And so once more, The Daily Mail has been found guilty of breaking advertising rules and telling consumers a porkie or two. Specifically, the Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) has found the newspaper in breach of no less than six regulations and declared the promotion to be misleading and untruthful. Boom.

If you want to read the ASA’s report for yourself, you’ll find it here. Essentially the paper offered cheap family holidays, and enticed readers to apply with big shiny headlines, hiding away the pertinent detail in very small print, as well as failing to mention that availability of the holidays was heavily restricted at peak times. There were other misdemeanours but you get the idea; the ASA upheld three separate complaints.

So given the serious nature of the matter, in that consumers were thoroughly misled by the promotion, what decisive action has the ASA taken against the paper?

“The promotion must not appear again in its current form.”

Here’s the thing. The promotion won’t appear in its current form again – not by virtue of the Daily Mail having a sudden fit of morals and making good on its misleading behaviour, but by virtue of the linear passage of time. The promotion is done, finished with – it won’t happen in its current form again, not because of the ASA’s adjudication, but because a time machine would be required for the same advert with the same particulars to run once more.

The truth is the same companies continue to break the advertising rules, over and over, and as soon as complaints are upheld, they simply tweak the message and do it all over again. This is the fifth time that The Mail and The Mail on Sunday have had complaints upheld this year alone. BT, another company in the headlines today for bending the rules concerning broadband speeds, has been found in breach of the ASA regulations no less than a dozen times in just over two years.

While the ASA likes to think that upheld complaints serves as an example to other advertisers, it’s fair to suggest their actions can never deter those companies with large marketing budgets. They can sustain a misleading advertising message that far outweighs a single day of bad press. Advertising works through repetition of the message, through frequency – so it’s the advertiser that’ll always win a confrontation with the ASA. Every time.

All the ASA can do is request that other bodies consider punishing offenders. For example:

“For misleading or unfair advertising, if an advertiser refuses to comply with the ASA, then the ASA Chief Executive is able to refer the advertiser to the Office of Fair Trading for legal proceedings.

“Such referrals are rarely necessary, as most advertisers prefer to resolve the matter directly with us.”

And how are such matters resolved with the ASA? By the advertiser promising not to run the same advert again. Oh. Only Ryanair seems to have been sent to the OFT for bad behaviour, while plenty of others continue misleading consumers with impunity.

“Our aim at the ASA is to ensure that consumers do not just enjoy the ads they see, but they can trust them too.”

Except you can’t trust them, can you? Ultimately it seems that any advertiser can say what they want, as often as they want, because advertising can deliver a misleading message unchallenged for weeks, and the ASA can only ever limply tackle it with a day of bad press.

Not too long ago, Groupola fired up their PR machine and fed it a deal that nobody could refuse. News of Groupola’s £99 iPhone 4 offer appeared everywhere – but it didn’t go according to plan. When their generous offer went live, the site crashed. Thousands of new users had to sign up to Groupola to access the offer, but found they couldn’t.

The masses rebelled on Groupola’s Facebook site, and Groupola deleted most of their criticisms. Bitterwallet discovered staff from Markco Media, owners of Groupola, were posting on Facebook but claiming to be customers and supporting Groupola. The PR company put forward “a number of people happy to talk to the media” to reinforce the point that 200 iPhone 4 handsets were sold. Only one has so far been interviewed, and the PR company wouldn’t let Bitterwallet interview any of the others.

We asked anyone to come forward who had been successful; only one person did – the person already interviewed by the media. We found just three other people claiming to have bought the handset for £99, but there were unanswered questions about their conduct on Facebook.

It’s fair to say that as PR goes, it was a bit of a mess, and we weren’t the only ones who thought so. So what do you do when one PR campaign fails? You create another one!

The study was released on Tuesday last week, but the media didn’t bite – a quick search of Google News suggests it wasn’t picked up by any of the papers.

So what do you do when one PR campaign fails? Yes, that’s right!

This time the press release, released just two days after the previous one, reinforced the national stereotype of Essex girls as cheap sluts – the sort of stuff the tabloids love. It was picked up by The Sun, The Star and The Express.

