The week in your words: The barking mad watchdog

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Posted on 28 Nov 2008 at 17:14

In a week that saw Ofcom lose its mind, Dixons lose a heap of cash, and David Bayon lose his rag over playlists, we take a look back to see what our readers have made of it all.

Ofcom: the chocolate fireguard starts to crack

We did it. We killed Kennedy, Princess Diana and disco. We've got Lord Lucan squirreled away in our basement, and the cure for cancer hanging above our fireplace. We crashed the plane in Lost, sold the idea for Big Brother to Channel 4 and will be later decorating our floor with a Panda-skin rug. Or at least, that's what Ofcom would have you believe.

According to the watchpuppy, people may not have a clue what speed their broadband is running at, but that's only because meanies like PC Pro are filling their pretty-little heads with confusing... erm, facts. The piece stroked up some baffling opinion.

"My broadband leaves a lot to be desired, but doing anything about it is a nightmare of call centres, gaps in service provision while changing ISP, and a bevy of hidden charges. Most reasonable people realise they are powerless to do anything about it," says c6ten dusting the footprints off his back.

jeremy paxman wasn't having any of it, though. What... Paxman? Of course he reads our blogs.

"Well, that's a great attitude to take. You can't be bothered so you just make do with a sub-standard service. Brilliant. Just brilliant. This is how ISPs in the UK have got away with it so long - they rely upon the utter apathy of the British web-surfing public."

Exactly. This is what marriage is all about. And, finally, to Michael, who chipped in with possibly our favourite ever comment on the blogs.

"I'm with Virgin Media and get 10Mb/sec as advertised, so, for reasons of gratuitous spite, I'm quite happy the rest of you have crappy internet connections."

Don't worry, in his next life he gets run over by a bus.

Dixons group announces huge losses

It turns out DSG, the group behind PC World and Currys, has lost £29.8 million over the past six months. This roughly equates to one pound for every enquiry answered with "huh?" by one of its sales staff. Our forums weren't shy about their lack of sympathy.

"I would like to think this is the result of customers avoiding its stores because of the abysmal service," says Mullins2003. "It is more likely to do with the current financial climate but it still fills me with a warm feeling inside!"

We prefer mulled wine, but each to his own.

"Surely part of DSG's problem is that until recently it had the monopoly on selling computers to Joe Public who didn't know much about computers," says davidbryant4.

"Now, however, it's competing against the likes of Tesco. Nobody at Tesco is likely to be able to advise potential customers, but then it's not much better at PC World."

And at least at Tesco you have the pleasure of causing a mini-uproar by rolling your brand new desktop PC through the self-service tills. They love that. paulzolo didn't even realise Currys was still going.

"I was under the impression that our local Currys was going to close, but it just got a refurbishment, so now it looks like a sinister Apple Store."