My Foxtrot Oscar Signature
I use this e-mail signature to annoy spammers and those that won’t take no for an answer.
I have better things to do with my life, than deal with spam.
If I get another from you, you’ll be reported automatically to the ICO.
To put it politely, Foxtrot Oscar
They generally don’t come back to me! But then threatening someone with the ICO, I like slapping them on the wrist with a very small feather.
Best of Salineville Award
I’ve received this e-mail in the past and can’t quite fathom out, how they screw me for money. But they will somewhere along the line.
Earlier this year, I sent a notification email to you recognizing that Xxxxx Xxxxxx has been selected for the 2010 Best of Salineville Award in the Animal Farms category by the US Commerce Association (USCA).http://salineville.uscommassoc.com/XXX-XXXX-XXX
I’m sure that your selection as a 2010 Award Winner is a reflection of the hard work of not only yourself, but of many people that have supported your business and contributed to the subsequent success of your organization. Congratulations on your selection to such an elite group of small businesses. In recognition of your achievement, a special 2010 Best of Salineville Award has been designed for display at your place of business. You may arrange to have your award sent directly to James Miller by following the simple steps on the 2010 Best of Salineville Award order form. Simply copy and paste this link into your browser to access the order form:
The USCA “Best of Local Business” Award Program recognizes outstanding local businesses throughout the country. Each year, the USCA identifies companies that we believe have achieved exceptional marketing success in their local community and business category. These are local companies that enhance the positive image of small business through service to their customers and community.posted on the USCA website. USCA hereby grants Xxxxx Xxxxxx a non-exclusive, royalty-free license to use, reproduce, distribute, and display this press release in any media formats and through any media channels.
Also, a copy of the press release publicizing the selection of Xxxxx Xxxxxx is
In order to provide you with the best possible service, you have been assigned an award code that can be used on our website for quick access to your award information and press release. If you have any questions or comments, please include this code with your correspondence.
Your Award Code is: XXX-XXXX-XXX
To place your order over the phone – please call us at: 877-312-9340 and select option 1.
If anybody has any idea how these crooks work, please add a comment to this post.
I did reply in my usual Foxtrot Oscar mode!
Sincerely,
A Nifty Information System
When I left, I forgot to take my printout of the return journeys from Great Yarmouth to Newmarket.
The conductor said that was no problem and promptly printed me an itinerary on his ticket machine.
Itinerary Printed on a Train
Some people would say that was seriously cool! I Just think it’s good software design, that gives customers what they need!
A Post From an Anti-Spam List
I belong to an anti-spam list called Spammers Don’t Like Us.
This was posted today.
Several years back, my now ex and I tried SPAM(R) sandwiches for dinner one night. It didn’t agree with me for some reason. Woke up mumbling a whole bunch of stuff about pills, weight loss, credit cards, discounts, coupon codes, marketing opportunities, etc. Then I just spewed vomit everywhere.
My then wife said “Five five what?? Message? What Message?” I said back to her “Honey, I bounced the spam.” The whole thing was very freudian.
Also was my one and only experience as a backscatterer.
As a coeliac, I should ask if Spam is gluten-free.
The CEO’s E-Mail Address
It has been reported that the CEO of Nationwide has been forced to shut his e-mail address, because of protests, that they are charging for overseas cash withdrawals. Apparently, it has now been changed to something like ceo@nationwide.co.uk and you now get through to one of his assistants.
Apparently, there is a web site call ceoemail.com, which gives many of the e-mail addresses or those that run companies and organisations.
So if I was running a large company, how would I organise it?
The e-mail address would be obvious like ceo@megacorp.co.uk and this would then go through a strong spam filter to remove the real rubbish trying to sell me worthless fakes and then pass the rest to my assistant or one of a group of assistants, if the company was large enough or I was getting a lot of e-mail. The assistants would have software, which by just clicking a button would take action on the e-mails. Actions might include.
- Forward to Customer Services or other Departments. These would also go into an e-mail tracking system, so that it can be traced that e-mails have been acted on.
- Put on a block list as it’s abusive. The sender would be told and why!
- Reply with a simple and appropriate e-mail.
- Phone the sender and say something appropriate.
- Send them a nice postcard. I’ve always found that this is a good thing to do, as people won’t throw away a nice picture. But they may pin it to their notice board.
Obviously, you can think of a lot more responses you might use.
The important e-mails would be sent to me for personal action.
Now some companies manage to do this with letters and I can remember receiving a phone call from Sainsbury’s after I’d written in with a complaint to the CEO.
But one thing no company does is to analyse all of the messages and count the occurences of various issues. So to return to the Nationwide example, if the CEO was getting a lot of complaints about withdrawal fees, the CEO would know about it and could take action.
So in fact, if you get the system right, it’s a very powerful way to find out what your customers are thinking about and satisfy their needs!
Is There A Need for a National Anticoagulation Service?
Like many people in this country, I’m on Warfarin. This means that I have a blood test every week or so and answer a few questions about how you are getting on and if you have missed a dose. The hospital managing your anticoagulation service, then does the analysis for your INR and calculates your daily dose and date of the next test. If there is a change in the dose, you are told immediately by phone, usually within twelve hours of the blood test. On the next day, you get a letter from the hospital confirming the dose and giving the date of the next test.
I have found that one of the subsidiary effects of my stroke, is a need to solve problems and design systems that work. So after the problems with the phones last week, where if there had been a dose change, they wouldn’t have been able to phone, I got to thinking about how the service could be improved.