Groupola are seemingly in a perpetual state of commissioning or conducting surveys – it’s a wonder they’ve got time to run a business. If one falls flat, another one pops up for the PR agency to fling at the media. Discount sites can only be good news for consumers, but they need to be powered to a degree by word-of-mouth to provide not only awareness, but credibility. Judging by their efforts at social media and machine-gun approach to PR, Groupola don’t seem keen to wait for that to occur naturally. That, or they’re desperately over-compensating for the bad press created by the iPhone 4 deal.

With original group-buying site Groupon buying up CityDeal in May to take on Europe, expect to see even more blatant efforts by Groupola to grab you by the collar and force-feed you bargains.

Despite what you’ll read elsewhere online today, the death of the printed boarding card is still a dot on the horizon, even if the airline industry is beginning to catch up with the smartphone revolution. The UK media is declaring the printed passes will soon be no more, because British Airways are launching a new mobile app that stores itineraries, flight information and a digital boarding pass; you’ll be able to use it on all domestic flights by the end of August, and most short-haul flights soon after.

The app launches on the iPhone from Monday, with versions for Android and BlackBerry to follow shortly after. You need to be a member of BA’s Executive Club to access it once you’ve downloaded it, but then the Executive Club isn’t all that executive – I’m a member for crying out loud; anyone can join it for free.

Reading the Telegraph’s coverage, you’d think BA’s ’software developers’ were mythical sorcerers who had discovered alchemy, instead of geeks messing about with an API. British Airways is by no means the first airline to do this; they’re over a year behind the likes of Air New Zealand and several other European airlines too, but it’s enough to get the UK media excitable. “Paper boarding pass set to disappear” reads the Telegraph’s headline; “Not for another five to ten years”, it should clarify underneath.

The reason? Boarding passes presented on mobiles are a world away from boarding passes printed at home – another cost effective solution favoured by many airlines. It’s easy enough to ask a friend or colleague to print the documents for you, but a digital boarding pass requires the individual to have the means to provide it. The problem is that while it may seem like smartphones dominate the mobile landscape, they’ve a long way to go; in the US marketplace for example, smartphone ownership counts for barely a fifth of all handsets.

For printed boarding cards to be scrapped completely, either airlines have to invest in web apps than can be reliably accessed on much older handsets that don’t use native apps (and even then, there are still plenty of people using mobiles with no web access), or smartphones require universal take-up by consumers. In other words, the printed boarding card is here to stay for a good while yet.

Image by adactio on Flickr. Some rights reserved.

Last week, we reported how Groupola dreamed up some supercharged linkbait – selling the iPhone 4 for £99 – and how the Guardian ran an advertorial a story about it. The article explained how readers could take advantage of the “deal” – they had to subscribe to Groupola’s mailing list if they wanted to purchase one of “a limited number of handsets”.

Groupola ramped up the PR bandwagon even further when their website failed as customers tried to buy the iPhone, claiming that “more than 5 million people attempted to log on to the site” in a half hour period – with a brief understanding of typical web traffic figures, we’d suggest such a nice, round number probably wouldn’t have hurt when it was plucked from somebody’s arse.

But hey, maybe we’ve got it all wrong. Maybe Groupola are just trying to do us all a favour by giving us fabulous deals! Perhaps all the criticism is downright unfair. After all, there are plenty of people supporting Groupola – just take a look at Groupola’s Facebook group. Here’s a shining endorsement of Groupola from one punter:

And here he is again:

As you can see, this guy Saqib is very clear about the fact he doesn’t work for Groupola, which is operated by Markco Media Ltd, so you know he’s got a valid and entirely objective point of view. An- oh, wait a moment. Who’s that on LinkedIn?

Oh. According to his profile, Saqib does work at the company that owns Groupola after all. Perhaps he forgot. Well at least Groupola have confirmed they did sell 200 phones to lucky punters, by way of an official press release:

It’s not as if there was any confusion concerning the number available, or that Grouplola’s own site might have somehow sold more phones than they claimed to have in stock, or tha- oh. It appears Groupola sold 202 phones at one point, and judging by the graphics, still had 800 or so left to sell:

Perhaps there was a slip of the fingers and somebody mistakenly entered 1,000 instead of 200 for the number of handsets. Maybe the computer couldn’t count.

Groupola’s PR company are whoring successful buyers to the media for interview, but that’s not really the issue. The question is how many handsets were on offer – because Groupola’s own website didn’t seem to know – and why are staff members posing as punters on Facebook?

