Surely content delivery should be better than this?
Rating: Sorry saga of Poppy wallpaper download
by Tony Dennis
Eight years after WAP hit
the industry, there’s really no excuse for poor content delivery, is there? So
I’m going to have a rant about a UK provider, PocketWorld, which I ran into by mistake.
Full of good intentions I was writing a piece describing how you could download
an image of a poppy to your mobile phone to support the British Legion.
The first stage worked easily. Texting ‘Poppy’ to 85099 resulting in a WAP URL
being sent inside a text message. Clicking on it should take you straight to a
download site.
Well it didn’t work with 3 and I have an inkling why. 3 was definitely blocking
the site. If you look at the regular web site the first thing that hits you is
the pictures of semi-naked women which can be downloaded as wallpapers.
The next operator I tried was Vodafone and although I reached the site this
time, the payment system – PayforIT, wouldn’t let me purchase the item in
question. Now I realise, of course, that the handset in question is blocked for
adult content.
In desperation I tried Orange
and this time I succeeded in purchasing the first Poppy wallpaper. I then tried
to download the animated wallpaper version and PayforIT took my payment. But
the download failed giving me an "unexpected response" error message.
Mulling this over, I went back to the original web page setting out details of
acquiring the Poppy wallpaper. Guess what? The link to a chart outlining which
handsets are capable of achieving the download doesn’t work.
This is pathetic. I was also especially incensed because it appears that
although the consumer is charged £3, only £1.50 actually appears to go to the
charity.
Pocketworld is very definitely off my Xmas card list now.
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