Eggsasperating

[j4]

Extracts from a phone conversation with egg.com's phone support...

Him: "There's definitely nothing wrong with the website."
Me: "Well, what I'm getting is: [reads out error page]"
Him: "Well, let me just have a look, we don't always get told when they're doing maintenance on the website."

[...]

Him: "What computer are you using?"
Me: "I'm using a PC, running Windows NT. I'm using NS7, but I've also tried it on IE5 and I get exactly the same results."
Him: "Ah, well, that will be the problem, old browser."
Me: [incredulous] "Netscape 7? That's hardly an old browser..."
Him: "Well, in computer terms it is."
Me: "So what browsers will the site work with?"
Him: "... Well, IE6."
Me: "You're saying it will only work in IE6."
Him: "Well, no, not only IE6... you can set IE5 up so it works in that as well..."

[...]

The upshot is: they think it may be the work firewall that's stopping me getting through; but they've activated my card for me over the phone, and I said I'd go and play with web browsers at home when I'm not paying for the cost of a phone-call at the same time.

OTOH if it does only work on IE6/Windoze that's going to be buggerall use, as at home I use either IE5/MacOS9 or Safari.

Arsing arsebadgering bollocks.

Comments

[naranek.livejournal.com]

FWIW, I've had no problems in FireFox (0.8 on WinXP SP1) ...

[bibliogirl.livejournal.com]

That's... interesting. I had dealings with Egg last year, and they were bitching and moaning because something wasn't compatible with browsers from IE5.00 and older (5.01 would work OK) on Windows. And now they're saying they'll only support IE6?

*growl*

[huskyteer.livejournal.com]

I want to ditch Barclays and get a nice Smile account from the nice Co-op. But I couldn't fill in the online application form in MacOS9/IE5, which is something of a problem for an online-only account.

[simonb.livejournal.com]

That could be related to Java; AFAIR all of the secure stuff on SMILE is done via Java applications.

[emperor]

HSBC's on-line banking is alarmingly competant, and works with lots of different web-browsers

[juliet]

Growl. Try Opera? It's free (there are banner ads at the top of the window, but I've found they genuinely don't notice), it's very very nice, and IME almost all ie-only sites work fine under it. It'll even identify itself as IE if you tell it to, for the sites that won't even let you *think* about getting in with another browser.

(I know that they should just write a website that *works* in other browers, but...)

[simonb.livejournal.com]

If you're got Mozilla or FireFox you can use the UserAgent switcher extension (http://extensionroom.mozdev.org/more-info/useragentswitcher) to do the same thing :)

[j4.livejournal.com]

I don't have either. I thought FireFox was a PC thing? (I can't install software at work, and I don't use a PC at home.)

I will see if Safari does work (at least with that they can't claim it's an "old browser"!) but if it doesn't I'm going to read all the small print and see if it says anywhere "You will only be able to use this credit card if you have a Windows PC running IE6". If it doesn't, I'll see if I can cancel the card. Just to make a point. It's not as if there's any shortage of "0% interest for 6 months on balance transfers" offers out there, after all.

[olithered.livejournal.com]

Although it doesn't seem to be advertised anymore, there is a .zip version of firefox (here (http://ftp.mozilla.org/pub/mozilla.org/firefox/releases/0.8/Firefox-0.8.zip)), which doesn't need to be installed...

[karen2205]

The Consumer Credit Act 1974 gives you the right to cancel it now anyway.

That and, you can always end any contract with a credit card firm by paying them what you owe them (which won't be anything if you've not used it), cutting up the card and returning it to them.

All of that said I use my egg card almost exclusively, since it pays itself by direct debit with no hassle each month and it offers cash back rather than more gimmiky offers.

[jiggery-pokery.livejournal.com]

These days, a whopping 0.1% cash back. Grr. I will be changing from Egg soon - specifically, as soon as I have a respectable regular income to quote on another credit card's application form.

I think Egg are pretty good in terms of customer service; the one time I phoned them it was really not too painful. I quite like their cheeky attitude, their interaction with the Egg Savings account and their Money Manager facility (MSIE only, I think, alas). It's just that their rates are significantly less good than they used to be and no longer quite competitive.

[imc.livejournal.com]

These days, a whopping 0.1% cash back. Grr.

I seem to remember it saying 0.5% when I signed up a couple of months ago, but sure enough 0.1% explains the pitifully small amount of cashback they say I've earned relative to the amount I've spent. Did I read it wrong, or have they just changed it, the miserable bar stewards?

Wow, that really is terrible. It means you have to spend £5,000 to get your minimum £5 cash back in September. Don't think that's going to happen unless we decide to get a conservatory and I pay for it using the card.

Back when Midland Mastercard had Choice Points, they were worth about 0.5% of what you had spent and I thought that was rubbish.

I wonder what Goldfish gives you. :-)

[jiggery-pokery.livejournal.com]

They changed it this year, certainly, though I couldn't tell you which month. As you say, spending a minimum five grand to make a fiver is hardly enticing.

