I've been ranting a lot in the Lounge recently, as some/most of you will be aware, but a lot of that has translated into bad feeling and I think I'd rather go on at length in here about the things that really bug me. Haven't tackled this in a while, so here are some of my current
“Search online for..?”
This really annoys me. If you want someone to buy your products, use your service or support your cause, the least you can do surely is to direct them to your website. How hard can it be? In the old days, like when I rode my dinosaur to hedge school, internet addresses were complicated. There was no such thing as .com really, or if there was you couldn't just set up a domain as one. At least here in Ireland and the UK, the procedure was you signed up with an ISP and they provided you with a spot on their domain, so you would usually get something like interneteireann.ie/hosts/users/members/~Trollheart/index.html. Now that's a lot harder to guess at than trollheart.com, so yeah, you can guess what the address for the RAF or Sight Savers or whatever is, but why should you? It still bugs me when huge global conglomerates like Sky or Coca-Cola end ads with “Search online for new Coke flavour!” or “Search online for Sky boxsets.” Why? Why the lantering F
UCK should I, your potential customer, be left to search, blunder around with Google looking for the site YOU want ME to find and use? Why don't YOU give ME the address? This is surely similar to someone knocking on your door, and saying “You must visit my new restaurant. We're looking for new business.” And you say “Okay, maybe I will. Where is it?” only to be told “Sorry, can't tell you that. But here's a map and an A-Z. You can find it if you look.”
Fu
ck right off, right? That would be your reaction to such arrogance and such an unhelpful attitude. So why not the same for these cu
nts who exhort you to “search online”? Are you really telling me the British Navy, Sky, Skoda and all these huge corporate giants and national institutions can't give you the URL of their website? Is there something stopping them, some law, some legal technicality? Well not in the case of Sky, as I go there regularly and get directed there for most of their products. But not for box sets. Oh no. Why not just say “go to
www.sky.com/boxsets”? Are they trying to increase their rankings with Google by having as many searches as possible? Unlikely: Sky TV (at least in Europe) would come first in any rankings you care to mention. They're already top of the tree; they don't need help. Is it a deal with the search engine giant, to drive traffic to their site? Let's face it: the days of Alta Vista, Lycos or any other search engine being used are gone: now, Google is so fully integrated into the human consciousness that it's become a verb. People don't say “search for it” anymore, they say “Google it”. So no matter what you're searching for, the chances are about 99.999999% that you will be using Google.
So why this “search online for...?” I take it personally, and as a great insult. My time is valuable. If I am interested in your products I expect to be able to go directly to your website, not faff about on Google looking for it, and if you want me there, then start putting up your address. Because now, as a point of principle, I refuse to obey any requests to “search online for” and will actively stay away from the site, even if I know how to get there.
Yeah, I'm
that touchy!
But that is mild compared to how much I hate
“Payday Loans”
Jesus Christ in a fu
cking zeppelin going over Mount Etna at sunset! I f
ucking hate, loathe, despise and curse these bastards. You know them, yes? Little institutions that aren't banks and aren't building societies, but privately-owned and operated companies who loan smaller amounts but for much much much higher repayment rates. They're aimed at the desperate, the people who just need a short loan to tide them over. But what nobody seems to realise --- and I only saw this when I happened to catch the quickly spooled-off quote about one of their APRs and had to do a double-take, run it back and confirm that what I heard was true --- is that you will be paying this small loan back for the rest of your life, probably.
Examples range from 100% to ... wait for it ... almost
1,200%! That's right: one thousand, two hundred percent! And I put it in
red, so that you could be sure I hadn't made a mistype! So if you borrow a small loan, say £500, on the lowest rate I've seen (100%) you can expect to pay back £1000, and on the highest, the abovementioned 1200%, a whopping £6000! And if you go for a larger loan, you're going to have an even bigger repayment! There's a reason of course why these scum don't loan any more than £5000, and that is probably because the crippling effect of paying back, say on a loan of £20,000, a total figure of almost a quarter of a million pounds is bound to get some press coverage and notice, and bring their extremely shady dealings into sharp focus. People like these don't like the light of publicity: they lurk in the shadows, waiting to snare the unwary, running their “We like to help!” (bastards) ads, pretending they can't WAIT to ease your financial suffering, when all they want to do is get their hooks into you and make you pay for the rest of your days.
Now you may say, so what? Banks essentially do the same thing: a mortage can take you the rest of your life to pay off, and that's true, but there are some very important differences. Firstly, a mortgage (or any bank loan) has a set APR that is usually more in the range of maybe 4-6% (been a long time since I got a bank loan, and I never will again, but I can't imagine it goes above 10%), and you're told this at the start. Also, you expect to be paying your mortgage for most of your life --- it's half of the word: mort being French for death. As well as that, you know that the bank, while they may not be happy if you miss payments and may send letters and make phone calls, are unlikely to send the heavies around, which some of these Payday f
uckers are known to do. In the small print on one of them (not sure which) they warn something like “Serious difficulties can arise from failure to pay”. The threat is veiled just enough not to be explicit, but we know what they're saying.
So why does the government allow this? Basically, these arseholes are loan sharks condoned by, or even authorised and sanctioned by the government. How can they let them carry on such reprehensible business practice, and why do these loan companies need to do this anyway? Who ever dreams of making a thousand percent or more profit? Why should they be allowed to? Why is there no legislation governing these institutions, capping their APR at the very least? Why are they not required to make it very clear --- not in the small print that nobody but me reads or in a quick, happy announcement that most people will miss anyway --- that once you sign up with them and get the money from them you will be paying it back at least twice over? I thought the Mafia were the only ones who did that, you know, two points on the dollar per day, sort of thing. Jesus wept. Even Tony Soprano's rates seem reasonable and manageable compared to these moneygrabbing fu
ckheads.
I honestly could not believe it the first time I saw the rates being flashed on screen, and ever since then I've watched a growing gang of glorified loan sharks witter on about how great it is to have cash in your pocket, and how they can help you pay your bills or meet your commitments. Yeah, well be very careful, because you may meet your current bill but if you take money from any of these lowlife scum, the next ones are going to mount up and you'll end up in the dark when that heavy knock comes on the door and you realise time has run out for you to repay this unrepayable loan. Surely nobody could be that desperate? And yet, there are so many of these and they can afford to pay for primetime TV ads and have huge offices and websites, so I guess there are people that gullible, afraid, destitute or desperate.
They used to say money was the root of all evil, but if so, it's grown some very ugly and twisted branches recently, and these trees are threatening to block out all the sunlight. They're choking the forest and making what was once a place you really didn't want to pass through but could do so, into an area to be avoided and feared. A dark, dismal place where not even the strongest shafts of bright sunlight can get through to. What's needed now is a few good lumberjacks to cut back these hulks and let the forest breathe, before everything in it is choked and dies.
In simpler terms, get some fu
cking legislation in to regulate these fu
ckers, before it's too late.