempt to steal my identity? My bank card statement, has the exact card details and address you already have. So why do you need a printed copy of it? Is it really going to google 'wallet', or google 'checkout'. Again no consistency, or do you use both names interchangeably? Why is it that when I log into my google wallet account, are no issues highlighted there, no warnings, no threat of account closure, no poor grammar, no spelling mistakes?

How come a company regulated by the FSA in the UK can requested driving license and/or a passport to be faxed outside not only the UK, but outside Europe, to what looks like a US, Californian number? Yet there is no phone contact in any of the e-mails you have sent?

I need clear answers to these to questions before I give out details that could easily be used to steal my identity.

The web page your e-mail directs to states " Google Checkout was unable to verify the account information you provided during the sign-up process". However the account only went through the "sign-up process" over five years ago, the only recent change was the addition of a credit card, and the updating of two expired cards. Doesn't quite add up.

If you cannot, or will not answers these questions, I will make a complaint to the Financial Ombudsman, using the enclosed form.

OK, it was typed in anger and haste, even I’ve manged two typos, then again, I don’t work for a multibillion dollar company. But still I felt that I had posed perfectly valid questions.

Then I got this in return:-

From: Checkout Compliance [mailto:checkout-compliance@google.com]

Sent: 16 June 2012 03:19 PM

To: Great Furby

Subject: Re: [#1048299504] Your Google Checkout Account

Hello Furbian,

Thanks for your email.But Unfortunately, we were unable to verify the information of "Great Furby".

In order to complete the verification process, we would request that you send copies of the requested documents, and we also promise that the documents you will send us will be secure and confidential. Please note that after you send the requested documents only, we will be able to make necessary changes in your account.

We appreciate your cooperation and apologize for any inconvenience caused.

As a result, your account has been temporarily suspended and you will be unable to place orders. In order to resolve this situation, please provide us with the requested information within 3 business days by filling out this form https://checkout.google.com/support/sell/bin/request.py?contact_type=verification_gmri

Please note that failure to provide us with the requested documentation may result in account closure.

Yours Sincerely,

The Google Checkout Team

It was looking as if someone in the call/processing centre was doing this for fun. Wouldn’t someone at Google would ‘click’, “grief that junior moron sent an e-mail THAT badly written, let’s say sorry and sent a correct one, and reassure the guy”. So it was time to get my ‘issues’ out in the open.

From: Great Furby [mailto:Furbian@gmail.com]
Sent: 16 June 2012 04:14 PM
To: 'Checkout Compliance'
Subject: RE: [#1048299504] Your Google Checkout Account

Dear Google/Fraudster,

Again, a billion dollar company, allegedly, sends another e-mail that is littered with poor grammar, i.e. written by someone who doesn't even know how to put one sentence together properly, e.g. " email. But" is clearly mean to be "e-mail, but", the comma isn't strictly needed. Again I must ask are you some scam artist trying to pull a phishing attempt? You haven't denied it have you?

So you can't write basic English, and yet I should just trust you with my documents because you say so? Would you send your information on the basis of badly written e-mails?

Also again you makes vague threats of account closure, that not handing over my details may result in account closure', be more specific. Again you don't specify what happens with my Android purchases. Life is far easier with Apple I may have made the mistake of buying an Android based phone, but I still own iPad's. There too my card expired, and I had to update my card expiry and CVV number, no problems there.

If you really are the " Google Checkout Team" it seems astonishing that you are running a global business is such a poor manner.

I'll ask again for a phone number, if you want my 'details' I want to speak to someone about it.

If you don't answer my questions, I'm making a complaint to the Financial Services Authority (FSA), you can ignore my questions, but you won't be able ignore theirs.

This exchange is worthy of a blog "The Android/Google Wallet experience".

Regards,

Great Furby

BSc. (Hons.) MSc.

Like a broken record player (to young 'uns out there, these are big round discs that have music scratched onto them, when they go wrong, the same bit of the music plays back again and again, a bit like what Google were telling me), I received more of the same.

From: Checkout Compliance [mailto:checkout-compliance@google.com]

Sent: 17 June 2012 07:04 AM

To: Great Furby

Subject: Re: [#1048299504] Your Google Checkout Account

Hello,

Thanks for your e-mail and sorry for the inconvenience caused.

However during our recent review of your account we found that your Google wallet account needs to be verified to comply Google policies, we focus on providing a positive user experience while placing orders online. Hence kindly provide us requested documents to validate your Google wallet account.

In addition, at this time, we don't offer phone support for Google Payments. If you have specific questions, please reply to this email, and we'll be happy to help you.

We look forward to providing additional support options in the future.

To review frequently asked questions about Google Payments, you can also visit the Merchant Help Center at https://groups.google.com/a/googleproductforums.com/forum/#!forum/checkout-merchant.

Note: Google Payments includes seller payment solutions such as Google Checkout and In-App Payments. In the future, you’ll start seeing your Checkout account referred to as a Google Payments account.

