October 2008 Archives
A while ago I wanted to cancel my Napster subscription. To my annoyance I found that this meant phoning a Luxembourg number. I much prefer to cancel in much the same way that I signed up - online using a form or by email. I complained to my MP that this was, in my opinion, a deliberate anti-competitive measure by Napster to make cancelling the service impractical and inconvenient.
Surprisingly I received a letter from him and someone at the then DTI. They told me that there is in fact a legal requirement for "information society services" to publish a contact email address on their web site. Hooray! Brussels red-tape working in my favour. The requirement is covered in 6(c) of the The Electronic Commerce (EC Directive) Regulations 2002.
I suspect this is quite an little known piece of legislation. So little that, in fact, DBERR (nee DTI) themselves do not publish an email address on their Consumer Direct web site. I know this because I recently submitted an information request to Cambridge City Council to find out how much it costs to replace a black bin because they recently quoted £50 for doing such, but you can buy the same bins online for £31 if you buy in bulk - which councils do and £19 to drive it 400 yards up the road to my house is a bit steep.
Anyway, whilst I was on the What Do They Know site filing my information request I noticed someone was trying to get a contact email address from the Student Loans Company, which is where I stepped in and left a note to let her know about the legislation. The SLC replied that they don't have a contact email address. Not good enough. They are required to have one. So, I decided to complain to the people that told me about the requirement in the first place, and went to the Consumer Direct site, run by DBERR for consumers to get advice. And that's how I ended up submitting another information request - this time to DBERR to get the contact email address for Consumer Direct service. Let's hope they are more helpful than the SLC. Then we can get the SLC to be more helfpul.
Surprisingly I received a letter from him and someone at the then DTI. They told me that there is in fact a legal requirement for "information society services" to publish a contact email address on their web site. Hooray! Brussels red-tape working in my favour. The requirement is covered in 6(c) of the The Electronic Commerce (EC Directive) Regulations 2002.
I suspect this is quite an little known piece of legislation. So little that, in fact, DBERR (nee DTI) themselves do not publish an email address on their Consumer Direct web site. I know this because I recently submitted an information request to Cambridge City Council to find out how much it costs to replace a black bin because they recently quoted £50 for doing such, but you can buy the same bins online for £31 if you buy in bulk - which councils do and £19 to drive it 400 yards up the road to my house is a bit steep.
Anyway, whilst I was on the What Do They Know site filing my information request I noticed someone was trying to get a contact email address from the Student Loans Company, which is where I stepped in and left a note to let her know about the legislation. The SLC replied that they don't have a contact email address. Not good enough. They are required to have one. So, I decided to complain to the people that told me about the requirement in the first place, and went to the Consumer Direct site, run by DBERR for consumers to get advice. And that's how I ended up submitting another information request - this time to DBERR to get the contact email address for Consumer Direct service. Let's hope they are more helpful than the SLC. Then we can get the SLC to be more helfpul.
This looks like a very slick application for manipulating images. Styled ever so similar to Photoshop, I think I'll be playing with this this evening.
http://www.pixlr.com/
http://www.pixlr.com/
