In disorder
My experience of internet shopping at Christmas was that a number of retailers were not prepared for the demand.
I received good and timely service from Discounttoys and Toyzone, but an order with HMV on December 7 was not completed until January 11. Only one item of four ordered was received before Christmas. Amazon was generally satisfactory, although it too shipped one item after Christmas.
Ray Smith
rsmith_telesto@hotmail.com
Unquotable
It ought to be true, as Danny Sullivan says (Weblife January 20) that putting something in quotes, like "Manchester United" returns "only pages with that exact phrase on them, in that exact order".
But on a significant number of search engines it isn't: the quotes are treated as if they weren't there.
Try searching them for my name "conrad cork" in quotes and you get flooded with stuff about some Irish County. Try searching for the title of my book Harmony With Lego Bricks and Google, for example, says that "with" is very common, and so was ignored.
Conrad Cork
Tadley Ewing Publications
Leicester
Bitter fruit
Your feature on Moonfruit (January 20) raises the question of who paid whom for the article. The journalist, Justin Hunt, works for Moonfruit, and the article is clearly a puff piece full of throwaway quotes and inaccuracies.
He says Moonfruit is "one of the first start-ups to go boldy into cyberspace". Had they launched a year ago, they would have been one of the first, but you can't say you're one of the first just because the internet is still in fast growth stage.
The feature reads largely like an apology for a launch that might not happen. Justin talks about the site launching "today" but says it may not happen. And surely there was a more inspirational pull quote than "people will either love it or they won't"!
Steve Masters
Online Director BlueCarrots
IRC inquiry
I have a tesco.net account, and am unable to connect to any useful internet relay chat server apart from the BT IRC server but the response times are terrible on the rare occasions I am able to connect.
Does anyone know of a quick and reliable IRC server accessible from a free ISP?
Elliot Herman
elliot.herman@tesco.net
Bad books
I bought the Oxford English Dictionary on CD-rom, when it first came out in 1992. Last year, the company announced the software had been redesigned to improve efficiency, and I thought it might be worth upgrading.
After two emails I got a reply, saying the price of an upgrade was £58.75; to qualify as an existing user, I had to send a photocopy of the old manual. I sent off the photocopy with a cheque for £58.75. I got a reply, saying the price was actually £59.99, so I sent another cheque for £1.24.
I received the software with a packing document saying that the price was actually £60, and demanding payment of the balance of one penny.
I have just received a new invoice, repeating the demand for payment of one penny. This letter cost 19 pence alone to send.
Julian Davey
julian.davey@dial.pipex.com
Inner circle
I logged into www.circle.co.uk after reading that this was the site for information and advice from the likes of Anna Raeburn. It was nothing to do with that, more for buildings/furniture/IT info.
Lynne Chamberlain
lchambe@rnib-redhill.ac.uk
• The address should be www.icircle.co.uk
