I saw an almost attractive offer in Times of India paper. The offer was for a chord-less telephone with caller-id, which costs Rs. 1999+180 delivery charge. Without having any second thoughts, we called up and booked for the phone.
We received the phone after 10 days of booking. At first look, the phone looked alright. There is one rule about this "home delivered products", there is always some hidden damages! We checked again to see charger adapter broken and caller-id not working.
We placed a replacement order. Packing back the product is bit of a pain. We had to take a printout of complaint letter too to place it in the box(yeah, tele-shopping, atleast in India Times, is not for computer illiterates!). The product was collected from our house in a days time. The replaced product was received in next 10 days.
This time we were not able to spot any damages. It was almost perfect. But the caller-id was still not working! This was suppose to be a caller-id phone. And caller-id cannot be faulty in both the deliveries. Suspecting false product delivery, we called up the customer support again, and they were not able to solve the problem themselves. They inturn gave the vendor customer care number.
We called up the phones vendor and notified him about the issue. After hearing his reply, we were a bit shocked. All he said was, we need to purchase an extra equipment(which will burn another 300 bucks from our pocket) for the caller-id to work! This was suppose to be a caller-id phone and no where in the Times of India advertisement it is mentioned that we need to buy this device. Being pissed and cheated, we called up the India time support again and asked them to take back the product.
We had to place a refund order for this, which we did. The product was taken from our house the very next day and was promised the refund within 7 days of receipt of the product. Ten days passed, no refund was sent. We called up the support yet again and they promised(again) the refund will be dispatched within ten days.
After a long wait, i received the below mail from India times support. (Issues quoted in red)
Dear $order.userFirstName userLastName [suppose to be my name, instead its some variable name]
We wish to inform you that we have processed refund against
Order No.: $order.orderNumber sub order number
$suborder.subOrderNumber $suborder.itemName [suppose to be my order and sub order numbers]
.................
.............
.................
With Warm Regards
Customer Service
Seeing the pathetic condition of their support, i decided to shoot a mail back to them to tell these issues. I had to use their grievances page. I drafted the content and sent it. At first try, the session got expired! I did not loose hope, started a fresh session, and sent it again. This time, i got the following error!
Exception occured: java.io.FileNotFoundException: http://ecomm.indiatimes.com/EncryptionUtility.jsp?TN=322696&Key=20&Op=1
The jsp file for some validation was missing in their server!! Do they atleast care to test these things? I pretty much know they dont test the products they send to their customers. They could have atleast tested the products they and their customers use.
I would never buy any products again from India Times Shopping. A lesson well learnt, again!
Friday, October 10, 2008
Tuesday, October 7, 2008
A day without a honk..
As I had to give my bikes battery for recharging, i was left with no choice to travel a day in the bike without the battery in it. By saying that, there is no way i could use by bikes horn, till the battery is ready. Earlier i thought, its not a big deal driving in Chennai without hoking off. But now i realized its really a tough task.
With roads blessed with jay walkers, unruly drivers, right-in-the-middle-of-the-road cyclers, jump-out-as-you-like bus takers, its close to impossible to drive in Chennai without honking. Its almost like driving without breaks. But as i said, i was left with no other choice, i had to take my bike.
Earlier i tried to take a bus, and it took me around two and a half hour to reach my office(just around 15 kms and in the bike it takes around 45 mins in peak hours)! So these days taking bus is not even an option for me(either take the bike or stay home :) is the policy).
While driving to office, i had no big problems driving without hoking. Except for few cases, like bikers who travel at less than 20 kmph(generally with a mobile in their hand), auto drivers who turn their vehicle as they wish, drives who hate using indicators, people who dont honk in turnings(hey dont look at me, i did not have a choice) and children.
Children are the main issue in the above list. While auto drivers are more unpredictable than most children, we still have to be careful driving behind children. The up-sides of driving without honking is you cannot drive faster or do rash driving in this hectic Chennai traffic and ofcourse, you wont contribute to the noise pollution(at-least for that day).
All in all, it wasn't really a terrible experience. I feel its a good practice to have a no-horn day once in a month or fortnight.
With roads blessed with jay walkers, unruly drivers, right-in-the-middle-of-the-road cyclers, jump-out-as-you-like bus takers, its close to impossible to drive in Chennai without honking. Its almost like driving without breaks. But as i said, i was left with no other choice, i had to take my bike.
Earlier i tried to take a bus, and it took me around two and a half hour to reach my office(just around 15 kms and in the bike it takes around 45 mins in peak hours)! So these days taking bus is not even an option for me(either take the bike or stay home :) is the policy).
While driving to office, i had no big problems driving without hoking. Except for few cases, like bikers who travel at less than 20 kmph(generally with a mobile in their hand), auto drivers who turn their vehicle as they wish, drives who hate using indicators, people who dont honk in turnings(hey dont look at me, i did not have a choice) and children.
Children are the main issue in the above list. While auto drivers are more unpredictable than most children, we still have to be careful driving behind children. The up-sides of driving without honking is you cannot drive faster or do rash driving in this hectic Chennai traffic and ofcourse, you wont contribute to the noise pollution(at-least for that day).
