According to Marc Warren in the rather patronising adverts where he tries to recreate a low-budget version of Minority Report, TiVo is a whole new way of watching telly. From what I’ve experienced, it’s a way of watching telly in a way that you want to put your foot through the screen every five minutes and you pay Virgin Media extra for the privilege of it. I wouldn’t be surprised if the reason that insurers offer accidental damage cover is to cater for people with Virgin Media boxes.

TiVo, when implemented properly, sounds fantastic. It records episodes of programmes that you’ll probably like and makes On-Demand a breeze. Looking at the US, where TiVO is massive, it works and it works well.

Unfortunately, Virgin Media seem to have bought the TiVo boxes and added their own brand of crap software so that it slows to a crawl and the rewind/fast forward controls are a joke.

The features, if you can call them that, are below:

1. YouTube
   YouTube on the telly. Sounds great. Only one issue – the interface is totally crap and the text entry is completely different to the other applications on the box which is shoddy design.
2. On Demand
   Virgin Media prides itself on its On Demand service. Watch the promos when you’re in the home menu and you’ll see that. Our mate Marc Warren is always banging on about it too. The only problem is is that On Demand with Virgin Media doesn’t mean On Demand. It means ‘occasionally, we’ll let you watch a quarter of a program and then the box will say that On Demand isn’t available and then you have to reset the box and then you’ll get to watch another five minutes before we cut you off again’. Honestly, if you’ve never felt rage before, get yourself a V+ HD or a TiVo box and try to watch a half hour episode. The only reason that Virgin Media give you a remote with your TiVo box is so that you’ve got something to chew on in frustration.
3. Rewind/Fast Forward
   Part of the fun of ‘On Demand’ and  TiVo itself is that you can skip and rewind. Allegedly, you can go to the exact part of the programme that you want. Except with TiVo, you can’t. Oh you can rewind and fast forward but the only problem is that when you do this, you press Play at the right spot and it carries on for another five seconds before playing. Then you skip the other way and it does the same again. It takes five to ten times of doing this before you land in the right place.

So, as you can see above, if you’re thinking about taking Virgin Media’s TiVo service then you’re in for a nasty surprise (unless they sort it out with yet another software update)

There are two reasons people use Virgin Media: fast broadband and/or a cheaper option than Sky.

The ideal compromise would be to take Virgin Media’s broadband service (which is quite cheap by itself) and pay the extra few quid to Sky for their television service. At least with Sky+ you won’t have issues with a dodgy, slow TV box.

Finally, you should also be aware that Virgin Media’s tech support is mostly based in Pune, India. Trying to get tech support from that team, who do not deviate from a script where you’re asked to turn the box off and on again several times, is equally as frustrating as trying to watch a 90 minute episode of Sherlock on a TiVo box.

UPDATE 15/01/12 @ 14:44: Virgin Media responded to my tweet:

Virgin Media's reply

And my response:

My reply to VM

OK, I’m being sarcastic, but it’s not far from the truth. If you try to get through to their tech support, you will definitely be asked to switch the box off and on again at least once, even though you’ve already tried it.

In the past, they’ve had me do it twice before telling me that there was a fault in my area. I checked this on Virgin Media’s status page and found that either they had given up and were telling lies or the info was out of date.

Also, as mentioned above, the majority of their support contact centres seem to be offshore so they will not deviate from their script. Be prepared for more frustration.

Marc Warren’s right — it’s a new way of watching TV (but one where you spend half the time making angry phone calls to their tech support people)

UPDATE 16/01/12 @ 19:26: I sent Neil Berkett (Virgin Media’s chief exec) an E-Mail asking for his thoughts and received the following back:

Thank you for your email.

I’m really sorry you’re unhappy, Unfortunately Neil is currently unable to deal with your complaint personally. So that his team can help you quickly, please reply with either your Virgin Media account number, telephone number or full address and postcode details and we’ll get straight onto it.

Raj Tandon on behalf of Neil Berkett

At first, I thought it was excellent. I’d paid £1399 for it, but that didn’t matter because I now had what is allegedly the best home computer in the world. With a 27″ screen and a spangly wireless keyboard and ‘Magic Mouse’, I was pretty sure I wouldn’t have to upgrade for a while.

I first realised that I had a problem about ten months later when the corners of the screen became ‘smokey’. The only way to describe this is that it looked fine until you had part of the screen was completely white. You could then see a dull grey smokey pattern in that area of the screen.

