Racing Post website and newspaper

Another improvement that I've just thought of would be to have todays results updated in something close to real time. The BBC, who care so much about racing that they got rid of it entirely and only maintain a minor web presence have the results of races up well before the RP.
 
I always used the Racing Post website and now rarely do. It's slow and clunky. The news section is poor, and all the stuff I really want I have to pay for when it's available elsewhere.

They lost my goodwill a long time ago. In fact I never buy the newspaper any more and that's kind of a pull through from falling out of love with the website.

Basically they want the website to be a profitable entity, but it's simply a million miles short of what I'd pay for, particularly as they aren't offering anything that isn't either free or better elsewhere.
 
Grey said:
This is what I put:

First priority is to speed it up, please, it's too slow.
Second priority is to be allowed to go directly to yesterday's results. The present way of having to click on the results tab and open today's results first should be completely unnecessary. In fact it's ridiculous.
Another improvement would be to have the option when clicking on a horse's pedigree to access the racing career of the sire or dam and not just the breeding history.
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I'm pretty sure you can get the racing history of the sire, Grey. When you click on the sire's name it defaults to the stud career page of the stallion book but there's usually an option on that page to select race history.

Not sure about the dam as I've got so used to every useful piece of information being behind the Members Club wall I've given up clicking and use pedigreequery.com instead if I want to look up siblings or her extended pedigree.
 
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Here is the response to my complaint to the owners of the Racing Post about the quality of their product (specifically speed due to adverts).

Dear Mr Simpson,

I hope you are well.


I have been passed on your details by Peter Crowley from FL Partners and I would like to try and respond to some of your issues. I am really sorry for the poor experience you have had using our website, it is always dismaying to hear negative feedback but we would like to use it to try and improve our products in the future.


I have spoken with our Customer Services team and while I know you are unhappy about their response, I do feel that they have done their best to show empathy with your situation and offer you advice on how to improve the loading speed of our site.


As I am sure you are only too aware, we are a commercial enterprise and we need to maximise our revenues, though without damaging the customer experience, of course. Unfortunately, in our case as with many publishers, we just could not operate as a business and provide our services without the revenue we receive from advertising. We have recently conducted some customer research to assess its impact and while no-one was in favour of advertising per se, they were not so disturbed by it that they would stop using our site. In the arena in which we operate - betting and publishing - advertising is commonplace and there are, rightly or wrongly, plenty of publishers who combine a subscription model with advertising. I am not writing any of this to say that you are wrong and to annoy you further but rather to try and explain why we persist with advertising on our site and to demonstrate that we have tried to take an objective view of the impact on our customers vs the commercial benefit.


We are hugely aware of the impact advertising can have on the speed and usability of a website and that is why we are on the brink of launching a new responsive site. Addressing the loading issues has been one of the main objectives and we believe that this has greatly improved, we have removed some advertising but I can't pomise that it will be gone completely! The issue with the current site is that the code base is old and it can't cope as well as we want it to with the quantity and depth of the content, data and messages we are delivering. Having said that, over the years we have not received a huge number of complaints about the speed of the current site which, I guess, is why the Customer Services team tried to suggest some practical solutions to improving the loading speed in your particular case - speed is not an issue for everyone.


I would like to invite you to join our beta launch programme as a friend of the Racing Post. This means you will get a first glimpse of our new site and have the opportunity to feedback to us about any aspect of the site you wish. If you just let me know you are happy to be included in this, we will send you an email, hopefully in the next week or so, which will give you access to the new site and a log in you can use to access Members' club. Clearly, if you would rather not be involved, I understand.


I apologise once again for your poor experience on our site and hope you will allow us to try and convince you that we have taken your feedback on board and are trying to address the issue. We really appreciate you taking the time to contact us in the first place.
 
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response in.

PS The Practical advice given amounted to "switch off your security programmes" and clear your cookies.
 
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So they knew their code didn't really support the adverts they wanted to roll-on.......but they went ahead and did it anyway, knowing it would affect loading efficiency.

At best, it's hoping for the best. At worst, it's a "TS" to the user-base.

STD's all-round please.
 
Cruella said:
I'm pretty sure you can get the racing history of the sire, Grey. When you click on the sire's name it defaults to the stud career page of the stallion book but there's usually an option on that page to select race history.

Not sure about the dam as I've got so used to every useful piece of information being behind the Members Club wall I've given up clicking and use pedigreequery.com instead if I want to look up siblings or her extended pedigree.
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Yes, you're right about that, it's available for the sires but not dams.

Turning to that letter to Simmo, it is a shocking admission. They have to remember their competition is free while they are charging a monthly sub, and yet they are the ones who have clogged their site with advertising to such a point that it doesn't work properly anymore.
 
Is it me or is this site dropping to new lows in terms of speed and page loading? I have fibre optic nutter super duper fast broadband, can stream anything I like without a milliseconds of glitch yet I get to the RP site and its like feckin dial up? And to cap it off, I pay for that privilege. I've always stuck with the RP because in terms of form and race reports it is the best but i'm so close to cancelling my subscription as it now feels like i'm paying for the site to regress. Not to mention the ridiculous video ads that randomly start playing at stupid volumes.....

