the(new)mediaslut

It seems like food establishments, small and big, are allergic to complains from their paying customers.

Local blogger Platoz complained about a small Ayam Penyat food stall at NTU and the owner allegedly “demanded” that Platoz stop complaining about his dish.

NTU Ayam Penyet stall owner asked me to stop criticizing him | Monk philosophy on everything under the sun via kwout

Privé, a more high end resturant off Keppel island, also decided to delete a comment from its Facebook community when a customer decided to use it to complain her displeasure at the service of the staff during a birthday dinner celebration.

Some might argue that Privé owns the Facebook group so it is in their prerogative  to delete comments that they don’t feel is right for the group.

That isn’t the point of this post.

Both food establishments have decided that the best way of addressing a complain is to take down the posts.

While they have erased the unhappiness in the short term, the long term damage is done.

Asking a blogger to take down a negative post or erasing a bad Wall comment shows that the establishments would rather sweep the damages under the carpet.

They forget that such actions can be easily propagated  with the Web2.0 tools that themselves hope to use to market their food offerings.

Their actions also creates a perception that they above their customers. In simple words, arrogance.

Would you want to part your money being served by service that is being portrayed as arrogant?

This blogger believes the two complainers are only looking for the two establishments to acknowledge their weakness, apologise for the bad service and improve their offerings.

Not a slammed door in their face.

If you think saying sorry is a sign of weakness, think again.

Imagine if the respond to the both parties was as follows:

We would like to apologise for the bad services experienced during your visit to our food establishment.

We have taken the necessary actions to look at how we can improve our services or food ensure your next experience at our food establishment on your next visit.

Again, please accept our apologies for the incident.

Would you want to visit the food establishment again?

This is what happens if you run a company and don’t use any input from Public Relations professionals.

Seriously, had the marketing department or management, where doubtless this poorly crafted idea came from, ran this through the PR department, it would not have gone public since PR guys usually have more common sense since they are thinking about the company’s relationship and reputation with customers.

The litmus test is quite simple: How would YOU feel if someone did that to you, penny pinching their way into your wallet?

Would YOU pay extra to get rid of the crap a computer company put in there in the first place?

I sometimes wonder if the way we do business nowadays, with the constant requirement of annual growth, is the proper way of doing business. Constant growth, with planetary resources not efficiently managed, is just not sustainable.

Never mind that Sony QUICKLY CAVED to customer outrage and canceled the charge, the damage is already done. Plus, if this happened the first time, Sony could easily say “sorry” and people would forget. But many still remember the CD rootkit fiasco, the activist surveillance issue and of course, the worldwide battery recalls. Don’t believe me? Check out Sony’s Wiki page and all the links to its sources and judge for yourself.

The old way of doing business is dead.

Now, corporations have a bigger responsibility to their customers, partners, suppliers, communities and environment, not just increasing shareholder value at any cost. And that means listening to some common sense.

You may heard the term from print to screen where books are turned into movies and it seems journalists from Singapore’s mainstream media are looking at social media for their source of the story.

It is, therefore, even more important for the brand protectors, like the PR and the corporate comms, to constantly be aware of the going ons of the social media scene.

It all started with postings on two SPH forums at omy.sg and asiaone.com about how the forum member won her case against Nokia to refund her the full amount of a Nokia phone which she bought stopped working after a few days.

Unable to get the mobile phone repair, the forum member asked for a refund and got it through Singapore’s Small Claims Tribunal.

However, when the forum member called Nokia to check on the refund, Nokia office replied they did not receive any notice from the Small Claims Tribunal.

So what did the forum member do?

She got the courts to call in the Repo Man.

Wrote XiaoYun at OMY.sg on Feb 18 2008,

I then applied for WSS (Writ of Seizure and Sale) the next day. An appointment date was scheduled on 11 Feb 2008.

I accompany the bailiff officer to Nokia HQ. Nokia was then given two options by the bailiff officer. One was to make settlement and the other one was let the bailiff officer to sticker their movable assets.

