2006-06-05

(1) Posted a complaint at The Beeb's Watchdog site.

(2) Posted an abbreviated summary on British Ex-Pats so that other British-Canadians aren't taken for a ride (or flight) by this unscrupulous company.

(3) Posted a complaint with the BBB of Vancouver.

(4) Emailed the acquaintance, who originally recommended Canadian Affair to me, so that they are kept in the loop.

(5) ABTA action will follow when I can find the time to mail off copies of the correspondence to England.

(6) Proving yet again that there is some truth in anagrams: according to Wordsmith.org, an anagram of "The Airline Seat Company", Canadian Affair's other name, is "I emplane, a cheat in story".

2006-06-03

My first blog post in a quite a while and it's going to be a long one.

July/August 2005:
My wife, my son and I travel to England to visit my folks for two weeks, flying from Toronto Pearson [YYZ] to Birmingham International [BHX] on Thomas Cook flight #TCX4L. Outbound flight: no problems. Return flight #TCX4K: I am refused boarding, because my British passport (with accompanying perma-resident visa stamp and landing papers) plus Canadian credit, debit and Ontario health cards, are not sufficient proof of Canadian perma-residency, even though my visa stamp and landing papers quite clearly show that I am a perma-resident, not on a student or visitors' visa. The fact that both my wife and son share my last name and that my flight originated at YYZ, is lost on the over-zealous security staff at BHX.

I am forced to cough-up CDN$433 to purchase a one-way ticket for use in returning me back to the UK within 6 months, because Canadian Affair is "acting on instruction from Canadian Immigration" (lie #1 in quotes - explanation will follow later). Thos Cook's travel rep at BHX, Kosmar, say that they do not have access to credit card facilities, even though they are authorised agents for Thos Cook/The Airline Seat Company Ltd (AKA/TA Canadian Affair). Luckily, I have the cash to buy a one-way ticket back to the UK. The Security Officer, who refused me boarding, said that the ticket must be valid for a return flight back to the UK within the next 6 months (the maximum time I can stay in Canada without a special visa) yet Kosmar issues me with a return flight of TCX4L on August 19th. This will become apparent when I summarise my conclusions later.

When I finally arrive back at YYZ, I have no problems with Canadian Passport Control, given my landing papers and passport stamps that proves I've been living in Canada for the past 2 years without any time outside of Canada over 6 months (this is the requirement to maintain perma-residency status). The Passport Control Officer informs me that whilst it is not 100% required, it is preferred that I have my perma-residency card to speed up the entry process. This confirms Thos Cook's first lie: if they were "acting on instructions from Canadian Immigration", then I would have had to either get back on the next plane to the UK (not possible, since the next available flight, TCX4L, is a week away - they only fly/flew out once a week) or I would have to call a relative to bring my perma-resident card to the airport. Neither were required.

According to Canadian Affair's booking terms and conditions (current, looks different to how I remember it when I wrote my my complaint) all complaints must be made within 1 month of return. I faxed my complaint letter on August 25th, thereby satisfying that requirement. Foolishly, given the time-constraint for a complaint submission, I expected a speedy reply - naturally my optimism was mis-placed, because it took Canadian Affair around 6 weeks and 2 chase-up calls to reply. Their letter was dated just "September 2005", but the postmark on the hand-written addressed envelope states October 2nd. This should have been a subtle clue to the sequence of mis-information that would follow from them.

The letter, written by Katherine Tam, Office Manager, Canadian Affair Vancouver, states that "The security officers as you can appreciate are acting on instruction from Canadian Immigration. Although you did have your Social Insurance number and bank cards this is unfortunately not sufficient prove [sic] to enter Canada with a one way ticket". Lie #2: my ticket was not one-way - it was a return ticket, originating from YYZ. Tam continues: "This is because temporary residents can actually obtain such items and not need to surrender such cards upon departure". Lie #3: my passport visa stamp shows that I am a category "IM-1" immigrant, ie. a perma-resident, NOT a temporary resident. Also, temp residents cannot obtain an OHIP card. Tam goes on further to state: "Therefore Canadian Immigration would normally want to see your Permanent Residency also as prove [sic] of your immigration status". Correct, Canadian Immigration would prefer to see my perma-resident card, but it was not necessary when I arrived back at YYZ. Tam then closes out with the following two paragraphs: "I have arranged for a refund of $433 to be sent to you, this will arrive shortly from our Head Office in the UK. We apologies [sic] for the inconvenience caused and hope that you will still choose to fly with Canadian Affair in the future."