All in all, it wasn't really a terrible experience. I feel its a good practice to have a no-horn day once in a month or fortnight.
Friday, October 3, 2008
ZohoCreator 3.0 Release Video
ZohoCreator rolled out their 3.0 version few days back. The highlight of the release was their release video. The Comic Video showcasing the features/power of ZohoCreator using cartoon characters was really awesome. Embedding the same below.
ZohoCreator fans can rate the video here.
ZohoCreator fans can rate the video here.
Thursday, September 25, 2008
Cool songs in recent times
Recently i stumbled upon a cool song from FloBots called Handlebars in a radio. I haven't heard about the band called FloBots till i chanced upon this powerful song recently. Having loved this song so much, wanting to hear again, digged YouTube to find the song here . No wonder the song got over 10 million clicks and over 76,000 comments within a span of just 5 months! Below is the song.
Another song which caught my attention was Viva La Vida by Cold Play. The song is really awesome and will linger in your ears even after the song is over :). I must tell, i had become a fan of Cold Play after this song. Below is the song.
A song that truly needs a mention is, So What, by Pink. Yeah you read it right, Pink is back and the song rocks! Here is the song, below is the embedded video.
Few others that are really good are,
More to come soon....
Another song which caught my attention was Viva La Vida by Cold Play. The song is really awesome and will linger in your ears even after the song is over :). I must tell, i had become a fan of Cold Play after this song. Below is the song.
A song that truly needs a mention is, So What, by Pink. Yeah you read it right, Pink is back and the song rocks! Here is the song, below is the embedded video.
Few others that are really good are,
- Ne-Yo - So Sick,
- Christina Aguilera - Keeps getting better,
- Katy Perry - Hot and Cold,
- Leona Lewis - Bleeding Love,
- Secondhand Serenade - Fall for you,
- Danity Kane - Damaged,
- Rihanna - Disturbia,
- The Middle - Jimmy Eat World
More to come soon....
Tuesday, September 2, 2008
Type in your local language - Firefox Extension
Ever wanted to chat in Tamil(or any other Indian Languages) from Zoho Chat or Gmail Chat? I have been longing to do so ever since i saw this feature in Orkut.
Google recently released their Language API, which include Translation and Transliteration APIs. Using their Transliteration API, we can convert any English text to native language(Ex: Tamil can be changed to தமிழ்) on the fly(like in Orkut). This feature is really useful while we chat or post comments.
Of-course we cannot expect every site we use to integrate this feature...but we can anytime build an extension in Firefox to fulfill our requirements. So one fine day i sat down and started writing a GreaseMonkey script...which happened to work in Firefox-2 and failed to work in Firefox-3. Dejected by the output, started porting the code as an extension, which worked fine in FF3 after a couple sleepless nights!
Here is the Firefox Extension i wrote to get the Transliteration feature plugged in to sites like Zoho Mail and GMail. As the extension is currently under Experimental category, you will need an account to install the extension. IE users please excuse :)
Currently the extension can transliterate the texts in 'textarea' alone. Hopefully will extend this feature to editable iframes very soon.
The extension is still in early stages, so bugs are common :). Please share your thoughts and report any bugs you face here.
Update 1: Version 1.0.3: Lots of bug fixes, Preference box with default language, text box support based on user preference
Update 2: Verion 1.0.4: Performance and issue fixes. Recommended Install.
Update 3: Verion 1.0.5: Textarea/textbox style corruption issue fixed. Recommended Install.
Update 4: Addon is now Public!! You dont need an account anymore to install your copy!
Google recently released their Language API, which include Translation and Transliteration APIs. Using their Transliteration API, we can convert any English text to native language(Ex: Tamil can be changed to தமிழ்) on the fly(like in Orkut). This feature is really useful while we chat or post comments.
Of-course we cannot expect every site we use to integrate this feature...but we can anytime build an extension in Firefox to fulfill our requirements. So one fine day i sat down and started writing a GreaseMonkey script...which happened to work in Firefox-2 and failed to work in Firefox-3. Dejected by the output, started porting the code as an extension, which worked fine in FF3 after a couple sleepless nights!
Here is the Firefox Extension i wrote to get the Transliteration feature plugged in to sites like Zoho Mail and GMail. As the extension is currently under Experimental category, you will need an account to install the extension. IE users please excuse :)
Currently the extension can transliterate the texts in 'textarea' alone. Hopefully will extend this feature to editable iframes very soon.
The extension is still in early stages, so bugs are common :). Please share your thoughts and report any bugs you face here.
Update 1: Version 1.0.3: Lots of bug fixes, Preference box with default language, text box support based on user preference
Update 2: Verion 1.0.4: Performance and issue fixes. Recommended Install.
Update 3: Verion 1.0.5: Textarea/textbox style corruption issue fixed. Recommended Install.
Update 4: Addon is now Public!! You dont need an account anymore to install your copy!
Update 5: I am(was) lobbying hard to get the latest version of the addon reviewed. Will try harder when I get more time. Till then please use the experimental version from here: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/google-transliteration-formerl/versions/?page=1#version-1.9
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