Post GST and the Business Crooks

After the new Malaysian Government announced the removal of GST, a lot of people were happy, hoping that prices would go down and people would have more money to spend overall. However, I was aware that there are certain business people, the crooks, who would use this opportunity to milk their customers like they did when GST was put into place previously, overnight prices went up and some restaurants still retained their service charges (as high as 10%). This has also happened in the past when fuel prices increase and the price of good would increase overnight, many times not proportional to the price rise. However, the worst part was that when the fuel prices went down, the price of goods and services did not go down.

Now consumers are more aware and social media was flooded with companies, mostly restaurants, which increased their prices when GST was removed - with people sharing images of receipts before and after showing no difference in prices. One famous example was that of a restaurant in Bangsar and the owner blamed it on a IT glitch. The authorities were also quick to investigate. However, in terms of prosecution, we have not really seen any of these  cheats being punished. Now they seem to be getting more blatant. Another restaurant in Bangsar have maintained the prices on their menu. On being confronted, the restaurant simply said that they had increased the prices by 6% (the same amount as the GST which was removed).

Let us act against these vultures and I sincerely hope that the authorities take stern action - not just fining them but closing these outlets.

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.

New UK immigration rules update

There is one industry that is recession proof and some research actually shows that it does better when the economy is bad. I am referring to the billion pound education industry. British universities have been highly successful in attracting thousands of bright foreign students to the British Isles.

A BBC report in 2008 showed that fees from International students amounted to £1.7bn. The Universities are interested in attracting foreign non-EU students because they can charge them higher. In my case I paid approximately £10300 this year and the fees are increasing. Local and EU students only pay one third that amount. In other words I am paying for the cost of two local/ EU students. I don't mind because a degree from a reputed British University is looked on favourably by employers all around the World (at least I hope so).

The Malaysian Government itself spends millions of dollars every year sponsoring the education of thousands of students in institutes of higher learning all over the UK.

However, recent changes in immigration regulations may change all that. First were the requirement to carry biometric identity cards. I didn't mind that even though there were a lot of protests because I am used to carrying an ID card all the time in Malaysia.

Yesterday we received an email from the University informing us of Pending changes to the immigration rules for student visa renewals. Based on the new rules which will be implemented from the 31st of March 2009, students would need to provide evidence of any remaining course fees to be paid plus £600pm (up to a maximum of £1200) living costs for visa extensions of nine months or less. If more than nine months you will need to provide evidence of your first year’s fees plus £1200 living costs.

The most worrying part of the new rule is the part of dependants. Namely the fact that you will need to show evidence of funds to support them. The amount has not been fixed yet but is tentatively £533 (per month) for each dependant (including children).

I guess this is part of their policy to toughen immigration rules and it has got worse since the economic recession started. All of us can feel a deepening anti-foreigner sentiment - from politicians, newspaper articles and even bloggers.

Now we are blamed for all short of problems ranging from health care to employment. This is plain ridiculous. Instead of creating more employment and reducing the number of people on the dole, foreigners are the perfect bogeyman to take the blame for past planning, economic and financial mistakes on the part of the Government.

I do agree that there is a problem of illegal immigrants but the new policies will affect the students legally staying and contributing to the British economy. I guess they are frustrated because they can't do anything about the rest of the Europeans (since the UK is part of the EU) or the illegal immigrants or the asylum seekers.

The ones worst affected will be the PhD research students with families. Officially most PhD courses are supposed to be of 3 years duration and the visa are given accordingly but apart from rare cases, most will extend to the fourth or fifth year. For example, in the Warwick Business School, I don't know of any single student (foreign and local) who has completed their PhD degree in the stipulated 3 years duration. The only guy I know who completed in 3 years in the whole University of Warwick was a Malaysian in the Engineering faculty and he was lucky because all his experiments went as planned. Sometimes it is not even the fault of the students as some supervisors can take their own sweet time in passing the students.

My friend has 4 kids and he has to have approximately £24588 £29385 + (based on the details given to us) in his account in order to extend his study for another 9 months. Failure to do so might mean going back to Malaysia without completing the degree (after 3 long years of research). It's scary.

First Commentator
Hapi

New Washing Machine

You never know how important something is until you lose it or in our case, it stops working. As you might have guessed from the title, we got ourselves a spanking new washing machine. The 2nd hand Zanussi we had been using for over two years now finally gave up. It was strange because all the lights were on, water was still going in and out and it was making the right noises but the cylinder inside was not spinning.

