Bad experience with Etihad

It's really shocking how some big companies treat (or should I say mistreat) their customers. My brother-in-law was just telling us about their bad experience with Etihad Airways(which is the national airline of the UAE) recently and I wanted to blog about it here so that other people are aware. It was really surprising because the company has a long list of awards which they have won for their customer service.

They had bought a ticket to Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia from London for my nephew in January. Somehow they ended up charging my brother-in-law's credit card twice. The amount is about £550 which is not a small sum.

He promptly called them up to get a reimbursement following which they directed him to send them an email with details of the ticket/transaction. Apparently he has had the same conversation a few times and have been sending them back similar emails several times as well.

It has been three months since the original travel date and my brother-in-law still hasn't received anything, not even an acknowledgement.

In the meantime, he's been paying interest on the cost. Right now he totally fed up and is contemplating sending an official complaint to Consumer Direct.

I hope they solve it before it goes to that.

Malaysian owned British companies

Malaysians are taking over the UK. I guess that might be a little bit of an exaggeration really but you might be surprised to learn the number of high profile companies which are actually owned by Malaysians/ Malaysian companies or in which they have a large share. Given below is a list of the companies:

1. Group Lotus Plc - Automobile / Sports cars / Engineering
Owned by Proton Holdings Berhad

2. Star Energy - Energy / Petroleum
Owned by Petronas

3. Wessex Water - Utilities / Water
Owned by YTL Corp

4. Laura Ashley Holdings Plc - Retail
Owned by Malayan United Industries (MUI) group

5. Jimmy Choo Ltd - Retail/ Shoes
Malaysian born Jimmy Choo owns 50% share

I am sure there are more but that's all I can think of for now.

Ryanair to La Rochelle - Part 2

What was really disappointing about yesterday's events was that we missed the plane by just 10 minutes. Ryanair's FAQ says:

Ryanair flights check-In closes strictly at 40 minutes prior to the scheduled flight departure time

Had we left immediately from Kettering using a Taxi and not waited for our landlord to pick us up, we might have been able to make it. It would have cost us much less than the £200 we had to pay for the tickets for the next flight. That is not including the cot of the hotel for the night.

We might have had we known about this. Unfortunately Ryanair doesn't provide a customer contact number and we had no chance of contacting them. Trying to search on the net using my mobile also gave me no clues. Only found out about it after going through their website today.

Thinking about this really makes me angry. There is a saying "Pay peanuts, get monekys". However, I know that is not always true and we can get greats bargains without paying an arm and a leg. Sad to say but Ryanair seems to prove the sayign right. Makes me really appreciate Air Asia's service. Whatever people say, they are way better than Ryanair.

Lighting can transform your house

A few days back, a family friend dropped by our house and we ultimately got down to talking about the house rentals and how they are going up in Coventry and I guess all over the UK for that matter even though house prices have dropped.

We then got down to talking about the condition of the houses we live in. They have just moved in to a newly refurbished house and how happy they were with the condition of the new house. The only thing they didn't like were the home lighting. Their landlord just left it up to them to fix their own. They were admiring our light fittings which we had bought from Ikea and they were surprised how cheap they were.

Talking about lighting, do check out Farreys.com, an international wholesale hardware company which is based in Florida. I was amazed at the choice of indoor and outdoor light fixtures on their site which are available in a wide range of styles. These products come from some of the top manufacturers specialised in lighting but at really low prices.

Lighting fixtures can completely transform the look and feel of each room in your house. For example, If you have a big rooms, you might consider having chandeliers fitted. Somehow, the right chandeliers of your choice ranging from contemporary to modern can give a distinct look to a room. Unfortunately, the rooms in our house are too small to pull off such a look sucessfully.

3 Dongle dangled

Take a look at what came via the post yesterday.

I am a satisfied 3 Skypephone user and had been thinking about signing up for their mobile broadband service after reading about it. Just imagine my delight when I was offered the opportunity to try it out for FREE for 3 months with absolutely no data restrictions.

The free gifts that came with the "dongle" was completely unexpected. I don't mind - I love free stuff.

