Farcebook

Category: Technology

  • Accidentally beta testing the world

    Accidentally beta testing the world

    Are you one of those people who always seems to break the world? Someone for whom the phrase “That’s strange, I’ve never seen that before” gets said around them a bit too often. Or you always seem to be in the wrong place at the right time?

    Yeah…

    So I thoroughly broke Amazon. Like, properly broke them. Well, their locker delivery system for my order. Not the whole of Amazon. Although, that probably wouldn’t be too hard.

    I tried to buy this, it’s a big item. Think 5 litre bucket of fence paint big.

    And this, which is a small item

    I tried to get it delivered to my local Amazon Locker, but the system said the locker was “unavailable”, so I chose another nearby one, which it let me do. The system knows what will be in each locker, and has to allocate a specific box in the locker for your items. They know what’s going on.

    Sometimes they also seem to tell you a locker is “full” or “unavailable” if they don’t want to send an item there. I’ve often tried to order something small and cheap to a locker, to avoid the £4.99 delivery fee (or at least reduce it to £2.99) and the system has told me all my lockers were full. Except if I added some more things to my order, the lockers magically became available again.

    Being cheap I opted for free three day delivery on my massive tub of gym powder and a case for my headphones, so it should have come on Wednesday. Sometimes you can cheat the system and it just turns up the following day, so it’s like getting next day delivery for free.

    So far, so good… so what?

    This is where normally you get a notification the next day and an instruction to pick up your items from the locker, and go away happy.

    Sometimes the system gets a bit messed up though, and you might see this in the tracking info

    No problem, maybe the locker was full. The item was supposed to arrive on Wednesday, so maybe the driver was chancing it.

    Oh, well I guess the locker is still full. Still, tomorrow is Wednesday and the day it was due to be delivered, so it’ll turn up tomorrow.

    And this is where the story gets a bit strange. For five days the delivery guy took my parcel, went to the locker, went “uh, full…” and put it back on his van.

    Yes, it’s possible it’s a different driver every day, but you’d imagine the delivery system would cancel deliveries after a certain number of failed deliveries?

    It took me contacting support twice to get them to cancel it, so I could order it again to my house. Which they managed to do pretty efficiently. The box it came it definitely wouldn’t have fitted in a locker. Bit strange it was despatched. Bit stranger they tried to deliver it five times.

  • Amazon Mouse 2, Refund Boogaloo

    Amazon Mouse 2, Refund Boogaloo

    After chatting with some people on Discord they convinced me to be bothered to return the broken mouse.

    They explained that since it was so cheap, the refund would be issued immediately.

    They were wrong, but wait a minute … £9.36?

    I paid £4.37, that was the whole point – get cheap mouse, and also why I couldn’t be bothered returning it.

    But if I’m being refunded more, well alright then. There’s a returns box in Morrisons, it’s quite good and must be a new thing. Last time I did a return it had to go to an Evri dropoff point.

    I bought this amazing device instead. It’s fine… The Bluetooth is laggy, but the wireless dongle works well.

    So to recap…

    • I got a £25 Amazon gift card code for trialling a new app for charging my car
    • I spent £4 of it on some e-waste
    • I returned the e-waste
    • I got more money than I spent as a refund
    • The mouse was probably someone’s old mouse that had failed, and they probably did a shady switch after buying a new one and returning it.

    I wonder who will get it next 😄

  • Cheap Amazon E-Waste Mouse

    Cheap Amazon E-Waste Mouse

    Wherein I thought I was getting a bargain mouse…

    For a bargain price, using the Amazon returns warehouse thing…

    But instead I received someone’s broken e-waste that has clearly been used quite a bit, before they returned it…

    This is clearly not a return that was barely used. Someones’s had this a good while. Look at the photos and the primary mouse button has a shiny bit on it. The pads on the bottom are scratched, and the little QA sticker has gone all transparent.

    So what went on? Did they buy a replacement and then put this in the box and return it for a refund?

    I’m not averse to second hand mice, I work in a school and have a functional immune system. A bit of finger gravy doesn’t scare me.

    No, the problem is the mouse doesn’t actually work. Plug the dongle in… Nothing happens. The PC sees a USB Mouse, but the mouse pointer doesn’t move.

    And for 4 quid it’s not worth my time and effort trying to return it. So you win this one Amazon, well done.

    Although I did buy this with a free £25 gift card I received for using the new charging app for my car, so… You lose Amazon 😄 It wasn’t my money in the first place.

  • TV Licence Scaremongering

    It’s that time again where I have to certify that I promise not to watch broadcast TV.

    Although they do try very hard to make me click the wrong button

    Its like Amazon and their attempts at tricking us into buying Prime.

    And then once the relevant form is filled in, you get this email

    “If any of your circumstances change, such as you start watching live TV”. What is this, I come home one night after work and have a relapse and binge on 6 hours of Corrie?

  • Android desktop mode beta, or Chromebook in your pocket

    Android desktop mode beta, or Chromebook in your pocket

    I enrolled on the Android Beta and am typing this on my phone plugged into a USB-C dongle that provides HDMI and USB.

    The idea is it’s supposed to turn your phone into a portable “real” computer.

    I think it needs some work, it’s a bit unstable. The idea is there, and it works very similarly to a Chromebook, just they don’t quite know what to do with the phone’s screen. Interacting with that really confuses everything.

    Also apps are completely unaware of what’s going on. Trying to use Firefox is … interesting.

    I had to take this “screenshot” with my phone’s camera, because I couldn’t find any other way. Pressing Print Screen on the keyboard took a screenshot of the phone’s display.

    Also sometimes the phone’s display got confused with what it was trying to show

    No idea what’s going on here, but I’m fairly sure apps in windows are not supposed to appear on the phone. Pressing the “X” in the window makes the entire phone close all apps and lock itself.

    Maybe it’ll turn into something good, and in a few years time I bin my Chromebook, or Google will silently kill it off by December. The concept is good, but I don’t really have random monitors, keyboards and mice lying around waiting for something to plug into them. I have computers, or a laptop.