Tag Archives: angry

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That’s right. At the Rabobank they must have made a board meeting at some point and one of the guys suddenly jumps up and shouts “I’VE GOT IT!” Where the rest of the attendees look up shocked and bewildered. “Got what?” one asks.

“Let’s make an appealing product for customers. Something that no other bank does. Something amazing! Let’s make it cheap too. So people join us even easier.” The excited board member exclaims. The others cheer and one suggests; “But let’s give them the worst of the worst product and procedure at the same time.”

And so they did…

Their site promises easy everything. Credit Card, iDeal, Maestro support. Active and supportive helpdesk and what’s more. It’s not too expensive, too.

Sounds good yea?

February 15

Applied for their payment gateway.

February 18

Received my contracts, confirmations and all paperwork accepting me into their iDeal program… Wait, what? No Credit cards? Calling their service desk they told me “Credit Cards are not allowed for IT businesses”. That’s a big vague isn’t it. And why is my company name suddenly different.

February 20

Emailed them, again asking them to correct my contact details. Yes, they had linked me to someone else’s website. A client of mine, for which I am technical contact.

February 25

Called them, again asking them to rectify my contact details and why I could not accept Credit cards. They explained I was put in a “high risk category” and thus would not be eligible to accept Credit cards. Also, since my own account was relatively new I would be linked to my clients account for the first month. Yeah don’t even ask…

February 28

After some discussion it turns out that Visa and MasterCard decided that my business was in a “high risk category” and declined my application for Credit Card payments. I argued that this decision (and reasoning) made no sense and wanted this up for discussion with a manager or higher-up-someone to sort this out. No manager was available. If they could call me back. Sure, whatever, hurry up already!

March 5

They called me back apologising for their mistake, there was some sort of miscommunication about my payment methods internally and their approval thing gave ambiguous instructions which suggested that only iDeal should be activated. But… She had taken care of it and all I had to do was accept and activate the current iDeal contract then once that was set up apply for an extension to add Credit Card payments.

So basically, she did nothing. And it makes me think they forgot about it altogether. Anyway, I sent in the contract the same day.

March 15

Confirmation that my contract has been received.

March 18

My contract has been activated and is ready to go. I promptly apply for the Credit card payments and added a second site to the contract.

March 21

Email confirmation that my extensions have been approved and I will receive the extension contracts soon.

March 22-ish

I’ve received 24 pages of Visa and MasterCard rules telling me about everything they would not do for me and how much I would pay them etc. Which I sent back promptly.

March 26

I received emails telling me everything was in order and activated and ready to go. Login details would be sent to me shortly. Great. Finally!

March 28

Finally the emails with my login details come in. But they account does not work. Trusting nothing these idiots do I emailed them asking them to confirm if Credit card payments were now active and for both my websites. Since the emails didn’t specify that. Also I asked why my account is not working. To which they answered I should call them.

Calling them the next day around 2pm I was told by a computer they were closed but could be reached on business days between 8am and 8pm. Uhh… Ok.

March 30

Today I called again. And actually got someone on the phone. I asked him if he could confirm that Credit cards were now active and ready to go. After some dicking around in the system he told me that my 2 websites were conflicting in their system or something. iDeal was not activated. Credit cards would take another 3-4 weeks and that he didn’t understand their mess. If he could call me back…

He called back an hour or so later confirming that indeed iDeal was not active but should be in a few days. He again explained that Credit cards take up to 3 weeks to activate. To which I angrily reacted that they told me in their emails 2 days ago that everything was active and ready. “Yes, our communication could be a bit more transparent.” No shit…

Conclusion (Intermission rather…)

So, still no credit cards. Neither of my sites can accept *any* payment through their site after 6 weeks of pointing out their issues and flaws and still they can’t set up my account properly. How hard can it be to activate an account and link some payment methods to it dammit!

And every time I tell them something is wrong they use the excuse “Omnikassa is a new product, we’re still polishing some procedures”. No it’s not new. It been available for over a year! It doesn’t take that long to send emails with the right information, or without spelling errors for that matter. It doesn’t take a year to “iron out kinks” in account procedures you do every day. Especially not glaring dumdums like this.

