NowPublic and Flickr Photos

I've not had my Flickr account for long - in fact, I only started uploading photos to it about a week ago. However, I've already received my first piece of 'Flickr Spam':

…We at NowPublic are working on coverage of a 4 year old to
climb Eiffel Tower, and we are putting together a
collection of photos. We came across your amazing photo on
Flickr and it would be a great addition to our story…

Now, the photo in question of the Eiffel Tower was one I took about 4 years ago on my Fuji Finepix e550 compact. When I decided to read the article in question, I discovered they already had nearly 50 photos of the Eiffel Tower assigned to this article, so why did they need mine as well?

I did a quick google and discovered that others had similar worries, with the comments on Bill Day's blog quite eye-opening.

The big problem as I see it, is if we, the general public, who have no intention of making money from our photographs (although it would be nice!), start giving them away for free, it cheapens photography as a whole. As a web developer, I'm constantly aware that we get undercut by the 'ubiquitious man in the pub' who can do it 'as cheap as you like mate' from his back bedroom. I'd not want to do the same to the photographers out there who rely on this as their income!

I've used Amazon for years - probably around 8 years or so, and never had a cause for complaint. I reckon I've spent the thick end of £5,000 with them over that time period, and they've always delivered as promised, and returns/repairs (on the odd occasion when required) have been a breeze!

This morning I logged on to purchase a Canon EOD 450D that I'd been keeping my eye on. My first disappointment was that Amazon had sold out of their stock, but suggested that I used one of their marketplace sellers called photoland_uk.

So I place the order, and on the checkout, it says it'll be with me within a few days. Once I paid, and checked the receipt, the delivery time has jumped to up to two weeks! Not good, as I need it before then. So, I thought I'd just login, cancel it, and purchase it elsewhere. Upon logging in, I'm told that you can't cancel a Marketplace order, only the merchant can. So, using the form provided, I ask for it to be cancelled. I also rang Amazon, and they said to remove my credit card from the account, and the seller won't be able to capture the funds.

Much to my shock (horror?!) I got an email this afternoon saying that the seller had billed my card! So I sent another email to the seller. I called Amazon again who said it is out of their hands, and they aren't allowed to cancel it. I finally got the merchant to refund it, but at this point, the funds had already been taken from my card, so I'm looking at around 3-5 days for a refund to appear!

It appears that Amazon has no control over the marketplace sellers. I was told that the seller could still bill the card, and send out the camera, and I'd either have to refuse delivery or accept the delivery and send it back! Not a good system in my opinion!

In the end, I've rung up my local John Lewis branch who were only too happy to reserve one for me, and I'll pick it up after work this evening. It works out at being around £25 more expensive, but I've wasted so much time to-and-fro-ing on the phone and via email today, that I've already 'spent' that! Lesson Learned!

I had cause to book a parcel pickup & delivery via parcelforce today. The checkout process was quite good, however, I opted to print the labels, and attach them to my parcel.

Upon paying for my order, Parcelforce provided the label as a downloadable link which ended up being a file called accessor.epl. Now, whilst OS X is very good at handling a multitude of files, for some reason, nothing would open this file. A quick look on Google found nothing either!

However, I renamed the file to accessor.pdf, et voila! Turns out it's a bog standard PDF, but was just named incorrectly - so keep that in mind should you decide to use their service.

I also managed to get 15% off a 24 hour delivery by using the voucher UPAG!