Lloyds TSB Phone Insurance – Forgot Password Problem…

I recently had the misfortune of losing my whilst in Amsterdam.

My bank, Lloyds TSB provide me with phone insurance as part of my gold account benefits, crucially for me, is international loss insurance.

I always follow the rules.
My policy states that I must start the claim within 48 hours of me discovering the phone was lost, so that’s what I attempted to do.

A little background…

I was in a taxi (phoned for me by the hotel – CitizenM Amsterdam City) about 11pm. I showed the taxi driver (who must of been the only Dutch person I met who did not speak a word of English!!) a map of my destination on my iPhone.
That was the last time I definitely know that I had my phone.

Some time after I had arrived, I went to get my phone, and realised it was gone. Naturally, I assumed it had been stolen, perhaps I’d been the victim of the notorious Amsterdam pick pockets… So I asked the venue I was at to call it. It was still turned on!
I asked them to call my hotel, and explain to them that perhaps it had been left in the taxi, and could they call the company and ask.

When I returned to the hotel later that evening, the phone had not turned up, and the taxi company said nothing had been found in the taxi.
I asked the hotel to call the phone again in the morning – still turned on.
So where it had gone, is anybody’s guess.
Perhaps it had been stolen, but the thief (for some odd reason) had not turned it off immediately… Or maybe it fell out, and straight down a drain as I got out of the taxi… Who knows!

Later the next day, I admitted defeat, and made contact with O2, and blocked the handset. Also, as per the instructions on my insurance, I made a report to the police (which wasn’t easy – surprisingly, the level of English wasn’t great, and making them understand that the phone was lost, was pretty difficult)

So there we have it. I’m in Amsterdam, with no phone.

When I got back to the hotel, I logged on to Lloyds TSB’s phone insurance portal:
http://www.lifestylegroup.co.uk/lloydstsb/

Since I wanted to get my claim in as soon as possible, I clicked the “make claim online” button:

Next, it asked me for my policy id, which, luckily, I had as part of my documentation I always take on holiday with me. (Obviously, in the below picture I have obscured it)

But then…. password. No idea!

Not a problem I thought, I’ll click the “Forgotten your password?” link

 

Then…. the biggest problem.

Please enter your Policy ID number and mobile phone number. We will then send you a text message containing your newly generated password.

 

Are you joking?!

Why would I be logging in to this site, if I was still in possession of my phone… the phone that the new password would be sent to?

This left me completely unable to make the claim within the allotted time – Their offices were shut after 8pm, and I had no time before I was due to check out and meet some friends the next day, before heading to the airport for my flight home.

My plane got into London at 7:30 pm, which still didn’t leave me any time to make contact with their offices!

I made a point of phoning at exactly 8am on Tuesday (about 8 hours after the 48 hour deadline) and explained my problems (including the glaring accessibility / functionality problems highlighted above)

The customer service agent explained to me that as I was abroad, they do take this into account, so fingers crossed they understand the problems I had!

Tags: accessibility, finance, insurance, usability

Creating a new post in Wordpress using the JoeBlogs library

A few people have recently been asking how the NewPost method works within JoeBlogs

First, you need to create an instance of Post.

Then, set the following properties:

dateCreated
Fairly self explanatory, but you should set this to today’s date (or whatever date you wish the post to be set as published)

title
The title of the post

description
The body of the post.
This can of course contain HTML

categories
This is a string array of categories to associate with the post

mt_keywords
Another string array, representing the tags for the post

Then, using your presumably already instantiated Wrapper class, you can call the NewPost method, which takes the above Post object as a parameter, and a boolean – indicating if the post is to be set as published. Note – if this is set to false, the post is set in draft mode.

Here’s some sample code:

//create a new post
var post = new Post();

//since this is a struct, we can't have a constructor that does this!
post.dateCreated=DateTime.Now;
post.title="This is a title";
post.description="this is the body of the post. it <strong>could</strong> be html.";

//create the post!
wp.NewPost(post,true);

Hope this helps!

Tags: c#, JoeBlogs, wordpress

Domain Name Appraisal Scam – NameSaleShop.com

I recently listed a domain for sale – www.ukcabs.net (incidentally, it’s still for sale if anyone is legitimately interested, please feel free to contact me)

It was listed on places like Sedo, I advertised it on twitter and eBay.

On Saturday, 9th May, 2009, I received an email from weisberg@theonlinebrokerage.com with the subject “ukcabs.net sent (05/09/09)”

Hello,

What is the price of your domain?