I took this to mean that, yes, perhaps I should have had the perma-resident card with me, but that in the interests of good faith, Canadian Affair would be sending me an ex‑gratia refund (not even a little extra on top for all my efforts). Lie #4: payment never came. Fast-forward to December 27th, when I used the extra-long holiday period to sit down and chase up any unfinished business (and the same day I actually got around to starting this blog). I faxed a chase-up letter 2 days later, including a copy of Tam's letter and confirmed receipt with Celia later in the day. Fast forward to April, following 4 months of busy home and work life. My folks asked if I ever got a resolution out of Canadian Affair. This prompted me to call them yet again for an answer. Called on April 26th or 27th and spoke to Russell, who claimed to be a Supervisor. He advised that Katherine Tam was now working in their Glasgow office. Understandably, given that it was already 1900h Eastern Time, he advised that he would not be able to contact her until the next day. Russell promised me a callback the next day, after speaking with Tam. I gave both my work and home numbers. Unsurprisingly, I received no calls or voicemails the next day(s) or on the Monday. So, I called one more time on Saturday May 27th and spoke to Scott, who advised that Tam was back at their Vancouver office. I advised Scott that unless I received a favourable response on Monday May 29th, I would be issuing a charge-back on the original booking (about CDN$1800 versus the amount of CDN$433 I was claiming back) since Canadian Affair did not provide me with the original return-flight service that was paid for in June 2005. Scott would not comment beyond repeating the words "you will receive a call-back on Monday" and again took my work number - he only had my home number on file.

Sure enough, I did get a callback on Monday, but Tam left a voicemail on my home number, requesting a callback. Called Tam on Tuesday 30th and re-issued my threat of the charge-back, which evidently did not get relayed by Scott. Tam advised that after writing her letter in September/October, she referred my complaint to her Head Office and that they wrote to me "shortly afterwards" to turn down the refund request. I never received a second letter, nor any response to my chase-up fax in December or phone call in April, but that is beside the point: Tam had already promised me a refund in her original letter. I advised Tam that if she did not have the authority to issue refunds, she had no business promising me something that could be overridden by another office and, notwithstanding their decision, their communication and general customer service had been extremely poor to-date. Tam once more advised that she would speak with her Head Office and this time relay my charge-back threat.

Tam called back the next day, Wednesday 31st May 2006, to advise that their decision stands and that they would fight any charge-back attempt.

To summarise:
(1) Canadian Affair will use any means necessary to generate extra "revenue" by disingenuously hiding behind "immigration rules" and will hold passengers' return flights ransom, until such time the ransom is paid in cash. It is now obvious as to why Kosmar "could not" take credit-cards for the ransom - Canadian Affair evidently knows that it is exploiting a grey area of the "immigration rules" and obviously wants to reduce the number of legitimate charge-backs. Any passenger, who does not have timely access to cash in Canadian or UK currency, will be shafted - even if they have a life, job and family to get back to in Canada. Any ticket purchased will be under duress, therefore under ransom. Kosmar issues return flights for the next available flight, not for the 6 months - evidently and purposely so that I cannot cancel the return flight for a refund and for them to be able to resell the seat.
(2) Canadian Affair have the temerity to demand complaints to be submitted within one month of the return date, yet will play for time, hoping that complainants will forget to follow up on their claim.
(3) Canadian Affair, when chased, will promise a refund (even on an apparent ex-gratia basis).
(4) Canadian Affair, when chased some more, will play for more time, hoping that complainants will eventually forget or give up. This is presumably intended to make the complainant "shut up and go away".
(5) Canadian Affair, when chased yet again, will then break the refund promise - they will not even have the courtesy or guts to inform the hapless complainant that they have turned down the claim.
(6) Canadian Affair will openly lie about having written a follow-up letter.
(7) As per Canadian Affair's own website: "Canadian Affair is the trading name of a privately owned company called The Airline Seat Company Limited" and "Canadian Affair maintains strategic alliances with Thomas Cook Airlines and My Travel Airways which are exclusive to the company's Canadian routes". According to a Google search, My Travel Airways were formerly known as "The Air Touring Company" aka Airtours. Airtours have had numerous complaints exposed on the BBC's consumer affairs programme Watchdog. It is no small surprise that Canadian Affair should "maintain strategic alliances" with such a disreputable company, even if the flights themselves were on Thomas Cook, not My Travel.

