Numerous typos on a bogus used clothing collection sticker

On Monday morning the sticker shown arrived in my door. It has 3 obvious typos/errors and some other strange stuff too. A long time ago I emailed the email address given (clothescollection@gmail.com) but never got an answer.

The first typo is “gratefull” which should be “grateful“. Then “clothings” should be “clothing“. At the end, “ENCLOSED” should be “ENCLOSE“.

As for errors, “day indicated below” is wrong as the collection day is listed above that sentence.

The “some other countries” bit is amusing – it’s as if they couldn’t be bothered to make up other destination countries. It must be difficult to continually have to make up new text for these stickers. At some stage I expect them to use “yada, yada, yada.”

The lonely “EXPORTED” word, combined with the lack of a full stop at the end of the sentence above it (about not “enclosed (sic) a bag”) made me think that they left out a few words e.g. “of being“. This would make “…your children and pets can be put as risk of being exported”

1 typo and 2 apostrophes, both unnecessary

When I was younger the local supermarket had a noticeboard that people could list items for sale, rooms for rent or services available. My local convenience shop has a noticeboards but it is behind the front door and I doubt that many people see it or even know that it is there. Of course I am a bit strange.

The van and driver ad caught my eye because it offended within 4 words – “Avaiable” is missing the “l” and should be “Available”. The apostrophes in “Kind’s” and “Service’s” are simply wrong.

Maybe van driving is the advertiser’s speciality and not spelling. Or maybe s/he is actually very clever and made deliberate mistakes to stick in the reader’s mind. This approach worked, though my photography skills weren’t good enough to capture the entire phone number.

Did you mean accessible?

Early last year my wife and I stayed in Mount Wolseley Hotel in Tullow, Co. Carlow. It is a delightful hotel with good bar food and warm swimming pool.

In preparation for our trip I visited the hotel website, looking for directions to the hotel and information about the facilities.

The initial map is a little confusing because it has a starting location that appears to be in the middle of nowhere (it’s actually “Co. Carlow, Ireland” in Google Maps – Green Road in the centre of Carlow town would be more useful, especially as Carlow town is not an option in the drop down list of starting points on the page and I am sure that a number of their customers live in nearby Carlow).

Back on topic, this post is about the typo on a map inside the hotel.  Around the corner from the lobby, close to the toilets, is a large wall mounted map of the hotel interior. I quickly spotted the “accessable” typo and I couldn’t help but notice it everytime I passed the map. I photographed it with my lowly mobile phone camera, hence the poor quality.

I checked Google for a definition of “accessable” and it is listed as:

Common misspelling of accessible

I don’t remember whether I reported this to staff at the reception desk though I did email them about the map page prior to my visit. Nothing has changed.

I went to their Stockists Locator page to see if there were any retailers near me. The Region drop down list had a typo for Ireland (North & Rebuplic of Ireland) where “Rebuplic” should be “Republic” (swap b and p).

I used the Customer Centre section to inform them and they replied telling me that the issue would be forwarded to the web site team to fix the issue.

A few days later I checked the site and found that the list had been changed but that they had only half fixed it. Now it says “Repuplic” – the b was changed to a p but the other p wasn’t changed to a b.

I am sure that some would take this half-fix a deliberate slight against Irish people but I find that such offence takes a lot of energy.

Update: 4 November – the typos have finally been corrected.

In the outdoor section of the store there are a few signs highlighting the wonderful plants on offer. Unfortunately the author of those signs is not the best speller.

The sign shown tells us how wonderful and colourful poppies are and that they can be “mass planted in groups in boarders.”

Obviously the typo is that “boarders” should be “borders.”

A small catalogue for a hardware supply business arrived last week. It listed products related to home insulation and solar panels so I read through it thoroughly.

At the back of the catalogue was a map to the business, with some nearby landmarks highlighted.

The first typo I noticed was DEIDCATED – which should be Dedicated (swap I and D). Next I saw DAILYMOUNT PARK, which should be Dalymount Park (drop the I),  home ground for Bohemian Football Club. Finally, the MATTER HOSPITAL should drop the T to be Mater Hospital.

While three typos is significant, it doesn’t beat the 4 typos on a flyer received last year.

Obviously there is still litter around and amongst it we found this gem. My son is too young for Ben 10 (he watches Special Agent Oso, Handy Manny) so I didn’t know this cartoon when we found this litter.

This DVD sleeve has two errors – the first is the printed typo in “The Complete Season Tow” instead of “Two“; the second is the hand written correction “Six DVD Pack” changed to “4 DVD Pack”

Ticket machine - Buy not translated

Irish Rail have installed automated ticket machines throughout the network. The interface can be displayed in multiple languages.

One day, while sheltering from the rain at the station, I decided to look at the translated interface. Early in my career I worked in localisation and we checked the translated software displayed and worked correctly when translated.

I checked the German translation to see if all the words fit (because German words are frequently longer than English) and it looked good. French was fine too, but then I noticed something small – the Buy button was not translated! Ouch.

It is surprising that this was noticed (and fixed) during product development.

Expensive at €92.50 per litre

When I am in my local Tesco I like to take a quick browse through the beer aisle to see if there are any bargains.

I am a big fan of Bulmers cider, even having a ‘Bulmers’ custom license plate while I lived in California and custom ‘Bulmers’ t-shirts made.

I have always felt that Bulmers is priced a bit high but the price per litre during this trip was crazy – -€92.50 per litre!!

While the correct value is €4.44 per litre,how can such an error happen? Surely this stuff is all in a computer. I didn’t inform Tesco because it seems to be pointless – I have used their Tesco Feedback site but have never received a response to any of my feedback.

KFC protecting the enviromental

When I worked in East Point Business Park I noticed that Smoking impacts dexterity, for Oracle employees anyway.

From a recent visit to the Blanchardstown Centre I saw an embarrassing attempt at a “green stance” by KFC. There are a few bins outside the restaurant with a brutal spelling error on them.

The bins say:

Thank You. Protecting the Enviromental (sic) for the next generation

“Enviromental” should be “Environment” – add an ‘a’ and drop the ‘al.’

I normally report issues that I find to the company or organisation responsible. The KFC.ie web site is a single page with no contact links.  The KFC.co.uk site only lists a snail mail address.