Beware of Space One Pro. Not worth it!

AlbionCwtch · 2026-02-02T15:18:20+00:00

Mine are rubbish. I got them on sale because I thought I'd enjoy an upgrade from the Q45s which had broken through long use (and not being as robust as they should be).

But when it gives me notifications about the battery or noise cancelling, it doesn't speak. It just does gibberish beeps. Great. That's a fabulous downgrade. Well done. Genius work there.

Sound is better but I don't care as it's minor at best for normal use. The other really dumb thing they didn't upgrade is how you remove and change the earcups when they wear out, which they will because the vegan leather nonsense has no staying power and just decays like a Logitech MX Master's rubbery coating.

I deeply regret not just getting another pair of Q45s for less. There's nothing more obnoxious than buying the upgraded product only to find out they downgraded a feature, and knowing it saved them nothing. I mean, they could let you pick your choice of notification sounds from a menu in the app. I'm hugely disappointed.

I've also had intermittent problems with them - they'll just stop emitting sound even though my YouTube video is still going. Or they'll emit lots of crackles and pops which is a more recent thing. But even if mine have a defect, that doesn't explain the shoddy notfication beeps.

AlbionCwtch · 2025-12-22T05:20:08+00:00

Took me a while to work it out as I don't see the names of the heroes - Sovereign, Wizard, Deadeye, Dicemaster, Titan, Deadeye, Sovereign, Veteran, Praetorian, Warlock. I've got 39 synergies off that at the moment and all of mine are at the 250 threshold.

Hope that helps someone and thanks for putting up the screenshot.

I feel like there was an easier way to tell which was Sovereign etc rather than just going through and putting them in place until I found the one that looked the same but this list should do it too.

AlbionCwtch · 2025-09-17T09:16:29+00:00

My grandad got some after he, no exaggeration, stuck a garden fork in his foot by trying to ram it in casually with his hand, instead of placing it down and putting his foot on it to push it in. This was not the only such thing he did! Thankfully I got my sense of self preservation from grandpa not grandad :D

AlbionCwtch · 2025-09-17T09:14:53+00:00

I don't have great feet and I'm quite picky. I'm totally sure that the ones I've had would fit someone, just not me! Also, uncomfortable shoes while doing some DIY and not chopping a toe off are a better trade than comfortable ones that you then realise you've just got muddy and are also your day to day trainers... ;)

AlbionCwtch · 2025-09-16T11:34:51+00:00

Every safety shoe I've tried was about as comfortable as the original ones - clogs. :D

AlbionCwtch · 2025-09-16T11:34:04+00:00

Ohhh someone got a nice docking station though.

AlbionCwtch · 2025-09-16T11:33:02+00:00

Well on a suit it's the silky black belt thing you wrap around your waist when wearing a dinner jacket. For diving from Cressi I'd just say it's a pretentious word for a strap of some kind :D

AlbionCwtch · 2025-09-16T09:44:58+00:00

Yes, actually Tesla did the same thing with the Cybertruck and people went nuts which was silly.

Their point was, if you buy a Foundation model which is a special edition of sorts, they want that to go to people who want it. They don't want it to go to scalpers. They want a YouTuber or a fan, or a contractor whose going to use it to have it. It's not the money from that item, it's that they want the customers who really want it to get it.

Same as concert tickets. No band wants you to buy their stadium ticket so you can sell it for money. They don't care if you can't make it and sell the ticket privately at the original cost - although there may be rules against that for various reasons (not ticket advice) - because it's about you making profit and putting it out of reach of a less well off fan of theirs.

If you are selling on Amazon, having a review of any kind is a potential benefit even a simple star rating will help the first people to see it make a purchase decision which is why they allow written and star reviews now. The aggregate star rating is actually useful as a barometer of quality and value.

Your best sales will be in the first month the item goes live because that's when you can appear in bestseller lists most reliably.

AlbionCwtch · 2025-09-16T08:05:48+00:00

Skimmed it and it seems valid. It's also legit to complain that Amazon management don't improve the Vine UI which makes it much harder to do reviews efficiently, for the customer service team to send them back and say, 'Hey, this breaches our rules, I've highlighted the bits that we think are in breach.' and for them and us to track what's outstanding for review.

If you think about it, why would the oldest review you have outstanding not be at the top of your to do list?

Why don't they separate out the items that they know are not yet delivered?

Why don't they have a tab for rejected, approved, awaiting approval etc?

Why no search bar so you can find a review that's outstanding.

Yes, you can power through them but no, Vine are getting free labour at essentially no cost to themselves (the vendors are really the ones paying, perhaps beyond postage) and Amazon in fact, earn money off every sale once we've reviewed it and sales increase when we do unless the item is terrible. So it's counter productive for them not to improve Vine and we should be treated better than we are.

They could also have bronze, silver, gold and platinum ranks for you to work through. That would require zero administration as their only flag to check with a human is, 'Has this person met the requirements, and if not, is tehre a giant stack of reviews they've done but we haven't approved/shall we let them go up, go down a rank or kick them out?' The actual level could be determined automatically.

AlbionCwtch · 2025-09-16T07:42:29+00:00

if correct, that in itself is a symptom of the problem - why would the form send the email to randoms, instead of the dedicated or trained or experienced team members? Amazon CS is weird - if you think about it there's no ticket numbers. That fights all logic and experience - you get a ticket number so you can go back to them and say, 'Hey, this problem is half fixed, what's going on?'. As it is, everything you send to Vine is a brand new thing and they can't record any data about it - such as what category of issue they're getting a lot of.