And also, the whole James Doyle story, was it me or did it just not make it to the website? Its a little like they never wanted it on the web as the web never forgets.

As you can probably tell, i'm a tad miffed.
 
I got fed up with it a few weeks ago and wrote to them. There was an enquiry in the reply whether I was using an adblocker, which I took as a hint that I should instal one. Since then the site is still more sluggish than it should be but it's way better than it was.

It's pathetic though that a pay site should be choked by ads and they then have to start dropping hints to block them.
 
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Aragorn said:
Is it me or is this site dropping to new lows in terms of speed and page loading? I have fibre optic nutter super duper fast broadband, can stream anything I like without a milliseconds of glitch yet I get to the RP site and its like feckin dial up? And to cap it off, I pay for that privilege. I've always stuck with the RP because in terms of form and race reports it is the best but i'm so close to cancelling my subscription as it now feels like i'm paying for the site to regress. Not to mention the ridiculous video ads that randomly start playing at stupid volumes.....

And also, the whole James Doyle story, was it me or did it just not make it to the website? Its a little like they never wanted it on the web as the web never forgets.

As you can probably tell, i'm a tad miffed.
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Write to them. The more complaints they get the more they are likely to do something about it.

This is the email address of the Private Equity firm that owns the RP.


craig.vickery@exponentpe.com

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craig.vickery@exponentpe.com

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Grey said:
It's been slow on Chrome as well in recent times.
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I try not to use it too much..but have found that if you go to adds on and set "flash player" to "ask to activate" when using Firefox..it helps with speed of RP site. I tend to use Chrome and Firefox...not used chrome for a while with it..but i believe you can set chrome to ask for flash to activate as well

i can't seem to view page 2 of this thread..anyone else having same problem?..odd one
 
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EC1 said:
I try not to use it too much..but have found that if you go to adds on and set "flash player" to "ask to activate" when using Firefox..it helps with speed of RP site. I tend to use Chrome and Firefox...not used chrome for a while with it..but i believe you can set chrome to ask for flash to activate as well

i can't seem to view page 2 of this thread..anyone else having same problem?..odd one
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Your post is the first one on Page 2 EC1, have you tried toggling the Thread Display options ?

That little trick on Firefox has made a hell of a difference, thanks EC1
 
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kinda ironic that on a topic complaining on RP website, the thread's own site is having issues. Someone needs to contact the dev. and tell him to update the CKEditor from 5 years ago version of 3.6.2
 
@aragorn, no offence but what you just said is idiotic. No one pays money to access RP website and if you are having problems with their site and you still subscribe then its even more idiotic. Secondly, I don't think you know how bugs work. If I was an ill intentioned person no one will be able to access/read any threads on here(via standard view) and I don't think many will cope with it. I gave an opinion, more of an advice, and of course like always people on here take it the wrong way..
 
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Aughex said:
@aragorn, no offence but what you just said is idiotic. No one pays money to access RP website and if you are having problems with their site and you still subscribe then its even more idiotic. Secondly, I don't think you know how bugs work. If I was an ill intentioned person no one will be able to access/read any threads on here(via standard view) and I don't think many will cope with it. I gave an opinion, more of an advice, and of course like always people on here take it the wrong way..
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Lots of people pay money to access the RP website, which is their choice regardless of whether or not you'd choose to do the same. It's kind of ironic that on a post criticising people for being idiotic (in your fairly narrow opinion), you manage to be idiotic at the same time.

PS Does that sentence sound like advice or an opinion to you?
 
no one pays to access RP, its free: http://www.racingpost.com/news/horse-racing/ The OP and other complained that even the free version had problems and its not worth accessing.

Now, for the ironic comment let me put it another way so you can understand. Someone X is having car problems with the engine overheating(Racing Post website, adds & other ****) and he borrows his friend Y car which the next day engine's fail and won't start(Page 2 of this thread which doesn't display anything) then someone comes along and makes a light comment of how ironic this is and tells him how to start the car but X tells him hey at least its not my car(which is idiotic). Then a smart-ass comes along and insults the one that offered the advice, telling him he's a narrow minded person because the owner X paid for his car so the engine should not overheat(which is not relevant at all as the discussion was about the friend's Y car engine and how to start it).
 
Aughex said:
no one pays to access RP, its free: http://www.racingpost.com/news/horse-racing/ The OP and other complained that even the free version had problems and its not worth accessing.

Now, for the ironic comment let me put it another way so you can understand. Someone X is having car problems with the engine overheating(Racing Post website, adds & other ****) and he borrows his friend Y car which the next day engine's fail and won't start(Page 2 of this thread which doesn't display anything) then someone comes along and makes a light comment of how ironic this is and tells him how to start the car but X tells him hey at least its not my car(which is idiotic). Then a smart-ass comes along and insults the one that offered the advice, telling him he's a narrow minded person because the owner X paid for his car so the engine should not overheat(which is not relevant at all as the discussion was about the friend's Y car engine and how to start it).
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What a ******* halfwit you are.
 
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