Well, I’ve visited more pound shops and am loaded up with more tech products – expect to see the reviews soon. I’m bursting with USB hubs but are particularly enjoying a USB powered LED light!

Meantime, I’ve contacted all 3 retailers – PoundWorld, Poundland and 99p Stores. Sadly, none of them have responded and don’t appear to be interested in assisting with this. That’s a shame as, so far, I’ve discovered some real gems. Having said that, I’ve also unearthed some dishonest advertising!

I’ll also be updating some of my past reviews of pound products to reflect changes and similar products I’ve seen elsewhere – look out for that!

Today I go to order some curtains (don’t ask) from Next online. All goes well until the point where I need to sign in or set up an account.

I choose the latter but am told that I already have an account with them. A quick search of my email (I save everything!) confirms this – I bought from them 4 years ago.

As I don’t have a record of them in my password manager I attempt to sign in with my “usual” password (we all have one). At this point I’m told that I never set up a password and must sign in with my customer number. I would do but I don’t know what it is – it’s not on any of the emails that they sent me 4 years previous. There’s no “Forgotten your customer number” option so I resort to their Help section. There is a “what to do if you don’t know your customer number” entry and it duely informs me that I need to request it via their online form – clicking on this takes me into their Customer Service section and an online email form. Except you can’t contact them unless you have your customer number. I kid you not.

So, I ring them using the number they provide on the same page. They want to know my customer number, so I explain that’s what I’m rining aboout. They take all my details and then inform me that they’re going to put me through to customer services. So who did I ring? I used the number they provided in their Customer Services section of the website.

I’m transferred and explain, again, what I’m after. The only way theyll give me my customer number is by emailing it to me. In 1-2 days. Great. No, don’t worry Next I wasn’t bothered about ordering anything from you anytime soon.

Whilst I jhave them on the phone I explain the problems I’ve been having but they don’t seem overly interested. I got a limp-wristed apology and a rather condescending answer back of “next time put your delivery invoice to one side as that’s got the customer number on it”. Yes, because keeping 4 year receipts is something most of us will do.

Needless to say I’m unimpressed. If anything now goes wrong with my order now I’ll be writing to them – as it currently stands they’ll just get this notable mention. No wonder I only order from them every 4 years

Kindle Cloud Reader

Kindle Cloud Reader is a web site that allows you to read, online, your Kindle eBook collection.

Kindle Previewer

I’ve mentioned lots of ways of converting various eBooks into a Kindle format. Amazon also provide the Kindle Previewer, an online service that lets you preview how a converted eBook will look on the Kindle.

KindleFeeder

Kindlefeeder is a service for Amazon Kindle owners that lets you aggregate your favourite feeds and have them delivered to your Kindle in a convenient, easy-to-navigate format.

Read Web Pages Later

The following 3 links are for existing online services that allow you to save web pages for reading later. However, they all have specific options for sending this information onto your Kindle….

Instapaper
ReadItLater
Readability

Kindle Direct Publishing

Created your own book but not sure how to now sell it? Now, via Amazon’s Direct Publishing service, you can self-publish your books on the Amazon Kindle Store. It’s free, fast, and easy.

Books self-published through KDP can participate in the 70% royalty program and are available for purchase on Kindle devices and Kindle apps for iPad, iPhone, iPod touch, PC, Mac, Blackberry, and Android-based devices.

With KDP, you can self-publish books in English, German, French, Spanish, Portuguese, and Italian and specify pricing in US Dollars, Pounds Sterling, and Euros.