My recommendation: If flying to/from Canada/UK, fly with KLM Royal Dutch Airlines (maybe no direct flights, but good connections via Amsterdam Schipol) or Air Transat. Never had a problem with either airline - I went with Canadian Affair on the recommendation of an acquaintance. Next time, we're going with KLM or Air Transat for sure.

2006-04-04

Some good news in today's 24hrs: "The City of Brampton is slapping big fines on those accused of causing advertising pollution. Anyone caught posting signs on public property without a permit could face a whopping $5,000 fine".

It's about time that municipalities went after the street-spamming morons who litter public property with those nasty choroplast signs and bits of paper taped to the sides of bus shelters. It's nothing but commercial graffiti.

Hopefully, the rest of the cities in the GTA will follow suit.

2006-03-10

Saw an interesting story on Wednesday in 24hrs, a free daily news rag in the GTA. It looks like one of the big Canadian ISP's is trying to bilk its customers into paying more for a high-priority internet service (what Shaw Communications calls "QoS Enhancement"). This is presumably done in a protection racket-type effort to provide a "reliable" connection for its customers who subscribe 3rd-party VoIP services. Naturally, there is a plug for Shaw's own VoIP service (called "Shaw Digital Phone") with a link at the end of the "QoS Enhancement" page.

Of course, Vonage's cries of "VoIP Tax!" aren't without merit, but this is old news. Primus has had the same ongoing problem since at least May 2005, according to this blog. However, it looks like Vonage is actually trying to do something about it, by complaining to the CRTC.

Shaw's rebuttal is less-than-convincing. It is laughable that Shaw should claim that "contrary to Vonage's claim, Shaw does not offer an Internet telephony service in direct competition with Vonage or any other Internet phone provider. Shaw's Digital Phone service is a carrier-grade, primary line, local and long distance residential telephone service that uses a managed IP network. Shaw Digital phone calls travel directly from Shaw's secure private network to the tried-and-true public telephone system. They do not travel over the Internet. The result is a more reliable and higher quality phone service". Nonsense, Shaw, it's still VoIP. Even though it's not provided through a 3rd-party carrier, it still uses an IP telephony network, ergo it's VoIP by definition.

What contempt Shaw must have for its customers, if they think everyone is so stupid as to not know what VoIP is and how it works. Hopefully, the CRTC will slam them good. I'm glad I'm not a Shaw customer.

Related perma-link.

2006-01-31

Ordered some goodies from the GoogleStore website about 3 weeks ago. Unfortunately, one of the items I wanted wasn't in stock, but GatewayCDI couldn't tell me how much it would cost to ship the order for the in-stock items until everything came into stock 3 weeks later. When they finally told me that the shipping would cost almost half as much as the goods, I cancelled the order.

This is the sort of idiocy that happens when a company outsources its services. GoogleStore had some cool goodies on their site, but due to their dire customer service and excessive shipping costs, they've lost a sale.

Having worked in e-commerce, I can say that it is not impossible to calculate the shipping costs on-the-fly - there is no reason why they couldn't have told me the shipping costs as I placed them in my shopping cart.

GoogleStore: dump GatewayCDI and either do the e-commerce in-house, or find a better outsourced e-commerce solution with cheaper shipping.

2006-01-29

Decided to add a bit more to my blog customisation to gradually move away from Minima Black, one of the default Blog*Spot templates. I initially chose Minima Black, because I find pages with white backgrounds too hard on the eye.

However, I don't want my blog to look just like all the other Minima Black-based blogs out there, so I added some animated .gif's, courtesy of Flaming Text. Then I coded some JavaScript that is called when the <$BlogItemTitle$> meta-tag is used in the template, referencing either <Rant> or <Rave> in the blog title. Now I have a customised blog title, stating if the blog entry is negative (rant) and/or positive (rave).

Finally, another part of the script keeps track of how many rants and raves I have posted (in the current blog index) which is displayed over on the right-hand side-bar.