They finally woke up and agree to make payment. By then, they got to pay $1,018.43 instead of $778.

The forum post ended in Singapore’s popular blog aggregation site, Tomorrow.sg on Feb 22, 2008.

The Straits Times posted a teaser on its online site today to highlight that the Nokia incident will hit the pages of the print papers on Feb 25, 2008, with the headline “Nokia forced to cough up more than $1,000 over faulty phone“.

Wrote Alfred Siew of The Straits Times,

EARLIER this month, Ms Tan Geok Hoon marched into Nokia’s office, brandishing court documents and threatening to seize the assests of the cell-phone giant.

A bailiff stood at the side of the 43-year-old sales manager, ready to reposess the company’s things.

Ms Tan was enforcing a small claims court decision that ordered the world’s largest cellphone maker to pay her $778 for a faulty cellphone she bought last year.

The moment, which Ms Tan recalled recently, marked the culmination of a seven- month David-versus-Goliath battle.

The story of one woman’s fight against a mighty firm made its rounds in several online forums last week, casting the spotlight on how the world’s top phone maker handled unhappy customers.

This shows that the mainstream media are reading forums and blogs for a story source and I believed this isn’t the first time that it has happened.

However, I went through Nokia.com.sg Press Center and failed to find any official respond to the incident.

Neither could I find any Nokia response in the forums.

The question here for Nokia is that while the company promotes its mobile phones as a blogging tool, what type of respond mechanism does the company have when it comes to addressing the social media scene?

Or do they wait for it to be blown up in the mainstream media before they respond to them?

I had to take the taxi yesterday because I was carry a large luggage to the bus terminal for my weekend trip to Kuala Lumpur.

It was one of those rare trips that I boarded a taxi where the driver managed to strike a conversation with me.

In a mix of Mandarin and Hokkien, we conversed about the recent debate about the amount a taxi driver’s daily earnings of SGD318 as announced by Raymond Lim, Minister of State for Transport, in a recent Parliament sitting.

The Today newspaper ran a story how netizens of an Internet forum calculated that the daily takings would total SGD9858 a month.

(Though the Singapore papers are reluctant to give credit to bloggers, Jean of the Simply Jean blog should be credited for her calculations of the monthly earnings.)

I highlighted that paper also clarified that ComfortDelgro corrected its statement and said the SGD318 earned were calculated based on two shifts.

Upon hearing the monthly earnings and ComfortDelgro, the taxi driver roared with uncontrollable laughter and I almost became an accident statistic if the driver didn’t gather composure quickly.

The taxi driver then highlighted that because the new taxi fares have created an over supply of taxi drivers during the peak hours and lower demand, some taxi drivers have taken to make use of the peak hours as a rest period.

The new peak hour surcharges meant taxi drivers get to earn an extra 30% on top of a fixed surcharge.

He highlighted that passengers arn’t stupid. Many has adjusted their timings to take taxi before or after the peak period, thus saving on the extra surcharges.

On the bus to Kuala Lumpur, this conversation got me thinking about Comfort Delgro and how they got into the mess.

Wrote The Straits Times on Jan 22, 2008,

While some cabbies have complained that passengers are not flagging taxis, Mr Lim said their earnings have however gone up.

Based on figures provided by ComfortDelGro, Singapore’s biggest taxi operator, cabbies are pocketing about $11 more a day, earning about $318.

Mr Lim was responding to questions from MP for Tampines GRC Ms Irene Ng and MP for Tanjong Pagar GRC Mr Baey Yam Keng in Parliament.

Technically, a day is made up two shifts, so earnings of SGD318 was correct.

But the statement given by Mr Raymond Lim made it sound as if one taxi driver earned SGD318 per day.

Unless ComfortDelgro has started to hire Cylons as taxi drivers (which maybe something they have not announced), then it would be possible for a taxi drivers to drive two shifts a day for 365 days a year.

Maybe there was a request by the Land Transport Authority to ComfortDelgro for some figures.

