I am a HUGE fan of deal sites. This is how I manage to be out virtually every night and still pay off my mortgage… But the ‘hidden’ conditions really annoy me.

The other day, my sister and I bought vouchers for Tulsi, our favorite Friday lunch joint. The vouchers specified they weren’t to be used in conjunction with any other deal.

No worries.

Except, when we arrived, they said we couldn’t use the vouchers because their entire lunch menu was a ‘special’ (It’s the same every week). Fair enough(?). We asked to see their non-special lunch menu. They don’t have one.

So after giving up on that, we said ok, we’ll pay full price for the lunch and use the voucher for the absolutely-no-way-its-on-a-special wine. Which led to a frosty reception when paying, and not so much a fight, but we definitely had to convince them to let us use our voucher.

It appears, what they meant was the vouchers were for DINNER only. However, they failed to let us know that at any stage.

This left us feeling like the whole thing was a bit disappointing. It would have even been better if they were free voucher, but we paid for those puppies, and when you pay for something in good faith, it’s pretty bad to be made to fight to use it!

So, being good customers of Grab One, we both wrote to them about our experience (we didn’t know each other was writing). I heard back once, and then they went silent. Sarah was basically brushed off.

It really annoys me.

All I asked was that in future they make sure the specify the conditions on the vouchers, so everyone knows where they stand. It seemed reasonable to request that, especially because at the time we genuinely believed it was an oversight.

There response (or lack thereof) makes me wonder if sites like Grab One survive on the fact that a large portion of the vouchers they sell are never redeemed, and that the people who buy them are too embarrassed to fight to be able to use them in case they come across as ‘cheap’.

Not the best or most ethical business model, if you ask me.

This morning, I took in my little old car for a warrent. As per usual, I left it to the last possible moment, so when it failed for busted tyres and busted brake hoses.

So, I set about getting things fixed.

Thank goodness that despite my complete lack of knowledge about cars, I have a 24/7 advisor in the form of my dad, so I could quickly call him to get a rough idea of how much it SHOULD cost to fix a break hose.

He said roughly $150, give or take.

The first Mechanic quoted be $200, but couldn’t lock that down, they were also located quite a way from work, so I moseyed on.
The second shot up to $270.
The third turned out to be a towbar place NOT a mechanic (my fault, I rocked up on the basis it looked like a mechanic)
The fourth was a chain store: Pitt Stop.
They took my car, promised me to do a free break check, then call me with a quote. They also said they’d complete the job and take it back to the warrent place to finish that up.
They rang 10 minutes later with a fixed quote for $160.

When you are a dumb girl in regards to cars, you quickly learn that some mechanics take one look at you and pluck a number out of the air on the basis, they know, you don’t know how much it costs.

I remember once being quoted $60 for a $5 lightbulb. Thank goodness, I had, once again checked with dad before heading around.

In my opinion, it’s borderline criminal to overcharge so massively, however not much can be done about that… But despite the pain and time off work, it was a good lesson in ensuring you know a little about cars when you have one.

I watched the Facebook movie. I’m not sure how ‘true to life’ it was, but I one thing I loved was the focus on how important it is to have something ‘cool’. We talk about ‘building buzz’ and all these other marketing, techie terms for ‘cool’, but it was funny to realise, that at the end of the day, the ONLY thing that matters in a successful web app is how cool it is.

I wonder if that’s actually why the internet took off – it inspired a bunch of people who weren’t traditionally ‘cool’ to create stuff that would send their cool factor to the stratosphere – and indeed being cool seems to be a fundamental reason why we now have Facebook, which is even more funny, given that the main reason people use it is to show off how cool they are.

This realisation was was quickly followed by hearing about how they are now playing Mozart in some of the dodgy areas of Christchurch – apparently the sound is so disgusting to the dregs of society, they move on and stop committing crimes in the area.

This tactic seems to have been wildly successful in ‘un-cooling’ the area significantly enough to massively impact behavior, in much the same way as the founders of Facebook believed ads would affect the site.

