What bemused you today?

[StephenBatey]

Yesterday I ordered "The Canal Trip" from the BBC store. I had assumed (never assume anything!) that it would be a physical DVD, but after paying I found I had to download it. No problem, I thought. Until I tried. It's only possible to download using a special BBC Win10 App, which had to be installed first. I tried just downloading, but no joy - it had to be a Win10 app presumably on a Win10 computer. So I applied for a refund instantly, as the terms and conditions allowed. Today I got a couple of emails confirming that I had been refunded, so no big deal (or story). However, given the nature of the "problem" I'd had to report (the site only has a "Contact Us" box for refunds) I was surprised by the wording of the email. Bemused and amused in equal measure. I quote:


Hi there,

Thank you for reaching out to the BBC Store Team. I am delighted to provide my assistance with your query today, regarding your recent purchase of 'All Aboard! The Canal Trip'.

It's great to see you showing an interest in the BBC Store and the brilliant content we have available. Rest assured, I will provide all the information you need within this email.

I can confirm that I have processed a full refund for your excellent purchase. An email confirmation will be with you within 24 hours, to advise you that your refund was successful on our system. Please allow up to 10 working days for the funds to return to your account.

For any future queries there are many helpful articles on our help and support page which can be found here: 
https://help.store.bbc.com/s/

Simply search for your query and read through our suggestions. If you cannot find what you are looking for, please feel free to get back in contact with us, we are always happy to help at the BBC Store.

Kind regards,

I now know what people mean when they talk about "BBC English" 

[Reinardina]

Makes me want to laugh and cry in equal measures! Worthy of a comic sketch.

And ten working days, for the funds to return to your account?

It is obviously a standard email, 'adapted' to your query. And then some ...

The Store Team must consist of robots who cannot read an email, only react to certain words.

[Oldboy]

The Store Team must consist of robots who cannot read an email, only react to certain words.

The BBC has moved to Media City in Manchester. They never learned to read Queen's English there! 

[northenderdave]

No need to have a go at us Northerners over this. A lot of the BBC staff at Media City are from London & Birmingham. 

[Reinardina]

It's just the BBC, 'reaching out' to all of us, in the most positive way they can think of. Rich, flowery words that hardly make sense, but float in the air like weed smoke.

Too scared anyone will take offence, if they use straightforward language.

I'm sure a northerner would have sent a proper email.

[Hinfrance]

It's one of modernity's diseases: the urge to make a short sentence long by juxtaposing unrelated words and meaningless platitudes. A hearty dash of insincerity often completes the imbroglio.

[StephenBatey]

The nearest to this style of BBC English I'd come across before is that used by a jolly nice Nigerian* laywer who used to keep emailing me wanting to share in $25,000,000 dollars. The phraseology was so very similar. The email just made so very clear that "they" weren't actually replying to me, other than by cobbling together a set of stock answers.

* Other nationalities are availble, and were represented 

[Paul Montgomery]

I've heard of a few companies experimenting with AI to reply to emails. That looks like one of them...

[Reinardina]

What is AI?

[jinky]

What is AI?

Artificial Intelligence R

[Reinardina]

Thanks Paul.
Very artificial, and not too intelligent then.

[StephenBatey]

It's often been said that artificial intelligence is no match for natural stupidity...

[Oldboy]

This Black Headed Gull appears to be swimming but it is dead. Had to check it twice but it didn't move in over one hour. 



I wonder if it will still be there tomorrow? 

[Beryl]

What bemused me today was the Co op bank sending me an E-mail asking me to retrieve my account , Which they had locked for security reasons 

I'm certainly not stupid  and I don't have an account with them.

I had to clear my cookies and history after as I had clicked on the link to see what they wanted me to do   

they asked for my sort code  account number or credit card number. Ha ha ha

[StephenBatey]

Be careful about clicking on links contained in spurious emails. I never do, but the reason for suggesting caution is that my anti-virus program gave me a pop up warning this week about an html file in an email that had just come in. I regularly see the signs of removed zip files in emails, but this is the first in a while that was html related.