I'm not the world's most organised person. I'm forever losing important pieces of paper. Over the christmas break I went through some of what I laughably call my filing system and attempted to impose a little more order.
One of the important pieces of paper I found was my TV licence. In an attempt to cut down the number of important pieces of paper I have to keep track on, I visited the TV Licensing web site and was happy to see that they have a Licence by Email facility. That seemed to be a good idea, so I signed up.
Today I got my first email from them. Opening it up I saw the text:
I realised what had happened. For various reasons I always read incoming mail in plain text mode. When I switched Thunderbird to HTML mode I saw that there was a carefully constructed HTML section as well and that this section had lots more information, including a link to a PDF of my new licence.
It's nice that they bothered to create a text portion of the mail (many people still don't). But I'm sure it could have been a bit more useful. Perhaps they could have included the link to my licence in the text portion. That way I wouldn't have had to open the HTML version at all.
It's a real shame when you see people trying to do the right thing, but just not understanding enough to get it right. I bet someone made a lot of money designing that system.
Oh, and the mail came from a "do not reply" email. That's just rude. What's the point of an email address that you can't reply to?
One of the important pieces of paper I found was my TV licence. In an attempt to cut down the number of important pieces of paper I have to keep track on, I visited the TV Licensing web site and was happy to see that they have a Licence by Email facility. That seemed to be a good idea, so I signed up.
Today I got my first email from them. Opening it up I saw the text:
Your TV Licence is availableAnd nothing else. No information on how I could get my licence, or anything useful like that.
I realised what had happened. For various reasons I always read incoming mail in plain text mode. When I switched Thunderbird to HTML mode I saw that there was a carefully constructed HTML section as well and that this section had lots more information, including a link to a PDF of my new licence.
It's nice that they bothered to create a text portion of the mail (many people still don't). But I'm sure it could have been a bit more useful. Perhaps they could have included the link to my licence in the text portion. That way I wouldn't have had to open the HTML version at all.
It's a real shame when you see people trying to do the right thing, but just not understanding enough to get it right. I bet someone made a lot of money designing that system.
Oh, and the mail came from a "do not reply" email. That's just rude. What's the point of an email address that you can't reply to?
Dave,
Whoever the webmaster at TV Licensing is should be permanently embarressed. The state of the site is appalling and gives no confidence that having taken your cash they will maintain a record and not subject you to later prosecution / persecution.
Currently and since the 1st Feb I have been trying to renew online using the pay by Credit / Debit card option. Having entered the licence details I wish to renew and hitting the continue tab, the form is wiped and no access to the second form is available. I have complained, they responded effectively saying it works for loads of users. Still I have a hard problem.
Nice receipt by post definately needed, please can we go back to using the Post Office?
Regards, Soundman