Ranting on

I went to bed at 7am. Fiddled around with my phone... and of course we know where that leads...by the time I closed my eyes and went into lala-land, it was noon.

My dad then called at half 1 saying my grandma was in the A&E. So I had to rush to hers, get all the meds she's on, and bring them to the A&E so the doctors knew what to give her.

Which is kinda difficult to do if you don't have the right keys and have to run back and forth to get two sets of keys and figure out which goes to which door.

I got an android. That's no biggy...

The thing is, our government, in particular Taipei Cityhall, decided to act on some consumer protection law saying we should get a 7-day refund period for items purchased.

See, in English there's no much room for error, items, something physical. The Chinese wording though, gets a bit tricky. In Chinese I think that clause actually says 'things' purchased via mail, internet, blablabla.... basically, any 'thing' you buy before actually seeing the product.

So, that includes software.

Now, I know some people would go all eye roll and face palm by now.

Most apps have a simple, Chinese description of what they are supposed to do attached to them on our android market, but anything detailed is in English.

And it's the law. And do let's be honest, not many people have the ability to read all the English fine print of description on the android market by google, nor have the ability to actually write a letter to google after that 15 minute trial period asking for a refund. Which is, as I'm aware, the other option.

So this one poor sod thought he'd been ripped off when he bought a software that's basically, crap (and we know that some apps are crap on certain phones). As in, it didn't work, at all.

3G internet connection, or Wifi connection, can be flimsy, so by the time he realised it's crap, he couldn't refund any more. The 15 minutes were gone.

Google offered a page, in English, explaining what other actions he could take. He didn't read English that well.

So he went to our version of the fair trades commission (or what was the official name of that?), which then, raised this issue with our city hall. Simply because, the shell company google operates in Taiwan, is registered in Taipei.

I find the true hilarity here. In stead of helping that poor guy to solve this issue by writing to google for a refund, this consumer protection commission decided they'd go through official channels by interpreting an old law clause.

Or maybe he just took up with a city council member that wanted his 15 mins on TV.

And the Taipei government had to comply because, it's the law. It may be flawed, but it's still the law. So, the city hall, issued a warning to both apple and google to comply with the local law here.

After 7 days or so, apple issued a statement saying they'd comply. Note, originally their refund window was within 30 days of purchase, now they got to shorten it to 7 (now, face palm please). Google chose not to comply.

At first they locked down the entire market. No one with an android phone could go and even try download something for free. Then, after a couple days (or another week, I didn't really keep track), google simply decided they'd just pull all pay-for apps, off the market. Should you have purchased before, you can continue to update them. Should you want to purchase something new, well, no can do.

That was the 27th of June. Google issued a statement then saying they'd work on other solutions. The Taipei city hall issued an order saying non-compliance will earn google a $1million fine (yes, US dollars) by the 1st July.

I'm guessing google just paid that fine and stuck to it. Anyway.

Just sharing some rants....

I just realised lack of sleep leads me to random rants, impatience of catching up with posts on my stream (I went as far back as 3 hours and then decided to give up), and... weird photo posts of dog faces.

I will now spare you from my other rants...