An overzealous member of ComfortDelgro might have taken the figures and then passed it to the authorities without thinking of the consequences of the wordings.

Based on this incident, it would be very difficult for readers to believe whatever figures that ComfortDelgro provides to the media or the authorities.

The best way to do it now is via an external auditor to provide figures from this taxi operator.

Another authority that will be caught playing the number games will most likely by IDA in April 2008 when the number of Internet users in Singapore will drop by a cool 1 million users. Then again, the fault has been pointed at Singtel for providing such figures to the authorities.

The Monday morning of Jan 21, 2008, must have been one hell of a morning for those staying between Pasir Ris and Tanah Merah as the SMRT train service between these stations of the same name was halted because of a “track fault”.

Through the service disruption, zm the studious blogger questioned SMRT’s corporate communications procedures when it came to crisis management.

(pictures gathered from Hardwarezone)
Wrote zm,

non-transparency on cause of service disruption. On the screens at the MRT station, i only knew there was a DISRUPTION from PSR to TNM. What’s the fault? Why is SMRT always so shy to tell commuters of the actual problem?

Is it important to tell commuters the reason for the disruption?

Yes. It isn’t because the commuters are a bunch of busy people, but a reason would have provided them the necessary information to make decisions on whether to wait for disruption or look at alternative transportation.

Did somebody committed suicide again by jumping onto the train tracks? Did a train run off a track? If commuters knew that this was a problem, they would know it would take awhile for train service to resume so it would be better to look for alternatives.

I believe SMRT engages in many emergency drills to prepare the staff for, well, emergency, but are their corporate comms department also tested during these drills?

During such emergencies or crisis, the corporate communications shouldn’t be just preparing a speech for a spokesperson, but they should look at how to disseminate such disruption to the public.

There a few ways to do. The fastest way is to deploy a team at the affected stations to inform incoming commuters that there is a train disruption and it might take awhile for regular service to resume.

According to some reports, there were only signs that say train service is disrupted.

During such crisis, commuters want to speak to humans to understand the situation, not robots or machines!

The next step is to send out a note to radio stations to make an announcement that train services are disrupted between station A and B.

Putting your crisis management procedures in a drill will also highlight some of the holes that needs plugging.

Be honest and upfront in a crisis. Don’t shy away from the problem as it will be made as if you have something to hide. which then ends up in speculation and rumour mongering about the cause of the crisis.

Cheap doesn’t always mean good.

That’s what about 200 Tiger Airways passengers found out on Dec 7, 2007.

Thanks to Traumatised by Tiger for the YouTube Video.Seriously, what are the communication procedures that Tiger Airways have for customers in case of delays? How do they empower their staff to handle such situations like this delay?

Do they have one in the first place?

Now that Tiger Airways are allowed to fly to Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia in February 08, is a 45 mins flight going to be extended into a 5-hour wait? The same time that is needed to travel to the Malaysian capital by bus?

Sorry, Tiger. I am sticking to the 5-hour bus rides.

It was meant to be a light-hearted apology from Dreamhost when the hosting company accidentally overcharged their clients a total of USD7.5 million.

Dreamhost made used of a Homer Simpson image to apologise for their mistake and continued the post joking about it.

Wrote Dreamhost,

Hello.. how’s your morning going?

I hope it’s been a little better than mine.

We had a teensy eensy weensy little billing error last night… my first clue something was up when I saw this morning’s daily billing report (so far): $7,500,000.

It turns out due to my excessively fat fingers, nearly every one of our customers has been seriously over-billed in the last 12 hours.

I bet when you read this part of the last newsletter:

4. New Office!

Another important thing I’ve been doing instead of writing newsletters is looking out the window of our NEW OFFICE:

http://blog.dreamhost.com/2007/12/21/were-so-high-right-now-you-dont-even-know

If your next web hosting bill from us is mysteriously tripled, now you know why.

.. you thought it was a joke!

Ha, the joke is on you! I guess. Um, okay, no, not really, I’m sorry.

