21 December 2019

Lump of Coal Award Nominations

Today being the Winter Solstice in the Northern Hemisphere when the day is the shortest and things can look "black as coal", do you know of organizations that deserve a lump of coal in their stocking this Christmas?  Here are my nominations.

1. Library and Archives Canada, failing to respond to an access request for over a year while several times promising a response within a month.

2. Dante Labs, failing to deliver results for a DNA test since May.

3. Statistics Canada, failing to reveal in announcements in The Daily when access is for a fee. In addition, I wonder whether Stats Can ever looks at the advances being made in other countries, such as in this blog post from the UK Office of National Statistics?

4.  Loblaws, increasing the price of their own-brand soft drinks by 25% in December. Nominally the price is $1.49 but typically 2 for $2; now advertising it as a 4 for $5 multi deal.

5. Canada's Anglo-Celtic Connections, inability to proof-read, spell and grammar check.

Your nominations are welcome.

4 comments:

  1. TWO lumps to The U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services.
    The U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) is proposing a nearly 500% increase in fees for record searches and records provided through its Genealogy Program. A search to determine what records are held would increase from $65 to $240, and for copies of paper records from $65 to $385. Thus, locating and obtaining a single record, such as a visa file, would increase from a total of $130 to $625.

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  2. Four lumps to the Republican controlled US Senate, for not having the nerve to hold a fair and transparent trumper trial. BT

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  3. Three lumps of coal to Ancestry. They fail to proof read transcriptions, many of which are done by people with little knowledge of English. They do not make corrections to the obvious errors, for which corrections have been submitted. In transcribing Newfoundland census their records consistently say "Bay de Verdi" instead of Bay de Verde!

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  4. I would like to send a FULL coal scuttle to Library and Archives for the delay in fulfilling a request. The original estimate was within 12 months. After inquiring on the status, I was given a new estimate of 18 months. The level of service has certainly dwindled. Previous inquiries only took a couple of months.

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