I’m not sure what the lesson is here, but it feels like there’s something in that.

I HATE Vodafone as a general rule.

Last night I hated them even more when their bung billing system kept charging me the wrong amount… Which meant that even though I’d been merrily paying, assuming they’d tell me the RIGHT amount to pay, I was CUT OFF FROM THE WORLD.

I was fuming this morning, and rang up demanding to pay the right amount, get put back on AND get a discount (the last part was just me being angry, I knew I had no hope).

She didn’t go as far as apologising for the inconvenience and DID try to explain that it was on my head to someone ring every month, wait on hold for as long as necessary and grill the customer service person for the correct amount until they had sorted out their systems…

BUT

I think (from what I heard in between falling in a dead faint from shock) she wiped my entire next bill.

Thanks Vodafone. I think it’s outrageous that yo are aware you have shoddy systems and STILL assume your customer is at fault, but at least this time the poor weary customer support person (who I imagine has spent the past few weeks of her life being screamed at) did something reasonably nice.

About 6 months ago, I wrote about customers who were refusing to pay.

What a way to start the year, it really made life hard and even harder because they not only DIDN’T pay up, they also tried to lay the blame on me.

And I’m one of those people who has weird guilt complexes about almost everything (our building’s fire alarm went off at 4.45am the other day, and despite the fact I’d been asleep for hours, my first thought was that the whole thing was my fault and I’d burned the building down). It’s really hard for me to listen to people tell me something is my fault, without automatically shouldering the blame and assuming they are right.

But in this case, after hours/weeks/months of heartache, searching and searching through conversations and signoffs and milestones, I realised that these slime bags didn’t even make sense.

The other day I experienced a similar situation, where someone tried to back out of a project they’d agreed to. The excuses, once again, made no sense to me, but still, I felt awful and offered to start from scratch and wipe the current fees. It quickly became apparent that they’d just changed their minds and employed a pretty unethical way of trying to weasel out of a contract. My guilt complex really doesn’t help these situations, nor does my desire to leave every customer happy…

But this year has been hard.

And this year I have learned to back myself.

So c’mon you slime bags, I now know for certain you are out there, sliming your way into peoples lives. I’m onto you, I’m not scared of you and I’m certainly not going to deal with you then let you get away with screwing me over without a fight.

Oh the ways life shapes your personality…

I’ve been a little distracted by Paul Henry recently, which may be why I found myself reading the first weekend newspaper I’ve read in a year or so, and all excited about an article about how Paul Henry’s suspension/resignation proved that we need to look into the role of a State Broadcaster.

The argument is that TVNZ is doing a bad job as a State Broadcaster because they make a profit (actually this is only the argument of those who KNEW they make a profit, the rest of NZ is still up in arms that they funded Paul Henry with their taxpayer dollars – which we don’t). The profit being bad because their drive to GET the profit means that they are broadcasting people and topics that aren’t in the ‘interests of us as a society’ – that they are behaving like any other corporate TV channel that’s all about ratings and advertising revenue and not about ‘Quality Programming’.

It strikes me that TV is one of the very few things that Government is involved in that actually does follow the same path as it would in an open market and the fact that there is a SOE that MAKES money is a GOOD thing and not a reason to get rid of it ASAP.

I don’t buy the argument that TVNZ is failing because it’s popular. I think there is room for programming that interests very few of us (which is why no one who is concerned about profit would bother to make it), but lets be honest, the need for that programming is inherently limited. You can’t hold TVNZ responsible for the fact the rest of us would rather watch Paul Henry wax lyrical about anything offensive (and this is very much proven by the fact his biggest haters seems to always know exactly what he said, when) than drink our cups of tea in front of hideously boring yet apparently quality programs. If anything it’s OUR responsibility for not being the kind of people who would watch programs that are educational and informative than Survivor, NZ’s Next Top Model etc etc.

Given my new philosophy on life post Commonwealth Games, I’m all about winners and have a major sensitivity to anything that looks, sounds and smells like New Zealanders trying to pull down those who succeed and make excuses for those who don’t. How often do we have SOEs that perform better than private companies? I think it’s awesome.