A few clients of Dreamhost accepted the method of apology, but a majority of them, especially those with other business clients, felt it is very wrong for Dreamhost to joke about such a mistake.

Wrote Jeremy,

Josh - it is time you realized when the light jokey style in which you run this business is NOT the appropriate tone. Any of us involved in running a business knows when you approach your customers with a serious tone. Your customers are taking that tone with you; Time to step up and be serious and act like your company depends on it. I think it does.

Wrote  Randall Bennett,

Please, show some genuine concern for your customers. Sure, you screwed up, but I don’t see any sort of genuine concern other than the $7,500,000 in credit card debt you accidentally set off.

The joking tone works for some errors, but how bout some actual concern for your customers instead.

Here’s a sample.

“Wow. Seriously, we made a gigantic mistake. Just to make it right, we’re going to…” and then somehow create a conciliatory tone. Otherwise, it just sounds like you’re mocking us.

Humor might help lighten the situation, but it has to be used sparringly and rarely especially if dealing with a crisis.

If you want to start an apology with a joke, do it quickly then take a serious tone about it.

Texts are emotionless and it can be read differently as intended by the writer.

ST701.com exposed a few hundred job seekers’ email addresses today when a job alert from their mail server was send out in the evening.

I wonder if ST701.com really need to send their emailers on a one day course to find out the difference and importance of BCC and CC.

Don’t they ever learn?

From the ST701.com email,

Delivered-To: xxx@gmail.com

Received: by 10.114.57.7 with SMTP id f7cs446349waa;

        Wed, 16 Jan 2008 07:36:13 -0800 (PST)

Received: by 10.114.112.1 with SMTP id k1mr1080919wac.24.1200497772331;

        Wed, 16 Jan 2008 07:36:12 -0800 (PST)

Return-Path: <ops@job.st701.com>

Received: from job.st701.com ([202.176.207.131])

        by mx.google.com with ESMTP id

       Wed, 16 Jan 2008 07:36:12 -0800 (PST)

Received-SPF: neutral (google.com: 202.176.xxx.xxx is neither permitted nor denied by best guess record for domain of ops@job.st701.com)

Authentication-Results: mx.google.com; spf=neutral (google.com: is neither permitted nor denied by best guess record for

 domain of ops@job.st701.com) smtp.mail=ops@job.st701.com

Received: from rmasia04 ([10.10.10.108]) by job.st701.com with Microsoft SMTPSVC(6.0.3790.3959);

  Wed, 16 Jan 2008 23:31:41 +0800

thread-index: AchYVOTQkjmuHUyPRJW/EBKK96gGJQ==

Thread-Topic:       Job alert from ST701

Reply-To: <ops@job.st701.com>

From: "ST701 Jobs" <ops@job.st701.com>

Sender: "ST701 Jobs" <ops@job.st701.com>

To: <noreply@bcc-please-do-not-reply.lan>

Cc: ....<melvynxxx@yahoo.com.sg>,

 <maggiexx@gmail.com>,

 <sweexx@singnet.com.sg>,

 <ramesxx4@yahoo.com>,

 <dcyntxx@163.com>,

 <brianxx@yahoo.com.sg>,

 <henrxxhotmail.com>,

 <y_ailinxx@yahoo.com.sg>,

 <whyloxx@hotmail.com>,

 <xxx@snpcorp.com>,

 <krisxyahoo.com.sg>,

 <shxow@yahoo.com.sg>,

 <jexxxx1@yahoo.com>,

 <kevxxxxahoo.com.sg>,

A group of under 14-year-olds in Perth were waiting for TR717 flight to Singapore for a series of friendly football matches.

It could have their first time ever traveling overseas on an airplane.

Unfortunately, Tiger Airways flight TR717 was postponed because “the captain became concerned about his crew working overtime“.

What do you think the type of image these 14-year-olds would have have Tiger Airways now and when they grow older?