Update #1 How very odd. Within two hours of this post appearing, Saqib Azhar’s profile has been removed from LinkedIn. However, eagle-eyed reader blagga spotted on Azhar’s Facebook profile that he’s a member of Markco Tech, a private group on Facebook for staff only:

Azhar has now deleted that detail from his profile too, and he’s not the only one worrying the delete key this afternoon; the Groupola administrators have been deleting comments left by Bitterwallet readers that link to this article, and at one point blocked all new comments from being posted. Before:

And after:

Update #2 Thanks to avid Bitterwallet reader az for pointing out that a second member of staff has been posing as a Groupola customer on their Facebook page. The comment was deleted within minutes of our reader reporting it, but thanks to Google the unedited Groupola comments are still available:

And a quick check of LinkedIn reveals XeeShan Ch also works for Markco Tech, a branch of Markco Media :

Blogs are power. As the world’s population consumes more comment and opinion online, choosing to align themselves with digital voices, popular blogs now have as much sway, if not more than printed publications.

Unfortunately, the rules that attempt to keep newspapers and magazines honest, are nowhere to be found on the internet.

For example, there are rules to keep offline advertising and editorial separate and distinct, because selling messages shouldn’t be presented as factual, neutral information. That’s why so much money is spent on PR that generates “news” stories, regardless of the true facts – it isn’t cheap, but compared to the price of an advertising campaign, it’s a bargain and potentially more powerful – will be find more meaning and value in editorial.

Because those rules don’t apply to blogs, you don’t have to bother with all that spin and bullshit – and so PR companies simply try bribing bloggers to write about a company. And many will be successful – lots of eyeballs reading your posts doesn’t necessarily translate into a steady income, so plenty of bloggers take what they can get. Some of it is done so poorly that it’s easy to spot, other times it’s not immediately obvious.

Bitterwallet receives around a dozen emails from PR people, all suggesting we write about their product in return for favours, usually hard cash. Here’s one we received yesterday afternoon from a PR company called The 7th Chamber – they’re really keen for us to do it, because they’re already chasing us for an answer;

I was wondering if someone from your Editorial team could get back to me re-writing a piece for us? We’re working on a campaign for Capital One (around personal finance) and we’re looking for 8 prominent Finance blogs to write a short piece on either of these topics:

1. How will credit be managed in the future?
2. Which audiences will most need better information on credit during this economic downturn?

We’re not looking for something that would shamelessly plug Capital One in every sentence, all we would ask it that you link through to their site and mention the campaign they’re running at the moment. We’re looking for something subtle and I’m sure that suits all parties.

Please check out the YouTube channel that we created for Capital One, the campaign is genuinely interesting to consumers (hence the massive views on YT) so we’re confident that your audience will find it engaging and relevant.

We have around £350 per article.

Please let me know asap if this is something that you would be interested in working on.

“We’re looking for something subtle and I’m sure that suits all parties” - or to put it another way: “We know misleading the reader into believing this is the point of view of somebody they trust won’t go down well, so just take the money and keep it on the QT, yeah?”

So let’s have a think about this – the blogger wins, because they’re better off; The 7th Chamber wins because they’re paid handsomely by Capital One; Capital One wins because they’ve exposed their products on a blog that consumers choose to read and are loyal to. The only people to lose are the consumers – a trusted source of information is corrupted and they’re unduly influenced into making a financial decision. PR isn’t always about bullshit, but in this case it’s secret bullshit in a mask and cape.

We like Apple, you know we do. Sometimes we get a little over-excited, but that’s ok because so do plenty of our avid readers. Not today. Of course we’ve been talking about the iPhone 4, keeping you up-to-date with prices and tariffs and availability, but this morning the new handset is living up to its moniker of the Jesus phone, because people out there are acting as if it’s the Second Coming. But it’s not just queues outside the Apple Stores, either – we get them, because there’s a sense of occasion – but queues outside third party suppliers on trading estates?

Android might be piling on the numbers, but it’s Apple who are educating the mainstream consumers about the new generation of smartphones, and of course we’re big fans, but IT’S ONLY A PHONE. Never thought we’d say that. If everyone stopped behaving like attention-deficient hyenas, there’d probably be stock availability before the end of 2015, by which time there’ll be four newer models of iPhone that can fly, pass through walls and bend space-time, but still drop calls.