I Googled it and saw that it wasn’t an isolated issue – quite a few other people have had the same issue and have had to take them back to the Apple Store where they’ve had to replace the screen. Other people have had the same issue and it’s disappeared after a while.

No problem I thought; I’ll just give the nice folks at Apple a call and they’ll do the same. Wrong. The thing about the Genius Bar (and Apple in general) is that they are ridiculously secretive about everything. I booked an appointment and asked if they could get the parts in. I knew what was wrong, they knew what was wrong but they told me that they would have to carry out ‘a full diagnostic’ before they could order parts. I told them several times that it was definitely the screen and pleaded with them to have a screen in for a 27″ Mid-2010 iMac, but they said that they couldn’t promise anything.

The day of my appointment comes, I turn up bang on time and they tell me that they’ll get to me as soon as possible. As soon as possible turned out to be 40 minutes despite having an appointment. The guy who dealt with me was polite and a nice guy, but he gave me the news that I’d been dreading – it was definitely the screen but they didn’t have a screen in stock. Fair play to him, he put my iMac at the front of the queue and I had it back three days later. When I went down to pick it up, the engineer who brought it out was rude as hell and said “There you go, it’s fixed. Can’t stop, got another three repairs to do in 20 minutes”.

I got it home set it up but didn’t turn it on as it was almost Christmas and I had a million and one things to do. A few days later, I get round to using it and realised that something wasn’t right. The screen was perfect but there was a barely audible buzzing/whistling sound that wasn’t there before. It was the CPU fan at the back.

As it was barely audible, I wasn’t too bothered. I used it without a problem for a couple of days. Then, while browsing the net, it got seriously loud inside the space of about five minutes. I thought it was because the CPU fan speed had been cranked up, but thanks to iStat Pro, I could tell that wasn’t the case. The CPU fan fault had gotten worse.

I phoned the Apple Store on 3rd Jan and told them and they said that they’d put me through to someone who could help. I was then placed in a queue where I was number 5. Number 5. Still number 5. Twenty minutes later, I gave up and phoned Consumer Direct instead.

It turns out that Apple may be in breach of the Sale Of Goods Act 1979. They’ve now advised me to write a letter to Apple Retail Ltd and detail my complaint. The letter’s written and I’m ready to post it, but I’ve just given the Apple Store another call, asked to speak to a manager and apparently he’s going to call me back. I’m not holding my breath, but I’ll hold off sending this letter until then.

If this doesn’t get sorted, I’m willing to take this all the way to the Small Claims Court. I know Apple have got legal eagles just waiting to hand my arse to me on a plate, but sod it… I’m not putting up with the crap that they’ve sold me and then tried to repair and then ballsed up some more just because they pay lawyers in fancy suits a lot of money.

On the other hand, if Apple do pull their finger out and sort this, I’m willing to update this post. I’m not paying for a taxi all the way to Liverpool One and back again out of my own pocket for a fault that they introduced in the first place.

Update: 14/01/12 – The Apple Store agreed to send a courier to pick the iMac up, but I still had to trek down there to sign the paperwork. Apparently, they’ll be sending it back to me by courier when it’s fixed. I’ll add another post when I know what their response is.

He’s allowed me to put the E-Mails up here on one condition — that I change his name. I agreed. From now on, we’ll call him Tarquin.

Tarquin bought a TV from Asda twelve months ago. Then it broke. So they replaced it with another one. Then that one broke. Then they replaced that one. Then his house was burgled and he had to buy a new one. And now that one’s broke.

This first E-Mail was sent from Tarquin to Andy Clarke, the Chief Executive of Asda UK.

Dear Mr Clarke

Please treat this E-Mail as a formal complaint.

What do I think of when I think of Asda? I’ll tell you: good food, low prices and mince. I also think of electronics, and that’s what I’m writing to you about today.

I’m somewhat of an aficianado of electronic gizmos and own a mobile phone, a Breville toastie maker and a kettle. All of these have been purchased from Asda and I’ve had no problems whatsoever with them.

Around 12 months ago, I bought an LG 32″ television from you. It was awesome. I purchased it along with a selection of DVDs from your bargain bin (all of them had Kevin Spacey and Samuel L Jackson in them, which was a bit weird)

I took it home and gave it pride of place in my house and invited my friends around to watch ‘A Time To Kill’ (£2.99, an awesome movie starring both Kevin Spacey and Samuel L Jackson).