I scanned through all the Australian online publications and while a Tiger Airways spokesperson came out to explain why the flight was delay, there were no apologies and remedies in the statements made.

Here’s a sample.

Wrote news.com.au,

“The captain had a look at the time sheets of the crew and decided to postpone the flight because he was concerned they would work out of hours on the return leg,” Tiger spokesman Matt Hobbs said.

“I’m not sure why on this particular flight they thought they might go out of hours, but we stand by our pilots.”

There’s the reason and yes, I would rather be on the postponed flight then one being flew by pilots who did not have their mandatory rest periods.

Matt Hobbs might have apologised in making his statement, but it was not reflected in any of the Australian publications.

I tried searching Tiger Airways website and I couldn’t even find a page for press releases. Was there an apology from Tiger Airways about the delay?

How about a statement from Tiger Airways to provide a remedy that such delays do not happen again?

Without a remedy in place, are delays due to scheduling problems still a high possibility with Tiger Airways?

If that questions linger in the customer, how confident would the customer be to book a flight again with Tiger Airways.

The three Rs of crisis communication as stated in the book “Drop the pink elephant” is applicable to companies, big or small, that need to handle a crisis.

But you might ask, “Would an apology be an admission of guilt? A sign of weakness?”

The book also explained that it actually will have opposite effect.

On the other hand, apologising is a sign of strength, humbling the corporation to their level of the customers and trying to understand their frustration.

Delayed flights can cause a lot of frustration. Money can’t solve everything and if the company feels that refund is all that is needed to appease their customers, then a rethink of their crisis communications strategy is necessary.

It seems Patricia Mok had something to say about Canon’s after sales service.

From The Shopping Diva:

Now– spoilted!! Last nite went to a glamorous wedding dinner at four seasons……one silly tai tai spilled a whole glass of white wine into my camera and the worse part…..the len is facing up!!! Which means=== water had sipped in and corroded the inner mechanism!!! And i had called up canon to check if can be repair—NO, NO, NO!!!! AAArrrggggghhhhhhhhh……………MY CANON 800 IS SPOILTED, CONFIRMED, CHOP-STAMP!!!!! KNN!!!

CANON, Now CAN(ot)ON !!!!!!

Smile Canon, you are on a celebrity’s blog!

If you have taken part in SMRT’s Ride SMRT, Celebrate Life! contests, you might received an eDM with emails of other contestants group with yours.

The email addresses are group based on alphabetical order and each group would have about 200 emails exposed.

The problem resulted as a result of the sender putting the emails in the CC field rather than BCC.

Maybe SMRT should get their staff trained in email profiency.

Here’s the sample of the email. The email addresses have been added with xxx in front of them to mask the original addressees.

Subject: <ADV> Ride SMRT, Celebrate Life! December Draw WinnersDate: Fri, 28 Dec 2007 18:06:22 +0800

Message-ID: <6162FE8D0256CD45A179616123D574380522CCDF@corpex1.smrt.com.sg>

X-MS-Has-Attach:

X-MS-TNEF-Correlator:

Thread-Topic: <ADV> Ride SMRT, Celebrate Life! December Draw Winners

Thread-Index: AchJN++wItlqI0e1QSW7QqQB3/rjnQAASPtg

From: "RideSmrtAndWin" <RideSmrtAndWin@smrt.com.sg>

To: <xxxan_@yahoo.com>,<xxx1704@singaporeair.com.sg>,<xxxher@gmail.com>,<xxx122@hotmail.com>,<xxx4455@ntu.edu.sg>,

<xxxaru85@gmail.com>.....

This is a multi-part message in MIME format.------_=_NextPart_001_01C84939.9F0A8C32

Content-Type: multipart/alternative;

boundary="----_=_NextPart_002_01C84939.9F0A8C32"

------_=_NextPart_002_01C84939.9F0A8C32

Content-Type: text/plain;

charset="us-ascii"

Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable

This message contains images. If you cannot view the images in this

message, click here

<http://www.ridesmrtcelebratelife.com/edm/20071228_draw1result.html> .