So what problems can I see?
- For me giving blood for a test is very easy. Although I am right-handed, because of my gammy left arm, I prefer the test to be taken out of my right arm. A week ago, they took blood in the hospital on the Friday and then I had another test on the Monday for the Warfarin. It was no problem at all. But my late wife, C, found giving blood for a test almost impossible. So we’re all different.
- The letter I get for each dose, is one of those awful NHS letters, that because of my hand, I find very difficult to open. Or I would, if I didn’t have a very good pair of scissors! There must be many on Warfarin, who have much worse hands than me!
- I live in the countryside and I have the blood test either at the GP surgery or at my local hospital. As I can’t drive, this means I have to make sure on test days, my driver comes in. It’s not a great expense and I usually do all my food shopping at the same time, but it could difficult for those who have to go to the local hospital, where transport is difficult.
- Perhaps my biggest problem, is that I travel a lot and might not be in the right place for a test. I can have them a day late, but I like to be precise in getting my dosage right! This travelling might also mean that I don’t get the letter until a few days after the test. This doesn’t matter as regards the dosage, but knowing the next test date might be important.
So what is available to improve the excellent service, I get from the NHS. And in these times of austerity, could a service be designed that was not only failsafe but cost less to run?
There are machines now to self-test for your INR, just like diabetics test for the amount of insulin they need. I used to think that this might be the way to go for me, as I’m pretty tech-savvy, but the machines aren’t cheap and it means that when I travelled, I’d need to take it with me. I’ve tried hard to avoid carrying excess baggage for years and now that I’m not as strong as I was, I don’t want to start adding to it. And my gammy left hand might drop and break it!
On the other hand, these machines only take a pin-prick of blood. So would they be much better for people like my late wife?
Technology has also moved on in the fields of communication and I now am reminded of my hospital appointments by SMS message. So there must be ways that technology can improve the service!
So what could a service look like?
I have said in the title to this post, that it might be National, but that might bring in other problems, like Data Protection. Incidentally, I don’t bother about that for my health records, as anyway most of my problems are already available to everybody in this blog.
Like now it should be based on a network of testing stations. There could be two sorts; ones that worked as now and sent the blood samples to the hospital and others that worked using pin-prick style machines, which give a direct INR reading. In the case of the simpler systems, all it would need would then be to enter them into the Service through a web page or even by phone to the hospital. Obviously, various routes could be allowed, so that patients who might be confused, weren’t upset.
The advantages of multiple testing stations are that you can go to the one that is most convenient. Suppose too, that pharmacists were licensed to do the test, so that you could do your test when you went to the shops. It would be much easier for me to go to Boots in Newmarket, than have to go all the way to the West Suffolk Hospital, because the blood nurse at the surgery was too busy or on holiday.
Multiple testing stations would also mean that, when I was travelling, all I’d need to do was find an accredited testing station.
As the testing stations would get your INR almost instantly, once it was in the Service, the results would be immediately available.
But it is in the distribution of those results that the greatest improvements can be made. We have five basic methods of communication; letter, e-mail, phone, mobile phone and SMS message. You should be able to choose how you want to be told and all of them can now be done automatically. I would take an SMS message with a letter for backup.
I elieve that properly designed such a system would work very well. The problem with it would be that some anti-coagulant departments in hospitals would no longer be needed. So what would the Unions have to say on that one!
trueCall and Daisy
I couldn’t resist taking my call records from trueCall and putting them in Daisy.
After a minute or so, I was able to draw a simple Daisy chart.
A Daisy Chart of trueCall Data
Obviously, this doesn’t show that much, as only a few records were used to draw the chart.
On the other hand, charts such as this could be used to show perhaps that a particular nuisance call tends to happen between 21:00 and 23:00 on a Wednesday night. Years ago, a chart such as this, drawn of all phone box fraud in Wales, led to the arrest and conviction of one of the Principality’s biggest drug dealers.
A Possible Solution to Nuisance Calls
A couple of days ago, I was plagued by a boiler room scam, that decided to ring me every minute. I reported it in this post.
It is now three days later and they are still trying occasionally, but I might have found the solution to criminals like these.
It is called trueCall and effectively screens every call that it doesn’t recognise. All those Unavailable and International calls that are just a waste of your time are challenged and the caller is asked to identify themselves with their name before they are put through. Obviously, the time wasters don’t do this, so the system hangs up on them and asks them to leave a message. I suspect they never will!
The system did cost £99.99 including VAT, but it was just a plug-in to install, as this picture shows.
trueCall Installation
But it was ever so easy to install and it comes with all sorts of features to be valued.
- It simply learns who your friends and enemies are, if you follow a few set of simple rules.
- It has a fully-functioning built-in answering machine.
- You can look at all your incoming and outcoming calls on the Internet.
I shall certainly keep it in place to innoculate me from scammers and time-wasters.
Why Not a Wayne Rooney Foundation Scam?
Now that footballers earn a lot of money, I’m surprised some of our friends in the 419 scam business haven’t been creating things like the Wayne Rooney Foundation, which chooses to give people at random large amounts of money. After all, judging by the recent press reports, he might actually be stupid enough to do something like this off his own bat! Some would argue, he should after his abismal performance in South Africa!
Perhaps because something like this hasn’t turned up, it just shows that the scammers are even more stupid, than your average footballer.
The Anonymous Widower 