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![]() Here are some quotations from the Terms of Business recently distributed to its customers by Orange Broadband. Spot the deliberate mistake ![]() We will check your details with Fraud Prevention Agencies ("FPA's") to verify identities to prevent crime and money laundering. We may also make periodic checks with CRA's and FPA's to manage your account with us. That's nice. The very first thing they're going to do before they accept us as a customer is discuss us with someone else, someone we don't know, someone who is not responsible to us, someone who keeps secret files on us and will alter them as and when he sees fit without telling or asking us. Note also the charming ethnic touch - the "grocer's apostrophe" in "CRA's" and "FPA's". I imagine that's to make us feel at home. I mean, it's just like being in your own High Street, isn't it? ![]() So if you're married, don't install a PC in the garden shed to watch porn late at night - your helpful ISP are likely to tell your wife. I expect it's in your own best interest ![]() So if you get in a dispute with Orange and refuse to pay your bill because they haven't provided the service you thought you were entitled to, they're going to gang up with all their big business mates and hound you through the streets ![]() So they'll decide what information is correct and what isn't, and they'll set the police on us if they feel like it. We wouldn't have too much problem with this if it weren't for the number of times large organisations like this are shown to have made massive and repeated errors, lost computer files, confused one customer with another. Still, when the Old Bill come banging on your door in the middle of the night (assuming they're not on strike, that is) it'll be easy enough to explain that it's not you they're looking for, but someone with the same name who lives in Cumbernauld. Yeah, that'll work all right ![]() Well, nobody's in favour of fraud, are they? So of course we won't mind that the entire financial industry of the Western World - banks, insurance companies, credit agencies, credit card issuers and prospective employers are all phoning each other up and talking about your personal details. Oh, and don't bother applying for a new job - you're likely to arrive at the interview to find that bloke from Cumbernauld has already been appointed. ![]() That'll be the two very large gentlemen with baseball bats, presumably. From Cumbernauld. ![]() So don't think you can escape by emigrating to Australia. Once you've signed up with Orange, mate, they bloody own you. ![]() Er hang on what's this? What d'you mean, profiling my preferences? Does that include my you know, my little foible about the ink-well filled with chopped liver ? ![]() We'll clog up your email with messages, we'll give your postman corns by loading his mailbag with junk, and we'll phone you up five times a night and when you answer there'll be this Indian gentleman talking and talking and talking and he won't go away ![]() Chechnya, the Ukraine, Indonesia, Sri Lanka, Iran, Bangladesh, some tiny atoll in the Indian Ocean with a submarine moored in the lagoon ![]() but to put it in simple terms, we'll know every page you look at on the internet, we'll keep details of every email you send, we'll know who you talk to, how you spend your money, which organisations you belong to and we'll pass all this information to anyone who asks for it, because you have no right to any privacy at all and if you've done nothing wrong you'll have nothing to fear and anyway if it saves one little kiddy from harm it'll all be worth it and if you don't agree you must be some sort of pervert or terrorist or something, and global warming ![]() We will provide you with the Service(s) using reasonable skill and care and in accordance with the provisions of this Agreement Only reasonable skill and care, that is. We're not actually very good, but we're reasonable, and that's the best we can manage. Sorry. ![]() If we pay someone else to do something for us and they mess it up, we're not taking responsibility. What did you think? ![]() We're crap. Take it or leave it. ![]() We'll sell you on to some other crap company if we feel like it. But don't worry, we'll tell you first, so that's all right. ![]() Especially anyone from Chechnya, the Ukraine, Indonesia, Sri Lanka, Iran, Bangladesh, the Indian Ocean or that bloke from Cumbernauld. And the deliberate mistake? Well, that's our mistake in assuming that it's Orange's job to provide its customers with any kind of "service". How very silly of us. It's perfectly obvious, when you think about it, that their real raison d'κtre is to make it abundantly clear why they don't feel themselves bound to provide any service at all, except to the official organisations to whom they will pass our personal details. Personal privacy? Customer confidentiality? Service? No, I don't think so. Bastards. either on this site or on the World Wide Web. Copyright © 2007 The GOS This site created and maintained by PlainSite |
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