What makes it all worse is that today is also the today that this abomination reaches the iTunes App Store:

The greatest time vampire known to man, now on the iPhone. None of this will end well.

Image by [YFrog]

“More than half of consumers abandon online purchases due to lengthy and frustrating checkout processes – costing shops £420 million a month. A survey from Moneybookers reports that 63% of Britons find online checkout processes too long and ultimately frustrating.

Rather than put up with poor service, online customers regularly leave sites after they’ve selected their purchase but before they’ve completed their transaction, meaning that shops lose out.”

…so says a “news” story by Consumer Champions™ Which! on their website. It’s not a survey by Which! however, but by Moneybookers. What’s that headline news again?

“More than half of consumers abandon online purchases – costing shops £420 million a month.”

Sweet muscular Jesus, that’s over £5 billion a year leaking away because of badly designed websites! It’s not like these consumers will simply find another website to buy their goods through, is it? I mean, you’d just do without rather than shop elsewhere.

No hang on, that’s not right. In fact that’s a fucking absurd suggestion.

“Moneybookers’ survey, which included a list of top 20 online shopping websites, found that on the worst sites it can take almost seven minutes and involve 11 different steps to complete a purchase after you’ve selected your item.”

Fair enough, that sounds like a pain in the backside. But who are Moneybookers?

“Moneybookers enables any business or consumer with an email address to securely and cost-effectively send and receive payments online – in real-time!”

Just so we’re clear, then – a company publishes a survey, the outcome of which would seem to serve the company’s own interests – which is then repeated verbatim by a company that has built its reputation on showing no bias or advertising in consumer matters. So why is this on the Which? website again?

Hello there. You might be reading this because we caught your attention on Twitter, or because you’ve stumbled upon it by another means. We wanted to let you know what Vodafone have been up to over the past month; we don’t think the company has behaved in a consistent or fair way towards their existing customers, and we wanted to explain why.

Last month Vodafone announced they would begin charging existing customers for any additional data usage. If you’re a customer with 500MB of data to use every month (on a Fair Use Policy), you would be liable to a minimum £5 charge for exceeding it on more than two occasions.

At first, Vodafone stated they would change the contracts of their customers, but refused to inform customers of these changes. So far, this hasn’t happened. While the right to charge for “excessive usage” is in customer contracts, Vodafone admitted there were no previously published rates for excessive data usage, and that they hadn’t even defined “excessive usage” until pressed to by customers. That’s right – the customers had to ask Vodafone to define their own charges, so they could begin charging them. Brilliant. Vodafone eventually decided it meant all usage over 500MB, even though customers had repeatedly been told by staff that only file-sharing or using their handset as a modem was considered excessive, and that regular customers would not be charged.

But how do Vodafone define regular usage? Vodafone claimed that 97% of customers on a 500MB monthly allowance never exceeded it. Vodafone later admitted that the 97% figure included all customers on the much higher data bundle of 1GB – obviously such customers are far less likely to exceed their allowance, since it’s twice the size. Vodafone repeatedly insisted “500MB means you can read and reply to 10,000 emails, download 24 Google maps and read 8,000 BBC News stories.” This wasn’t true either – if you followed their usage example, your bill would skyrocket – and that example doesn’t even mention the use of apps, which is the key reason many people have smartphones.

The bottom line is existing customers will be liable to pay more if they exceed their 500MB allowance for more than two months in a row; some customers who took out a contract just a month ago may be liable for the next two years – exceed the data allowance just twice, and their Fair Use Policy will mean nothing. Now Vodafone have announced they will upgrade customers of particular handsets – not all – to 1GB, but only if they’re on the appropriate price-plan, and only if the customer requests it.

We haven’t even mentioned the occasions when Vodafone dodged or ignored questions, or that many customers claim they were sold “unlimited” data tariffs – coincidentally, Vodafone last month removed the word “unlimited” from all their tariffs. If you’d like to read more, there’s a timeline here, and Vodafone’s own forum with over 2,000 posts and complaints. After a senior Vodafone manager accused Bitterwallet (that’s us) of being unfair in our coverage of the story, we sent an open letter detailing the issues. He never replied, except to mention it on his personal Twitter account.

