Rants

Comments left unsaid

by

I’ve written about the perks of online dating before, and one of the best things about not being face to face (initially, at least) is the ability to take the time to think of what you want to say before hitting the send button. This aspect also translates to other aspects of online communication – like leaving comments or writing posts on Facebook. Believe it or not, despite all the stupid things I share online, there are a lot of things I’ve stopped myself from posting after second thoughts. As we all know, once something goes online, it’s pretty much there forever (probably more applicable to people with a following, but nevertheless a good thing to keep in mind if you’re worried about any backlash).

I don’t know if it applies to everyone but I have erased a lot of comments and posts I’ve made online before hitting the send button. 99% of the time, I decide it’s not worth saying anything because it honestly doesn’t affect my life or I don’t care about it enough. I just ignore the post and move on. In a few hours, the post will be buried, and you’ll never have to see it again.

The 1%? I share stuff in a private group chat and talk about it there. That way I get the opinions of people I care about and not have to worry about what other people think about my views.

And no, I’m not saying that it’s what everybody should do – far from it. I believe in the freedom the internet provides us, after all, who doesn’t like to laugh at the stupid shit that some people say?

On that note, why do some people insist that you ‘pm for price’? I never understood that and still don’t. It’s a fucking marketplace, people expect to be told the price of an item before they decide if they want to buy it. Why is it private information? Are you going to tell people different prices depending on who’s asking? Are you going to dispute complaints that people may have about the price because it isn’t listed publicly? Why not just put the regular price down and give discounts privately? Why make people jump through extra hoops just to buy your shit? It’s so scummy. I read news about it being made illegal a while ago yet I still see people doing it. If you’re selling stuff, don’t be a dipshit and post your prices publicly.

Gift Cards Are Worse Than Cash

by

There’s something that I’ve been wondering about for a long time – why do people think gift cards are a great idea?

Buying someone a gift card assumes that the recipient:

  1. still wants something from the shop you bought it from
  2. is willing to travel to the shop
  3. before the gift card expires

You’re basically making your recipient do work for his or her own present – when you could have just given them the gift in the first place. So you say, you don’t know what the recipient wants – why not just give them cash?

Cash is flexible – because it is not tied to a store, it can be spent anywhere and on anything – they don’t have to travel to an inconvenient or faraway location to purchase something. It doesn’t expire, so if the recipient doesn’t want to spend it, he or she can just save it for something else. There is no way a gift card can be better than cash. If a store offers discounts for people buying using gift cards – the recipient can just purchase those gift cards to get what they want since they’ll be going to that store anyway.

Of course, gift cards can be used as jokes – i.e. giving a vegan gift cards to a popular steak restaurant – the recipient will either end up not spending it (wasting your money) or giving it away (which I guess is a good thing, since you gave them a present to gift for free).

I can’t think of a situation where presenting someone with gift cards is better than giving them cash.

Goodbye Unifi

by

Yesterday I handed in my termination application form and returned my broadband modem to Telekom. I’ve been using Telekom’s Unifi service since I moved in to my current home in 2011 so you could say I was a pretty loyal customer. I never had any problems with the service – my download/upload speeds were good enough for gaming, streaming and torrenting. The network was rarely down – I didn’t have any issues with the service at all.

So why did I terminate my account? I was happy with my internet service. It was Telekom’s very own marketers that pushed me over the edge. About a month or two ago some dude called me up and told me that because I was a long-time customer, I was eligible for a “cheaper price promo”. I told him that was great, and I was interested in switching to it. But he told me that I couldn’t just switch my account to that new price – I had to cancel my account and sign up for a new account to get this new price point. We got into a debate over how absurd that was and I ended the phone call with him after about 20 minutes without agreeing to take this “promo”. Immediately, I went online to do some research about TM’s current price offerings.

My plan then was RM179/month for 30Mbps (which was supposed to be upgraded to 100Mbps for free this year but due to my condominium’s network cable limitations, it wasn’t going to happen) – a plan that they don’t offer anymore (you have to Google to get to this page, it’s not even linked from their homepage – why is it still up?). If you check their website, they currently offer: RM129/month for 100Mbps (unlimited) or RM79/month for 30Mbps (limited to 60GB a month). This meant that I was paying an extra RM50/month for my current plan. Now, who in their right mind would want to do that?

My 2-year contract had already long expired – couldn’t they have just reduced my monthly fee to match the current price? Why did I have to cancel my account and sign up for a new one just to pay the correct price? They aren’t selling my old price plan anymore, it doesn’t make any sense that I have to keep paying for it since I was no longer bound to a contract.

I wrote them a lengthy email about my situation and they didn’t answer my question. They kept harping on the fact that I had to cancel my account to get the correct price. They marketed this ‘new’ price as a promotion. How the fuck is it a promotion if it is just the correct price for a service I’m overpaying for? If I had to guess, they probably wanted me to commit to another 2-year contract, or they wanted me to contribute to their number of sign ups for the year.

Since Telekom wanted me to cancel my account anyway I decided it would be a good time to give Time a shot. I signed up for an account over one afternoon at Seng Yip’s house (the sign up process is a stupidly simple and quick process, big props to Time for making the transition so easy) and scheduled a date for them to come over. That day was yesterday and after successfully upgrading to Time, I drove to the Telekom center nearby my house to terminate my account.

I hope Time lives up to its reputation – based on my friends’ experiences I’ve made the right choice (and for the past 24 hours I’ve been very very pleased with it). When the billing date comes around, I’ll be happy with the lower price and the fact that I won’t be charged for a service I never use (looking at you HyppTV).

Also, this switch comes one year after I shut down a Time telemarketer almost a year ago. Does this mean his call worked?