The clothes started piling up and we even had to wash a few loads at our friends' houses. Thanks Nana, Roby. Did some research on the net and we finally decided on the Hotpoint AQGMD129 Washer Dryer. We decided on this particular model because it has an A energy rating (the most efficient) and a capacity of 8Kg. Another important feature we were looking at was the child lock - absolutely essential because we have a son who loves electronic gadgets with buttons and flashing lights (like father like son, I guess).

We bought the Washer Dryer from TDA - Appliance Bargains. It cost us £397.89 including delivery charges and cost of disposing our old washer dryer. In Argos, the same machine costs £623.59 (with delivery).

They delivered it yesterday. Was a bit annoyed when the delivery guys just wanted to leave it outside. In the end, after some persuasion, they did bring it in to the kitchen. They were surprised when we told them that they were supposed to dispose of our old one as well. Had to call up their office who apparently had made a mistake. They are going to pick it the old washer tomorrow. What a waste of time and fuel.

Fitting everything took me over 2 hours. Mostly due to the fact that the machine was so damn heavy. Removal of the four transit bolts and rubber bush at the rear itself took half an hour. I have no idea why they have to make it so difficult for customers.

Had to put bricks underneath because of the skirting on the wall and somehow push the machine in to the narrow space.

Just take a look at the space I had to fit it in and you will understand why it took us so much time.


Soon had it up and running. The best part is that it is so quiet that I had to check to make sure that the thing was actually working.

We love our new Washer Dryer.

Buying 3 pay as you go SIM card

My sister-in-law who's just moved to London wanted to buy a pay as you go SIM card only, as she already has a phone. It was meant to be a temporary thing before she signed up for a monthly payment plan. Of course I suggested 3. So off we went to their store in Bayswater, London. However, I was quite surprised when I found out that they didn't have any pay as you go sim card in stock.

Further down the road there's a Phones 4 U shop and they eventually bought the 3 sim card from there.

This is yet another example of a 3 store disappointing me. My previous experience was buying a phone from their Coventry store. Yet another reason for interested customers to buy phones or SIM card from their online store.

Caro Prangenberg the idiot

There's someone who calls himself Caro Prangenberg, who keeps leaving comments on my blog or should I say spamming. It's ok to comment but this guy is so lazy he just copies some sentences from one of my posts and pastes it to the comment. I am not sure what's he is hoping to gain by this. My guess is that he one of the guys employed by one of the SEO companies out there who pays people to go blog hopping and leave comments with a link back to their client's website.

They don't realise that sooner or latter, the websites are going to be blacklisted as spam origin sites.

Deregistered from Surgery

My daughter was suffering from an allergy and I called up our Surgery (they call the clinic a surgery here in the UK though I have no Idea why as no surgeries are carried out at all). Imagine my shock when the lady on the line told me that we had been de-registered from the surgery and that our records had been sent to the Coventry Teaching Primary Care Trust.

For a few moments I didn't even know what to say - I was totally speechless. After the initial shock, the anger came. No! I had not joined another surgery nor had I moved my home address. The lady told me that there was nothing she could do and I should talk to the manager next day.

Called up in the morning and had a chat with the manager and she told me that we would have to register again by filling out some forms. She was really helpful and told us that I could still bring my daughter to see the doctor. She told me that I am quite lucky I found out about this by chance. Our names were still in their computer even though we had been deregistered.

I had emailed the Coventry PCT the night before and I received an email reply from them. They found out that our records had been recalled by the Coventry PCT because we had not replied to an immigration check which had required a response. Not responding to the letter results in an auto recall of the medical records from the surgery. I can't recall receiving any letter from the Coventry PCT.

Took my daughter to the surgery today after school and filled up the forms. The doctor saw her and prescribed a cream. Hopefully our names and our records will be back in the surgery soon.

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.

Fuel prices stink

Fuel prices in Malaysia is set to rise from RM 1.92 ringgit to RM 2.70 (£0.425) a litre while in India it has increased to Rs 47.49 (£0.57) a litre (an increase of almost 5 rupees). Read the report in the International Herald Tribune here. Petrol prices are heavily subsidised in both countries.

Over here in the UK the prices are determined by the market. Got the shock of my life when I saw the prices at the nearby Texaco station near my house this morning - 116.99p. It is the highest since we arrived here in the UK.