If you have additional questions, please visit our Help Center at http://checkout.google.com/support/sell/

Sincerely,

The Google Checkout Team

If anything it appeared that the chap/chapess was actually quite keen to get my ‘details’ and ‘information’, more the behaviour of a con artist than a multibillion dollar American company. So again, more specifics from me.

From: Great Furby [mailto:Furbian@gmail.com]
Sent: 17 June 2012 03:16 PM
To: 'Checkout Compliance'
Subject: RE: [#1048299504] Your Google Checkout Account

Again, another badly worded e-mail asking me for 'details' that would allow someone to apply for credit cards in my name with ease. I am again expect to believe that someone who can't write basic English sentences properly works for Google.

Some examples:-

"comply Google policies", I think you meant "comply with Google policies".

"provide us requested documents ", probably meant "provide us the requested documents", unless there's only one set of documents in the whole world.

For the THIRD time, what happens to my Android applications? Answer this one simple question, if you can, or rather if these e-mails are genuinely from Google.

Anyway, as you have refused to answer my questions, a complaint to the FSA will determine whether this is a phishing attempt or if Google really is expecting us to use a prepaid on-line service that it runs so appallingly that it can't even employ people who can write English.

Then, their final word on the subject, forget the warning, 'there, were doing it now because you asked too many questions, and we’ll continue to communicating in what we consider is correct English, or should that be, “What we are thinking is being the correct English”.'

Hello,

Thank you for your mail,

During a recent review of your Google Checkout account, we were unable to verify your information and also had requested for the Documents. As a result, your account has been suspended and you will be unable to place orders.

In order to resolve this situation, please provide us with the requested information within 3 business days by filling out this form https://checkout.google.com/support/sell/bin/request.py?contact_type=verification_gmri

Yours Sincerely,

The Google Checkout Team

Oh come on, now you’re asking for it, even more mistakes, I just had to let them know.

From: Great Furby [mailto:Furbian@gmail.com]
Sent: 17 June 2012 09:49 PM
To: 'Checkout Compliance'
Subject: RE: [#1048299504] Your Google Checkout Account

How about answering some of my concerns about why I'm being sent e-mail, apparently from 'google' that have simple mistakes a ten year would be able to spot?

Anyway, keep your 'Google Checkout account', I don't really need it, as Android allows the installing of unsigned code, I can get what I need elsewhere, and I've paying for goods and services using Paypal for years, as most vendors don't accept Google Checkout, judging by your e-mails, I can see why.

It seems odd how your requests seem genuine, but are so amateurishly written, they seem like scam. Maybe you’re a google employee who's stealing details for him/herself? Seems rational considering the way the e-mails have been written.

" had requested for the Documents", wow, "requested for"? A tip for free, the 'for' shouldn't be there. A capital 'D' for 'Documents', in the middle of the sentence?

As for the account being suspended, it was already blocked in the first place! Oh but you have extra levels of blocking, and this is super doper, double triple, blocking.

So purely out of spite, i.e. we won’t answer any of your questions, and we don’t like being told that we can’t string a sentence together in correct English and/or we don’t’ like being asked such question, they didn’t bother waiting for 3 days to super disable the account, they blocked the account from even attempting a purchase soon afterwards, no warning, no nothing.  The message appeared to be, there we did it, and there’s nothing you can do about it. So there was a super/ultra-locking they could do after all, not that it made any real difference.

Complaining to the FSA, well you can’t, you complain to the financial ombudsman, and that’s done using a form, that appears to be ‘settle a claim for money’ type of affair. Not very useful. I might do it, I might not.

Well we have 4 Android phones in the house all linked to my account. What did I do? Something I really wanted to avoid, turn on the setting to allow code from ‘unknown sources’, and ‘obtained’ a few apps for the sake of being able to do so. Two wrongs don’t make a right, but I will not provide enough details for someone to commit identify fraud to anyone who writes such poor e-mails, I can’t trust them as it stands.

Even the ‘we’re regulated by the FSA’ notice has a problem, the URL they give you, i.e. 'regulated by the Financial Services Authority' is a dead link that goes back to a Google page.

Way to go Google! I was looking at some Android tablet reviews lately, maybe we could replace one of the iPad’s with one, or add one to the household. Fat chance of that now. It’s only a few sales, and I doubt Google would give a ….

Late addendum, I can a be total sucker for punishment, their new Nexus tablet thing, looked cheap, and I thought why not buy and try, if I don't like it, easy to sell it off cheaply if done quickly. Oh you can pre-order it, and how to you pay for it? Oh that's right, only one payment option...

Item	Price
Nexus 7 (8GB) - The first tablet from Google. Thin, light, and designed for Google Play.	UK£159.00
Shipping (Two Day Shipping):	UK£9.99
Total:	UK£168.99
(includes VAT UK£28.16)

Your account is not available at this time. Please contact our support team to resolve the issue.

Pay with:

VISA xxx-yyyy

Final irony, this is hosted by Google, so they could kill it I suppose, c'est la vie.