Little Things That Irk You: The Hateful 08

[wakka]

It's completely dominated by those generic alphabet soup brands now. It's less of a store and more of an e-commerce search engine, so it's become a mess of search engine optimised crap (much like Google).

Provided you pay for Prime, I find it primarily good for getting small sundries now. Hayfever medicine, lightbulbs, a thing for getting dog hair off jumpers, cheap HDMI or USB-C cables. That sort of stuff. And the delivery on those small items is often lightning fast, next day at worst, and quite often same day.

If you actually want to research and browse though, it's next to useless. All you are gonna find is the companies that have either paid to rank first for a particular search term, or have optimised their pages best for it (usually featuring an extremely large number of questionable reviews).

[fishbowlhead]

Blame EVERYTHING on Amazon completely. Everything they have built is built to be manipulated for search terms, reviews, returns, everything. All with ZERO oversight from humans, well a few indians in a call center, probably 2. Bad review? Delete the listing and start over.

But customers are just as bad sometimes, 5 stars item was delivered quickly, 1 star item arrived a day too late for my liking, ok so hows the product though?. Reviews need to be completely separated for delivery companies and the actual items being sold.

Edit. Also the Indian call center operators who sell reviews and review deletions need to be sacked as well, they’ve all got away with that far to long, theres numerous threads on the seller forums of Chinese companies that get all bad reviews instantly deleted, up they go and poof, deleted forever. Only people in the Amazon system can do that.

[QualityChimp]

However, I do have a chuckle in the Q&A sections when someone answers a valid question with something like:
"I can't answer your question as I do not have this product."

[wakka]

Q: Does this work with XYZ?
A: I dunno

You just know those are un-tech-savvy people who have been prompted to write a review by an automated email and treat it as some kind of personal correspondence that they need to reply to.

Blame EVERYTHING on Amazon completely. Everything they have built is built to be manipulated for search terms, reviews, returns, everything. All with ZERO oversight from humans, well a few indians in a call center, probably 2. Bad review? Delete the listing and start over.

But customers are just as bad if not worse, 5 stars item was delivered quickly, 1 star item arrived a day too late for my liking, ok so hows the product though?. Reviews need to be completely separated for delivery companies and the actual items being sold.

Edit. Also the Indian call center operators who sell reviews and review deletions need to be sacked as well, they’ve all got away with that far to long, theres numerous threads on the seller forums of Chinese companies that get all bad reviews instantly deleted, up they go and poof, deleted forever. Only people in the Amazon system can do that.

Yeah, the whole thing is fubar to be honest. As a buyer it's good for the zippy shipping if you already know what you want, but the whole Marketplace system is exploited to high heaven by bad actors, and Amazon doesn't seem to pay more than lip service to fixing it.

[Neon Ignition]

‘I’m a pregnant woman making choices’: Shauna Coxsey on climbing – and the ‘bullies’ who want her to stop | Sport | The Guardian
It's not about making choices and stopping bullies, it's about being selfish in your own interests at the potential risk of the cost of the life of your unborn child

[wheelaa]

Petrol prices. Ok, obvious moan.

Specifically though, that extra little splash you squeeze in when the pump auto cuts out as the tank is full, that is now measured in pounds not pence.

[QualityChimp]

Petrol prices. Ok, obvious moan.

Specifically though, that extra little splash you squeeze in when the pump auto cuts out as the tank is full, that is now measured in pounds not pence.

"At the petrol station I saw a guy at pump 1 buying £10 of fuel. I thought 'Where's he going? Pump 2?!'"

[Hirst]

I put £10 in, it's the minimum amount that counts as a "visit" to Shell. 10 of those and they give me a pound back, so I like to game their system as much as I can.

[Colin]

Here's an odd one and I don't really know where to post it.

I just received a package at my mums house so went along to collect it. Inside was three used Fantasy books by some author called Elaine Cunningham. I have no idea who these are from. I didn't buy them.

It does certainly irk me though as its a bit weird.

[wakka]

The employees at Hirst's local Shell garage:

[fishbowlhead]

GP’s, whole system needs taring down and a do over, there’s no saving it at this point.

[Hirst]

Bought a Game Gear AC adaptor from Cex as one randomly appeared in-store and they sell them cheaper than the going rate on eBay. Doesn't fit. After a fair bit of research, it turns out there are two types of "end" based on whether your GG is an early or late model. Not something I knew until now, but you'd think a shop that has been dealing in them for 30 years might have figured it out when loads of people keep bringing them back as they don't fit.

[Asura]

Bought a Game Gear AC adaptor from Cex as one randomly appeared in-store and they sell them cheaper than the going rate on eBay. Doesn't fit. After a fair bit of research, it turns out there are two types of "end" based on whether your GG is an early or late model. Not something I knew until now, but you'd think a shop that has been dealing in them for 30 years might have figured it out when loads of people keep bringing them back as they don't fit.

Yep though in Sega's defence, if I recall correctly - it was because the original units needed a special Sega-specific adaptor, which was expensive, and the later ones shifted to just using a generic connector.

I know this because I had the original unit, and a third-party DC adaptor, one of those ones with the cruciform connector at the end, which rarely worked (you had to hold it in place). I remember my dad getting to work, then bollocking me for "breaking it" when I eventually told him that it was always loose; and honestly as a kid I really thought it was my fault until I found out years later that I was using the wrong piece of kit, and the bloke at Tandy had lied to him.

[Asura]

Very much a little thing that irked me recently.

When did "duty free" at the airports become crap?

I remember when I was a kid, people used to buy loads from there, as it was particularly cheap - at least ~20% cheaper than most other places due to not VAT.

I knew that in the EU (and whatever the UK is still doing for the moment) it had gotten worse due to law changes but recently, when we flew to the US, I had hoped to get some aftershave - and the price was significantly more expensive than just the regular prices in the UK, and honestly, it was no better in the US when on the way back.

[fishbowlhead]

Been like that ever since i can remember to be honest.