15 Storeys High - Sean Lock and Mark Jones' (aka Mark Lamarr) quietly hilarious and inventive sitcom.

Loco Roco - modern classic cute, wobbly, beautiful platform game for the PSP.

At Swim-two-birds - brain-tickling roam through Irish literary student life and fiction by Flann O'Brien.

All highly recommended!

I finally got a component cable for the original Xbox from MVS through Amazon. The problem, as described earlier was that I was rather naively searching for the word 'component' which doesn't appear in the name of this item.

I'm glad to report the difference in picture quality is astounding. I can actually see jaggies! And the colour depth is like going from the built-in speakers on a portable telly to an amplified 2.1 system. A tenner including delivery.

Have recently been given an xbox, I've noticed how difficult it is to buy new xbox games now. The original xbox and all games have been replaced in large retailers like HMV and Virgin Megastores by Xbox 360 hardware and titles, while searching online retailers inevitably mainly throws up results for the 360. Sony did the exact opposite when the PS2 came out, re-releasing the PlayStation as the cheaper PSone thus saving all sorts of naming confusion.

Mainly I want to get hold of an xbox composite video cable, but such a thing is out of stock wherever I look. Have manufacturers stopped bothering with the ugly dinosaur console? Or do Microsoft operate some noxious scheme to incite third party accessories manufacturers to move away from the less profitable older platform with expiring licensing agreements or some such?

Update!

I have ordered a Netgear XE104 85 Mbps Wall-Plugged Ethernet 4-port Switch from amazon.co.uk. Everyone seems to have forgotten about HomePlug in all the excitement about wireless, even me. I had ordered a Linksys WRT54GL-UK while it was surprisingly cheap until I remembered about ethernet-over-powerline (not to be confused with power-over-ethernet). It seemed like a good idea as I would otherwise have to get a wireless bridge for a bunch of wired devices in my room, and it neatly sidestepped the whole signal-strength/compatibility/security/firmware nightmare with which anyone who has set up a wireless network will sympathise.

However, I am still waiting, and I ordered on January 5th. If you go there now, it says "Availability: In stock", but when I ordered it said "Usually dispatched in 1-2 weeks". Hmmmm. Perhaps Amazon are waiting for some more buyers before they can afford to ship a crate-load over from France or something?

UPDATE: I complained two days after the delivery estimate expired and got a free upgrade to First Class post. However, I still had to wait a further seven days until it was finally delivered on February 2nd. Now they seem to be in stock at amazon. Way to be an early adopter!

Further to the case of the Canon Ebay Outlet negative feedback posted earlier, I have just been offered a refund by Digital River for the postage and packing cost if I would withdraw my negative feedback.

What bald bribery! Of course I find it easy to resist seeing as I have already received a full refund!

Informing them of this via the ponderous process of Squaretrade mediation, I am then offered a 20% discount on my next purchase from the Canon Ebay Outlet. I replied that I had no plans to purchase from them again.

Thinking long ago that this was all over after I got my refund, I have bought the exact same digital camera from Amazon, a Canon IXUS 40, which I am very pleased with. Annoyingly, Amazon.co.uk have reduced it by a further twenty quid since I bought it. This means that the camera is now only £8.75 more brand new, delivered and without having to deal with Digital River than I payed for my refurbished one!

It seems to me that Canon's ebay outlet shop, operated by Digital River, is trying to suppress negative feedback. I bought a camera from the outlet back in August and subsequently had to send it back because it turned out to be faulty. They offered me a repair service, but I had to pay for the postage to the repair centre and wait some untold amount of time to finally get my camera back so I figured it wasn't worth it.

I have just received this email from SquareTrade Customer Support:

**AUTOMATIC NOTIFICATION: CLICK BELOW TO RESPOND**

eBay Item Number: 7541980690
SquareTrade Case ID: *******
Merchandise Description: Canon Outlet: Digital IXUS 40

Hello,

This is our 4th notice to you about a case filed by canon_uk1 concerning transaction #7541980690. eBay may have already withdrawn the feedback comment you left for the dispute transaction.

If it has not already been withdrawn, the only way you can prevent this from happening is by responding to the problem--responding does not obligate you in any way to resolve the problem. You just need to respond by clicking here and completing your response:

-snip-

Fourth notice?! What? I hope that's not a tactic to make sure they can say they have taken "reasonable steps to contact me" or something.

Probably should have blogged this sooner, but I was patiently waiting for my refund which appeared some weeks later yet was backdated on the statement, which may make it difficult to prove. Then I noticed that the refund had come in two separate payments that didn't add up to the original debit - the balance was still short by £5.09. I reminded them about this and had to wait another week or more for it to appear (again backdated) in my account before finally feeling safe to leave what I still consider to be quite reasonable, even understated negative feedback as follows:

Item arrived faulty. How disappointing :( Friendly service though.

They were always courteous on the phone and in emails. I don't blame the operators! But what possible grounds will they have for asking to withdraw that? It remains to be seen what they will claim, but it makes me wonder how many other negative feedbacks may have disappeared from large ebay shops with a dedicated staff and corporate muscle behind them.

On the reassurances about refurbished products page linked to from the listing it states "Refurbished products are 100% OK." Within what margin I wonder? That attractive looking 98.5% postive feedback score means 154 people have left negative feedback in the past twelve months and a further 277 have left neutral feedback. Now I begin to wonder how many may have been withdrawn.

This isn't the first time I've had problems with a seller who had huge feedback, only that time I had made all the mistakes and there was no recourse except publicity and selling the faulty item, since even the total price was below the threshold for making a claim.

Bought on ebay for £11.99 this is several errors in one; the card itself failing after a week or so of use and in buying it from Hong Kong, paying significantly more for the non-refundable postage charge than for the item thus making the returns policy prohibitive.

The faulty card is now listed on ebay.

UPDATE: It seems ebay.co.uk now shows the postage cost next to the price, which is quite sensible. I like to think my little bit of pressure helped there. It doesn't stop the "required postal insurance" cost obfuscation but it does make unreasonable item cost vs postage cost ratios more visible. Remember: you can't get a refund on the postage cost!