As a student here, I am definitely feeling the pinch. As much as I would like to, I simply can't reduce my dependence on the car. I use it to send and pick up my kids from the nursery. We also have use it to go to the University. Of course public transport is always an option but we have to change two buses to get there, taking almost 40 minutes of our precious time and a day saver ticket costs £2.60. In the end, it is cheaper to take the car.

However we are resigned to it as it doesn't look like the fuel prices are not going to come down anytime soon. It might not even come down at all.

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.

Monday morning blues

Or should I say red?

Woke up this morning to find this...


(that's frost on the windows)

Like a lot of people in the UK, we usually park our car by the pavement or the sidewalk, as it is known in the US. Well, someone broke the side view mirror on the left of our car.

Must be one of those B"£$%^& kids on the way to school.

Later went to my favourite garage here in Coventry - Taxi & car repairs on Stony Stanton road. Isfaq, the owner of the garage, fixed it for free. Thanks a lot.

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.

Selling is not marketing

Warning: Ranting ahead.

The past two weeks has been very frustrating time for us. As some of you may be aware, AOL cut off our broadband connection without any warning (but still billed us) and we have already signed up for the 'TalkTalk 2 International' plan, which comes with a free broadband connection.

The upgrade was quite smooth and the new plan came into effect on the 21st of November. The guy we talked to, promised us that we would have the installation CD and new modem by the 30th of November. Today's it's already the 2nd of December. We are hopping mad because we have already received the bill for last month WITH the new plan, which happens to be costlier, even though we still don't have any CD or modem in sight - meaning no broadband connection.

I am really pissed off because I missed a meeting with my supervisor yesterday because I only got to read her email quite late YESTERDAY. And then there is the loss of earnings from my blogs. It's only when we get cut off from the net, that we realise how dependent we are on it.

After a year here in the UK, I have come to realise that a lot of British companies are really good at "Selling" their products and services but very poor at retaining their customers. Take broadband service providers as an example. There are so many of them to choose from but according to what we have experienced and what our friends who have been staying here for several years, almost all of them are equally bad in their after sales service if not worse. They keep on changing service providers every year in the hope that the next might be better. Some of them have accepted it as a fact of life here in the UK which is wrong. We might accept this in some third World country with no infrastructure or the communications network is controlled by the Government but this is the UK.

It's no wonder because most of their marketing departments here are actually filled with sales people while technical complaints are handled by call centres in India. Correct me if I am wrong, but I don't know of any which has a customer retention plan in place. And I am not only talking about the broadband providers but the entire private sector.

I sometimes can't believe I am learning marketing here. I pointed this out to one academic and according to her, that is one of the reason why a lot of British companies apart from a few, have not been able to compete globally.

On the other hand the Government offices are really efficient. That's quite funny because a lot of the former colonies of Britain, blame the British tradition for their own paperwork laden sluggish bureaucracies.

I remember an old post I made sometime back, "Malaysian Companies and Marketing". I think it applies here in the UK as well.

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.

My old phone line has been taken back

This is to inform all my friends who have been unsuccessfully trying to contact me using my old Celcom number, that it has been cancelled.

I was using their Xpax prepaid line and I had activated the global roaming service before I left Malaysia. The reason I retained it was because our Maybank TAC pin numbers were sent to it.

One day I noticed that my phone was showing a "SIM not found" warning. I realized that I had forgotten to top up the airtime and asked my dad to help put some airtime in. My father put in RM30 but the SIM was still deactivated.

Check the validity periods as given below:


This means that even if you don't use a single sen, you still have to top up when the validity period ends.

Wrote an email to the Celcom careline but didn't receive any reply. I only found out that they had canceled my number after my dad went to their local office in Kota Bahru and inquired. I know it's my fault but am annoyed and sad as well because I have had that number for nearly 6 years now and the fact that there was still more than RM100 credit.

I learnt that they recycle old numbers, which means that the number is back in the market and someone is probably using it now. So don't be surprised if you get a "Hello! Is this Adam?" on your phone. It means that you got my old number.

Bloody inefficient energy company

When we first moved into our house, it already had a prepaid card meter system installed for both the electricity and gas. As we preferred to be billed, our landlord had both replaced to electronic meters. The company we signed up for is supposed to be one of the biggest in the UK and has ads running on TV all the time.

A few months on I was a bit worried as we hadn't received any bill as yet. Looked up their website and called up their customer service number. Was asked to push a couple of numbers one after another and I finally got a ring tone. However after several minutes nobody answered. At that time we didn't have a house phone and I was calling from my mobile - I hung up. Emailed them asking them for a bill. Received a prompt reply and they asked me to send them my meter readings. This I did.

