A Donkey on the Edge

I think the nice man who went in search of my Identity theft woes last week would have liked me to update my previous post.

So here goes: according to his findings there is nothing wrong with either his payment-processing software or hardware and a review of staff at the branch revealed nothing untoward.

So just to confirm: all is well at Eat. You can pick up your soup and sandwiches safe in the knowledge that these guys pay attention to detail, act fast when required and are just generally a bunch of excellent people!

eat.co.uk

Wow, when was the last time you thought you'd get a response as a result of filling in a form on the web (never mind a rapid response)?

Well, I had a little grief from the fraud protection mob at Firstdirect this afternoon and as a result posted this note in the feedback form on the Eat website (and I won't go into the domain name resolution issue on the site which means if you load the flash movie by entering the domain without the 'www' the links to the feedback form are broken--I wonder how much more feedback they'd get if that was fixed...)

At 14:31:55 on 27 June 2008 (roughly an hour ago) I purchased a soup and sandwich from your 15 Basinghall Street shop.

When I returned to my desk to eat my lunch I received a call from my bank (first direct) informing me that there had been fraudulent behaviour on my switch card.

According to their records, the transaction I had just made in the City of London was routed through a supplier in Equador.

The security guys at the bank where I work reckon this is a man-in-the-middle attack and that someone has tampered with the keypad in the store (similar to attaching card readers to ATM tellers, to harvest card details).

Please review this situation asap.

All the best,
Dug Falby

To be honest, I really didn't think I'd get an answer (strangely, the Flash front-end is what gave me this impression: If it's not a real html form, how can it yield real results?) but I did.

A nice man called Martin (I think he said he was head of business communications?) rung up to explain what was going on as a result of my note. From his description, I pictured a black helicopter appearing over Basinghall street and special forces whisking the card-reader off to a controlled explosion. It was very impressive, he said he'd frozen all card transactions at the store, notified the card processing supplier who are going to come in and refit the store tonight and would double-check records for staff access to card processing stuff.

He also made a point of checking that I had notified my bank and assured me he would get back to with with any progress relevant to my situation. Prompt, courteous and thorough, just the way it oughta be.

Which of course means I'll be all the more likely to go buy delicious soups and salads from Eat:-)

At last! A proper French meal. Meet the "Café des Sports" in scenic Issy-Les-Moulineaux:

1. in your face 'patronne'--check.
2. long, ancient and very battered 'zinc'--check.
3. loud clattering sound (tile floor and cheap cutlery in use)--check.
4. paper tablecloths--check.
5. ample supplies of bread and mustard--check.
6. tongue and tripe on the table--check.
7. everyone smoking--check.
8. shot in my bird--check.
9. several bottles of Gamay at lunch--check.

Very nice indeed, and to boot we had a nice geeky conversation about the relative merits of different widget engines:-)

So I was trying to score some new Birkenstocks at lunchtime today and ended up eating a small Ceasar salad at the bar of the Covent Garden Hotel which seemed like the best way to avoid eating Another Bloody Sandwich.

Decided to wash the salad down with a rather tasty and very refreshing martini (gin, three olives).

And to complete the impromptu drift into another life, had a natter with none other than John Stoddart who was having a mineral water while waiting to meet a picture agency chap up the other end of the bar...