'UK Trainwrecks' Category
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 […]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 […]
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 […]Media trainwrecks (one of two)
Courtesy of Irish uber-blogger and technology journalist Damien Mulley come two excellent examples of poor quality information getting loose.
The first concerns an article published in the Irish Examiner Newspaper. They published a story this week which puported to show that Irish employers were losing millions of euro due to staff members using Social Networking sites like Bebo […]Customer data boo-boos in Carphone Warehouse & Talk Talk
For a change, we didn’t find this one on The Register (oh, hang on , here it is on el Reg as well…). However, it would seem that UK communications retail Carphone Warehouse and its telco subsidiary Talk Talk have been given a stern reprimand from the UK’s Information Commissioner for problems with the quality […]
I shot the Sheriff (but I didn’t update the warrants database)
The headline doesn’t scan as well as the original Bob Marley lyric, but that jarring dischord is nothing compared to the problems with the PNC (Police National Computer) in the UK.
A review is underway of the processes used to update the PNC database across the UK covering the “national process and practice for withdrawing warrants, […]ahem… Information Quality problem with the trains…
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2007/11/13/eurostar_glitch/
Again culled from el Reg, here’s an example of an information quality problem that prevents a process (a very trivial process) from being completed.
It seems that the on-line booking system for the EuroStar train linking the UK with Europe doesn’t recognise the existence of the 29th of February 2008. As the leap year day is […]oops Amazon did it again…
Also from “The Register”, it appears that Amazon have again created ‘interesting’ relationships in their data that have had uncomfortable results for their customers.
We previously reported on the IQ trainwreck that occured when Amazon sent email recommendations for sex toys to people who’d never bought such items from Amazon. Today they seem to have gone […]