If they weren’t the only ones who had accepted me for this stuff I would have given up weeks ago…

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For the last 2 weeks I’ve been trying to find a aquirer, bank or whoever able to process credit cards for me on my websites.

Turns out none of them want my money…

This business is so fucked up that they can’t even advertise their services properly. They’re all hiding behind vague sales jargon claiming it is easy, instant, secure and whatever else kind of bullshit they’re spewing. Meanwhile. Once they see that you don’t meet their non-published bullshit requirements they throw you out on the curb.

A quick rundown of the companies I’ve approached and their stupid reasons why they don’t want my money:

  • Skrill (Moneybookers) – Their site invited me to register and anything was possible. Their response once I registered and wasted a day on setting up my account: We’re too busy.
  • SagePay – Took 5 days to respond; You must be in the UK. (Why that isn’t on their site is beyond me, and why does it matter where I am anyway)
  • Braintree – Tells me anything is possible, so after 2 days I register for an account only to hear I must be an incorporated company otherwise the risk is too high or some bullshit like that.
  • Ogone – You can be our customer (yay!). But…. You need an Aquirer contract from a 3rd party. Which doesn’t respond to my inquiries. And Ogone doesn’t respond anymore too.
  • 2Bcheckout – Wasted another bunch of hours of my time to tell me; No, you must move more than $20000 a month to be our customer. Also you must be in the USA.
  • Authorize.NET – Worst site ever, and I must be in the USA or Canada or UK.
  • Worldpay – Doesn’t respond at all.
  • IcePay – Doesn’t respond and has horrible reviews.
  • Paypal Pro – Only available to US account holders.
  • PayLeap – I must be in the US.
  • Insipire Commerce – Took 3 days to tell me that it’s too expensive to have me as their customer because they don’t want forgeign trade.
  • FirstData – Only available in the US.
  • Stripe – We only do business with US Citizens.

And then some…

And the prices, insane. 2-4% here, 20-75 cents per transaction there. Montly fees. Extra transaction fees. Secondary costs. Startup fee. Interchange fees, Creditcard annual fees. And almost all stack up PER transaction. I’m not even going in to that.

Seriously. It’s too much and for the lousy experience so far… Hardly worth it! Greedy fools!

They’re all obsessed with security and all of them are better than the next in their own special way.
So fine… If they’re too dumb to want my money. Fuck you then. I’ll make my own software and deal directly with the bank. But wait… To become PCI Approved (some marketing security bullshit that allows you to handle creditcard details) will take 6-18 months and costs generally more than $44000 to be able to apply and see if you qualify. Then several thousand more to actually become PCI approved. Or atleast that’s what I understood from it.

*sigh*

I give up…

Oh wait – My own bank is a PSP too. Yes yes! And they accept creditcards and stuff. Yay – So I’ve applied there. And they accepted. After I explained the product to sales. Yea… They didn’t even know themselves what their Omnikassa (that’s what it’s called) does. Awesome folks! Fucking idiots!

And worse; The reviews from other users are shit. Their support is shit. I can’t find working software to implement their payment gateway into my sites and their manuals to develop things myself are shit and seem incomplete.

So that’s a horrible experience and I didn’t even start using them yet…

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And so the umptiest product of Apple becomes “idiot-and-retard-proofed”. While removing distinctive features and breaking everything that I liked about iTunes 10.

Soon we Apple users have nothing to say but “Yes Apple, thank you Apple for taking away features, options and functional apps!” Or the better alternative – “I’m buying a PC!”

Whine whine whine!

Give me back my sidebar!

Yea! I liked having a sidebar in iTunes, where I can switch to a different section of iTunes in 1 click and at a glance can see what’s what.
Now? It’s 2 clicks, no oversight and it’s just a stupid interface. For example, by chance I saw there were 5 App updates and 2 podcasts downloaded. Great. With the sidebar I could just see that. Now I have to accidentally stumble over it because I might switch to a different section. If I didn’t I would probably not see that for days.

Playlists are useless now, too!

I have a smart playlist “Never Played”. It worked like magic. New songs, podcasts – They would show up there if there were 0 (zero) ‘plays’ and it wasn’t an audiostream (radio). Great!

