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General => The Common Room => Topic started by: ikas on Wednesday 25 February 26 10:13 GMT (UK)
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I could not find a board that seemed appropriate for this query so have posted here.
BNA have a PAYG option where you pay in advance for forty downloads. That dip in and out option looks good for my intended use BUT I took their free trial (3 pages download) and it seemed to me that selecting a page to zoom in consituted a download even though I did not hit the download button. I would very quickly run through my 40 pages if that is the case. Unfortunately I have used up my free trial so I cannot confirm/reject that theory. I am hoping I am wrong and that you can zoom up pages to check before deciding whether to download the page. Can any BNA users confirm/reject that theory?
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Have you asked BNA?
Boo
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It's going to be down to what you understand by the word download. When you zoom in on a page it's downloaded to your computer. I suspect that's what BNA means.
Martin
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There are people on here that are always willing to help to try and find articles if you don't manage that your self. :)
Sandra
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Have you asked BNA?
Boo
Yes. Still waiting for an answer. None of their FAQ address what constitues a download. Logic seems to suggest that my impression from the free trial is wrong. Surely you have to be able to read the page before decing to pay for a download?
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FAQ is an atrocious way of providing customer service. Why should I have to read through 100 problems that other people have had, on the off chance that I will find a solution to my particular problem. One day soon companies will realize this, and start saying we don't have an faq page we do proper customer service. Furthermore, I'm a big fan of artificial intelligence, if people use it properly, and actually give some prompts rather than just chucking their question at it. However, companies are relying on it as a way of getting rid of staff. It's going to be like those offshore customer service desks of 10 years ago. Everybody runs to them, until they find they don't work. And worst of all are of those so-called chatbots, where you ask them a question and they answer a different one. The very worst of all are the telephone ones, where you have to say, in a few words what you're calling about. Aren't they abysmal? Don't chief executive officers ever try them?
Rant over
Zaph
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Haha - and then they want you to fill in a feedback chat on how well they did. I had one the other day from British Gas wondering if I'd give some feedback on how I felt making a payment to them.
Do they care how I feel? If I say I was sad will they give me a refund?
Martin
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Have you asked BNA?
Boo
Yes. Still waiting for an answer. None of their FAQ address what constitues a download. Logic seems to suggest that my impression from the free trial is wrong. Surely you have to be able to read the page before decing to pay for a download?
To be fair they do provide a snippet, if you decide to go ahead and 'view' the full image then its available on your screen and you will get all the info - which is what they are selling.
Boo
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You are probably right.
Zoom in and then take a Snapshot of the article is probably what BNA are expecting users to do.
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To be fair they do provide a snippet, if you decide to go ahead and 'view' the full image then its available on your screen and you will get all the info - which is what they are selling.
Boo
By snippet do you mean a thumbnail view of all the pages? If so, it is not possible to read the page to see if it has the relevant information. My problem is I thought the free trial would allow me to assess this prepaid option and I wasn't really paying enough attention. Suddenly I had nothing left in my free trial.
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Rant over
Zaph
I recognised myself in your rant. ;D
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To be fair they do provide a snippet, if you decide to go ahead and 'view' the full image then its available on your screen and you will get all the info - which is what they are selling.
Boo
By snippet do you mean a thumbnail view of all the pages? If so, it is not possible to read the page to see if it has the relevant information. My problem is I thought the free trial would allow me to assess this prepaid option and I wasn't really paying enough attention. Suddenly I had nothing left in my free trial.
Not as such, I know that isn't readable but the OCR attempt which is printed at the side of that will often give an idea.
e.g. I just used the BNA to search for an article I already have from 24 July 1874 for an inquest report in the Newcastle Courant. I put Grace Agnes Sinclair in the search and this popped up.
Its not always that clear, the OCR struggles if the scan isn't too clear and you need to learn to interpret the gobbledegook :)
Boo
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It's going to be down to what you understand by the word download. When you zoom in on a page it's downloaded to your computer. I suspect that's what BNA means.
I was drawn to the same conclusion during FindMyPast's free newspapers week recently. They now have a fair use limit of 200 "records" per day. "Record" = page, it seems. As the articles I was looking for were rarely found by the Search, I had to browse page by page, which used up my quota rapidly, mitigated only by a shortcut of knowing which page they were usually on.
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Now RC is back up I can answer my own question. I got my wife to register with them and this time I paid careful attention to what used up her 3 page free trial. As suggested by others on this thread zooming-in on a page is considered to be a download. As the small thumbnail is far too small to see it is impossible to judge whether to zoom-in or not. The OCR translation only happens after you zoom-in and highlight an article. So the PAYG forty page option is unusable for my project. I will consider which subscription model to use. Thanks to all for contributing.