Jan 28, 2010
Observe – feedback – fix
Congratulations Camden Council.
I’m in the process of fighting a case on behalf of #tweetbike about a little parking matter. That’s another story.
But at two stages in the appeal process so far I’ve been pointed to the online appeal process: http://www.camden.gov.uk/pcnobjections. Rather considerate design, one might think, offering a link straight to the objection page. Time-saving. User-centric. All that stuff.
However, if you’d used this link yesterday, you would have been redirected to a top level Penalty Charge Notices page. Which says at the top: “Make a Payment”, closely followed by “How do I avoid a penalty charge notice?” It’s hard to say which of these two are more annoying to someone who is specifically trying not to pay, and is clearly a bit past ‘avoidance’ help. Not a major crime (I suspect the link used to work, but after a bit of rejigging had become misdirected) but enough to cause a fair few people a bit of easily avoidable grrrr.
So I tweeted. Although I know some of the Camden guys, I deliberately didn’t point it at them, to see what would happen.
It got picked up.
And now it’s fixed. In less than 24 hours.
So, if you see something that’s easily fixable, do at least have a go at feeding back. It can work.
Lovely to see positive response!
To be fair to Council IT folk, it can be difficult checking that each and every page of an information-rich web site is correct and links to the correct targets. When I have had responsibility for web resources, I have always been glad and grateful to see polite feedback about things that need correcting.
[…] at more or less the same time again, Paul Clarke didn’t want to pay a parking ticket when Camden council rather thought he should, and was then more aggrieved when […]