Kantar - Royal Mail Monitoring and Posting Panel

silvercar

It does make you wonder how man people are doing the RM monitoring at any one time. Some weeks I receive more post from being on the panel than regular mail....maybe the whole thing was created to keep RM in business.

Schnurrbart

I've just spent half an hour typing a message on the Kantar TNS portal (admittedly I type slowly, and spend too long deliberating about what to say and how to say it, but still...).

I'd signed off, and was about to send it when: "Oh, look! The site has just logged me out, causing to me to lose all those words I've just spent so long typing!"

I have a vague feeling that this has occurred before, leading me to resolve to remember the fact (well, that worked well, didn't it?), and to compose my message - if it was going to be a long-ish one - in Word before copying & pasting it into the Kantar TNS message box.

What annoys me most is that it doesn't appear to be a 'proper' timeout (by which I mean getting timed-out after a set time since your last interaction on the page - e.g. typing text - rather than getting timed-out after a fixed period from opening the page). But it doesn't quite seem to be the latter either; I've certainly not noticed the site regularly and consistently timing out after a fixed (but undetermined) period. I hope that all makes sense. Clearly, it does time-out, but after how much time, and in which conditions, I cannot tell. But it certainly should not have taken me back to the log-in screen mere seconds after I had typed something.

I then tried to call them to inform them (okay, have a moan) about this timing-out issue, but nobody picked up.

And the purpose of my carefully-crafted message, now forever lost in the binary maelstrom, was... ahem, to complain about another issue, about which I may post separately!

So, from a Kantar TNS perspective, I'm having a right old day of it!

Primrose

Well I have a different complaint. What on earth does it mean when it says This message is time expired (or some such similar wording?). I often wonder who designs these websites. The wording is rather bizarre to put it mildly.

Schnurrbart

Primrose wrote: »

Well I have a different complaint. What on earth does it mean when it says This message is time expired (or some such similar wording?). I often wonder who designs these websites. The wording is rather bizarre to put it mildly.

Lots of things about Kantar TNS are rather bizarre (to put it mildly)!

Yet another peeve: Kantar TNS staff sending you a message on the portal (not an automated one), then summarily closing the thread so that you cannot reply directly to the message*. They keep doing this! Even if they don't anticipate a reply, they could still leave the thread open just in case.

* Primrose, is this what you were referring to? The full wording is:
"This thread has expired. Please click on ‘Compose a message’ to start a new thread."

This is one of the points - not the main one - that I was making in my vanishing message.

And Kantar TNS are still not answering their phone...


[Edit: sorry, the text editor keeps adding extra line spaces to my posts, making them look messier and longer.]

Primrose

Yes, this is the message I'm complaining about. English is my native language and I STILL don't understand what its supposed to mean bit I guess nobody responsible for the maintenance of their website ever reads this thread on this forum.

Schnurrbart

It (just) means that you can't add a message to that particular thread, and since keeping related, connected messages together in a single thread has obvious benefits, I fail to understand why Kantar TNS close them prematurely.


An internet forum and Kantar TNS' message portal aren't exactly analogous, but imagine if a mod closed this thread. If you wanted to respond to this post you would have to post it on a different forum page (a bit like our having to start a new thread on the portal). Your reply would not appear after the post you were replying to, but elsewhere on the forum pages.


Similarly, when I send a message in reply to a Kantar TNS message (and they have closed the thread), that message will not be displayed after the message I'm replying to. It will be (at) the start of a new thread. In order to specifically link it to the message I'm responding to (not in any technical sense, but in the mind of whoever reads my message), I have to quote the message (by copying & pasting it), refer to the content, or - the easiest option, even though it shouldn't be necessary - quote the Ticket ID.


If Kantar TNS would just keep the thread open until both they and the panellist were in agreement that whatever issue had been raised under a Ticket ID (by either party) was now resolved, none of this would be an issue.


That's what's so weird about Kantar TNS; so many of the processes and procedures they decide to set up and follow must surely make things harder than necessary for themselves as well as for panellists.

Schnurrbart

Sorry, Primrose, I'm not sure that my above attempt at an explanation has aided your understanding! If not, perhaps someone else could explain message threads more clearly.

dobbiesloan

Primrose wrote: »

I often wonder who designs these websites. The wording is rather bizarre to put it mildly.

I think this is a foreign site trying to translate messages into english

quoia

Schnurrbart wrote: »

<snip>

</snip>

[Edit: sorry, the text editor keeps adding extra line spaces to my posts, making them look messier and longer.]

Is this problem best described as "2 blank lines between paragraphs" ?
Instead of just the 1 you intend to have by entering 2 returns?

eg
aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaRETURNbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbb

gives

aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa
bbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbb

but

aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaRETURNRETURNbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbb

IS NOT

aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa

bbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbb

but actually

aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa


bbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbb

Correct?

Are you using FIREFOX by any chance?

Cheers
Q

Schnurrbart

quoia wrote: »

Is this problem best described as "2 blank lines between paragraphs" ?
Instead of just the 1 you intend to have by entering 2 returns?

eg
aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaRETURNbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbb

gives

aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa
bbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbb

but

aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaRETURNRETURNbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbb

IS NOT

aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa

bbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbb

but actually

aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa


bbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbb

Correct?

Are you using FIREFOX by any chance?

Cheers
Q

Hello quoia, took me a moment to process that, but yes, that's spot on. That is, your description is more accurate, that is what I enter in the text editor vs what appears in the post, and I am indeed using Firefox!

I can always edit the spaces out if I remember and can be bothered to. It probably annoys me more than it does anyone else, and it doesn't even annoy me that much! Having said that, those superfluous lines do take up space on a finite page (although I see many posts on here with several line spaces after the last punctuation mark (or letter/numeral in the absence thereof) - I doubt they're all deliberate multiple carriage returns on the part of the poster, so could that be a similar problem on a different browser?).

Apologies, by the way, for my tendency to overuse (and combine - see, I can't help myself) parentheses and dashes, not just here but in other posts. To my mind, they help me express myself more clearly, but I appreciate that some may consider my posts to look cluttered.