Broken/Stukkend 1 : in QLD's “captial” city

A colleague has introduced me to Seth Godin's blog. Godin is a best-selling author and speaker and used to blog under the slogan This Is Broken about disasters in customer service and the customer experience. I have decided to collect a few examples of my own, in an occasional series.


Exhibit 1 is from the website of the Watermark Hotel in Brisbane (archived version at http://backupurl.com/x3wwqm). Big U has been trying to book me a room in Brisbane and has finally uncovered this gem, at a mere R1 500,00 (about US$200) per night, as opposed to the hotel's own website special of R720. This qualifies as a big success, incidentally, because Big U's initial offer was R4 000,00 per night in the South Bank, in a 4 star hotel. The typo (?) has been on the website for days now. The accolade "inspired 4 star" almost certainly means that the hotel is only aspiring to 4 stars, and clearly not with a surfeit of determination.

Toiletpapier-inspekteurs gebruik perforasies

Daar word vandag op Fin24.com dat here van die SABS by vervaardigers van verdagte toiletpapier aan die Wesrand. 'n Fabriek vervaardig blykbaar rolle wat te min papier op het, en boonop ontbreek die perforasies. Volgens die woordvoerder van die SABS

"Perforations allowed the paper to be easily torn and also helped the regulator to measure it."

Is dit net ek wat die gedagte aan 'n kantoor in Pretoria, waar die here ernstig sit en blokkies tel - met behulp van die perforasies - belaglik vind? Kan mense nie 'n toiletrol optel en voel of dit lig is al dan nie?

Bron(ne)

SA toilet paper 'too short' http://www.fin24.com/articles/default/display_article.aspx?ArticleId=1518-1786_2527828 [toegang op 2009-06-08]

SMS agter die stuur

Die koerant Rapport berig afgelope naweek oor die verminderde bestuursvermoë van diegene wat SMS in die kar. Volgens dié blad erken amper 20% van bestuurders dat hulle SMSe stuur op die pad. Ek doen dit soms self alhoewel ek dit natuurlik probeer vermy. Indien die selfoon lui terwyl ek bestuur, antwoord ek - as 'n reël - ook. Die rede is eenvoudig dat Suid-Afrika 'n gevaarlike plek is en 'n mens nie kan weet wanneer jy 'n noodoproep gaan ontvang nie. Ek twyfel of dít méér gevaarlik is as om te rook terwyl 'n mens bestuur.

Waarom SMS mense dan so baie uit die kar? Eerstens, vir dieselfde rede dat mense buite die kar so baie SMS - die koste van selfoonoproepe in SA is uitermate hoog. Tweedens, selfs al word/is dit onwettig om te SMS terwyl 'n mens bestuur, is dit 'n aktiwiteit wat baie maklike vir verkeerspolisie weggesteek kan word of onderbreek kan word indien 'n beampte verskyn. Die wetgewing wat die praat op selfone in die kar verbied, het dus 'n teenwerkende en onbedoelde effek - mense SMS nou meer agter die stuur. My ervaring dag-tot-dag in die verkeer het in iedere geval lankal gesuggereer dat selfoonpraat nie die grootse gevaarfaktor op die pad is nie...

In 'n ideale wêreld sal alle motors se klanktoestelle outomaties aan die bestuurder se selfoon koppel, soos 'n vriendin van my se oulike nuwe Mercedes (nee - sy is nie in die politiek nie!) doen. Maar ons is nie in Utopia nie en die meeste mense moet kies tussen 'n nuwe klankstelsel en nuwe bande. Ek hoop hulle kies die bande.

Bron(ne)

Studie oor foon in kar skok http://jv.news24.com/Rapport/Suid-Afrika/0,,752-2460_2524591,00.html [toegang op 2009-06-04]

BigU's dumb-A DNS

Most of the servers of BigU have been unreachable since this afternoon. Thank gods for Google's cache... By this evening it all got too much for me and I decided to check the WHOIS information at http://www.ac.za/ to get some information about the setup. This is what I found out.

1. The contact e-mail addresses of the administrators are in the domain which they administer. Google is brave enough to do this, but CNN is not.
   
2. All the nameservers are on BigU campuses. Ditto re Google and CNN.
   

At least a neighbouring large residential university has had the sense to specify a nameserver in the far-off Eastern Cape. BigU is, however, ignoring the stipulation

[A]t least one secondary name server must be on a different network from the primary server

on the registration form. In my understanding, this means that a problem with the nameservers on the BigU campus will make the entire BigU network inaccessible, except by IP address. In any case, the problem actually appears to be worse because the servers cannot be reached by IP address either... Ouch. If I remember correctly, they are in the examination period.

Tidying up GMail IMAP

I am one of those backward souls still using a standalone e-mail client (Mozilla Thunderbird) for most of my e-mail reading and sending. My three main reasons are:

1. good Afrikaans localisation in Thunderbird, which GMail still lacks;
2. using a standard protocol for offline copies, allowing me easy offline access (which I know GMail now kind-of has); and
   
3. the range of add-ons for Thunderbird, with some nifty productivity tools.

That said, GMail is the subject of constant improvement and I am a big fan of the nice new themes and the option "Include original attachments" which has recently appeared and often switch to the GMail interface just to use the latter.

GMail has also recently made it possible to select which labels (hence, folders) are visible to the IMAP server. Although one could also manage this using the IMAP client's Subscribe feature, I like the clean look that is now automatically there when I use any IMAP client to access my GMail inbox. This feature requires (free) subscription to the GMail "Lab features".