One’s parents are often the most difficult to buy presents for. They’re well-established and have everything they need. My parents are no exception. My fall-back is taxi vouchers. They no-longer have a car but they still do need to get around, so although taxi vouchers are not the most clever or unexpected gift, I know they’ll make good use of them.

My sister gave me the taxi company’s address and phone number but with my writing being what it is, I wanted to verify the information. Happily the company has a web site even though they’re the only taxi company in town. Not so happily is the fact that the site designer seems to be a curious mix of cutting edge and forgetful of the basics.

I noted links for a privacy policy and terms of use. Given that the city is pretty small and that the site is little more than an on-line ad, I was surprised to see these two links. I tried them anyway and they were both failures, though in different ways.

The terms of use link didn’t work. Clicking it had no effect.

The privacy policy link threw up a window full of nearly illegible placeholder text, as shown to the right.

Perhaps even worse, the whole site is in flash. This seems to be the trendy thing lately, though I hate it. Flash-based sites can be ridiculously slow, and you often can’t even select text and copy it. I had to type the phone number and email address because I could not select it. I’m really surprised business do this because it also means that search engines cannot index page contents. You’d think a business would want to make things as easy as possible for search engines to visit and read the site!