SMRT has since apologise for the exposure.

From SMRT:

Dear XXX,

We sincerely apologise for the oversight and have taken immediate action to correct the mistake. The staff who had sent the mail out has been counselled, additionally, we have also reviewed our procedures to ensure that this will not recur again.

Once again, we are sorry. We thank you for your feedback and seek your continued support in our promotion.

Regards
Wei Min
Ride SMRT, Celebrate Life Lucky Draw Team
Website: www.rideSMRTcelebratelife.com

The Comfort Group of Taxis, in Singapore, made announcements lately to increase the meter charges for their taxi drivers to help them combat increasing operation cost and the lack of taxis in the Central Business District.

The past week I have had to deal with Comfort Taxi Premier services to book either a Mercedes taxi or a 7-seater Maxi-Cab but my experience with this “premier” service was no different than the normal taxi booking service.

The biggest difference with the Premier booking service and the normal taxi booking service was that the former had a SGD8 booking fee while the later is only SGD4. However, the difference in services stops there.

When I called the Premier booking service, the service person on the other side of the phone, instead of talking to me, spend the next 10 seconds conversing with her colleague.

It was after that 10 seconds that I got an “Hello, can I help you?”

This created a feeling within me that the conversation with the colleague was more important than the conversation with a new customer.

I had experience working in call centers before and the first thing we did when we picked up a call was to focus directly on the call.

If we had to speak with our colleague to ask for help, we would put the phone on hold before we continued.

What made it worst was when the call ended, the Premier service person continued talking to her colleague before the phone was put down.

Talk about focusing on your customers.

It seems bad experience seem to come in turns.

Again, I had to call the Premier service for a 7-seater Maxi-Cab and this time round the service person couldn’t find the address and I had to repeat it for more than 5 minutes before she found the place on the system.

I found this strange as prior to this call, I made one to the Comfort Taxi normal booking and they could find the address on their system in an instance.

Makes me wonder if Comfort consolidated their call center solutions for both the Premier and Normal booking services.

For the record, I couldn’t get any 7-seater Maxi-Cab from Comfort on the second call, but I did managed to get a SMRT 7-seater MPV almost immediately after.

The great thing about SMRT is that you only need to call one hotline to get a Mercedes taxi or a 7-seater MPV.

For Comfort, they have two hotlines and one of the other isn’t allowed to make bookings for another.

Comfort should look like combining their Premier and Normal booking services together to achieve economy of scales as it seems there is no differentiate factor among the two in terms of service.

Not sure if this should be under Service Sucks!, but I went into MacDonalds yesterday and said “I’d like some fries”.

The girl at the counter asked, “Would you like some fries with that?”.

themediaslut may not be the brightest economic student in town, but the shop that gives her the best value for her dollar gets her business.

themediaslut finds it strange that a spokesperson for NETS , a cashless transaction service, used price increase as a weapon to fight competitors. Isn’t that a little queer?

From The New Paper (22 May 2007);

Mr Ivan Ong, vice-president of Nets Payment and Value-added Services, explained the fee increase was needed to help Nets face increasing competition from international card schemes, adding that Nets transactions fees are still the lowest in the market.

A quick backgrounder for themediaslut’s non-Singapore readers, Nets (Network for Electronic Transfer) is a system for Singaporeans to pay for stuff at shops with their bank ATM cards. 

Nets is used by many neighbourhood stalls that cannot afford to make use of Visa and Mastercard services.  

Nets is planning to raise the fee of using the system from 0.35 and 0.55 per cent of each transaction to 1.5 and 1.8 percent  of purchases from July 1, 2007.

This means that the shop owners have to pay more to use the system and they are also not allowed to pass on this fee to their consumers.

Back to the statement. 

If Nets is facing increasing competition from international card schemes, why are they increasing the transaction fee instead of reducing it? Is the new theory of Singapore economics?