We are very interested in it. Good domains are wise investment in the

future. Our company is interested in easy-to-remember domain names.

If you have other domains for sale feel free to send your list.

Looking forward to do business with you.

Regards,

Andrew Weisberg

CEO

OB Real Estate LLC

 

Naturally, I replied a few days later. Initially believing it to be a genuine interest in the domain name.

Hi there,

Apologies for the late reply

I’m interested in offers on the domain, please feel free to send me one.

Regards,

Alex

I didn’t hear anything for a few months, so in September, i resent the above message, and asked if he was still interested in the domain.

Around a week later, I received this reply:

Yes.

As a seller you should provide me with an appraisal first. This is a reasonable practice.

I’ve found not all the appraisals are accurate. So I accept real manual appraisals from trusted sources only.

I don’t trust $14-$20 services. Nobody will do a research for $14. We need a real manual service.

I researched several companies and here are the results:

I wanted to engage AccurateDomains.com as appraiser but looks like this company has very bad reputation Just read this blog http://accuratedomains.blogspot.com/

So I’m not going to accept this fraudulent service.

I also considered www.Afternic.com, but now it’s clear their service is not reliable enough.

Just read this:

http://www.igoldrush.com/links3.htm

"Capsule Review: After lots of complaints, Afternic is no longer a recommended service. We will re-review the service in the near future."

Another complaint

http://www.out-law.com/page-1630

I was told about manual research service from http://www.DomainMart.com. It costs – $200/hour.

Many experienced sellers suggested us http://www.Namesaleshop.com as a trustworth manual service. They charge per name not per hour. We’ve read only positive comments about them. And I have my own positive experience with this company and their support.

 

Just by googling “namesaleshop scam” it brings up plenty of information.

What this guy does, is pretend to be interested in buying the domain, but make you pay €60 to get it appraised by a “reputable” company, which just so happens to be his company.

Then, needless to say, vanishes.

Tags: domain names, Scams

Using TeamViewer

TeamViewer is a remarkable piece of software that let’s you share control of your computer with another person.

It works round any firewall / router complications that Remote Assistance normally has, and I use it regularly to help friends / family with their problems.

Best part is, it’s free for non-commercial use!

Here’s how to use it:

Step 1 – Download TeamViewer

To download TeamViewer, please visit www.teamviewer.com

There should be a little green box on the right hand side of the website that says “download now” or something to that effect.

Once you have downloaded it, double click it.

Step 2 – Running or installing TeamViewer

Sometimes, this box will appear – just click “Run”

On this screen, select Run.
Since we don’t need to install the TeamViewer software, there is no point doing so.
Click next….

Step 3 – Accept License Agreement

Read all the way through it if you really want, however I’ve never come across a EULA (End User License Agreement) that I don’t agree with….

Select the I accept checkbox, then press Next….

Step 4 – Connect / Be connect to….

If you want someone to connect to your computer, to give you help:
See the left hand panel – Wait for session – Simply give the other person your ID and Password.

If you want to connect to someone elses session:
Enter the ID in the box on the right hand panel. Click “Connect to partner”
It will then ask you for their password.

A box, not unlike Remote Desktop Connection will then appear.

Tags: Software, TeamViewer

NVelocity template with decimal to two decimal places

I wanted to be able to output a decimal value from an object in my NVelocity template.

For example, the value of the decimal was: 3.40000 to represent 3.4.

The end result:

Total Order Value: 3.40 GBP

I needed to display this as currency format. Sure, I could of used this String.Format method, but that adds £ or $ or whatever (depending on your environment setup) to the start of the resulting string.

In the end, I used ToString with “N2” formatter.

So, in my nVelocity template, here is what I would use:

Total Order Value: $Order.GrandTotal.ToString("N2") GBP

There are some other alternatives discussed here:
http://stackoverflow.com/questions/1048643/format-a-double-value-like-currency-but-without-the-currency-sign-c

Tags: c#, nVelocity

Google Wave invitations for sale on eBay

Google Wave invitations were sent out yesterday, 30th Septermber 2009.

Bizarely, I didn’t get one, despite being a paying google apps customer.
Anyhow, I wasn’t overly bothered – sure, i would like to try it out, but I wouldn’t part with cold hard cash to do so!

It appears some people will however:

A quick search on eBay (UK) revealed 3 for sale already!

Slight deja vu of circa June 2004 when Google released gMail – people were willing to splash out serious bucks to try that out!

Tags: Ebay, google wave