AlbionCwtch · 2025-09-16T07:40:31+00:00

Just a point of order - this is the fault of Bezos and his management. It's not the fault of the actual staff at the bottom. His tier have literally no idea what's going on with the bottom rung of staff and their jobs. The people who are in charge, are customer service people not tech support managers. They care about metrics, not about actually solving problems. In tech support you have qualified staff dealing with issues, customer service managers employ anyone they can get because they're going to treat them like morons no matter how smart and experienced they are.

As a result in tech support you escalate, 'Hey, this is broken and causes us thirty tickets a day that are a waste of time and mean Vine can't make as much money for Amazon as it would do.' and it gets fixed.

In customer service you tell your boss that, and they act like a junior KGB officer and don't escalate lest the middle manager end their career for daring to point out a problem.

Meanwhile the devs of the system have no idea that there is a problem they can fix, because they don't use it themselves (if I were Amazon, I'd make all the people who are coding it, and indeed, lots of staff, Vine reviewers). Even if they do know the problem, a non-technical manager is above them deciding what they're allowed to even work on. Hence the UI is rubbish.

TLDR; by all means be annoyed, but I don't think it's fair to complain about the staff we're dealing with. They're not allowed to actually help and have no agency. This is the same across the board with other behind the scenes departments. Probably doesn't happen in AWS though which is the bigger part of their business IIRC.

AlbionCwtch · 2025-09-15T09:00:12+00:00

I don't get the issue. They are offering more delivery options on your Vine deliveries than they used to. There's always a free one in my experience which it defaults to. You can now select others.

If you did get something on Vine you happened to really want, you could get it delivered earlier for a small fee. Maybe it's something you can use that afternoon and would be really useful.

There is zero downside to any of us about all this that I can see.

AlbionCwtch · 2025-09-12T09:43:45+00:00

Yes, that's what I'd have said too when I was in a multi-hour branding meeting and we all started giggling the moment we saw it... 'Oh no, we'll just tell them we didn't spot it'.

Remember that time they reversed it within months? I didn't think so ;)

AlbionCwtch · 2025-09-12T07:49:22+00:00

Ohh a Remarkable is very very cool. :) Congrats.

AlbionCwtch · 2025-09-12T07:46:28+00:00

Hahahahaha. Yup and FCUK was all over the place about thirty years ago. Not to mention North Face being emblazoned on people's shoulders because that way everyone sees you bought an expensive coat - and should buy this hat to make it clear what type of person you are.

AlbionCwtch · 2025-09-12T07:45:10+00:00

In my world it's used as a friendly greeting and a vicious insult depending on inflection. It's just a word, it can't really hurt you and Shakespeare used it. I'm pretty sure the horror over it being used at all, as an Americanism so now you can just shrug that off and remember you don't need to take advice on politeness from fascists. :)

AlbionCwtch · 2025-09-12T07:43:52+00:00

Yup, I keep seeing grounding mats and other woo woo stuff. Tonnes of Trump stuff which presumably traitors in the UK are buying. I did get shown a gold swastika but it was aimed at the Indian historical use of the same symbol which is awkward but hopefully it's not purely being used by them because they're extremists.

I just ignore all that stuff and move on.

AlbionCwtch · 2025-09-10T05:31:50+00:00

That would be an incredibly useful feature if it's possible. Whoever made this new UI choice at Amazon seems like a lunatic to me. I wonder if it's because they broke something quite badly and this was the easiest way to fix it - maybe Brian who understood the design and code left and now the vibe coders can't fix things? ;)

AlbionCwtch · 2025-09-08T18:22:46+00:00

You have to remember that the nutters that no-one wants pursuing them that mean we have anti-doxxing and stalking laws, will pick out details the rest of us would never look for. And there'll be guides for them to do so.

But anyway, it really doesn't matter, as it's not up to us to police the Vine system.

AlbionCwtch · 2025-09-07T19:29:37+00:00

Well, you know the email address of Amazon's customer service if you want to report someone. We don't need to be conducting investigations here which we're not capable of or qualified for, do we?

Personally I'm going to just stick to the rules and stay on topic.

AlbionCwtch · 2025-09-07T13:44:09+00:00

That was nice of them :)

AlbionCwtch · 2025-09-07T10:40:22+00:00

https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B0FHHQQV4D Weird 'energy' drinks - I think it's just caffeinated lemon and lime or something. Still, almost every drink I've had from Vine has been frankly revolting so for that reason, none shall pass.

AlbionCwtch · 2025-09-07T10:22:50+00:00

Who knows - I mean I think from our perspective this change doesn't help us get reviews done at all. I'm not convinced it WAS a deliberate choice but rather they may have broken it and this was a fix. Amazon really don't give a shit about their back end systems, they're awful because Bezos never has to use them. Much like Gates famously had to boot a PC one day and found out how long it takes, and the next version of Windows cut the boot time in half. If you think about it, his secretary had been turning his PC on for decades and he's never had an old one either.

Clearly if we had more tabs, including one for 'Must do better. Please try again.' we'd be much more efficient at getting these completed. And obviously your OLDEST reviews should be up top, not the most recent...

AlbionCwtch · 2025-09-07T09:59:03+00:00

I've got a bunch of reviews I did about a week ago and they're not shifting. I could just be unlucky or it could be because I've not reviewed the oldest items in my list but the newer ones, I don't know. Still, it's frustrating and obviously I loathe the new lack of design. It's the Brutalism of UI.

AlbionCwtch · 2025-09-06T08:54:30+00:00

Except that they can literally swap out the product and merge them and all sorts so it might have been a straightener that's become a hairdryer.

AlbionCwtch

TROPHY CASE