Chris Timson

It’s a shame it takes so long to get to Scotland, it’s a lovely place. I’d spend more time up there if it weren’t for the fact that it takes so long, even by plane.
Take for example the following flight which travel supermarket suggested for me in order to get back after a bank holiday visit was considering!

I guess this is caused by congestion over the UK causing them to choose a route where they depart Edinburgh heading north and take the long way round.

Search engine optimisation is somewhat of an artform, and something that I’m constantly trying to learn more about. So you can imagine my curiosity when I received a vistaprint flyer in with my amazon order this morning telling me to go to www.google.co.uk and search for “vpamazon” for a deal on business cards or “vpamazon2″ for a deal on pens.

What a strange way of doing it I thought, I wonder how many results will be returned, it’s not as though they will be able to prevent other people from writing about it so it’s not going to be like a Googlewhack where you only get one result.

So imagine my surprise in finding that vistaprint haven’t even got an organic google listing for the expressions. Instead all they have is an adwords (paid for) listing. The organic search results are all people like myself blogging about it.

I’m sure that somebody out there (probably Ed) will say that they’re being clever and trying to get viral marketing by getting people (like me) to talk about their offers, I however don’t think they’ve been that clever.

Anyone who networks regularly can spot a vistaprint business card a mile off. Quite apart from the fact that they’re a non-standard size the print quality is (in my opinion) truly shocking. I made the mistake when I first started out in business all those years ago of going to vistaprint and I soon got my money back when I saw what they had produced.

These days I’ve come to learn that there are more important things than cost and that sometimes you’re better off using someone like Nifty Print for your business cards and infact letterheads and all printing. Yes it will cost you a little bit more, but I’m sure with all of the effort you put into your business, it deserves to give the right first impression.

On friday I went to pay a supplier via online banking and found that I couldn’t, please phone us it said. So I phoned the number it gave on the screen and the chap I spoke to didn’t seem to have a clue. I’m assured that he wasn’t in an Indian call centre, but he seemed to have difficulty understanding me and I couldn’t quite grasp what he was saying. Eventually he put me through to telephone banking where they were able to make the payment for me.

So I tried to contact my Natwest personal shopper relationship manager, but she wasn’t available. I spoke to her boss who told me that she’d get back to me within 48 business hours. So I spoke to the online banking helpdesk, determined to find out why I could no longer make online payments.

“We have suspended the ability to make online payments due to fraud, we are sending out card readers, when you get your card reader you will be able to make payments again”.

Now I know for a fact that I’ve had my card reader for my personal account for almost 6 months, and I’m sure that one of my mates has had a card reader for his personal account for about a year. Yet they haven’t managed to roll one out to the business yet (where we pay to use that service).

“it’s because you haven’t been using online banking for very long” - rubbish, it’s about 8 years

“it’s because you don’t make many payments online” - rubbish, far more than from my personal account

“we’re rolling them out in a random order” - seems far more plausible

Is there any way to jump the queue? “it’s technically impossible for anybody within Natwest to prioritise your request, you will just have to wait for your company to be randomly chosen” - anybody? against policy maybe, technically impossible, nah.

So, has there been a sudden increase in fraud?

“No, fraud hasn’t increased at all, but we’ve noticed that of the customers that have already received their card readers, there hasn’t been a single instance of fraud” - err, so speed up the rollout?

In the meantime, how am I meant to pay my suppliers and staff?

“Telephone banking” - seems somewhat more time consuming and prone to errors?

“Phone your business manager” - she claims this isn’t possible, and besides she’s never there!

“Go into your branch” - are you having a laugh?

Ok, so I’m left with telephone banking… which I might add I’ve never setup, it just seems to have been enabled on our account. Thing is, telephone banking strikes me as far more prone to fraud.

Firstly, telephone calls aren’t secure, SSL web connections are, it’s even legitimate to record telephone calls under certain circumstances. Secondly, anyone within earshot can hear what I’m requesting, including any passwords I get asked to read out. Thirdly, telephone banking seems to require less in the way of security details than online banking. So the argument that it’s all for security reasons seems crazy.

When I tried to complain about their ill thought out policy I was told that I wasn’t being singled out and that they treat all of their customers like this (I didn’t at any point suggest I was being singled out). I was given nothing in the way of apology and very little in the way of suggestion (a mild hint that I choose a different bank, but she refused to tell me that in so many words).

As somebody who often gets asked for advice on what business bank to choose, my advice from now on will be “Do NOT choose Natwest whatever you do”. I think it’s time I started the long winded process of moving my various companies bank accounts away from Natwest. Anyone got any suggestions?

So Gordon Brown was obviously feeling the urge to increase his popularity amongst the business community this month as he invited entrepreneurs from all over the UK to join him for a glass of wine in the gardens of Downing Street last week. Seems like a good way to spend the taxpayers’ money if you ask me.

Although I didn’t really get much of a chance to speak to him, it was quite nice to have a nosy around no 10.

It seems that everywhere I go business people are confident about the future of the economy and their businesses. The only people that seem to be worrying are the general public, fueled by media hype about how bad things are getting.

Anybody that has taken a flight in the last year or so will know that check-in is increasingly being handled by touch-screen computers.