Now? There are 60 items in there that aren’t downloaded (but bought and removed) and thus have 0 plays. Suddenly I have to add “location is on this computer” to the playlist rules. Fine. Small change… But after I changed that half my library reverted to 0 plays. Awesome! Why? Because iTunes, without telling me, removed the files from the library and downloaded DRM free files. Another automated convenience that I…Do…Not…Care…About… And only inconveniences me.

And another… I had playlists made that took a bunch of similar genres and put them in a smart playlist. Since the rules for smart playlists are either ALL or ANY for matches. Suddenly I can not have such playlists anymore. Because Apple thinks it’s convenient to list iCloud shit in there too. Music I don’t want anymore, podcasts and Books. And because there are several genres and songs are only in one the rules must be set to “match any”. Thus the label “location is on this computer” is a free pass to have most items in the iTunes library to be listed. Suddenly I was listening to Trance music when I was expecting Massive Attack or SepiaMusic.

Of course I’ve tried a few things and combinations. But due to the amazingly useless iCloud integration half my playlists are now unusable and completely inaccurate.

And where the hell is Coverflow! I like coverflow! Google tells me a lot of people like coverflow! Why the hell is it removed? How do I get it back. It’s just a neat eye candy trick. But I liked it. What good is album art now, since the only usable option is the text listing.

And that’s iTunes 11. Amazingly new refreshed and super stupefied iTunes 11.

It’s a trend!

And I hate it!

Awesome Apple! Thanks! Yet again I must alter my comfort-zone because you want to be groundbreaking things!

Grrr!

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Ever since Steve was less involved with day-to-day stuff at Apple the products have been less than stellar. Overall buggy software, seemingly weird choices of action. And a *lot* more fancy nagging to “convenient” annoyances.

Perhaps it’s just me, but in the past days/weeks… Over and over again -

No, I don’t want to enable automatic syncing to all devices if I download a book in iBooks or buy a song or app in iTunes. Just leave me alone. If I want it on my iPhone or iPad, I’ll sync it there myself. So don’t ask!

No I do *not* want to save all my documents in iCloud. So stop trying to trick me into using that space! I have 8TB at home! I don’t need your silly cloud crap.

Yes I am aware that you (Apple) have free apps in the app store. No I don’t have them all installed. If I wanted that, I would have done it. So stop fucking reminding me every time I open the App store on my iDevices.

No, I do not want to answer 3 security questions with stuff that doesn’t apply to me at all to “improve” security on my iTunes account. Go away and just let me spend my money!

I do want, however, that you (Apple) fix Mac OS X Mountain Lion, iOS6 and a bunch of stuff!

To name a few gripes-
1. Spaces is ruined, restore it the way it was in Snow Leopard.
2. OS X Mail is so buggy it’s hardly usable.
3. iCloud sync is dodgy for Calendar and Contacts. Often doesn’t do it’s magic.
4. Sandboxing is annoying, software isn’t broken because it’s not signed!
5. Mac OS Server is completely ruined. And unusable.
6. Safari Address bar does not show the url I’m visiting when i search for something.
7. Flash keeps crashing in Safari.
8. Yahoo in iChat does not support MSN contacts or file sending (Yahoo Messenger does).
9. Syncing notes to iCloud requires an @me.com address? Why?
10. Calendar is a pain to use when you want Month view. And Week view isn’t fun either.
11. Time Machine often fails since I’ve upgraded to Mountain Lion. Especially when working with lots of files. I didn’t notice this in Lion or Snow Leopard.
12. What’s up with memory use? 6GB of Inactive memory bogging down my iMac after a day of office work?
13. “bought items” and “updates” do not refresh on my iPhone or iPad app store.
14. Horrible spellchecking experience in both Mac OS and iOS.
15. iOS Wifi sync often looses track of the various devices.

*sigh*

Over the past few months, I don’t recall a single week where I could say “I’m a happy mac user”. Actually ever since I upgraded from Snow Leopard it’s been an less than enjoyable experience for a lot of things. And the ensuing stress and annoyances remind me a lot of Windows and why I switched to mac in the first place.

Or am I just old fashioned and behind on the program with Apples “innovations”.

You’d almost think I accidentally the whole experience!