We’ve got a limited amount of public funds – if TVNZ is a method of getting more, so that we can fund healthcare, schools and a bunch of other things that make us such a brilliant country to live in, then GOOD ON THEM. I’d much prefer that than they deliberately aim to lose money and waste whatever funding they get on programs that no one will watch.

Paul Henry aside (because he’s managed to become one person who has completely divided us as a nation), we should be shouting our State Broadcaster’s success from the rooftops.

As I cashed in on my $20 voucher at Farmers Department store yesterday, and struggled to find my Farmers Beauty Club Card in amongst all the other Fly Buys, One Crad, Air New Zealand Airpoints Visa, Civic Video Stamp Card, Sushi Stamp Card etc etc cards… I started to wonder if I am an addict!

I think loyalty cards were a great idea, they may even work for some people – but when you find that you have signed up for pretty much everything, you start to realise you are no more loyal to any one company than you were before they all offered you Loyalty cards. You spread your points so thin they hardly make a dent in the number required to actually GET anything.

Im all in on my Air New Zealand Air Points Visa and I WAS a big fan of Fly Buys until I spent them all on a stupid woman’s magazine subscription and now have to save for like 5 years before i can get anything else and the gloss has sort of worn off.

Hmmm….

One thing you get a lot in (well I assume) any industry, is those customers who think they automatically have to bully you into giving them what they want… Or they wont get it.

I HATE dealing with people like that, who kick up a stink as soon as they want something so they get to the front of the queue.

If we’ve done something wrong, we will fix it as soon as possible, REGARDLESS of how we are treated, but if you are pleasant, you might just get in slightly before the total jerk (this, of course is more the case if we are responding to a request rather than an issue). I like this postcard from Postsecret, it goes to show that being polite and pleasant pays off (at least when it comes to ice cream :)).

I started writing that and then changed my mind a little.

Just a little.

Why is it that every time I want to buy music, it’s ONLY available in the US store???

I totally get why people download music illegally. You’re being all up on the moral high ground re: not being a criminal, and then shebam! You are told the only way to acquire the thing you want is by theft.

Plus, if I search for songs WITHIN itunes, it never find them, I have to do a Google search, then click through.

As a side note, I’m not sold on whether inputting your credit card details once and then purchasing willy nilly is a good or bad idea?

If I ever needed a reminder that I am not meant to go on holiday, it came in Queenstown. It seems like all the major disasters happen while I am away (generally in the area the disaster hits), I am starting to think the world is sending me a message that I should be chained to my desk!

I wont dwell on the earthquake(s) because I imagine in my absence the topic has been analysed to the minute detail, but we were thinking of all of you who were affected, and also the friends and family of everyone who was on that skydiving flight. What a tragedy.

One thing that did strike me though, is that businesses are getting much better at recognising that events like this are a great opportunity to generate some good PR while giving some pretty needed relief to people who could really use it.

Not only do I LOVE Air New Zealand’s quirky safety videos (hilarious and practical – these are the only safety briefings that seem to have all eyes glued to them), I love how they were quick to ensure the family of the Australian victim of the Skydiving crash knew they had free tickets to get here, and their son would be flown back to them for free too. Small comfort in a horrific time, but AirNZ deserve all the buzz they get from this act. That’s the kind of people we are in New Zealand, and since we largely own Air NZ, it’s great they reflect this with gusto.

Powershop quickly added a $19.95 Power and Love package to their site to help ease the financial burden to Christchurch residents and GrabOne started a $5 donation ‘deal’ which had already had about 6,200 donors (and probably a lot of buzz).

None of these guys give the impression of ‘cashing in’ on the disaster… a testament to their strong brands that make them already well known as the kind of companies that understand their customers and look after them. It’s hard to gauge how much impact social media and the like has on a company’s willingness to jump on board and help the relief effort, but it’s great to see genuine helpfulness generating great word of mouth without the need for spin doctors and PR reps.