Anyway, the dongle is actually a Huawei E169G USB Modem and looks like a bit like a normal USB flash drive.





Before using it, you have to take out the USIM card holder and insert the USIM card. Stick the dongle into one of your laptop's USB ports.



The modem software installs automatically. Once installed, all I have to do is click "Connect" on the pop-up screen and I am done - mobile broadband Internet access.

Over the next three months, I will be testing out the modem from various locations in the UK. Look out for more reviews and technical details on my tech blog Adamok dot net.

Thanks to Sam and the other guys at 3mobilebuzz for giving me the opportunity to try out the modem and of course, the other freebies.

TalkTalk the worst broadband provider in the UK

It's been nearly 3 months since got reconnected to the Internet via internet service provider, TalkTalk after my AOL broadband connect got cut off without any warning.

I was quite happy initially until I realised that our connections speeds were really slow. I complained a few times but the TalkTalk customer service people kept making excuses.

Really regret signing up with this broadband service provider (or should I say Narrowband service provider). I ignored the warning signals - low ratings on various consumer forums, delay in sending me the broadband router, etc. A guy who came to fix our gas even told me "they are crap mate".

I ignored all of them because I was blinded by their amazing offer of "Free Broadband with our Talk2 International Call Plan". Should have remembered the old saying "pay peanuts and you get monkeys".

Really ashamed that I promoted this "free broadband" thing to a few other friends as well as I thought it was a wonderful deal in the beginning. I just hope that they didn't sign up. And I simply don't want to ask lest they blame me.

Just proves my earlier observation that a lot of companies here in the UK are really bad when it comes to customer retention even though they are really good in attracting first time users.

Here are the results of two different broadband speed tests I carried out a few minutes ago:

1.
- Speedtest.net


2.
- Broadbandspeedchecker.co.uk

A little difference there but the fact remains that our broadband speed is not even half of the promised "Up to 8 Meg download speeds".

Really annoyed that I am stuck on a 18 months contract. Wonder whether there is any way I can move to another service provider without getting penalised in any way?

Update 8 Oct 2008 : They have improved their service. Read "Faster broadband speed"

How National Express let us down.

Almost forgot to blog about a disappointing incident that happened two weeks back. My wife was in Nottingham for two days for a workshop at the University of Nottingham. She had booked a bus ticket with National Express for her return journey. The bus was supposed to leave Broadmarsh bus station, Nottingham at 10:05pm.

I was home with the kids and had just put them to bed when my wife rang me up around 10:30pm. She told me that there was no bus to Coventry around and asked me to check her email - just in case there had been any cancellations. I opened up her account and didn't find any emails from the company. However, I did find a number on the e-Ticket which was meant to be for "emergency situations only". My wife called the number and found out that the particular bus had been cancelled because she was the only passenger to Coventry. As you can very well imagine, we were really pissed off. Instead of apologising, the person on the line actually made it seem like it was our fault. According to the person, they had sent an email to my wife informing about the cancellation. We have yet to receive that email. At first I thought that it might have ended up in the spam box. No! It wasn't.

Our money was refunded promptly but that is not the point. This could happen to anyone. What if you didn't have enough money to stay in a hotel for the night? What if you couldn't call anyone?

Fortunately my wife was able to call up a friend who lived in Nottingham and the friend kindly picked her up and my wife waited at their house for me. I had to wake up my sleeping kids, bundle them in the car and drove up to Nottingham. The journey took about an hour and I was lucky that there was a can of Nescafe around. The journey back and forth took about 2 hours and by the time we got back, it was nearly 1 am. We have travelled with National Express a number of time but this incident really left a bad taste in the mouth.

A few lessons we learnt:
- have enough money in the pocket always
- have enough credit in the mobile and enough juice in the batteries (recharged) always
- have some loose coins just in case
- call the transport company at least a day before to make sure that there were no cancellations.

Online grocery shopping - Tesco vs Sainsbury's

Both my wife and I shop a lot online. I guess we are what marketers refer to as a "innovator" especially in relation to stuff online. However, I never imagined that I would be shopping for groceries online one day.

