CASTERS AND BOLLOCKS

Here’s the drill. You find something on the internet that you want to buy. You can’t do this unless you ‘SIGN IN’. To do this you must first ‘REGISTER’, giving a Username and a Password. You then may ‘SIGN IN’, order and receive what you ordered.

This part is fairly easy and works well, in my experience.

Now, of course, you have been added to the email list of the company from which you have purchased something.

You will now get at least one email a week forever from this company. I exaggerate here. Maybe it’s only once a month. But then I think of Charles Tyrwhitt the shirt man and Donald Russell the meat man …

Six months ago I bought four casters to go on a shelf unit. Jolly good they were and still are. I had, before, never ever bought casters either from a shop or online. I doubt if I shall ever buy any more in my life. My need for casters has been satisfied.

Yet I continue to have to delete messages from this company who fail to realise that they are, to use a contemporarily acceptable expression, pissing me off.

Experience tells me that if at some time in the future I happen to need casters I will not be allowed access to their sacred site unless I ‘SIGN IN’. But I will have forgotten the Password so I may not ‘SIGN IN’ without first having clicked onto the FORGOTTEN YOUR PASSWORD button. Then you have to wait until they respond by email. Of course your screen is full of stuff relating to your order. No problem because you just have to minimise that screen and go to your Email account and wait.

Sometimes, very rarely, their system sends you a reply giving you your forgotten password but not often. What you will most likely get is a TEMPORARY PASSWORD which you have to use to SIGN IN. So you either scribble down your TEMPORARY PASSWORD or cut and paste it into the screen that you have minimised.

This may work but often, in my experience, they want you to CHANGE YOUR PASSWORD (perhaps they may say to a ‘more memorable one’ – well, anything is more memorable than xjq13krapzsw69).

I have not yet included the likelihood that they will also expect you to remember your USERNAME. These days one may use one’s Email address and that works well. If you REGISTERED some years ago, however, they will probably require you to remember the words or words you used then.

I have, just this morning, gone through this procedure with another organisation – not the casters company – which has added another level of sophisticated torture to the process of SIGNING IN. First they ask for your USERNAME and you give them your Email address. Then they ask for your PASSWORD which you do not remember. What they then do is wait until you have gone through the process of being reminded which results in your being given a temporary password and then ask you (tell you?) to fill in a form. First question is WHAT IS YOUR USERNAME? And you give them the Email address you gave them at the beginning. They then ask for your PASSWORD – which you now have, albeit a temporary one with 16 characters. You type it in and … guess what? They tell you, in red, that they already have the USERNAME you have given. Well, of course you have you dolts I’ve just given you it! And the system is then frozen. Nowhere to go now but anywhere else.

We’ll stop here and remember that what we started off by wanting was a few casters. We are not applying for a job with MI5. Why the secrecy? Why consciously put a barrier between your customer wanting your goods and letting him pay for and receive them?

It may, by now, be difficult to remember that it was casters you wanted. It was just so long ago. Or was it the Gas company you were trying to SIGN Into?