A few months later, the worse happened. I was halfway through watching the DVD of The Negotiator (£2.99, starring both Kevin Spacey and Samuel L Jackson) when the set completely died on me. I tried everything; I turned it off and on, called friends to ask for advice and asked the bloke in the flat above who once worked for IBM if he could fix it. But no joy. It had officially gone to TV heaven.

I unplugged the set, placed it in my car and drove all the way back to the Asda with it. When I got there, I dragged the TV into the store and the lady at the customer service desk kindly replaced it for me. While I was there, I bought The Usual Suspects (£3.99, starring Kevin Spacey, but no Sam Jackson this time)

I brought the new set home and plugged it in and continued to watch some excellent movies.

Fast-forward a few months and the same thing happened. By this time, the guy upstairs who worked for IBM had moved out so I had nowhere to turn to. I drove it back to your Asda store and again, the lady at customer services exchanged it for a new one.

Again, fast-forward a few months – my house was burgalled and the TV stolen. I drove to Asda again and your helpful staff helped me pick out a Sanyo TV to replace it (along with LA Confidential on DVD for £3.99, starring Kevin Spacey). Since then, I’ve been very happy with my new TV.

However, last night, my heart sank. I sat down in front of my TV with a cheese toastie and a cup of tea (made with my ASDA Breville toaster and kettle) and tried to watch Die Hard With A Vengeance (£2.99, starring Samuel L Jackson) and the set died. I almost screamed. No matter what I did, it wouldn’t come back on.

This morning, I tried again and it came back on, but I fear that it’s on its last legs.

Have Asda started selling shoddy electronics goods? Do you realise how much inconvenience this causes me when I have to take a day off work to buy TVs and DVDs?

I’m hoping that you can offer a solution to this issue that I’m having with my new TV. I don’t really want to have to lug this back to my local Asda store. Besides, I now own every single DVD where either Kevin Spacey or Samuel L Jackson appear.

I would also respectfully ask that I am compensated for my time and inconvenience.

Yours sincerely

Mr Tarquin Angler

Days passed and then Tarquin received a response from Nicola in Executive Relations. Awesome, they were willing to negotiate!

Hello Tarquin

Thank you for your email to Andy Clarke about the Sanyo TV you bought from you local store. As part of Andy’s team I’m available on his behalf to respond to any customer issues.

I’m sorry the TV has developed a fault. I understand how frustrating this must be for you especially as this isn’t the first time this has happened. We expect all the products we sell to be of excellent quality so it’s concerning this has happened.

All electrical items come with a 12 month guarantee. In order to refund or replace the TV for you we would need to you to return to the store with your receipt.

I understand this is inconvenient for you so as a good will gesture I would like to send you a gift card for £20 which you can spend in any Asda store. Can you please provide me with your address details so I can do this?

Thanks again for letting me know about the problems you’ve had. We value all customer feedback at Asda, as it allows us to understand what went wrong and get things right in the future.

If I can assist you any further with this, please let me know.

Kind Regards

Nichola

Nichola xxxxxxx
Executive Relations
Asda House
Tel: 0800 xxx xxxx
Ext: xxxxx
ASDA Saving You Money Every Day

So Tarquin was £20 up if he accepted their offer. £20 would at least get you a bottle of spirits. But before Tarquin could accept the offer, he tried to take his old TV back to Asda in Bootle and all hell let loose. Tarquin asked me to write another E-Mail describing his traumatic night.

Dear Nicola

Many thanks for your E-Mail. Again, please treat this as a formal complaint. I don’t want to involve Trading Standards, Consumer Direct, Anne Robinson, Martin Lewis or Dame Judy Dench (who I once met whilst stood in the line at Chessington World Of Adventures), but I will if I have to.

May I first say that I was disappointed not to receive an E-Mail from Mr Clarke himself. As the head of a massive, massive, massive, MASSIVE supermarket chain, I expect he has one of those Blackberry things where he could just ping me a quick E-Mail saying “Way to go, Tarquin!” or “Cripes, that’s awful, I’ll look into this personally”. But no, he didn’t. I’ll bet he has one of them massive 50″ Sony Bravia TVs and he was too busy watching that. Meanwhile, I was sat there with a broken 32″ Sanyo.

It’s with regret that I must E-Mail you again to express my dissatisfaction. As a Scotsman, I’m normally quite a cheery chap. Most of my friends call me ‘[NAME REMOVED TO PROTECT THE GUILTY]‘, and with a name like that, you know that I’m not normally one for expressing dissatisfaction. In fact, most of the time I’m quite smiley and playing golf.