As compared to books, software, electronics or even clothes, shopping for groceries is totally different. I like to look, feel and sometimes smell the food I buy. My wife wanted to try out some of the online grocery stores here. She gave a couple of resasons why buying groceries online was a good idea. According to her:
1. These stores would ensure the quality of stuff sold online.
2. We could shop at leisure.
3. We could avoid the crowd at the stores.
4. We could save on petrol.
5. We could avoid the temptations of the "spur-of-the-moment" buys.
6. It would give her a better insight into service quality of online stores, which is somewhat related to her PhD research.

We tried out Sainsbury's Online Groceries first of all. We bought products worth £77.41 - mostly organic food. I also earned two Nectar points for every £1 spent online.

The groceries were delivered on the appointed date and we were satisfied with the quality of the products.

A few days later we decided to take a look at Tesco's online grocery store. We had one coupon which enabled us to get a discount of £10 on orders over £50. The final amount came to £64.32. The stuff will be delivered to our house this Monday.

Here are some of our observations:

Website Navigation: We found Sainsbury's store to be more user friendly. Easier to find items.

Product Choice: We were looking for organic food and Tesco definitely has a wider choice.

Pricing: Tesco products were cheaper. As for delivery charges, Sainsbury's was comparatively cheaper but as I mentioned earlier, we had a discount coupon for Tesco.

Conclusion: I would have to give a thumbs up to Tesco's online grocery store because of the overall savings. Plus I get points on my Tesco card.

Introducing Nitro Digital

For several years, I have been helping people with establishing a presence on the net - this includes individuals as well as companies. Most of the time, I just point them to professionals who can help them set up a web site and in case they already have one, to market their sites online.

I always keep an eye out (and ear open) for companies specialising in web design and online marketing. It's quite hard to recommend a good one considering the fact that there are so many companies out there as well as freelancers involved in this area.

Among the criteria I look for includes whether the companies were established (when they started) and their portfolio.

One company I recently came across is 'Nitro Digital'. The compay was established in 2001 and started out as Nitro Ventures before changing to the current name. They specifically target pharmaceutical companies looking for agency to take care of their website - right from design and updating to marketing and driving quality traffic to it.

Nitro Digital is a succesful medium size Media Agency specialising in Web Design, Development and Online Marketing for Pharmaceutical companies (including PPC, SEO, Viral and Social Network Marketing, Online Display Advertising, You name it...)

Was quite impressed by their list of clients and case studies. I would defnitely recommend them to anyone looking for such services.

Place to shop for cheap printer inks

If you are like me and print out a lot of stuff, the printer seems to run out of ink so fast. A replacement cartridge doesn't come cheap especially if it's for your colour inkjet. In my case, it's worse because I am using a laser printer.

Well if you are looking for the Lowest prices for inkjet cartridges go on over to Ink and Stuff. The online stores has a great range of inkjet and laser printer cartridges as well other stuff.

All customers get 10% off on their first order. Remember to use the voucher code BZZ11Z at checkout.

My Boxing day in Coventry

If you are in the UK, I am sure you are aware of the crazy scenes in stores all over the country. Yes! I am talking about the Boxing day sales. I am not really into branded stuff and I didn't join the people flocking to the West Orchard shopping centre nor did we drive up to the Bull Ring in Birmingham.



I did do some shopping though. Drove down to the nearby Go Outdoors store with our friend, Kyrzul who's visiting us. A bit disappointed because I had been expecting lower price cuts but bought some stuff anyway.

We later went to see 'I am Legend' at Odeon - my first time there. The movie was simply amazing. One of the best I have seen in a while, maybe except for Transformers.

Anyway, after the movie as we had about an hour to kill before the next bus (buses ran every hour for Boxing day), so we dropped by Ikea. The store opened on 16th of this month. No! I wasn't there at the opening. It is huge - slightly less in area than the store in Damansara, Malaysia. For your information, the store in Coventry covers 24000 square meters while the Ikea store in Mutiara Damansara is the largest in Asia with a shop floor area of approximately 270000 square feet (25000 square meters). There were some fantastic deals and of course more shopping.