After a few weeks I received a letter from Siemens (their official metering partner, it seems) asking me to fill up a a small form with the meter reading and send it back to them. I was a bit concerned as the letter was addressed to "New Customer" with our address but I sent it back anyway,.

Weeks went by but still no bill arrived even though we received 2 new prepayment cards. I again sent them an email and called them up too. This time I got through and explained that I had changed to a metering system. The people at the other end were quite polite but seemed to be quite clueless to what was going on and couldn't give me any satisfying answer. Was passed around a bit but finally assured that everything will be settled.

While waiting for the bill, I had the billing changed to my name rather than my wife.

I got the shock of my life when we received TWO bills in February - one for £584.57 and another for a whooping £1,193.97 (both dated 18 of Sept. 2006). The bills were addressed to the "New Customer" but both had separate account numbers listed. Around the same time, we received 2 more prepayment cards addressed to my wife.

Of course I was worried. Remember this was in Winter and we had 2 kids with us. Just imagine what would have happened if the gas and electricity were cut off.

I called them up and after being passed around a few time finally spoke to someone who told em that there had been a mistake and if I could give them the meter reading AGAIN.

Waited for some more time but the bill still didn't come. Called them up again - got passed around and I had to explain everything all over again - that we didn't have a prepayment meter, the bill was wrong as we only moved in around the end of Sept. blah blah blah.

We finally received a bill around the end of March and another in June. All the while no body came to check the meter readings, which means that our bills were estimations.

In the end, fed up with the company and after finding out that other companies were offering much cheaper rates, we shifted to EDF energy last month.

However, the story does not end there. After we moved to the new company, we have been visited by representatives from the previous company, not once but TWICE. They wanted to change our non-existent prepayment meter to the newer version.

The difference between a developing country (for example, Malaysia) and a developed country (UK) is that they are (supposed to be) more efficient and have better customer service. That is also the same argument behind the privatization of services but it seems like they have messed up everything here in the UK. Customer service is almost non-existent even though we have a number of companies to choose from.

Give me Tenaga Nasional anytime.

updated with extra info: 18 July '07

Life in the UK - an update

Today's 07-07-07. Nothing special but there's Live Earth going on as well as Wimbledon finals.

A few of my old friends back in Malaysia have been complaining that I have not been blogging about myself for quite sometime now. It's quite true but the fact is that I have nothing interesting happening in my life right now to blog about.

No! I still haven't started my PhD. I plan to do so this year when the next session starts at the University of Warwick. My wife has completed her upgrading and won't be attending any more classes. The only thing worrying me right now are the rumours that they are planning to increase the fees this year. The total fees alone are more than the cost of our apartment in Damansara, Malaysia.

No! Unlike what a lot of people seem to think, I am not sponsored by the Government of Malaysia. I resigned from my comfortable Government job last year to follow my wife here in the UK. That's why I get annoyed with a lot of Malaysian students who keep on complaining about the Malaysian Government at every chance they get, when they ARE SPONSORED BY the Malaysian Government. With all the work I am doing, trying to promote Malaysia here among the British and other foreigners, I sometimes feel that the Govt. should be sponsoring ME instead of all these ungrateful guys.

No! I haven't got a job as yet. I am either not qualified enough for the top positions and too qualified for the lower positions. The only options open to me now are working as a cleaner or in a factory doing hard manual labour. I have applied for jobs with a number of companies around here, including Ikea. In the meantime, I am blogging full time trying to 'cari duit' (searching for money). I am earning a bit but not enough to pay for my PhD fees. So right now we are surviving mostly on my wife's scholarship, which is just enough but we have to forgo the luxuries we were used to in Malaysia, including eating out and buying branded stuff.

Will blog more about myself when I have positive things to say.

Imposter using my name and email

Early in the morning today, blogger Chan Lilian also better known as 5xMom, left a comment on my previous post telling me that a spammer had left a political sensitive comment on her blog, using my name and email address. Lilian has already deleted it but according to her, it was a very long comment on why the guy supports the opposition, about various political parties, and why Malaysia has no future and blah blah blah.

I was really pissed off. This may be one reason that my e-mail address has been flagged as spam e-mail on more than once occasion. This includes a few times when I tried to leave comments on other people's blogs including LiewCF.

Who would do such a thing?