So there you have it. Sure, Vodafone may not be any better or worse than the rest – we just wanted to let you know what type of company you’re dealing with. Thanks for reading.

Well now you know what you’re dealing with. A couple of weeks ago we sent an open letter to Jakub Hrabovsky, Head of Web Relations at Vodafone, after he claimed our coverage of the company’s “consistent” message concerning new data charges had been unfair. The open letter walked through the many instances of Vodafone contradicting itself, making confusing statements and explained why Vodafone’s behaviour appeared anything but consistent.

Hrabovsky never replied, not officially at least, but yesterday saw fit to comment on his personal Twitter account:

Actually, there’s plenty more to say, especially when many of the questions have been answered incorrectly or dodged altogether. We’ve already published pages of comment and statements on the matter (you can read a summary here), but throw in the fact that some customers are already claiming to have being charged for additional data usage after just one month, it’s difficult to see how Vodafone can claim their actions have been anything other than a fat mess.

Here’s what we’re going to do next: tomorrow we’ll publish a short and concise post about Vodafone’s behaviour over the past month. We’ll explain why they haven’t treated their customers very fairly. Then we’ll turn to Twitter; Vodafone use Twitter extensively for customer service, reaching out to customers who have issues or queries, and to those Twitter users who are interested in changing service providers.

On Twitter, Bitterwallet can have as much profile to individual users, as Vodafone. So from tomorrow morning, every person who contacts Vodafone via Twitter will be sent a link to the article; every user that Vodafone reaches out to of their own accord will be sent a link to the article. If you’re on Twitter, we’d encourage you to do the same. We don’t hope to achieve anything than mild irritation – we’re exceptional at that, at the very least – and make the point that Vodafone handled this issue, and their customers, very poorly.

We know how it is. You sign a new contract, pick a new handset. Then it all goes horribly wrong. You lose your job. You didn’t check network coverage where you live. Another mobile provider brings out a better tariff. It happens all the time.

Sad stories, all of them. But Bitterwallet can’t really help you out.

It’s not that we don’t want to. We’re probably receiving half a dozen emails a week from Orange customers. Some have genuine issues with Orange – in those cases we’ll either highlight their plight or pass them on to Orange. As far as the rest are concerned, we do our best to email back and explain that no, you can’t cancel a contract – consumer law covers many things, but not the right to a nicer handset when you feel like one. Some examples:

I have been told by Orange that I can only consider upgrading in November 2011. That is the first issue I have, the second one is that I have never seen, read, or signed any contract whatsoever.

The reason I want to cancel my contract, besides the obvious misleading me in the sales process, and denying me the right to the handset I actually wanted, I literally just cannot afford it any longer.

Yo, I read you can cancal my contract with Orange. I’m bored with my Nokia N95 and a button is broke (can’t call numbers with 6 in them) if I give you my number can you call Orange and cancal my contract?

hi just read article on orange increased charges for going over your allowence dated end of last year i have two contracts taken out before the increase what i want to know is can i write to them requesting to cancell them with no further payments to be made can you please advise thanks

Look, we’re not taking the piss, but for avoidance of doubt, anything we wrote about cancelling your Orange contract last year isn’t necessarily relevant now. Nor do we offer to call Orange and cancel your contract on your behalf, and nor is choosing yourself a crappy phone any sort of justification for wanting to quit. Cheers!

The newspaper industry has been in turmoil for years, as readers stop buying dead wood and switch to websites for more relevant and timely output. And because reading news on websites is, by and large, free. There have been attempts by newspapers to charge for content, very few of them successful – only the Wall Street Journal and Financial Times have managed it successfully, because their output is niche and valuable to its readership, who use the information to inform them on financial dealings.

But what about the world of broadsheets and tabloids, the mainstream newspapers, where the same stories are carried by hundreds of sources? Rupert Murdoch is mad as hell and he’s not going to take it anymore. Several weeks ago, plans to put The Times (and Sunday Times) behind a paywall were announced. The blurb boasted: “We’ll bring you unrivalled coverage of everything that matters – from the election, to foreign news, to arts and culture, to the World Cup – in a more vibrant and stimulating way than ever before.”