So when 16 of us flew from Birmingham to Amsterdam last weekend for my brother’s birthday, you can imagine my surprise to get 2 boarding cards. It seems that whilst I was busily prodding away at “yes, I packed my own bag” etc, one of my brother’s mates helpfully decided to check me in as well.

So the system had happily checked me in twice and allocated me 2 different seats. Of course I went upto a member of staff and got them to cancel one of the seats, but it did occur to me that it could quite easily have caused a lot of confusion and delayed the flight. The plane was full, had I not known about the second boarding card it would either have had to choose a seat for me (but then I could confuse the cabin staff by sitting in the wrong seat and having a valid boarding card for it) or it would have had to refuse to check-in the last passenger due to having no seats left.

If they haven’t tested it for something as simple as checking in twice, it makes you wonder what they have tested it for!

OK, so I’ve done a dreadful job at bothering to update this blog.

Anyway, since my last post I have:

• Been snowboarding in Borovets, Bulgaria
• Finished off my day skipper qualification, so technically I can charter sailing yachts now
• Spent a week sailing off the west coast of Scotland
• Generally been very busy at work with an abundance of new projects to work on
• Visited Amsterdam for my brother’s stag weekend

The rest of the year ahead looks like it has lots more exciting things to come.

Just got back from the icicle balloon meet.

Sadly the weather on Saturday wasn’t upto flying, but today we managed to fly two slots allowing me to add another 2 hours 10 minutes of PUT time to my pilot’s log. I was quite pleased to find that despite not having flown since 12th September that I haven’t forgotten too much and that I’m still progressing.

Flying out of a farmer’s field near Hungerford, this morning we flew east towards Newbury and this afternoon we flew north towards Swindon. It was quite nice to fly over land with a few more features than the fells, altogether quite an enjoyable weekend.

Happy new year everyone and welcome to 2008.

I must say that I’m pleased to see the back of 2007, it was a rubbish year. Looking at it from a positive angle, it was an “educational” year and I’d like to think that I am much wiser as a result of some of the things that have happened.

To everyone that helped me through the year, thank you. I couldn’t have done it without you all.

I’m pretty certain that 2008 is going to be a fantastic year for me, and for lots of other people. It’s also looking like it’s going to be a hectic year, the following are some of the things I’m looking forward to….

• Snowboarding in Bulgaria (January)
• My brother’s wedding, including a stag weekend in Madrid
• Finishing off my day skipper qualification
• Narrow-boating from Kent to the midlands
• White water rafting

So, watch this space to read all about the action as it unfolds.

I can’t think of a single piece of legislation that I come into contact with which is more misunderstood than the data protection laws.

I’ve lost count of the number of times my phone has rung and the person on the other end has started asking me for private data “in order to comply with the data protection act”. Do these people really not get it, if you’re calling me, on my number, from a number that I don’t recognise, your identity is far more questionable than mine.

Today has been an interesting day from a data protection point of view

• I got an email from a customer asking for our bank details in order to pay an invoice. “I destroyed the last ones for Data Protection.” he states. Our bank details are on our invoice, a document he’s legally obliged to keep. The bank details are still relevant as he knew he had another stage payment to make on his project. Finally, the data doesn’t relate to a person (but a company) and therefore is not covered by data protection legislation.
• Broxtowe Borough Council informed me that they’ve looked into the data protection situation carefully and they may be able to give me access to some data that I requested after all. This relates to the Beeston Business Forum, an collaboration of local businesses and the local council of which I am currently the chair. Attendance at meetings is poor and my research into the reasons seems to show a combination of apathy and invites not reaching people. The council takes responsibility for sending out the invites, but every time I’ve requested to see the list of people it goes out to I’ve been told “You can’t see the list for data protection reasons”. This is crazy, the only personal aspect is the name of the contact at each business, and this data relates to the membership of an organisation which I chair. I’m pleased to hear that they’ve changed their minds and look forward to finally finding out who gets invited to meetings.
• I attended a BCS seminar “Data Protection and Compliance in Context” presented by Stewart Room. Stewart is a Barrister, a partner with Field Fisher Waterhouse, the chair of the National Association of Data Protection and Freedom of Information Officers (NADPO), a member of the BCS Information Privacy Expert Panel, a visiting lecturer on Computer and Communications Law, Queen Mary, the University of London and the author of the BCS book of the same title. It made a pleasant change to hear somebody knowledgeable talking about data protection rather than the usual misinformed garb I hear. I found it interesting to hear about how case law has changed with regard to data protection, how the government is trying to steer the information commissioner and how technology should be viewed as the solution rather than simply the problem.

This last point fits in with something I was saying to a potential customer last Tuesday. My recommendation was to use a web based database solution in a particular situation, something we often advocate at Touchlight Systems. She asked about the data protection consequences of such a solution, my response was that I felt it would help compliance much more than the current method of emailing back and forth of access databases.

OK so it’s time to renew my mobile phone contract, and I think I confused T-mobile somewhat. It took 4 people, the last of whom said “is it ok if I put you on hold for a moment, I need to get out my calculator as this is too complex for our computer system”.

The end result, I’ve now on a different tariff with a discount. My phone is on Flext 35 costing me £8.51 a month for 900 minutes or 1800 text messages and my 3G card now costs me £4.26 a month.

I was considering switching to “3″ for their mobile broadband, but I decided to take T-mobile up on their kind offer and stick where I am.