I suspect that this is the work of one guy who had left similar comments on my blog a few times and on occasion leaving as many as 7 comments on one post (with a totally unrelated topic). He/ she used different names but I saw that they were all from one IP address and had the same writing style. The last time he did that, I deleted all the posts and told him off. Maybe this pissed this guy off and he's doing this as revenge.

The spammer's IP address is 60.50.121.0 as recorded on Lilian's web site. My initial investigation shows that the person is from Petaling Jaya, Selangor, Malaysia.

Can anyone help me expose this sneaky, little racist ba$#@^d?

I say racist because even though he claims he is being discriminated against, he goes around making disparaging remarks against another race.

If I ever catch him, I am going kick his fat butt.

Tricked into holding a contest

Warning: This is a long post.

Some of you might recall that I had organised a Nitro T-shirt contest on my auto blog. It was not as successful as I had hoped it would and even though it received a fair bit of interest, there were no takers for it except for two bloggers who were also the winners by default.

That's when the problem started. the Dodge Nitro T-shirts were supposed to be sponsored but I totally lost contact with the sponsors (or they cut me off).

How did this saga start?

Well I was approached by a Corrie Zielinski from a company called New Media Strategies. I later found out that this online advertising and Marketing firm is based in Arlington, Virginia.

Given below is her first e-mail to me:

Hi Adam,

My name is Corrie Zielinski, and I just came across Auto Lah. I’m working with Dodge Nitro and have some t-shirts available for a contest. Would you be interested in running one? I think your site is great, and I’d love to work with you.

Thanks!

Corrie

I told her that I was interested and asked her to tell me a little bit more about the contest and what I would be required to do. This is her reply on Feb 22:

Hi Adam!

The contest process is pretty simple:

I provide you with the number of shirts I can make available to you, pictures of said shirts, and some additional picture assets you can use for the contest if you want. Then, we usually suggest a simple "enter to win" contest, where people email you and you can randomly pick a winner.
You send me the address, and I'll send the t-shirt to the winner or winners. That way, you don't have to pay for postage - we ship a LOT of stuff, so we have a pretty well honed system for getting stuff out the door quickly.

Does that sound good?

I told her what I planned to do and she wrote back on Feb 23:

Hey Adam!

That is the best idea - I love it!

I can give you one Dodge Red Long Sleeve T-Shirts and One Short Sleeve
Black "Can" T-Shirts. (If you look at the "Can" picture you'll totally
get why I call it that. I still can't figure out how they do it.)

I'd really appreciate it if you could include a link to official Dodge
site at (http://www.dodge.com/en/nitro/index.html). I'm also sending you
a link of a bunch of assets that we've collected from Dodge - pictures,
logos, magazine articles, etc. You're free to use whatever you want! The
asset links are available here: http://www.media-file.net/dodge/nitro/

Thank you so much, and let me know when the contest is live - I can't
wait to see it AND read the stories (have been personally drooling over
the Nitro since we get this project).

Thanks!
Corrie

The contest ended and on March 26 I informed Corrie about the results and that I had two winners.

I received the reply dated Mar 26 :

Corrie Zielinski

Hey adam - go ahead and get their addresses o we can get those sent. No worries on the parcipitation, it happens. I have no internet right now - thank god for blackberry!

Thanks, corrie
--------------------------
Sent from my BlackBerry Wireless Handheld

That was the last time I ever heard from her.

I obtained the addresses of the winners and sent them to her ... No acknowledgement! I had a bad feeling about that.

Then early this month, I learned that the winners hadn't received the t-shirts till date.

Sent Corrie another e-mail from an alternative e-mail address as I was afraid that the one sent from my Gmail might have landed in her spam filter ... No reply!

I then contacted the company through their website ... No reply! Sent email directly to them ... Still no reply!

Finally I realised that something was definitely wrong.

Searching on the net, I found out that a similar contest had ran on Kineda.com. On contacting Terry, the webmaster of the site,he informed me that he had had no problems with Corrie and

She delivered everything as promised.

I am not sure what happened. One thing is sure. I am never going to have a sponsored contest on my blogs again unless I have full control.

In the end, I had to send the winners Don and Doris a T-shirt each from my own online store.

Let this be a warning to all bloggers out there.

UPDATE:
I am really happy to announce that everything turned out great in the end. The whole fiasco was due to e-mail problems.

Tags: Contest Corrie Zielinski Dodge Nitro New Media Strategies Scam