I created my campaign and didn’t mind the fact that that they wanted billing information before they could activate my account – but then I noticed that there was a ‘activaion fee’ of £5 in my case that I needed to ay in order to activate my account. I took another look at the ad – yup “Try it for free – £50.00* FREE advertising. No risk. No obligation” and then I looked at the small print – “A £5 account activation fee or equivalent credit deduction required”.

That sounds neither ‘Free’ or ‘No obligation’ to me.

Perhaps the ad is targeting existing AdWords users where they have already payed their fee? Nope – “The promotional code can only be used for AdWords accounts less than 14 days old”.

It might not have annoyed me if it was aimed at being ‘Free’ to existing members who have already paid their fee, but the fact they are targeting new customers with the promise of ‘No Obligation’ which is a down right lie. You may think that £5 isn’t worth getting worked up over – but I feel this kind of advert is deceiving.

Needless to say I did’t bother continuing my account creation. So all this advert did was waste my time, annoy me and give me yet another reason to dislike the big G.

Rant over.

Well now I know why no one used Nochex. It’s rubbish. It’s the only thing that would make me recommend Paypal (and I hate Paypal) to anyone but at least their service does what it is supposed to with minimum fuss.

OsCommerce was working fine and accepted my Nochex account but Nochex wouldn’t accept my address, so I was unable to put a card straight through (as a user without an existing Nochex account might). So I gave up on that as the client offers their own credit card gateway.

So I thought that was that – but when you add a credit/debit card to Nochex they debit a ‘small’ amount from your card to help with their verification process. They didn’t go out of their way to tell you this when you register and they certainly don’t make it clear enough that this is non-refundable!

So there I was waiting for my couple of quid to get refunded only to discover it has been stolen. And for what? … other one for ‘the list’

This was until I saw for myself number 4… FOUR! Thats 4 stores within one mile walk of each other.

Never again will I step foot inside a Tesco’s store. Never.

However to my disgust with adblock plus disabled I was confronted with the following:

I think eBay should be ashamed of themselves. They have completely compromised their site by selling out to ads and lets face it – it’s not exactly like they are short of money! I knew eBay had ads but this is getting silly.

What a mistake.

My blood boils (and my money evaporates) ever time I have to contact them… which is a lot. There are lots of reasons to hate Virgin Media, but here are my top 5:

1. Installation – I paid £30 for installation, which consisted of a ‘technician’ turning up to my house and plugging a modem in. I tried to get a web page up which didn’t work and when I turned around he wasn’t there any more. I caught him in his van and got him back, but I soon realised that he had no idea what he was doing. He also refused to call technical support because ‘it would end up costing HIM money’.
2. Pricing – It’s not cheap, add on to that that they have a hidden £1 charge because they send you paper bills. Signing up for ‘e-billing’ is the solution – but they don’t tell you about this and be dammed if I know how to get on it from day one, so I ended up paying £1 for the first month.
3. ‘Contact Us’ – Not only do you have to contact them all the time to sort out your service, but the only number is a premium rate one! To get signed up on e-billing I paid £5 in phone bills sorting this out, because after all no-one knows what they’re doing. Even the numbers listed on www.saynoto0870.com are all blocked.
4. Overcharging – the one thing companies should be able to do right is bill their customers the correct amount. Not Virgin Media! They charged me my first bill (£51) twice! I gave up contacting them and went straight to the bank and got them to reverse the charge.
5. The service – their service really is appalling. Ask anyone who is with them and they will tell you they are not getting the speeds they are paying for. And don’t get me started on the fact that their ‘Unlimited’ packages that actually are limited.

Add to this a confusing web site which never actually does anything (you need to phone about 10 different people to sort it out) and you’ve got yourself a near heart attack.

My advice – Virgin Media, really really really really don’t bother.