How was your Boxing day?

What most males dread

My fate one day

Apart from impotence, I think the other thing that most males dread is the upward creep of their hairline as they get older. Some men lose it later, others much earlier. There are various reasons we lose our hair including medical conditions as well as bad diet and stress. However, the main reason appears to be androgenetic, also known as male-pattern baldness, caused by hormones called androgens and genetics.

I would be lying if I said that I wasn't concerned as well. It's in my blood. A guest who was invited to one of our family reunions remarked that most of the men in our family - from grandfather, to uncles and sons, looked similar. I pointed out that it probably might be their shiny heads. Some had even shaved it to a fashionable bald look. Even though I still have a thick tuft of hair in place, I know it will be gone one day or the other.

Anyway, it's kind of comforting as I look around my classroom to find out that I am actually doing quite well in that area as compared to some of my colleagues. I guess a PhD does that to people. The topic did come up once in a while and the issue of treatment was often discussed. It was clear that some had even tried various potions and so called miracle drugs without any success. I guess we sort of agreed that hair transplant might be a more effective solution.

Is there any hope?

Financing a car

One of our friends was recounting how they bought a car and to finance it, took out a loan. The interesting thing was that their decision was based on the advise of the salesman at the dealer where they bought the car. According to them, the salesman made it sound so attractive and that they were the best deal around. However, as they later found out, that was really not the case.

It's not surprising as I also financed my previous car - Proton, with a bank recommended by the dealership. Talking to a few other friends also confirmed the same thing. That is apart from a few other guys who were wiser because of prior experience. They had done their research and went with a lender that gave them the best deal.

It's amazing with a wealth of information at our fingertips on the web we still depend on the salespeople at dealerships for our financing. There are numerous sources on the web that can provide comparisons between the various offers available.

If you are looking to finance car purchases, do check out the the car finance section of the Motors Today (http://www.motorstoday.co.uk) website. They have links and information relating to loans, insurance and a link to HPI, a UK Company specialised in checking the histories of used cars.

They also a car tax calculator that will show the tax payable for the next three years. As for insurance, the company has paired up with Money Supermarket so that you can instantly compare quotes from leading UK motor insurers.

TalkTalk Broadband update

I don't like to beg but if anybody from TalkTalk is reading this ... Please, Please, can you help me get connected to the net.

We were supposed to be connected by last week. "You will receive your modem and installation CD within 5 working days". That was what the lady on the line said, when we called them on the 30th of November. A lady called Aparna confirmed it when we called them again on the 3rd of December. It's almost Monday and I am fuming - you probably know why.

Technically we are connected and as I mentioned in my last post, TalkTalk switched us to the new TalkTalk plan and started billing us since the 21st of November. However, we can't "go live" unless I get their stupid Connect & Go installation CD.

Called them up today and Stephanie, the lady on the line intially told us that the stuff had already been posted but then later said that we should receive it within 7 days.

I hope so because if we are not able to get a broadband connection by next Sunday (16th), I am going to move to another provider and ask for a refund for non-delivery of service.

Broadband connection cut off

Our internet broadband connection at home is down. I am in the process of changing from my service provider from AOL to TalkTalk.

There are a few reasons I am changing from AOL. At first I was quite happy with their service but later found that my friends were enjoying faster broadband speeds and it seems to be getting worse.

I also have had to call their customer service 4 times in a duration of 2 months. I got connected to a call center in India each time and everytime didn't solve my problem. In the end I had to solve the problems myself with the help of some IT savvy friends. What made it worse was that I was charged 5p per minute for the calls to their customer service.

After being unable to access the net for 2 consecutive days, I finally decided to cancel my broadband subscription. My contract with them had ended as well a few days back. Imagine my reaction when I found out that they had ALREADY cut my broadband connection BUT WERE STILL BILLING ME.