Also, who and what are these international card schemes that is being offered to the Singapore neighbourhood shops that threaten to compete with Nets? 

themediaslut doesn’t think these shop owners are looking at an international bank in the US to install a payment system for them.

Hence, the justification for the transaction fee does not make any sense for themediaslut.

themediaslut is usually pro-consumer, but in this case here, she would try her best not to use Nets system from July 1 onwards. 

As they say, cash is king! 

Mr Miyagi might have been having problems with Apple but themediaslut had an otherwise pleasant experience with NEC.

themediaslut has not been updating much because her NEC notebook has gone conkers.

Unfortunately, the warranty for the notebook was still 01 Sept 2006 and the notebook brokedown last Wednesday.

So at the NEC care center, one of the managers allowed the notebook to be on warranty but only for this time round.

themediaslut, therefore, got her notebook’s motherboard replaced which would set her back by SGD400.

So here is a big thank you to the NEC again.

THANK YOU.

themediaslut will definately recommend a NEC notebook to her friends.

themediaslut not only had be in the train cabin like a packed sardine, she also had to endure the most irritating audio advertisement by M1 on the train.

At every single stop, the M1 audio advertisement will appear after the train’s announcement of its arrival at each stop.

The M1 audio advertisement is now giving themediaslut a splitting headache and it has been 2 hours since themediaslut left the train.

Though it is an ingenous idea to tag an audio advertisment after the trains’ official one, couldn’t M1 arranged with SMRT to have that advertisement played every other three stations instead of every single station?

Dear M1,

your current brand tagline, "1 Life, Live it!"

Yes, themediaslut knows she has 1 life, but themediaslut would like it to be a peaceful one too!!!

The geekyslut saw this letter recently and did a double take. Check out the date received and the subsequent "post marks".

A final cessation of operations notice came 17 days after its own postmark (*dubious*). Anybody using this email service seriously would be screwed left, right, centre, up and down. Where did it hang up? 17 days is a lot of time. Unfortunately, Hotmail, to which it went, does not show delivery headers. But before you blame Hotmail only, 17 days is years on the Internet.

A straw poll of five eligible male friends also turned up ???? about this email at all. Although many remember receiving a sealed snail mail about MIW going defunct.

It reminds this slut of The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, where the notices were "always there on display". Dube diligence, this slut says. What’s your take? Tell the sluts…

(themediaslut welcomes new contributor themirror. She is a much more worse bitch than themediaslut that mirrors crack when she stares in them)

Oh gee.. Must they send a bus conductor *you mean they still exist?* up on a crowded bus at 820am in the morning just to check whether you’ve ‘beeped’ your card?

It makes no sense to themirror.

If we want to cheat, we can.

Have you ever seen those middle-aged women, who get up the bus, ‘beep’ their cards, walk to the back, take a seat near the exit door, and when the bus reaches the next stop, they ‘beep’ their cards, even though they’re still far from their destination?

Some even ‘beep’ their cards 10 seconds after they ‘beep’ at the entrance, then sit down happily to enjoy the ride. So can you stop people from taking a free ride, or in this case, a cheap ride?

No way. If you want it, you’ll make sure you get it. If a conductor really gets on, then just press the bell and get off the next stop.

Sweet and simple!

Speaking of buses, did it take so long for them to realise that climping three high steps up the bus is a killer?

Not only for them young things who wear ultra-minis, but also for the old men & women who struggle to raise their weak bones just to take a step.

And talk about the handicapped.

There’s no way for them to get on at all!

Take Hong Kong for example.

They’ve changed to single-step buses a long time ago.

What impresses themirror is that their buses can be lowered to the same height as the pavement, so that wheelchairs can get on effortlessly.

Near the driver’s seat, there’s a dedicated area for wheelchairs, with safety belts and hand rails.

Not convinced that Hong Kong is faster? Well, themirror saw it personally in 2004 when she was there for a holiday.

So are they faster? Definitely.

Here, it takes a big brother to say, let’s do this, before anything happens.

One word, and then suddenly, everyone is scrambling to improve things.

