Rants

Posted on 11 Jul 2007 at 15:53

 

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Mel Croucher issues a fearsome curse on a Polish airline that tricked him out of his personal data.

Well it's one for the money, two for the show, three to get ready, now go online and book an air ticket. Let me continue. You can burn my house, steal my car, drink my liquor from an old fruit-jar, do anything that you want to do, but uh-uh honey, don't insult my intelligence.

If you'd like to know why I'm not quite singing Blue Suede Shoes, here's the story.

I needed to visit the birthplace of my grandmother, which is in Poland. Like many other web-savvy cheapskates, I scoured my favourite sites for the best deals, screen-grabbed what I needed for reference and carefully erased my electronic data-trail behind me, more out of habit than paranoia.

The best deal was offered by Centralwings, a low-cost subsidiary of the Polish national airline, and for seven-and-a-half days it displayed the same price - a mere £109 return - on its website. The reason I hesitated so long was because I didn't like the amount of information they requested, including bank details, username, password, telephone number, plus all the usual credit card stuff. But a bargain is a bargain. I checked the SSL certificate online and all was well, so I made the booking.

It was a five-stage process, and at every stage the quoted price was the same, including taxes and booking fees. Then they insulted my intelligence. After seven-and-a-half days, they hiked the price to £244.52p the moment I hit the Confirm button. And that was no bargain. I cancelled the booking, of course, but only after they had conned my personal data out of me by what I consider to be illegal trading practices.

Poles apart

I accused Centralwings in writing of priming their database to display fake availability of bargain tickets, and automatically increasing the advertised price after sucking secure private data out of their victims. I gave them ample time and opportunity to refute my accusations, and stated that if they did not respond with a grovelling apology I would take that as an admission of guilt. They did not respond with a grovelling apology, and I pondered my next move.

Being a pacifist, and remembering that I was going to Poland to commemorate victims of war, I took succour from the recent cyber-attack by Russia on Estonia, one of the most wired nations in the world. When the Russians got narked by their wee neighbours for removing a Soviet war memorial, they launched the most coordinated Denial of Service campaign ever on Estonian websites run by the government, news organisations and banks, and the country ground to a halt. The war was over in three weeks. Not a shot was fired. This is a brilliant idea, and I urge all international conflicts and civil wars to be resolved in a similar way. Instead of bombing the enemy, leave rude messages in their guestbook. Sell their assets on eBay. Spam them into submission.

As for my revenge on Centralwings for insulting my intelligence, Piotr Kociolek, their chief executive officer, resigned for "personal reasons". His replacement, Maciej Kwiatkowski, said he would spend the rest of this year "addressing cost reduction issues". His name was eleventh on the list of candidates after the previous 10 were rejected by the board and the company posted record losses. I think they have suffered enough. Peace in our time - just don't insult my intelligence.

Author: Mel Croucher