Category Archives: Personal

Some jottings which relate to my life and worries…

The Bengali bits on Orkut seem to be off-key

It says আমার স্ক্র্যাপবুক and স্ক্র্যাপবই to mean the same thing for more fun check this. And of course … সংকেত: কাকে আপনি জানেন? আরও সার্চ অপশনগুলির জন্য সার্চ বক্সে বিষয়টি টাইপ করুন অথবা পাশের বির্বধিত কাঁচে ক্লিক করুন। They need to have a bugzilla with immediate effect.

Dell’s customer service hell

Sayamindu writes about how he’s part of the Dell Customer Service hell. Having been there and faced that, I can only have empathy for him. If anyone knows someone-who-matters at Dell, please pass on the message that “customer service representatives are not supposed to slam down calls with a curt “we will tell you when your machine is being built” irrespective of the blog.

@home does not make one feel “at home”

Store in concern is @home

Incident 02:

1. Order # 6114, delivery assured for 23rd Aug 2007
2. On 23rd, delivery time confirmed at 1308 to be between 1500 and 1600
3. At 1749, the delivery time changed to 1900
4. At 1920, the delivery time changed again to 2000
5. Consignment turns up at 2020

Between steps 2 and 4 above, I get to listen to:

+ Delivery got stuck because of traffic snarl on road
+ Delivery person does not have cell phone ie means of contact
+ Delivery person and store have been trying to reach me for 45 mins
+ Delivery person has just confirmed to store about delivery in 10 mins

Contradictory statements topped by very rude post-sales handling

Incident 01:

1. Orders SOMH001002293 and SOM001002292, delivery assured for 26th November 2006 at 1230
2. Assured that time will be confirmed by 1100
3. At 1130, in response to a call delivery confirmed by 1330
4. Till 1600, no one calls up to provide delivery status
5. At 1650, the store manager assures a call back in 5 mins
6. Store manager never does call back
7. The consignment arrives post 1700

The shop is good, but the post-sales behaviour is so off-track it really does not make sense to be a repeat customer.

UPDATE: Here is how the shelf looks now. By the way, barring a really off-key sorry @home never did revert.

“Clear”trip dot com (pun intended)

Sometime back I was telling all those who cared to listen that the Calendar might be the single most elegant piece of UI improvement that Cleartrip has put in place. Sadly, I guess they are failing to get some other bits in place eg. the confusion between Madras and Chennai (the location selector has Madras whereas the results has Chennai) and the flights on the Calendar not getting reflected on the trip selection bits. The site has become noticeably slow in churning out the results (or is it due to the readability of the inserted advertisement while the results page loads ?). In short, I don’t think I am going to use the site even to check the options of which are the flights available till they get some improvements in place.

It really was too good to be true…

I had written earlier about how online shopping does make my book purchases easy. Well, it was too good to be true anyway. I’d pre-ordered (like many others) last book in the Harry Potter series with the fond notion of getting it either on the 21st or on 22nd of July 2007. 22nd July was a Sunday when this year began, so I’d have guessed that the folks at the online bookstore factored that in when promising delivery. Today I get a mail saying “If you are not located in any of in any of the following cities : Delhi, Mumbai, Bangalore, Chennai, Kolkatta, Ahmedabad ,Cochin, Hyderabad: your book will reach latest by 24 July 2007 . All books were shipped on 21 July , however there is transit time of 2-3 days (excluding Sunday)“. It does suck big time when you cannot watch television since some m0r0n news channels are actually divulging the bits of the story and you are breathlessly awaiting the arrival of a book which now seems to be delayed all the more.

UPDATE: They claim to have been overwhelmed by over 15000 pre-ordered books, but managed to deliver it albeit a day late.

Books and stuff…

Finished reading A Long Way Gone – normally I am a very fast reader, but this book just holds you on to each page and makes you think over what is written. Highly recommended. Currently on the second reading of Strange Pilgrims and All Quiet on the Western Front. This does mean that my “ToRead” book list has become very short with only 3 books read to be gone through. For a month’s worth of reading it has been a nice trot.