AOL YOU REALLY SUCK

We have signed up for the Talk2 International with Broadband package from TalkTalk. The phone line comes with free broadband. Best of all, calls to their customer service is absolutely FREE. They promise "up to" 8MB broadband speeds and 40GB usage allowance but I am sceptical. Waiting for their modem and the setup CD to arrive. I will conduct a broadband speed test as soon as I have it up and running.

Till then, I won't be blogging that much.

Moving to WordPress

At present all my blogs are hosted with Blogger. I am quite happy with that but I would be lying if I told you that I haven't been tempted to move to WordPress and hosted somewhere else. One of my friends was describing the various bells and whistles on his WordPress powered blog including the various plugins support by this blog publishing system, the ability to block IP addresses of people I don't like and of course the huge number of themes available on the web.

A lot of people told me that if I consider myself a serious blogger, then I should move from Blogger and get myself a unique domain name and host my blog somewhere. In the past I did survey around a bit but good hosting companies that supported WordPress were charging quite a lot. However, today I realise that there are a number of reliable and reasonably priced blog hosts around. 34SP.com Ltd is one affordable WordPress webhosting company that I recently came across. Their prices start from $35.95 per year for 200Mb space and 2000Mb of bandwidth per month. For those who are new to WordPress, do check out their list of useful WordPress resources on the web - from codex, themes and plugins to discussion forums.

Right now they are offering all new customers who order WordPress hosting a free upgrade - double storage space and bandwidth.

Online marketing companies

The World Wide Web is the first truly new medium since television, offering marketers with several opportunities as well as challenges. In fact, a study by the Internet Advertising Bureau and PricewaterhouseCoopers this year showed that online advertising is the fastest growing advertising medium. Thus, it no wonder that so many internet marketing companies have mushroomed all over the net. Even the traditional ad companies have got into the act.

So how do we know which company to choose?

I have a few simple tips: First of all look at their track record. The older they are, the better. Secondly, take a look at their own Alexa and Google rankings. If these companies claim to specialise in Search Engine Optimization (SEO), yet are themselves stuck with a low PR, it doesn't make sense.

Look at the companies that fulfils both criteria. They should have over over 10 years experience in SEO, Pay Per Click Management, Online Media Buying, and Website Usability.

Look at their home page - does it have a Google PR 3 and above? 

Wifi with BT Total Broadband

Our broadband contract with AOL ends this month and we are seriously thinking of moving to another service provider. Even though I have had no problems with my present service, broadband speed is a priority for me.

After doing a bit of research I discovered that BT broadband provides the fastest broadband speeds in the UK. The most attractive package is their Option 3 package. This package offers up to 8Mb download speed with unlimited downloads, 5GB FREE secure online storage with BT Digital Vault. It also comes with the wireless BT Home Hub and Hub Phone so that you can easily set up a wi-fi network in your home.

I already have a wifi broadband network set up in my house so that I can even use my laptop in the garden. However, the threat of intruders do worry me a bit. This is why the BT Home Hub is quite attractive to me. This next generation wireless router has an built-in firewall that blocks viruses and unwanted intruders and even updates itself automatically.

With all these features I am seriously considering changing to BT's Option 3 deal.

Add value to your house with a conservatory

We recently had a party at our house and most of our friends were visiting for the first time. A lot of them were admiring our large garden at the back of the house. One of them commented that the house was ideal to have a conservatory added at the back. Unfortunately, it's not own our own and we are just renting the place. However, for people with a house looking out into a beautiful landscape or a beautiful garden, a conservatory can really add extra value to the house. Even if you don't, a conservatory can be a simple way to add extra habitable space.

BP and Shell

Did you know that the petroleum companies, BP and Shell, were once a single company?

BP and Shell-Mex Ltd had merged in 1931, to create Shell-Mex and BP Ltd until they separated again in 1975.

I only got to know when I visited the Coventry Transport Museum. It was not mentioned anywhere in the museum but my father-in-law, who's in the oil and gas business noticed this classic petrol truck.


Read about our trip to the museum with loads of pics here.

Not related, but the BP fuel station here on Lockhurst Lane, happens to be my favourite, along with Tesco's at Ricoh Arena - because they are the cheapest.

Tags: bp coventry shell coventry transport museum