2006-01-22

More lameness from Spike TV, this time from their Wednesday night offering, Casino Cinema, which featured John Landis' classic comedy Trading Places. Despite branding themselves "The First Network For Men", Spike aired the heavy-cut version of the film, removing any and all references to profanity and nudity.

To make matters worse, Casino Cinema stops after every 7-8 mins for a commercial break and/or feature on gambling, which totally detracts from the film. What could have taken 2½ hours (with commercials) actually ended up lasting 3 hours.

Bravo! on the other hand, screened it uncut and with limited commercial interruptions tonight. Maybe there are stricter restrictions on what American channels can show - if so, it's ironic that US channels can't show US-made films uncut.

2006-01-15

Decided to get back into a little programming this weekend, just to keep my coding skills from going rusty.

I found a neat little Flash scrolling text banner generator (on another Blog*Spot page) from here. Great for displaying static messages, but what about something dynamic - what about my hobby server's uptime?

I wrote a little PHP script, called by the system crontab every 10 minutes, to create an external .js file that uses document.write to load the .swf file with params, all of which is executed when this page is loaded.

Initial results worked really well, but of course the plain old uptime output from my hobby server was a little boring, so I found and used a combination of nifty PHP scripts to find and parse the system uptime into another format. Then I added the ability to record the highest uptime value and report back the current and highest uptimes so far.

The end result may not be that much to most people, but very satisfying for me all the same. You can see the banner over on the right side-bar, after the Archives section.


Update 2006-01/31: looks like someone was interested enough to tag this post on blinkbits.com.

2006-01-06

Read an interesting article in The Toronto Sun a few days ago, mentioning how unbelievable some of the forensics are in CSI (presumably also refering to CSI:Miami and CSI:NY). I have to say that the producers do stretch the science to incredible lengths on a routine basis. And not just the science, but also the technology.

Don't get me wrong - CSI is one of the very few shows that I like. But in at least two episodes (one in CSI, the other in CSI:Miami) they have used ridiculous-looking IP addresses - something like 4xxx.5xxx.4xxx - not even IPv6. If the producers are worried that someone is going to try and DDoS the on-screen IP address, yet still want to give some air of realism, for goodness sakes use something that at least looks semi-legitimate - use a CIDR/8 that hasn't yet been allocated by ARIN.

Of course, as each series rolls on, it does become harder to come up with new ideas and story-lines to keep the audience interested, but if there's no intention to make even a passing attempt at realism, they may as well set CSI in the 24th century and pretend that all these high-tech research techniques exist in a sci-fi, sorry CSI-fi, world.

2006-01-02

So, the Sony Root-kit debacle drags on. According to The Toronto Star, Sony is making token gestures to its loyal customers by offering 3 free downloads or a replacement CD with a measly US$7.50 plus 1 download. And that's just for Sony's US customers - Canadians may not even be open to the deal.

Not that I can remember the last Sony BMG label CD I bought - I used to think that the artist is more important than the label, but now I'm going to check every time on the rare occasion that I buy a CD. Oh, and when we bought a new TV this Christmas, I made sure it wasn't going to be a Sony either, so that's another CA$300.00 Sony has guaranteed itself to lose out on. It can sometimes be hard not to sound like a techno-snob, but when something like this happens, it's important to use non-technical language to show how bad a company has been, just so that friends and family can appreciate and participate in the boycott.

The actual purveyors of the original malware was a company called "First 4 Internet", which fits in exactly with one of my theorems: never trust a company that uses the number "4" in place of the word "for" in its domain name. I hope that First4Internet gets slammed with the Computer Mis-use Act over this. It'll be nice to see heads roll, now that big business has gone way too far in its contempt for privacy.

Perma-link to Mark Russinovich's original blog, outlining the root-kit.
Link to related news stories on theregister.co.uk.
Link to a CNET news story, listing other clients of First4Internet: Universal Music Group, Warner Music Group and EMI.
Link to a BBC news story, referencing the original blog by Mark R.
Link to an interesting article, clearly demonstrating that the ruling Liberal party of Canada is easily bought off by big business, when it comes to [not] protecting the privacy rights of its citizens - Sarmite Bulte MP.
Another link to class-action suit info.
Yet another link referencing boycott of Sony CD's (why not boycott everything made by Sony?) and which links to an on-line petition.