Well, the new site is now here and available to view for free, before a paywall is raised in a few weeks’ time. Here’s how the current site looks:

And here’s the new version you’ll soon have to pay for:

What do we think? The first thing you notice is how much white space there is; tabs and sub-menus have been hidden away under general headings, with just one news story and one picture story dominating above the fold – an attempt to preserve the printed appearance of the content? Possibly. Another reason might be how it displays on tablet devices; the multi-column view has a similar feel to the Guardian’s recent revamp, a design that works well on a PC, but is tailored perfectly for tablet devices like the iPad, where newspapers see plenty of consumption int he future:

As shiny as it looks, the paywall could bring around the end of days for the Times; all of the Times’ content will go uncrawled by Google’s spider.With no content indexed and ranked, there’s no route of discovery, and taking the first step to becoming a loyal reader will mean you either pay on the spot (£1 a day or £2 for the week) or buying the physical paper. Removing all free and, more importantly, viral online promotion of a website seems like business suicide for traditional media.

Oh, and their lead tech story is the Currys/Apple story. The story we published a month ago. Finger on the pulse, that’s what you’re expected to pay for.

For previous information concerning Vodafone’s data charges, see the timeline of events here

Hi Jakub,

Thanks for your most recent email. As I said previously, I do appreciate you taking the time to reply – plenty of major companies wouldn’t.

I’m going to make this a public reply, just so everyone is absolutely sure why we are continuing to pursue this. In return, I will happily publish any response, unedited.

First, let me apologise if you feel I have edited your previous responses before publishing; I would point out the editing was of whole sentences, and that I only removed the constant repetition concerning Vodafone’s stance on this matter – that Vodafone believes only a minority of customers exceed their 500MB FUP allowance, and that Vodafone has always reserved the right to charge for excessive use. These points are well documented.

You state Bitterwallet has been unfair to Vodafone and our readers by claiming the company has been inconsistent in its message concerning data charges. I would absolutely deny this. I want to walk you through the communications from both Vodafone and yourself, and prove how inconsistent and ambiguous the information has been: (more…)

Here’s a thing. Most of the fresh fruit and veg on sale in our supermarkets isn’t in season in the UK right now; farmers elsewhere in the world are meeting our demands. Even then, our farmers don’t grow most the stuff; ninety-five per cent of the fruit and half of the vegetables we buy Britain are imported.

Perishables are transported by air as well as road – it’s a trend that’s increased during the recession, with a need to fulfill and re-supply smaller orders. A lot of fresh fruit has been imported by air for several years; depending on the time of year, avocados, strawberries, blackberries, blueberries, peaches, pears, plums, kiwi fruit and more besides. There are other perishables likes flowers; the UK is the second biggest importer of fresh roses and other flowers from Ethiopia, all imported by air.

So what will no air traffic into the UK for three days mean for supermarkets? It may mean fresh fruit and some vegetables disappearing from the shelves for a short spell, possibly for longer than three days. Hauliers in Europe may have been quick to switch tactics and transfer their cargo from air to road. But then there’s the problem of reaching the UK by sea; demand increases for a limited supply of ferry and cargo crossings, and food spoils in the meantime.

Of course a fricking volcano in Iceland isn’t going to stop rutting great tankers docking with supplies of cheap jeans and Tawainese lead-based toys, but you might notice some gaps on the shelves in the supermarket over the coming days. Good news if you’re into gooseberries and rhubarb and six month-old apples, though.

How many customer orders cancelled by Additions has the company failed to refund delivery fees on? It’s a question we’d like the answer to and if you’ve ever ordered anything from Additions, you might too.

In January, Additions advertised a Buffalo Ministation 320GB external hard drive for just £24. It seemed like a ridiculously low price but dozens of Hot UK Deals forum members ordered them anyway, because occasionally a retailer will make good on the price. We were also curious to see what happened, so two of us in the Bitterwallet office ordered the product on 18th January. Here’s what Additions charged me:

The total charge was £24.35; £24 for the product, a 15% discount code, plus a £3.95 delivery charge. This is how the detail looked in the confirmation email from Additions:

The total amount was debited at the time of order, not the time of delivery. Several hours later, Additions appeared to cancel all the orders, citing a mis-price. By their terms and conditions they were within their rights to do this, because a customer’s order is only accepted once the goods are dispatched; the order confirmation emails are described as merely acknowledgments. A quick phonecall to Additions to confirm the cancellation and ask for my refund, and three days later the money is back in my account.

