Tom
Great Yarmouth is under construction, the council have approved plans for a HUEG ferry port. However this is taking many, many years to finish. Of course, once it is done, a day trip to Holland will be a viable option. However I do not plan to be in Great Yarmouth 25 years from now...

Daryl
So, we composed a rather annoyed email, under a false pseudonym, a one Mr Jim Thormuya (Yarmouth, for those reading this late at night) And submitted it using this handy form (which cannot be accessed by direct link for some reason), and a nice hotmail address.

Jim Thormuya
Sex: Male
DOB: 2/2/1973
Location: Great Yarmouth
Postcode: NR30 0GY
Email address: disgruntledgyresident@hotmail.co.uk
Occupation: Unemployed
Lives with: 2 dogs

Email 1- Ports, image macros, and terrible complaint forms.

Dear Borough Council member/trained email reading monkey,

I am disgusted at the ridiculous amount of time it will take to build the new port in Great Yarmouth. Personally, I would relish the opportunity to take high speed day trips to Holland and other destinations in Europe. Think of the money I'll save on alcohol and smokeables!

Being 34 years of age already, I do not intend to live here in 'Great' Yarmouth for another 25 years, or some other ridiculously long period of time before you actually build this port.

I would like to know, a few things;
1) Why on earth does it take so long to build a port?
2) Why on earth are you taking years to ship materials in?

I simply cannot put across my feelings in words well enough, so here's an image macro.



Thank you, Jim Thormuya- Disgruntled resident.

PS: I would also like to notify you of your websites refusal to use any form whilst using Mozilla Firefox. Fix this act of terror.

PPS: As per the questions above and your unworkable forms, I would like a reply to this email.


Tom

This has been sent, and replies will be posted.

UPDATE: 15/10/07
We have received a reply from the council, it reads-

Mr. Thormuya,



Thank you for your e-mail. The Outer Harbour will be completed next year. We have tested Firefox and it is working correctly.



Denise Mayman

PA to Peter Hardy

Executive Director (Economy & Environment)

Great Yarmouth Borough Council

Town Hall, Great Yarmouth, Norfolk, NR30 2QF

Telephone: (01493) 846303

Fax: (01493) 846252

E-Mail: dlm@great-yarmouth.gov.uk



Go to WWW.great-yarmouth.gov.uk for full information about the Council and the Services we provide



So, proved wrong about the port dates, we decided to focus on their unusable forms, which after 'testing' from our PC's were found to not work with either FireFox or IE.

This email was sent out, with the accompanied macro found by Ben.

Email 2- Port apologies, Form insistances, Cunning schemes and short replies
Denise Mayman,

Thank YOU for YOUR email reinforming me on the estimated completion date of the port, I had not expected such an early date (compared to what I previously believed) As of such, I had prepared another image macro. It seems a shame to waste, so please find it attached, as whereport.bmp



I would however, like to point out that your forms do not work. Myself and my various acquaintances have tested the forms in question with both Firefox, and Microsoft's own Internet Explorer. We would like to make it known that checking any tickboxes, or radio buttons result in a page refresh, which resultantly removes any form data already input. Rendering the forms useless.

I would very much like to see this issue resolved, as I'm sure there are many people willing to complain to the council, if they had the resources. Maybe this was all some sort of complaint reducing scheme, reducing numbers to those willing to hunt through a hard to navigate website in order to find a contact address which may me monitored. Luckily I'm one of those people, and hopefully I'll be one of many once this is fixed.

Again, as ever, I must express my view in image macro form. Please find this one attached as firefox.jpg



Also, if your next reply is going to be smaller than the appended signature, could you please make sure it is sent quicker than the last one.

Thank you, Jim Thormuya

Tom

Sent, Will update with replies.

UPDATE: 18/10/07

I have received another email, this time from someone called Geoff Jones!

It reads-

Dear Mr. Thormuya



Thank you for your recent email highlighting the problem we have with the forms on our website.



We were not aware that checking the boxes or buttons caused the effect that it does.



I have instructed the web development staff to investigate and correct the problem; as soon as this has been completed I will let you know.



Again thank you for taking the time to inform us of this problem the feedback is greatly appreciated.



Yours



Geoff



Geoff Jones

ITSS Manager



Now, as you can deduct from the replies I have received so far, GYBC does not seem to be able to reply to an email with a reply that takes longer than 4 seconds to write. Also, what happened to Denise and "We have tested Firefox and it is working correctly."

This won't do, as you can see from my next email, which also highlights another little issue I have with the Great Yarmouth Website.

Email 3- Form promises, nonexistant testing and website updates.

Thank you for paying attention to these issues Geoff, perhaps you could inform Denise that she needs to test things out before emailing back a flat contradiction in two lines?

Admittedly, when I outlined the problem for her, I believed it was only poor browser compatibility that was to blame, but a simple and quick test would have highlighted the larger issue.

I also notice someone has added the website feedback email to the frontpage of news, this is a good idea, and would have solved my earlier browsing problems.

Another little issue with the website is that although you can access it from http://www.great-yarmouth.gov.uk, you cannot access it without the http://www.

Ie. great-yarmouth.gov.uk returns a server not found page.

This is a feature supported by many websites, and may be needed to keep up with the advancement of internet technology. Would you ever consider providing support for this?

As ever, I have an image macro attatched, and, as an added bonus, you get a trading card too.




Best regards, Jim.

PS, thank you for the assurance that I will be contacted on the resolution of the form issues.


Will update with replies