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The AA exceeds their own incompetence

Thu, 30 Jul 2009 12:02:12 +0100

(Also see The AA - How incompetent can you get?)
I ended the previous story on the AA waiting to see whether I would receive an email, a fax or the promised next day delivery of the insurance policy ...

Well I didn't. Not one of the three possibilities. So I guess it is now official that the AA can't even organise a next day delivery. It would off course be simple enough to blame it on Royal Mail, but under the current circumstances I'll place my bet for "Incompetents of the Year Award" on the AA. "Bun fight" and "bread factory" comes to mind. So, next stop. Let's see how long it takes the AA to get a next day delivery to me ...

The AA - How incompetent can you get?

Wed, 29 Jul 2009 13:37:37 +0100

(Also see AA exceeds own incompetence)
Some organisations seem to specialise in making a mess of anything they touch. It is as if they send their people on courses to learn just how to botch things up.
Exactly how difficult is it too have a web site send out, in pdf format, a copy of an insurance policy you have just bought? Apparently it is just to great a feat for the AA to master !
This all started yesterday when I bought an on-line insurance policy for my moped. I did all the comparethemarket.com things you have to do nowadays and eventually discovered the cheapest insurance with the AA's comparison service. That was simple enough. It just took quite a bit of time off course to go through all the websites, filling exactly the same information in everywhere, waiting for them to find my address, waiting for them to give me a list of possible employments and business sectors ... but I found what I thought is the best quote. So, I retrieved my credit card and purchased the policy.

Problem number 1: The AA is not able to make the link to the policy work. Not on their website and neither in the email you receive afterwards.
Problem number 2: The AA's employees will lie to get you off the phone if you ask them something that they don't have the courage to admit their incompetency. Not being able to print the policy off, I called the AA. Off course I had to waste some more time to go through all the little phone menus to end up speaking to someone who had great difficulty finding my policy. I was transferred about three times too, if I remember correctly. I asked if I could get a copy of the policy emailed to me. This off course was an absolutely tremendously difficult exercise to complete so I had to hold while the AA rep went off to find out if this as possible. I was told that they would send it to me and I should receive it in an hour or so. Considering that it has to be sent from London I guess that couldn't be considered a long time. Internet connections in England are slow you know ...
Problem number 3: Faxes ?? Well, this morning there was still no sign of the email. I guess it must have been hijacked in Tazmania or something. You never know. However, when I called again this morning I was told that they don't have the facilities to send such emails. Email is off course a very modern thing and you couldn't expect a big company such as the AA to implement it over night. (Maybe one night is like a thousand years to the AA, so we still have another few hundred to go before we could expect anything as complex as email within the AA). They said they'll fax it. Since I don't have a fax, I asked that they fax it to the shop I'm buying the moped from. Unless the guys at the moped shop are brain damaged (which I doubt because they seemed to have quite mastered the concepts appropriate to their field of interest), the AA does not seem to be capable of sending a fax. It has now been 5 hours and still no sign of a fax ...
Problem number 4: The AA can't get a fax through to even two numbers. Now let's assume that there is something wrong with the moped shop's fax. I went on-line and found a free fax to email service. So when I called the AA for the third time I asked that they send the fax to the two numbers, ie the moped shop's fax number and my newly acquired fax to email number. Well, as I said, 5 hours later and I still haven't received anything and neither has the shop.
Problem number 5: Oh they have an on-line email support form on their web site that you can use. I used that to tell them that they are incompetent, but it will take them 72 hours to respond. So I can't tell you folks what they have come up with yet. If the response is remotely useful or humorous, I'll blog about it ...

Looking back at my blogs I see that I have had some run ins with the AA before. Like the time they increased the cost of my policy because I took somebody off it. I guess you had have been sent on one of those special incompetence course to be able to figure that out.

I just don't seem to learn do I ...

Processing - Koch Curve

Wed, 29 Jul 2009 11:16:12 +0100

Koch Curve created with Processing.
Processing - Koch Curve

(Original Blogger Posting 1)

(Original Blogger Posting 2)

Processing - Mandelbrot

Wed, 29 Jul 2009 11:07:57 +0100

A Mandelbrot Curve Applet created with Processing.
Processing - Mandelbrot

(Original Blogger posting)

Processing - Sliders

Wed, 29 Jul 2009 10:57:15 +0100

I hope Mike Taperell doesn't mind. I have taken his program for creating drop shadows and added sliders. One slider changes the transparency and the other changes the distance of the shadow. You have to be careful not to move the mouse too quickly for the sliders. I won't be refining this for the moment, it is just a proof of concept.
Processing - Sliders

(Original Blogger Posting)

Processing - Bezier Curves

Wed, 29 Jul 2009 10:49:18 +0100

I like to see how things work. I took the example code from the reference section on the Processing web site and added mouse events that allows one drag the anchor points around. I added little circles to the anchor points just to make it easier to click on them. You can now click on a point and drag it around to watch the bezier curve change. Cute isn't it? :-)
Processing - Bezier

(Original Blogger Posting)

Java - A small program illustrating a linked list

Wed, 22 Jul 2009 11:14:21 +0100

This content management system has two types of web pages, static pages and stories. My intention was to use stories for these articles on specific topics. However, one can't use all HTML tags in story pages. This means I have no way of displaying code in a nice format. So I'll just use the stories to serve as links to static pages. Here is the first article on creating linked lists in Java: Java - A small program illustrating a linked list

Java Basics

Sun, 19 Jul 2009 22:37:39 +0100

For the times I forget how to do those very basic things, because it has been so long since I last had to use it ...

In this topic I'll submit some basic Java programs and also anything interesting I might be coming across.

Every so often I have to do something very basic, but because it is not something you do every day, I forget exactly how to go about it. So by submitting it here, to my blog, I have a place where I can quickly find it. In the process it might help someone else too.

So, here we go ...