However, we have another customer service issue. Yes, another one.

I decided to take my Sanyo TV back to Asda Bootle today and queued for ten minutes. Ten minutes, Nicola. TEN. MINUTES.

When I got to the front of the queue, I explained the issue and was informed that I had to take the TV back to the store where I bought it which was Breck Road. Now I’m not sure what your geographical knowledge of the Liverpool area is (perhaps you’ve been on a hen night or city break around these parts?) but that’s a real trek. In fact, I timed it. It took me over an hour, all the while carrying a 32″ Sanyo TV that weighed an absolute ton.

Have you ever tried carrying a 32″ Sanyo TV for an hour? That’s a journey of over 3 miles. Perhaps you could give it a try next time Children In Need comes round. I’ll sponsor you.

I arrived at Asda in Breck Road completely out of breath, my back killing me and a crowd of local kids following me. They must have wondered what a Scotsman was carrying a 32″ TV along Breck Road for. It sounds like the start of a joke.

Queued yet again for 15 minutes (staffing issues, maybe?) and then the lady asked for my receipt. I didn’t have my receipt as I am an avid recycler and probably threw it out in my blue bin. I did, however, have proof of purchase in the form of a bank statement.

This, as I’m sure you are aware, is valid under The Sale Of Goods Act. I know this because I once took a class in Law as I had watched lots of Judge John Deed and it looked awesome. In fact, it was really, really boring.

The lady then spent 15 minutes searching her computer system to confirm that I had bought it there. I’m not sure why it took her so long. I can find anything on Google in under 30 seconds. If you would like to challenge me on this, please do.

After fifteen minutes, she found it. Hurray. Then she said that they had one in stock. She went away and came back. No, they didn’t. Then her friend said that she had seen one of these TVs in stock. They went to look for it and once again came back empty-handed. This happened again and again and again, with more and more Asda staff getting involved.

At this point, I was raging. You know that feeling that you get when your temples are throbbing and you can hear the theme from Ironside in your head? Like that. Luckily enough, my girlfriend had brought along her MP3 player and she had some Enya on there, so I listened to that to calm my tattered nerves.

They eventually found one. By this time, I was ready to collapse. I’d had a bad day and Asda made it a million times worse.

Twenty minutes later, the lady completed some crazy paperwork that I was required to sign. I signed on the dotted line and wearily dragged my TV out of the shop. I treated myself to a taxi this time as I had blisters on my feet.

So there we have it. Asda have, once again, delivered an exceptionally poor quality of service. In fact, instead of ‘Happy To Help’ maybe you should change your slogan to ‘We Hate You. Go Away’.

So while I thank you for the offer of a £20 gift card, I’m going to have to bat this one back over to you and tell you that I’m still not happy. Even if I was on less than the minimum wage, £20 wouldn’t compensate me for the time that I have spent running backwards and forwards and getting angry and listening to Enya.

If I’m not happy, Andy Clarke shouldn’t be happy. And if Andy Clarke’s not happy, you shouldn’t be happy.

Please sort this out. Pretty please.

Yours sincerely

Mr Tarquin Angler

No response as yet. As soon as I hear anything, I’ll update this post.

iPhone 4S Tariffs (source: The Register)

Amazingly, as well as offering the worst customer service, their tariffs aren’t particularly cheap either.

So let’s take the iPhone 4S improvements one at a time.

A new faster processor – the A5

Fair enough, faster processor means faster apps. Unless you’re a big gamer, this makes no difference whatsoever. The iPhone 4 (which I own at the moment) is no slouch. I’ve not noticed any slowdown at all, so a faster processor offers me no benefits whatsoever.

8MP digital camera and new optics

Again, impressive but unnecessary. My iPhone 4 gives me great photos at 5MP and they’re good enough for my purposes. Do I really want to shell out a few hundred quid for my photos to be a bit sharper?

Siri

This one is a bit misleading. For all I know, the Apple techs have been working hard on this and it’s one of the most advanced speech thingamabobs in the world. However, what most people fail to remember is that Siri was a free app a few months ago before Apple bought it. It looks like Apple have bought the company, integrated the app into iOS and left it at that. Again, reason to shell out a few hundred quid? Probably not.

So in my opinion, this is one of Apple’s laziest updates ever. At least the iPhone 3GS included GPS, a compass and other real improvements. This just makes it a little bit faster and gives you an app that was free up until recently.

