Had another note from Jeremy this time pointing out the text service offered by restaurant guide, London-Eating.co.uk.
I’m normally a TopTable user myself, just out of habit, so haven’t looked at the London Eating service recently.
When you’re looking at a restaurant page, for instance, one of my favourites, Quo Vadis on Dean Street, you’ll see a link on the restaurant’s page saying ‘Send this restaurant to your mobile’.
Click the link and you get the screenshot (left) up asking for your mobile number. The service offers to send you the restaurant’s address and phone number in a text message to your phone. What a useful service!
However, I don’t like the implementation — at the top of the page, there are instructions:
If you haven’t used this service before please text the word EAT to 80818 from the mobile with which you want to receive information.
Er. Right. Now, I immediately look to the bottom of the screen and see in the terms and conditions that each message costs £1.
In the middle of the screen is a form prompting me for my mobile number. Now I’m totally confused.
So, if you haven’t used the service before, text EAT to 80818. Ok. I haven’t used the service before: Why do I have to send that text message? Is that so you can whack me for £1? If so, when I type in my mobile number, is the text resulting going to ALSO cost me £1?
I dunno. I would have tried this out, but for the confusion. Goodness knows what normal non-geeky people think of this.
If you’re going to offer the service, I think you should make it ultra simple. They’ve made it extremely complicated. I’m not quite enamoured on the charges. £1? I might be booking a £150 meal, but at the moment, while I’m sat looking at the screen, £1 sounds like quite a lot of money for a text message containing the restaurant’s address and phone number. I’m not quite in the zone whereby this information is critical enough to me to blow a quid on it… not when it’s sat right in front of me on the screen!
What’s more, they should have asked me to ‘login’, shouldn’t they? Ask me to login, take my mobile number and send me text updates at no charge — send the text message to me for free, right, and in return, I’ll agree to receive text or email updates from you. Surely that’s more valuable to London Eating?
What’s wrong with a nice, simple, free ‘send this to my mobile’ feature that only works if you’re logged in and you’ve registered your mobile with the site?
OR! If you’re worried about abuse, simply put a unique keyword on each restaurant page so you text EAT REST1201 and get the phone number and address by return text. Simple!
Anyway, it’s a good idea. TopTable and the other restaurant information sites need to add a similar service.
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