RMweb Premium MRE2 Posted November 30, 2023 RMweb Premium Share Posted November 30, 2023 I have tried to change my personal contact email at Hornby as my current address will be defunct at the end of the year. I am a member of 3 Hornby clubs (Hornby Collectors, TT120, Scalextric) and they all have the same email attached to them. There is no way to change your personal contact info on the website so I called customer service to get my email address changed. Not possible apparently, as it is linked to your orders, bonus points, newsletters, etc. I asked how I would receive advice when my orders are available, how I would receive club special release and offers information, and regular club news and updates. If my current email is not available and my contact info cannot be updated, Hornby basically tell me "tough luck, our system isn't capable of making any change". Yes, I am pretty annoyed about this (synonym for pissed off, angry, etc) as I pay for membership and am entitled to receive information, offers, etc, and I have advance orders in the queue. I cannot think of any other company, resource, website etc, that doesn't permit personal contact info to be changed. I suggest the Hornby system is outdated, inefficient, amateur, contrary to good business practice and is having a negative effect. How do Hornby expect to do business if they can't (won't) contact established customers. The girl I spoke to in Customer Service was as helpful as she could be, but admitted it has been a known issue for some time and there are many other people who have been affected. Begs the question, why aren't Hornby doing something about it ? How many others are not able to get the benefits of paying to join their clubs and are taking their business elsewhere ? 1 3 Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
RMweb Premium stephennicholson Posted November 30, 2023 RMweb Premium Share Posted November 30, 2023 (edited) You could try quoting GDPR at them: Principles relating to processing of personal data Article 5 1 d Personal data shall be: accurate and, where necessary, kept up to date; every reasonable step must be taken to ensure that personal data that are inaccurate, having regard to the purposes for which they are processed, are erased or rectified without delay (‘accuracy’); Edited November 30, 2023 by stephennicholson typo 2 1 Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Steamport Southport Posted November 30, 2023 Share Posted November 30, 2023 Hmm. I'm pretty sure you can as I changed my phone number recently. Sign in. Click on your name at the top right hand corner and MY ACCOUNT appears. Go to My Details (highlighted in blue) Account Details appears Click in the box of what you want to change. Change it. Click Save Changes If you are changing your address it's the section below called ADDRESS BOOK. Click on Add New Address. This appears. Type in your new address. Tick the two bottom boxes. When you've done that delete the old one. Jason 1 Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Bulleidboy100 Posted November 30, 2023 Share Posted November 30, 2023 I have not played around with my own details, but are you saying once changed the site does not accept them?. If you go into My Account and My Details, which I assume you did, everything appears there to be changed, if you need to - email, password, billing address etc. Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
RAF96 Posted November 30, 2023 Share Posted November 30, 2023 (edited) I am not sure Hornby will notice your gripe on here, maybe repeating it on their forum would bring it closer to home. Edit - Others responding appear not to have noticed he wants to change his email address not his postal address. The problem is the whole account login is tied to an email ID and their system does not seem to have a way round it. Edited November 30, 2023 by RAF96 3 Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
RAF96 Posted November 30, 2023 Share Posted November 30, 2023 1 hour ago, Bulleidboy100 said: I have not played around with my own details, but are you saying once changed the site does not accept them?. If you go into My Account and My Details, which I assume you did, everything appears there to be changed, if you need to - email, password, billing address etc. email is greyed out so not available to change. 1 Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Steamport Southport Posted November 30, 2023 Share Posted November 30, 2023 1 hour ago, RAF96 said: email is greyed out so not available to change. You can. Click on the field you want to change. Enter new details and click on the Save Changes button. As I said, I changed my phone number the other week which was also "greyed out". That's why there is a "Save Changes" button in that section. I can't take a screenshot of the process as it has my details on it! Jason 1 Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Free At Last Posted November 30, 2023 Share Posted November 30, 2023 I have just tried on my account, and clicking on the first name, last name and telephone number fields makes them editable but it doesn't happen with the email address field. 1 Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
RMweb Premium MRE2 Posted December 2, 2023 Author RMweb Premium Share Posted December 2, 2023 Thanks to everyone who has noticed. All personal contact info can be changed EXCEPT the email. As all your account activity is linked to the email address it affects your orders, award points, newsletters, special releases, and general club information that you will not longer receive. Hardly a huge issue for professional software engineers to resolve............ 1 Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Michael Hodgson Posted December 2, 2023 Share Posted December 2, 2023 Sounds to me like fundamentally bad system design. 6 Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
RMweb Gold mcowgill Posted December 2, 2023 RMweb Gold Share Posted December 2, 2023 (edited) What a carp system! Any decently designed system will associate your account with a unique unchanging ID, everything else the system knows about you can change: name, address, email, if the system is designed properly you as the end user don't need to know that unique key. I look after a number of enterprise level systems and they all work this way, even our old creaking at the knees and soon to be replaced ERP uses this type of structure from over 25 years ago. That's why government web sites use NI/Social Security numbers as keys, unique values that follow you throughout your life. Martin (with the day job Enterprise Database Analyst hat on) Edited December 2, 2023 by mcowgill 1 Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
RMweb Gold Jonboy Posted December 2, 2023 RMweb Gold Share Posted December 2, 2023 Looks like they have used the email address AS the unique key. I have seen similar and it was something only the database admin could update and the suppliers recommended only after a full backup was taken…less easy in the days of 24/7 cloud enterprises… Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Michael Hodgson Posted December 2, 2023 Share Posted December 2, 2023 It's not an insoluble programming problem. If you're lumbered with that database structure, "editing" the key field is a case of obtaining the new value, creating a new record using that id, copying the rest of the existing record to the new one and marking the old record as closed. 1 Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
simmo009 Posted December 3, 2023 Share Posted December 3, 2023 On the plus side of this, is this the reason they honour pricing i.e. once it's in the system it can't be amended, rather than because they are being nice to us poor customers? 2 Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
RMweb Premium IOW O2 Posted December 3, 2023 RMweb Premium Share Posted December 3, 2023 (edited) It's not just Hornby who have the email update issue, my water utility won't let me change either, my email changes in two weeks, bill due mid January, I've told them by phone and writing they'll have to post out a letter if they want paying, as they are unable to update. But they won't do a letter as I've opted for email notifications! \/&^%$*, Should be interesting next month. Hornby not so much an issue. Edited December 3, 2023 by IOW O2 1 Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
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