Most of the airline flyer miles credit card deals work out at being worth about 1% or thereabouts, but the selection in the UK is hardly great.

[j4.livejournal.com]

The egg home page says "Up to 10% cashback at selected retailers," but I assumed that meant "0.00001% cashback everywhere except one shop in the Outer Hebrides which sells sprockets" or something. (Cynic, moi?) I wasn't planning on using the card to buy anything anyway, though.

More th>n (http://www.morethancard.com/marketing/splashpage_0005/index.html) sounds like you might actually have a chance of getting 0.8% cashback; and Halifax (http://www.halifax.co.uk/creditcards/one.shtml) offers 0.5%.

Actually, what you really want is the Motley Fool's credit card comparison table (http://www.fool.co.uk/partners/google/cards/cards.htm).

[imc.livejournal.com]

More th>n sounds like you might actually have a chance of getting 0.8% cashback;

Yes, in fact there's a whizzy little applet which lets you pick your own customised trade-off between interest rate, annual fee and cashback percentage. If you opt for top-notch interest rates (14% I think it was) then you get 0.8% cashback and no annual fee.

To answer my own question, Goldfish (http://www.goldfish.co.uk/) gives you points which can be redeemed for vouchers (from various shops) at the rate of 1,500 per £10 voucher, which is equivalent to 0.66% cashback.

However, in some sense, even at the top cashback rate a tenner is neither here nor there when you've just spent £1,250. At the other end of the scale, Egg's 0.1% is the best out of the three credit cards that I have at the moment.

[simonb.livejournal.com]

I thought FireFox was a PC thing?

FireFox (http://www.mozilla.org/products/firefox/) - the version of Mozilla without an email or news client - currently has downloads available for:

• Windows
• MacOS X
• Solaris (both SPARC and Intel)
• NetBSD
• Linux
• OS/2

You can also get the source code and compile it for any platform you want to.

[j4.livejournal.com]

I bought Opera a while ago. It claimed it worked with MacOS9. I didn't realise that what this meant was "Well, it works, but you won't be able to print unless you have more than 128Mb RAM, and it'll crash your computer completely (requiring hard reset) if you try. Oh, and it'll crash your computer (though not so badly) if you try to have more than 2 tabs open, too."

I might be able to run it in Classic on MacOSX on the new shiny computer, but frankly I'm cross with them for lying about their spec requirements and I'm not keen to use something that's made me cross by lying to me; I'd like (if possible) to stick with Safari, which is a) shiny, and b) Actually Written For the Mac.

I could still run the free version (which worked okay, and only crashed occasionally, though it didn't seem to be able to do flash/javascript/etc. so I still had to fire up IE for that...) but the pissed-off-ness still applies. Also the ads did annoy me.

[sparrowsion]

You should be able to run Opera as OSX native -- one of the reasons (I suspect) it sucks on 9 is that it's written for X and is using compatability libraries.

I think I'd notice the adverts if I used Opera on any of my machines other than my main work one. With a 21" monitor running 1400x1050 they take up very little screen space, but 17" at 1024x768 is another matter....

[j4.livejournal.com]

But I bought MacOS 9 Opera. I don't want to have to buy MacOS X Opera as well!

BTW I do love that icon of yours. :)

[sparrowsion]

Ah, I thought it was a generic Mac licence, not tied to the OS version.

[juliet]

Ick :-( That sucks. Sorry - have only tried it on Windows & Linux, under both of which it works beautifully. Mind you, that was the free version on both. Can definitely understand you being pissed off about that.

Safari is pretty shiny, but sadly does not have mouse gestures, which is probably my favouritest thing about Opera (well, that & tabbed browsing, which of course Safari does have).

[sparrowsion]

mouse gestures

Horrible idea. Turned them off as soon as I discovered it wasn't actually a mouse fault causing random shit to happen as I tried to navigate around my browser.

[juliet]

To each their own... I find them really useful. Still, you *can* turn them off, so that's OK :-)

[mobbsy.livejournal.com]

I use egg.com regularly with Firefox 0.8 on Windows and FreeBSD. I can't remember whether or not I needed to use something else to register.

[timeplease.livejournal.com]

Egg has worked for me in every browser I've tried it with. (IE5, IE6, Mozilla 1.0 to 1.6, Firefox 0.8 under Linux, Konqueror.) Generally with squid as a proxy and an iptables-based firewall.

[imc.livejournal.com]

I'm using Netscape 7.0 on Solaris.

Mind you, the form on which you apply for the card in the first place appeared to be broken on Mozilla and I ended up rdesktoping to the lab's Windows server to run IE on it (ugh). I complained to them, so they may or may not have fixed it.

(Freeserve's signup was also broken on Mozilla last time I tried it.)

[bopeepsheep.livejournal.com]

Doesn't that "rdesktoping" need either italics or another p? I wondered how you might slant or imbibe your rdesk.

[lnr]

Works absolutely fine on Mozilla on Linux here and has done for years, and I'm sure I've pointed other stuff at it with no trouble.