tonywhitmore.co.uk  

So, the reply I sent to yesterday’s e-mail is as follows:

queries@scan.co.uk wrote:

> 26 Sep 2005
>
> RMA 121193
>
> Dear Antony Whitmore:
>
> I am writing with reference to your recent return, the items received have been tested with no fault found.
>
> I can confirm that the items have been tested against any details with the return and also those logged on our RMA system. Our technical staff are fully qualified and having read your comments have not found any faults with your items.

If they have not found any fault with the unit, then it a) will not work any better should it be returned to me and b) was sold under an inaccurate or misleading description. Your website clearly states a range of 6ft, yet I have shown this not to be the case. If the unit does not, as you claim, have a fault and yet I have been unable to rectify the problems by following the procedure you and the manufacturer suggest, then it clearly does not meet the specification under which the product was advertised.

I am quite within my rights to a refund for a product sold that does not meet the specification with which it was advertised.

> The items need to be returned to you as soon as possible and in order to return the items to you there is a £10 +VAT carriage and a £10 +VAT service charge. Please forward payment details, cheque or postal order to the value of £23.50 inc. VAT, made payable to Scan International.

I will not be paying any such charges.

> I apologise on behalf of the directors of Scan Computers for the problems you have encountered. It is our aim to resolve any issues quickly and effectively so as to maintain a long-term relationship. I trust the above action has met your requirements.

I hope so.

>
> Yours Sincerely,
>
>
>
> Mrs E. H. Norris
> Returns Manager
>
> Immy
> Scan Computers
>
> The set of characters in the subject uniquely identifies your query. When replying to this email please ensure that these characters remain unaltered.
>
> This message is entirely the creation of its author in his or her personal capacity and any views expressed in this message are the views of that author. Accordingly, Scan Computers Intl Ltd shall not be nor become liable in any way, whether contractually, tortuously or otherwise, in respect of anything stated or depicted in this message. Please also note that this message shall not constitute an offer or an acceptance or be legally binding upon Scan Computers Intl Ltd in any way.

The literal interpretation of that disclaimer implies that the original e-mail above is not Scan’s offical position, and that Scan has not responded to my RMA. Mrs. Norris is responding entirely in her “personal capacity”. I would very much like this matter to be given the attention of a Scan employee acting within their professional capacity to resolve this matter.

Regards,

Antony Whitmore

Caustic, perhaps. But I feel quite put out by this whole affair. The reply that was waiting for me when I got home:

Antony Whitmore,

Hi

With regard to your recent return in your own words you state that you cannot get the keyboard/mouse to work from a range of no greater than 6 inches we have tested the equipment from a distance of 12ft and can confirm that the keyboard & mouse work from this distance without fault.

We appreciate that the item may not work in your particular environment however this does not mean that the item returned is faulty. If the item were faulty then it would not work here at SCAN this has been proven not to be the case. If you wish to obtain a refund for the item this is fine, however as it has been opened and used there would be a restocking fee of 25% applied to the item before refund.

Please advise

Regards

Mark R
Scan Computers

The set of characters in the subject uniquely identifies your query. When replying to this email please ensure that these characters remain unaltered.

This message is entirely the creation of its author in his or her personal capacity and any views expressed in this message are the views of that author. Accordingly, Scan Computers Intl Ltd shall not be nor become liable in any way, whether contractually, tortuously or otherwise, in respect of anything stated or depicted in this message. Please also note that this message shall not constitute an offer or an acceptance or be legally binding upon Scan Computers Intl Ltd in any way.

Once again, despite my explicit request to talk to someone acting in a professional capacity on behalf of the company, I’ve been fobbed off with someone acting in their “personal capacity”. Unless of course, their legal disclaimer doesn’t really mean what it says.

But the actual meat of the e-mail is that the product works for them (assuming they are actually telling the truth) at a distance of 12 feet. Now, nothing on the product page says anything about particular environments for which the product might not be suitable, yet they are now claiming that environmental factors could be causing the problem. Nowhere on the product page does it say that the device may be rendered next to useless by environmental factors.

I also remain puzzled as to what environmental factors could be causing this effect. It’s a normal living room of a mid-terraced house. As previously mentioned, the receiver was placed in the middle of the living room floor, at maximum cable length from the PC and any other piece of electrical equipment.

Another e-mail has been sent…

Following Ohman…

Which File Extension are You?

I like the description, but why do I have to be a Windows executable?

To make matters worse, I’ve just done the “What OS are you” quiz:

Which OS are You?

As we were visiting Chris, Heidi and Sammy yesterday, I missed the Grand Prix. However, I’d set up the meeja box to record it, and managed to avoid the news all day so I didn’t know the result when I sat down to watch.