The new buses got on the news as well, geez.. it’s already old news.

Compassionate? Still a long way though.

themediaslut has been travelling via Transtar to Kuala Lumpur and have always booked her tickets via the Internet.

Today, while trying to book the tickets online, there was a problem
with the e-Nets credit card payment page as it kept bouncing back to an
error page back to Transtar’s page.

When themediaslut called Transtar, the respond was very disappointing..

"Sorry, we cannot help you," said the person on the line.

"You have to come down yourself to book and you can’t book on the phone because you are not a member."

themediaslut is rather surprised Transtar does not have a technical help desk number to call or set some communications guildlines to their staff on dealing with technical problems regarding for the site..

Anyway, themediaslut then called the eNets Call Center’s telephone number listed on the Transtar site but surprise surprise… the phone number doesn’t is no longer in use..

So themediaslut went through yellow pages, called NETS‘ main office and finally got the real hotline number.

The Nets hotline then said the credit card payment server is down and will only be ready at 8pm at night.

The person suggested I try tomorrow..

Eh… but there were only 4 more tickets left on the bus.. if it is fully booked by tomorrow…

"What is the down time guranteed by NETS on their payment servers?" wonders themediaslut.

"Arn’t payment servers mission criticals and should be up and running in 4 hours or less? Imagaine the amount of customers lost because of down time?"

themediasult’s had a friend whose letter to Today’s "Voices" was rejected and he was looking for an alternative medium.

themediaslut response to friend was: "You will always have the slut."

themediaslut wonders if the management staff at Cafe Cartel ever played Dinner Dash.

I’m writing this letter toTODAY’s Voices section to basically vent about a rather unpleasant dinner experience I had last Thursday.

What began as a potentially entertaining night of dinner with a good friend followed by a movie premiere was unfortunately soured by a lack of empathy on the part of  the manager of the Coffee Cartel outlet at Orchard Cineleisure.

My friend and I decided to have our pre-movie dinner at Coffee Cartel, and proceeded to place our order at 7.23pm. Service was initially prompt.

From the single set meal we pre-paid for, we received our soup of the day and soda within 5 minutes.

20 minutes later, our main meal had yet to arrive, so we asked a passing waiter to check our order for us.

He never returned to deliver our meal, nor update us.

25 minutes later, at 8.20pm, I realised that I had waited 45 minutes without my order, and went up to the counter to see the manager.

I then simply asked for a refund, citing that I was fed up of waiting and had a movie to catch.

It was only then that the manager mentioned that they had recently discovered a ‘printer’ problem, which delayed
my order as well as that of other diners.

I found her excuse unacceptable, and her constant expressions of "I’m sorry" insincere and formulaic.

My previous inquiry should have alerted them that a problem had cropped up, so I thus find it rather
strange that the ‘problem’ was not discovered sooner, or that the manager saw fit to let her customers sit and wait in hunger without any word or apologies.

That’s what really got me very angry.

Not so much that they had a ‘printer’ problem, but rather that the manager lacked any initiative to handle the situation, or empathy for her customers.

To simple keep quiet about the delay, and to expect your customers to sit for 45 minutes while you play catch up with the orders shows a clear lack of simple courtesy on the manager’s part.

I have experienced similar situations in other cafes and restaurants, when a problem arose that delayed dinner service.

In most of these cases, prompt action by managers keep diners happy, by personally informing customers that there was a problem, offering them alternatives such as a refund, or providing small complementary entrees or drinks to sooth hungry stomachs.

I recently stayed in a Sydney hotel that suffered a power failure due to a short in the city’s power grid.

No matter that the blackout was not the fault of the hotel, all guests still received a personally signed letter of apology from the hotel manager, delivered to their rooms within 2 hours of the blackout occuring.

It’s these little touches of empathy and consideration that make an unpleasant situations bearable.

Unfortunately, I did not have a similar experience last Thursday.

Rather, I was treated like an idiot who’d sit quietly and patiently while waiting for a long overdue dinner.