Gossip

Splendid April Fool prank from "leading UK hotspot provider" Swisscom

We thought the best April Fool trick must be the S&M wireless device reported by Gizmodo - two days early. And then Swisscom group, which claims to run the UK's leading hotspot WiFi network, trumped it all.

Your Sniffer arrived at Waterloo station this morning, on his way to a seminar in Bracknell, and missed the train. So there was a half hour delay: why not log onto the Internet and get twenty minutes work done?

The Swisscom hotspot popped up. It said service was "freely available" and indeed, it seemed so, because the prices were all shown as zero pounds. What more could you ask for!

Just one trap for the gullible: you can't click on any of the products there. You can fill in all your details, and press "proceed" and it simply says you have to re-submit, with the product you want to buy. Doesn't matter how often you try.

A neat April Fool! but, being an idealist, your Hunky Mouse thought it might be kind to draw Swisscom's attention to this cockup, in case it wasn't deliberate.

There's a "contact" page on that web site. It even has a page for "media contact" so your Sniffer filled that in, complete with the required full personal history, inside leg measurement, and, of course, postal code.

"Invalid postal code" it said, and refused to take the message.

Actually, that's an even better April Fool trick than the other one. But not quite as good as the April Fool trick Megabeam played on Swisscom a year ago, when it conned the Swiss telco into paying for worthless Megabeam shares, of course. That outranks all other tricks we've ever seen for this joyous festival of foolishness ...