That’s pretty much it, except that it was a good race, it’s nice to see a new Champion, I like my meeja box and I continue to be impressed with the ability of the Neo:6 decoder to take a digital stereo signal and do some very clever things to it and produce a convincing 6.1 channel output. (The Hunt for Red October was particularly impressive.)

I recently ordered a Belkin Wireless keyboard and mouse set for my Meeja Box from Scan Computers. The price at the time I placed my order was £12.99 + VAT. I ordered one other item at the same time. The product page on Scan’s site clearly states: “The Belkin Wireless Keyboard and Optical Mouse bundle uses digital radio technology to give you the luxury of using your keyboard and mouse in comfort anywhere within six feet of the receiver.” This was exactly what I wanted: A RF wireless keyboard that would work 6ft away from the receiver so I could sit on the sofa and operate the box remotely, principally to play Spectrum games in an emulator. The distance from the TV unit to the sofa is 6ft, so I made sure to select a keyboard with at least that range. I didn’t really need the mouse, but it seems to be impossible to purchase a wireless keyboard without a mouse for a sane price.

So, the goods arrived and I unpacked them, fitted batteries and generally set the kit up as per the instructions. In addition to the keyboard and mouse, there is a controller unit can be connected to the PC via two PS/2 connectors or 1 USB connector. I wanted to use the USB socket on the side of the case, so fitted the controller to that. The controller was recognised and now that it had power, I went through the configuration routine in the manual. Lo and behold everything worked. So far, so good.

The problems started when I went to sit down on the sofa, to try and use the keyboard. I pressed keys, nothing happened. I tried again, nothing happened. I moved a little closer to the receiver and pressed more keys. Nothing happened. I moved closer than 1m from the controller, and finally my key presses produced characters on the screen. OK, so 75% of the key presses were going missing, but something was happening. Not being satisfied with having to press each key 4 times in order to get a character to appear, I moved yet closer. A series of experiments showed that the keyboard did not function reliably at more than 6 inches from the reciever. Now compare with the description on the site: “anywhere within six feet” with “did not function reliably at more than 6 inches”. With me sat on the floor and the keyboard on my lap, I had to balance the reciever on my thigh, because it was on the floor, it was too far away and the keyboard wouldn’t work! I wasn’t happy with this performance, so turned to the troubleshooting section of the product manual. It suggests a few things, one of which is to re-run the synchronisation procedure, which I tried. I also tried the other troubleshooting tips which were changing the batteries in the keyboard and ensuring the controller was away from other electrical equipment.

So, I fitted a new set of batteries into the keyboard and placed the reciever at maximum cable length distance from the PC, in the middle of the room. There was no other equipment within at least the radius of the controller cable. I tested the keyboard again. Suprise, surprise, it still didn’t work at more than 6 inches from the controller.

So, having followed the procedures outlined in the manual and still not having resolved the issue, obviously the product was either defective or not up to the specification quoted on the website. I completed Scan’s RMA form on their website, and a couple of days later got an e-mail suggesting I contact Belkin’s technical support and to check for any updated drivers on their website. Now, this is something of a wild goose chase, as my contract of sale is with Scan, not Belkin. Belkin’s on-line technical support suggests checking the things I have already checked – batteries, synchronisation, interference etc. They also haven’t updated the drivers for this product in over a year. In fact, it appears to be an end-of-life product.

So, Belkin not having anything to offer, I returned to Scan. I replied to their e-mail saying that I have followed Belkin’s troubleshooting tips and that there were no new drivers for the product. I didn’t get a reply for a few days, until an RMA e-mail arrived, telling me to ship the product back. Now, when the product was originally shipped to me, it was simply wrapped in bubble-wrap in a courier’s plastic bag. So I found the bubble wrap and packaged the box up in brown paper, having included the necessary paper work. It cost me £7 to send if first class recorded delivery. (Scan requested a recorded delivery in their RMA documents.) That was Friday.

I get home from work today, to find the following e-mail:

Antony Whitmore,

Scan Computers
27-28 Enterprise Park
Middlebrook
Horwich

Bolton
BL6 6PE

26 Sep 2005

RMA 121193

Dear Antony Whitmore:

I am writing with reference to your recent return, the items received have been tested with no fault found.

I can confirm that the items have been tested against any details with the return and also those logged on our RMA system. Our technical staff are fully qualified and having read your comments have not found any faults with your items.

The items need to be returned to you as soon as possible and in order to return the items to you there is a £10 +VAT carriage and a £10 +VAT service charge. Please forward payment details, cheque or postal order to the value of £23.50 inc. VAT, made payable to Scan International.