Don’t get me wrong, it’s a great upgrade if you’re on an iPhone 3GS and your contract is up soon. You’ll get a Retina display, a better camera, an LED flash and you’ll notice the speed increase. For people like me who have an iPhone 4 and need an upgrade, it’s just not worth it.

So what now? Last week Samsung and Google announced the Samsung Galaxy Nexus. I’ve watched the video, I’ve seen the specs and, for the first time that I can remember, the Android phone comes out on top over an iPhone.

	Samsung Galaxy Nexus	iPhone 4S	Winner
Screen size and DPI	1280 x 720 – 4.65″ screen 316 DPI 100,000:1 Contrast Ratio	960×640 – 3.5″ screen 320 DPI 800:1 Contrast Ratio	Samsung Galaxy Nexus Slightly lower DPI, but look at that screen size! Also, Samsung are bragging that the contrast ratio is the highest in the industry
Battery	Li-Ion 1750 mAh	Li-Ion 1432 mAh	Samsung Galaxy Nexus Bigger battery, plus it’s removable so you can take a spare battery on the road
RAM	512mb RAM	1GB RAM	Samsung Galaxy Nexus Double the amount of RAM available
CPU	1 GHz dual-core ARM Cortex-A9 processor, PowerVR SGX543MP2 GPU, Apple A5 chipset	Dual-core 1.2GHz Cortex-A9 CPU, TI OMAP 4460 chipset, PowerVR SGX540 GPU	Tie Slightly faster processor on the Galaxy Nexus but a better GPU on the iPhone. iPhone 4S for gaming by the looks of it.
Other gizmos	Three-axis gyro Accelerometer Proximity sensor Ambient light sensor Digital Compass	Three-axis gyro Accelerometer Proximity sensor NFC Support Digital Compass Adobe Flash Support Barometer	Samsung Galaxy Nexus Wow — Apple has been out-gadgeted!
Voice Recognition	Available	Available	Undecided From what I’ve seen, Apple’s Siri works well if you live in the US and don’t have a regional accent. Android 4.0′s speech recognition looks good too.

I’m sold… it looks like the Samsung Galaxy Nexus has everything I need and more and will be at least a stop-gap until the iPhone 5 hits the shelves. Whether the iPhone 5 will be able to compete with Samsung’s next offering, who knows?

One final point – once again, it looks like demand for an Apple product has left the shelves empty. But recently, Apple have said that sales were ‘disappointing’ and blamed consumer anticipation of the iPhone 5. So where’s all the unsold stock?

One of my favourite conspiracy theories is that Apple restricts stock to create demand and have Apple customers foaming at the mouth trying to get their hands on the latest Apple gadget. At the moment, it doesn’t look like it’s working. My friends who have an iPhone 4 at the moment see this as an incremental upgrade and aren’t searching every shop they can find trying to get hold of an iPhone 4S.

Conclusions? Got an iPhone 3GS and want to stay with Apple? Get an iPhone 4S.

Got an iPhone 4, looking for a new phone and not particularly bothered about staying with Apple? Get a Samsung Galaxy Nexus.

Not really bothered either way and looking for a new phone? I’ll bet any money that the Samsung Galaxy Nexus will be cheaper and you’ll be able to get your hands on one pretty much straight away with no queueing for hours in the rain.

I might be wrong — who knows, I might buy the Samsung Galaxy Nexus and decide that I prefer iOS. Think I’ll give it a whirl though just to see if the grass is greener on the other side.

I’ve only just had chance to call them back and spoke to a guy called Hamraz who tried to help the best that he could, but a guy called Andrew has my case. Can’t really get an answer until Monday but I’ve left a message for Andrew that I want my fifty quid back and that they can cancel the upgrade.

To be honest, having thought it over, I don’t particularly want an iPhone 4S any more and I definitely don’t want one from Vodafone. What Vodafone fail to realise is that although they might be saving themselves a few quid by fobbing me off, I was about to start a contract that would have netted them £1,104 over the course of two years.

I’m thinking about starting a twelve month contract with O2 now and I think I’ll be taking the Samsung Galaxy Nexus. That will at least give me a new phone until the iPhone 5 comes out.

Depending on how the iPhone 5 looks, I might be a permanent Android convert.

DON’T BUY AN IPHONE 4S FROM VODAFONE. In fact, don’t buy anything from Vodafone.

I am seriously angry at Vodafone. Something as simple as an upgrade has turned into me waiting on the phone for ages and speaking to people who just don’t give a toss about customers. As a sad iPhone geek I want the latest iPhone and I want it now.

