I think it’s  a well documented phenomenon that as you get older you get wiser.  The flip side of your new found understanding of the world however, is cynicism and general grumpiness.  I’m just shy of 40, and now rather fearful of just how bitter and twisted I will be by the time I’m 70.  Hopefully the joy of actually reaching this goal might help to offset things.

This week’s irritations are Swiftcover.com (owned by AXA) and Sony’s Memory Stick format.

The insurance giants have to be very inventive these days to compete in such a fierce market but some feel the need to verge on the most devious of tactics to get new business or keep existing customers.  Whilst many are spending millions with pun laden Meerkats, and nodding dogs, Swiftcover have a new sales tactic.  You make it as hard as possible for the customer to leave. 

You receive the renewal quote, do the confused.com bit then find a cheaper insurance company.  No problem, but… on the renewal notice it says No claims bonus ’5 or more years’ .  Hold On! . I’m damn sure when I joined you last year I brought 10 years with me.   You can see where this is going….. You see some companies are now discounting policies further for drivers with up to 10 years NCB.   By refusing to recognise any more than the 5 year maximum on their renewal notice, Swiftcover.com can artificially make their premium more attractive.  Clever eh?

Well I’ ve kicked up a big fuss about it and ordered a separate statement letter of NCB from them.  It’s not been easy though. The company that has ‘won’ countless customer service awards doesn’t have a phone number, at least, not one that is visible within my surfing attention span.   They prefer you to converse via their ‘Chat’ system with trained chimpanzees that are equipped with a wonderful computer (provided by Fisher Price or Vtech)  that has an answer for any question you ask it.  It’s the same answer each time of course but you have to admire their preparedness.

It transpires I have in fact got 11 years NCB but I’m still waiting for that letter to arrive…..

Meanwhile I have taken ownership of a new Digital camera, a Sony one.  All was well until I ran out of storage space on it.  Two words,   Memory Stick! After years of being quite settled in the knowledge that any digital device worth it’s salt will come equipped with an SD card slot, I’ve been thrown a curveball, in fact several of varying sizes.  You see Sony seriously screwed up when they made the Memory stick.  Being the size of a chewing gum it was clearly useless for smaller camera devices.  So they made it smaller.  It was still too big so they made it smaller again.  By now, the chaps at Secure Digital must have been laughing their formats off.

 So now we have:

Memory Stick
Memory Stick Select
Memory Stick PRO
Memory Stick Duo
Memory Stick PRO Duo
Memory Stick PRO-HG Duo
Memory Stick Micro (M2)
Memory Stick XC

Confused?, I am.  After much head scratching I purchased a Memory Stick Pro Duo.  It comes with the daftest adapter you’ve ever seen to allow it to be used in some of the older generation Sony card readers.  An exact copy of what you are plugging into it, same no. of terminals, same spacing, except the plastic is slightly chunkier.   In order to talk to my new memory card with anything other than a Sony PC, I also bought a USB ‘140 into 1′ card reader for the princely sum of £1.74 inc post from Ebay.  It arrived yesterday, but it’s baffling to fathom what economic tomfoolery has ocurred for such an incredible bit of kit to have a retail value less than two litres of petrol.

So there you have it.  It seems, it costs millions to goof up standardising on digital formats but only £1.74 to fix it.