The Yodel Game

It's that time of year again when we order a lot of things online for Christmas. Dealing with most couriers in the North East of Scotland is a nightmare, the main distribution hubs for the big couriers are located in Aberdeen and Inverness, with a mish-mash of local and/or independent couriers filling the gaps further afield. This generally means that if you are quoted a delivery date of 1st December by the mainstream courier, that date actually reflects when it reaches their final hub, BEFORE it's passed on to the indie couriers. This can add a day or two onto the expected delivery date, what I call "The Highland Rule". The exception to this rule is Parcel Force, who use the Royal Mail network and so can meet the delivery date.

This time of year is also the most common time to play "The Yodel Game".

The Yodel game, for the small minority who have not played is quite a simple one to learn, but a very hard one to win.

Here's how to play:

1. Place an order for home delivery with Amazon, Argos, Littlewoods or one of the many companies that use them
2. Wait at home on delivery date (plus next working day after for the "Highland Rule")
3. Discover that you have missed your delivery by one of the following:
-Get card stealthily put through door without a knock or a ring
-Tracking website informs you that you have been carded, even though you don't have a card
-Tracking website informs you that you have already signed for the item

4. Call company you ordered from or call Yodel and receive same incorrect information as on tracking website and be told it will be redelivered
5. Repeat steps 2 - 4 for up to 7 days
6. Receive Parcel (Probably, otherwise start again at step 3)

Yodel is a special kind of courier (as seen on Watchdog), they claim to be the UK's biggest by quite some margin and they handle far too many of the UK's deliveries (purely on a cost basis, no doubt) but in reality Yodel is a extremely loose network of independent drivers, each with their own habits and hours of operation. This is Yodel's @HOME brand.

The @HOME Yodel model is a fairly simple one (and not one that is exclusive to them either). Yodel employs independents to deliver their parcels, with a commission of 40-70p per signed for delivery. Each day, the big Yodel van will turn up at the home of an independent and drop off the parcels to be delivered that day. This delivery can occur any time during the working day, so your local delivery bod may not recieve parcels until late afternoon. They are then responsible for delivery of said parcels to their recipients.

And here's where the system really starts to fail...

Say Mrs Smith from ten minutes down the road is your local Yodel delivery person, trying to make a bit of extra cash to suppliment the family income. Now Mrs Smith has recieved some rather large parcels for you, but they won't fit in her little Corsa, she'll have to wait until her Son is free at the weekend so she can get him to drop it off in his van. Does she come and tell you this? Does Yodel phone you to advise? No, of course not. You're just left to wonder if you will recieve your parcel.

What about Billy down at Number 42? He likes a night out with his mates, the Yodel stuff was dropped off at 4.30pm and he was just about to head down to the pub. Will he tell his mates to wait until he does his deliveries? I doubt it. Will he feel like delivering tomorrow when he has a brutal hangover? Don't count on it. Maybe he'll just scribble some signatures down so he gets his commission and maybe he'll drop them off when he feels more up to it. Again, does anyone pass on a revised delivery date? Does anyone care?

Now I mentioned that the Yodel game is a hard one to win, suggesting that there are ways to win. Based on the disaster that was last years Christmas delivery season, I can make the following "strategic suggestions":

1. Put a sign on your door instructing couriers to Knock/Ring the Bell and if no answer then please leave in such and such a place. Sign it and put your name underneath (like a letter). This counts as a delivery signature/instruction and most couriers will respect this. Of course, if your delivery person is Mrs Smith or Billy, then this won't work, but for the delivery person who doesn't intend on hanging about it works pretty well - just be careful where you have them leave it and check this place regularly!


2. I work in Aberdeen, so wherever possible I get parcels delivered to my office. This means that I'm close to a main distribution hub and my parcel will be delivered by the original courier rather than play pass the parcel with Indies.


3. Choose delivery options that aren't Yodel/Independent friendly - many websites have delivery options that Yodel can't do such as a one hour window (DPD) or by 1pm (Royal Mail). This one can be a bit of a pain because unless the website lists which courier provides which service, you can only assume that it won't be Yodel.

The reason these big companies choose Yodel is because they are cheap - and very much for a reason, but we need to take some responsibility too. The next time you tick "Free Delivery" on Amazon, think about whether or not you want to play The Yodel Game.

Citrix Error 61 on Mac

Recently, one of our clients updated the SSL certificate for their Citrix remote access website. This proved to be quite an issue for users with Macs running the Citrix Reciever, which didn't want to play ball. Generating the error message SSL Error 61: You have not chosen to trust "<authority>", the issuer of the server's security certificate. Error number 183  when they tried to launch an application.

