With travelling happening I had reason to look at the Virgin Trains website; this has proved slightly amusing. For some bizarre reason you can only check some aspects of a trains journey if you're registered with them, and like all good eCommerce sites your login goes over an encrypted connection. Unfortunately the certificate for their site expired this morning.

Now I can be a helpful devil sometimes, so I went through their Contact Us dance to let them know. I gave my email address and filled in the box asking for my question. I didn't actually ask anything, I just said:

Your SSL certificate appears to have expired early this morning.

Well, there was no need to be fancy or sarcastic was there? Apparently there was. After doing that you get taken to the next screen where you have to fill in your name, because that can't go on the first screen. Then you go to another screen and do something else, I believe it was confirming that you really were stupid enough to not only need their help but still be tyring to contact them.

After the standard auto-reply I wasn't really expecting anything else. I soon found myself impressed when a reply arrived but 77 minutes later! Then I read it.

Basically I was told that there was a helpful FAQ which I should've read. It was ever so helpful, explaining to me that either my clock was wrong or my root certificates were out of date. Then it told me I really should've been able to find that answer myself.

So I replied in the little "if you're too stupid to use our website we'll tell you how to send email too" section of their email. Somehow I managed to stay polite and not point out that I can read the fucking manual all by myself.

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No, I really am serious.  Your SSL certificate *has* expired

The Validity field has the following entries:

Not Before:
24/10/2003 01:00:00
(24/10/2003 00:00:00 GMT)

Not After:
24/10/2004 00:59:59
(23/10/2004 23:59:59 GMT)

That is an expired certificate.  My computer's clock is not wonky and my
certificate information is both current and accurate.  You have an
expired certificate.  I wouldn't have told you otherwise.

>[===> Please enter your reply above this line <===]

I'm kind of curious how long they'll manage to keep sending me form replies before someone notices their certificate expired early this morning.