I’ve just fired off the angriest E-Mail I’ve ever sent anyone and at one point, went a little bit head-mental and copied the chief exec in because I have no confidence in anyone at that company being able to understand or deal with my complaint.

The complete E-Mail is below.

UPDATE: Vodafone’s contracts aren’t the cheapest – click here for comparisons

—

Dear Vodafone people

Please treat this as a formal complaint. No, really, please do. As soon as this E-Mail has finished, I’m going to blog it and copy every single one of my friends and family in on that blog post. Then I’m going to give Consumer Direct a call and give them the full story. Then I’m going to slam this E-Mail on Facebook and Twitter. Then I’m going for a smoke and maybe a cup of coffee.

First off, you have some lovely people in your organisation. You also have some people who I would describe otherwise. As this is a formal(ish) E-Mail, I won’t use the words that I have in mind to describe them.

I’ve been trying to do an upgrade for a while. I kept phoning your upgrades line and being put through to a team in India who said that they weren’t upgrades, there was no launch date for the iPhone 4S and that they couldn’t help me. Yes, they were utterly clueless and to be honest, I think putting a headset on a cat and sticking it in your upgrades contact centre would probably be more effective and give customers more information. Please find a picture of this attached below.

One of the ladies in Web Relations phoned me last week and said that she could do me a free upgrade and that she would call me back after launch. I still haven’t had that callback.

iPhone 4S launch came and went with no word, so I phoned yesterday and spoke to Sarah on the sales line. She said that a free upgrade wouldn’t be a problem after she had looked at my account. I asked her how I could do this and she said that I could either do it online or visit a Vodafone store. I opted for the store.

I went into your Vodafone store in Liverpool One and spoke to a nice bloke called Nathan. He had an iPhone 4S in stock and placed it on the counter in front of me. He took all of my details, ID, etc. and then told me that I had been misinformed by the sales people and that they couldn’t process the upgrade in store as apperently, even though it’s the same company, you’re two different companies! It was a good job he was such a nice bloke because this made me angry.

I stormed home and called your sales team again. This time I spoke to a nice bloke called Chris. Chris said that I had been lied to all day and that the only way that he could process an upgrade would be to pay a £50 upgrade fee and then for him to reimburse it on my next bill. He also told me that the stock wouldn’t be in for around a week.

So I’ve gone from having a free upgrade where I could have had the phone straight away to an upgrade that’s costing me fifty quid but you’ll give me it back at some point. Also, apparently I won’t have it for a month.

I phoned ten minutes ago and spoke to a bloke called Chris. Chris sounds like the sort of bloke who always told his mum and dad that he wanted to be an astronaut or train driver when he left school but ended up working in a call centre and now he hates the world. I asked him if he could give me a delivery update on the phone that I ordered yesterday. He told me (in a rather rude and snappy way) that I could expect to wait up to 2-4 weeks. So now I’m paying fifty quid extra and waiting an extra month.

WHAT THE HELL IS GOING ON AT VODAFONE? Seriously, it’s run like a tramp’s tea-party (again, photo below)

It’s got to the stage now where I’m not even sure if I want the upgrade after all the piddling about that you’ve put me through. How do you keep customers?

Here’s the best part — someone has just asked me (just as I started typing this E-Mail to you) if they should stick with O2 or move to Vodafone for the iPhone 4S. Here’s my response:

As you can see, you’ve lost one customer already. So bloody angry with this. In fact, I’m so angry, let’s copy the chief exec in. Mr Laurence, sorry to drag you into this but your organisation’s customer service is on the rocks.

Seriously, sort it out. Vodafone is run like a tuck shop at a dodgy school at the moment and I really don’t want to give you any more of my money.

Will Robinson

After installing the app, I attempted to add my Facebook account. A new window appeared asking me to sign in, which I did. Then the question; would I like to give eBuddy access to the following information? The list ran for a few pages — my political views, my religion, my friends political views and religion, my photos and videos, my family information and relationship status. It also wanted to post information to my Facebook feed.

Recently, I’ve been reading a lot of scare stories about Facebook and the stack of information it keeps about us all, but this really did take the biscuit. Why would a simple chat application need so much information from me?

However, there is a workaround. I’ve edited the install file to allow you to install it within Firefox 4. Try it out, let me know how you get on.

Download StumbleUpon toolbar for Firefox 4 Beta (Link outdated)