Doing what all IT Professionals do best, I googled it. Unfortunately, the majority of the results referred to different scenarios, mostly under older versions of the Citrix client (The dreaded ICA!).

After a very long afternoon of back and forth with one of the affected users, I was able to get things working by taking these steps:

1. On a PC, browse to the problem Citrix website with Internet Explorer
2. Open Tools >> Internet Options >> Content >> Certificates >> Intermediate Certification Authorities
3. Find the name of the cert in the error message (Above) and click on it and click Export
4. Click Next >> Select DER encoded Binary X.509 (.CER) >> Next
5. Save as the same name as the original error message. (e.g. COMODO SSL CA) and Finish the wizard
6. Rename the saved file extension to crt and transfer this file to the Mac
7. On the Mac, open Applications/Citrix ICA Client and create a folder called keystore
8. Open the keystore folder and create a subfolder called cacerts
9. Copy the crt file you created into this folder
10. Open Keychain and click logon from the left pane
11. Choose File>>Import items
12. Browse to the crt file and import. Set all permissions to trusted for the certificate
13. Close browser completely and re-open, browse to problem page and open an application, it should now load successfully
 
That's right, you use a PC to fix the Mac. Good Times...

Sony Bites Back: PS4 Announced

So, the worst kept secret in the videogame industry was outed last night when Sony officially announced the Playstation 4 - scheduled to be in your living room this Christmas (or undoubtedly Easter for those of us in the Eurozone).

This announcement is significant in a lot of ways for Sony, the Playstation brand and indeed for Microsoft - the arch nemesis for said brand.

Playstation 4 announced in NYC

I am a diehard Playstation guy, having owned every Playstation console to date but I was concerned that for the second generation running, Sony was going to be playing catch-up to Microsoft. Yes, rumors of SDK's going out to developers were persistent but there was more talk of Xbox 720 release timescales and reveals than anything else. I would say I've heard more about the Xbox 720 in the last year than I have about the WiiU - a console that is already on shelves!

When Sony announced their "Playstation 2013" event, I was sceptical - moreso following the reveal of the tablet controller patent a few weeks ago - I thought we would see some combination of the tablet, a Vita hardware refresh or something new for Move. I was also concerned that Sony was again all to content to sit back and see what Microsoft was up to. The seventh console generation caused the Playstation Brand a lot of damage early on, with the console being seen as second best for at least half of its lifetime before games like the 2nd and 3rd Uncharted titles and the LittleBigPlanet series broadened appeal.

But as February has moved forward, the rumor mill has gone into overdrive - every gaming site has had an exclusive about the Dualshock 4 controller, analysing and arguing over whether any of the steady stream of pictures was infact legit or just what the new buttons would do and it got to the point last night where a last pang of concern hit me - what if it's really not being announced?

If Sony had played the same game as before and left things until later, then the Playstation brand could have been damaged beyond repair. Microsoft would have delightedly announced the next Xbox at E3 in the summer and Sony would see an increase in pre-owned console sales over Christmas.

Thankfully that has not happened and now it's Microsoft caught on the back foot and that is the best thing for them - the 360 has peaked and is now in steady decline. The innovation that helped the console has deserted it and now Microsoft needs to innovate to get back in the game. My prediction is that Sony will demo the actual console hardware at E3, which will again steal thunder from Redmond, who are still on track to announce then.

Sony has bitten back in a big way with the sudden appearance of the PS4 and it may be enough to win the 8th generation war in the way Microsoft and Nintendo took the 7th by storm.

A rant about the state of digital streaming media

Here in the UK, we are currently being subjected to the Smart TV revolution and in tune with that, we are being bombarded with advertising, sales people at the door, sales people in the street and pretty much anywhere else you can think of. What are they people trying to sell me? A Netflix, NowTV or Love Film subscription.

Full Disclosure: I currently use Netflix because it's compatible with my Roku.

The thing that bothers me about these services is that they all offer a different selection of content because each one has signed up TV Studio X and Movie studio Y to exclusivity deals. Difference here, is that Sky's NowTV has the rights to new movies in the UK for the first 12-18 months after DVD release because of Sky's long standing agreements with studios.

"OK then" you say - get NowTV and that's problem solved. But I grudge paying double what I would pay for either of the others, much as I grudge paying Netflix whenever I see a movie listed on Lovefilm. The general rule of thumb is that Netflix is better for Movies and Lovefilm is better for TV shows, but looking at the UK catalogues for both tells me they both have a solid selection in both TV and film, leaving me back at square one.

I feel there should be some uniformity amongst studios or some regulation that requires them to make content available to any service provider - they can argue about costs etc themselves - but to leave exclusivity and first-run rights out of it so the consumer gets the best deal.

Is that so difficult?