'European IQ Trainwrecks' Category
Never mind the prat-nav
Sat-Nav, it’s everywhere. When my mother-in-law starts asking me about it and my wife starts to swear by it (rather than at me) on long journeys I know that the technology has reached mass market acceptance.
Spare a thought then for hauliers, tour buses and other large vehicles trying to navigate the Ring of Kerry using their trusty Sat […]Economic impact of Information Quality
First off - an apology for not posting a bit more regularly. It’s not that there aren’t any IQ Trainwrecks, it’s just that there have been so many recently we’ve been spoiled for choice for the ones to use and we haven’t had time to edit and compile them all.
However, one that jumped out of […]Medication errors affect 1 in 25 in leading Irish Hospital (or does it?)
[UPDATE]: To carry home the challenges of managing and measuring the quality of information at times, Beaumont Hospital have issued the following press statement regarding the issue mentioned below (this statement is copied from the comment below).
STATEMENT BY BEAUMONT HOSPITAL RE OMBUDSMAN’S REPORT
The Office of the Ombudsman issued a report this morning which highlighted […]Tracker mortgage off target
RTE news today reports that AIB Bank (one of the largest banks in Ireland) has admitted an error in applying interest rate changes over a 12 month period to so-called ‘tracker’ mortgages.
This has resulted in customers having underpaid their loans in recent months. The bank is, kindly, offering the affected customers the option of paying the shortfall in one go or spread over the remaining […]Leap Year problem hits Irish bank
The Sunday Business Post newspaper (Ireland’s leading weekly paper dedicated to business news) carried a story this week about errors in calculating mortgage interest due to the 2008 Leap Year which have affected at least one Irish bank. This is an information quality problem we discussed previously on this blog.Of course, the bank’s are simply going to apply the interest missed […]
An electric (bill) shock
Courtesy of Cambridge News comes this story of a shocking electricity bill.
British Electricity provider N-Power sent a Cambridge woman a bill recently for just over stg£90million (US$ 177million). This was bemusing to her because she has availed of a pre-paid electricity meter. It would seem that for the woman to have run up such a bill would have […]British Gas Billing leaves explosive whiff in the air….
The Register today reports that British Gas (aka Centrica) is taking legal action against international consulting firm Accenture after a total overhaul of their billing systems costing stg£300m resulted in customers being incorrectly billed (in some instances on multiple accounts - for one customer at the same address). British Gas claims that it has had […]
Aer Lingus pricing blunder brings everyone back down to earth (and now the lawyers are involved!)
The IAIDQ is holding its annual US conference (the IDQ Conference) in San Antonio this September. As a Director of the Association and a potential speaker at the event I’ve been researching my options for flying to the US as cheaply (but comfortably) as possible.
Imagine my dismay when I spotted that I’d missed an opportunity […]The importance of language
Courtesy (yet again) of The Register.co.uk comes this salutory tale that highlights the importance of language in Information Quality, after all it is information that is being transferred when ever we communicate and the expectations of the sender and receiver of any communication can often affect how that message is understood.
The synopsis of the tale […]What a nice model of furniture
Also from The Register is this story of a data quality boo boo on the Marks and Spencer website (the offending page has been removed from the site, but el Reg kindly kept a screenshot).
The text of an on-line catalogue entry described an item for sale, emphasising its “modern curves, soft-look styling and hardwood […]