So then. Lots of chancers hoped to get lucky on a low price; they didn’t, and instead they got a refund. What’s the problem? Additions didn’t refund all the money – they kept the £3.95 delivery charge:

They didn’t just keep our money; according to the Hot UK Deals forums, they failed to refund dozens of other customers; there are examples here, here and here. In fact, in all the cases we’re aware of, Additions only refunded the delivery charge after the customer contacted them to request it; more examples are here and here, and Bitterwallet reader Scott also contacted us concerning problems with refunds.

Perhaps customers were being impatient, and Additions would eventually get around to refunding the delivery charge? So the two of us at Bitterwallet waited to see what happened. Guess what? Nothing did. The 60 day limit for refunds set by the Distance Selling regulations came and went, and Additions failed to refund the delivery charges. So do Additions only refund charge manually if they’re asked to?

£3.95 isn’t a big deal, and for that reason it’s possible many people didn’t bother to chase Additions for a refund, or even notice it hadn’t been paid back. It doesn’t matter a damn – it’s the customer’s money. The question is – how many customers did Additions charge and fail to refund? And has Additions failed to refund delivery charges on other occasions? It may not be a matter of a few pounds; it may be thousands of pounds, perhaps more, of customer’s money. We don’t know how much for certain without asking Additions. So that’s what we’re doing.

We’re sending this letter to Shop Direct Home Shopping Limited, the parent company of Additions. We’ve asked for some straight forward answers to our questions. How much of your money does Additions have that it shouldn’t? We’ll let you know what we find out.

Dear Stephen,

We’ve been enjoying your email exchange with the American blogger David Parker Brown at AirlineReporter.com. Because Brown’s blog is syndicated to the Seattle PI, his article about Ryanair caught your attention. In your latest email, you attempt to correct Brown by – and let’s be honest here – pouring an awful lot of PR horseshit down his throat.

Ryanair does ‘understand’ social media and that blogs are generally based on opinion (which is why we generally ignore them – unless they appear somewhere like the Seattle PI).

So true, Stephen! So to break with tradition, and since Brown asks for feedback from people who have flown Ryanair, we’re going to mix facts with our opinions, as we pick through your latest critique of Brown’s post:

1. “They provide sub-par customer service (and are almost proud of it)” Wrong. Ryanair has the best on-time record, the least lost bags and the fewest cancelations of any major European airline.

Sorry Stephen, but immediately I have to call bullshit on you. And we’ve barely got started!

Customer service isn’t about simply satisfying a company’s own operational targets. The customer benefits in the situations you mention, but it’s in Ryanair’s best interests to address these areas – doing so keeps costs down. Customer service is about heightening the consumer experience before and after the flight, as well as during it.

2. “charge for everything” Wrong. Ryanair allows passenger to avoid paying for any of the services that are factored into the cost of high fare tickets, the average fare with Ryanair (which includes a 25KG baggage allowance) is just €32 — compared to the next cheapest airline at €60.

If you can explain how to avoid the cost of online check-in, at £5 per person per flight (for which the customer has to print their own boarding passes with Ryanair’s advertising on them), we’re all ears, Stephen. As for the credit card charges – you hardly make it easy to avoid them, do you? A pre-paid Mastercard, hello? Ryanair is charged for processing credit card purchases per transaction, not per person, so charging £10 per passenger is utterly disproportional.

While we’re on the subject of your online booking system, why does the website pre-select one item of hold luggage per passenger? Why is ‘no travel insurance required’ not pre-selected? How does making the consumer jump through hoops – or increasing the probability of them making a mistake – constitute good customer service?

3. “fly to smaller airports.” Wrong. In some cases we do, but we also fly to many main airports (e.g. Berlin, Edinburgh, London and Madrid etc) and passengers, especially those who travel frequently realise that it is more comfortable and quicker to travel through smaller airports — while it also allows for cheaper fares which passengers would walk over hot coals to get to.

Stephen, really. Ask somebody attempting to reach Barcelona with Ryanair how comfortable and quick it is to travel through smaller airports. It’s neither, and it’s more expensive. You don’t fly to Heathrow, you fly to the smaller London airports. It’s not wrong, it’s simply fair comment. (more…)