I apologise on behalf of the directors of Scan Computers for the problems you have encountered. It is our aim to resolve any issues quickly and effectively so as to maintain a long-term relationship. I trust the above action has met your requirements.

Yours Sincerely,

Mrs E. H. Norris
Returns Manager

Immy
Scan Computers

The set of characters in the subject uniquely identifies your query. When replying to this email please ensure that these characters remain unaltered.

This message is entirely the creation of its author in his or her personal capacity and any views expressed in this message are the views of that author. Accordingly, Scan Computers Intl Ltd shall not be nor become liable in any way, whether contractually, tortuously or otherwise, in respect of anything stated or depicted in this message. Please also note that this message shall not constitute an offer or an acceptance or be legally binding upon Scan Computers Intl Ltd in any way.

Let’s make this absolutely crystal clear. They claim there’s no fault with the product. It is a logical assumption then that they haven’t done anything to it to solve the issue. (You can’t fix a problem that doesn’t exist.) That given, the keyboard won’t function any better were I to get it back here. And they want to charge me £23.50 to ship back a £15.26 product that I just paid £7 in postage to get sent the other way!

This is despite a clear description of the fault and as much information as I could give about the troubleshooting steps I’ve been through. (Let’s not forget, I run a network with over 1000 users: I know how to report faulty equipment in a manner than helps speedy resolution of the problem.) So, if there is no hardware fault with the keyboard shipped to me, then it is either not fit for the purpose for which it was sold, or has been sold with a mis-leading description. Both of these are serious matters and I am quite within my legal rights to be given a refund.

Just as an aside, I know many people rant about the pointlessness of the legal disclaimers attached to e-mails, but the one on this e-mail is a classic example. It implies that nothing in the e-mail is anything to do with Scan – it’s all down to Mrs. E. H. Norris in person. If this is a corporate-wide signature then logically, no Scan employee ever carries out company business by e-mail. If a Scan employee offers (for example) a refund, Scan are not liable for that decision. So that employee presumably sends out the refunds from their own personal bank account. Either that, or this is another example of a pointless, unsustainable and legally indefensible corporate e-mail signature.

Fortunately, there was a very good article in PCW about consumer rights when shopping online, covering the Sale of Goods Act, Trade Descriptions Act and Distance Selling Regulations. So, I have sent the reply and await Scan’s response. The cheque is not in the post.

On a happier note, Laura ordered a Corsair USB memory key from Dabs.com. We were pleasantly surprised to find Linux on the list on supported operating systems on the front of the packaging, along with Windows and Mac OS. OK, so Dabs didn’t actually include this information on their website, but seeing hardware manufacturers list Linux as a supported platform is a sure sign of its spreading acceptance.

Having been prompted by Neil Ferguson to look at NX Machine (or rather, FreeNX, the GPL version) I did tonight. I’ve heard a lot about this product over the last year or so, but I knew there were licensing and distribution problems with the server software. However, until now I’ve not been aware of a Debian repository for the GPL version.

So, I followed my nose, with the odd bit of help and got it up and running. I scribbled some notes as I went. The key thing to understand is that a mini file system is set up in /usr/NX which houses the home directory of the nx user. This is the user as which the nxserver runs. Authentication is via SSH keys but this is easy to set up by following the guide on the HantsLUG wiki. So, to clarify, the user account that runs the client needs to have its public key in the .ssh/authorized_keys file of the nx user on the machine running the server.

I use the XFCE desktop at the moment (possible subject for a future blog!) so I needed to select a “Custom” desktop. This gives the option of running any command to start a window manager. NX is a bit like VNC on *nix in that it sets up a second desktop environment, rather than giving you access to an existing session (as VNC on Windows does). That said, this might just be the default behaviour and there are many options I’ve yet to investigate, including something that looks like integration with VNC and RDP.

Admittedly this screenshot is of the localhost and LBreakout2 was a little jerky, but the perfomance of NX is still miles ahead of even the best VNC I’ve seen. It is equivalent (in this brief experience) with that of RDP, Microsoft’s protocol for remote management. It’s easily good enough for use in thin-client technologies.

I’m looking forward to trying NX over a wireless connection and can see me putting it to good use at work too. And if I remember, I can set it up to try to connect over low bandwidth to a system at home from the next LUG meeting too!

I made my first venture into the wonderful world of Virtual Hosts this evening with rattle.tonywhitmore.co.uk. It set up the DNS for the above some time ago, and then got round to fixing it. (I needed to put a full stop at the end of the host name to ensure it wasn’t appended into something horrible like rattle.tonywhitmore.co.uk.streetend.force9.co.uk.)

Thanks to some help from Rob Smith, Adrian Bridgett and others I finally tweaked Apache into submission. It was really just a case of looking at the LUG’s working config, and Rob’s config and copying the relevant bits. I’m not 100% sure it’s the correct way of doing it, but it works.

So, expect wiki.tonywhitmore.co.uk, blog.tonywhitmore.co.uk, gallery.tonywhitmore.co.uk and many others appearing over the next few weeks.

A blog post by Adam Trickett led me to generate the following maps of places I have been:

Create your own visited countries map

… and …

Create your own visited states map

This weekend I went to a party for my friend Stuart who is leaving for the USA soon. I’ve known Stuart since we moved to Surrey in 1991, and we ended up doing pretty much everything together throughout our teenage years until we went off to Uni. Even then we worked Panto together. Scouts, school, theatre stuff and so on. It will be very weird not seeing him every few weeks, but I hope that he and Kim will be able to get on with their lives in New York. I have even said I might try the evil propriatory Skype software to try and talk to him over the net.

Chris and Heidi are both well (although Heidi would dispute that at times) as they get closer to Sammy’s due date. I’m really excited for them – it’s something proper grown up. They’ve been decorating and buying stuff over the last months, and I can now identify a sterliser. Chris is another friend I’ve known for years and it’s very odd to see the Mothercare catalogue lying around in his front room.

It’s the first InfoPoint after the summer this weekend. InfoPoints are really great way to spread the word about Linux and Free Software. We have even had people come along to LUG meetings that we’ve first chatted to at InfoPoints. We’ve got a small team of stalwart attendees, but it would be nice to see more members of the LUG giving up a couple of hours to help out at one of these events.

One of the reasons that I’ve not posted more recently is that my laptop is still off for repair. Acutally it’s been away and come back once, before being sent away again. It’s looking like it will be an expensive repair as the whole motherboard apparently needs replacing. Also, the Meeja Box project is coming on in fits and starts. I have the two DVB cards in the case now, and one of them even works. The Belkin wireless keyboard that is supposed to have a range of 6 feet barely reaches 6 inches though, so I’m currently trying to get Scan to accept it back, refund, exchange or replace it.

Also, Gallery version 2 has gone stable, so I hope to upgrade our installations to that this weekend.

I completed the migration to the new webserver this evening. I spent a couple of hours tinkering about with case fans, disk caddies and memory, but shifting from a PII 233MHz system to a 700MHz Duron system required me to do, err, absolutely nothing with the software at all. Thanks to the modular Linux kernel all the various new bits of hardware were detected and the drivers loaded automatically. The network card, previously a Realtek, is now an Intel chipset. No problem. The CD-ROM drive is a different model. No problem. The CPU is a different manufacturer. No problem. The chipsets on the motherboard are different. No problem. The graphics card has gone from an onboard ATi chip to an nVidia PCI card. No problem.

I’ve seen Windows installations stuck in an endless blue screen cycle when a hard drive has been shifted from one box to another. Either one spends hours downloading and installing endless chipset drivers and rebooting the system every couple of minutes, or one ends up installing Windows from scratch. I’ll be sticking with my Debian installation, if you don’t mind.

Hopefully this new box will make the stuff served from it run faster, especially as it has been “ramped up” from 196MB RAM to 384MB. I’ve already noticed improvements in the speed of the wiki and gallery.

Yesterday was another HantsLUG monthly meeting. Another busy one – about 30 people turned up throughout the day. It was particularly nice to see three or four new faces at the meeting – I guess we’re doing something right if people are happy to just turn up to a meeting!

At the meeting I got to upgrade Wifi-Radar to the latest version. This introduces support for WPA and integrates with a DHCP client properly. I then ended up helping a couple of LUG members get it installed and running on their Ubuntu and Debian systems. Having done something twice inevitably results in a wiki page describing it.

Other than that, it was a relaxing (if hot) afternoon, chatting to a variety of LUG members. Tom Bragg, as well doing his usual masterly job of providing network services for the meeting, donated a faster PC to upgrade my webserver. The existing box is a PII 233MHz system and has started to struggle a bit lately. To be fair, it’s only started to struggle as I’ve expected it to do more (beyond what can reasonably be expected of a webserver) and as the website is getting spidered a lot more. The new box is a Duron system with a CPU in the 800MHz region.

It’s probable that the meeting was the last we’ll have at Syan TSD. It’s been a great venue and a very useful resource. It’s pretty much certain that I’ll have to begin looking for a new venue somewhere other than Southampton soon. Suggestions welcome.

It’s still far too muggy down here and despite thunder and lightening tonight it’s not dehumidified yet.