Archive for 'irishblogs'

fast-swing-10 is the new theme

Finally I got sometime to fix up the blog and to make it that little bit nicer. It’s called fast-swing-10 and it I must say I like it.

So, back to more important things, myself and L are back in Munich after over almost 4 week long holiday. We hit Boston,NYC ,Athens & the Greek Islands. The flights with BA were much better than with LH the previous year. One the return flight from Boston they even had on demand (which got me hooked on Entourage TV show) !

Heaven knows how far we actually travelled, driving,flying,sailing & walking, we did drive almost 1k miles in the US. The 1 week cruise (with EasyCruise) around the Greek was just fantastic. It’s great to wake up every morning and to have a whole new island (and a few pages of Lonely Planet to read) to discover. Here is a list of the Islands we hit.

• Piraeus (Athens)
• Milos
• Ios
• Amorgos
• Naxos
• Folegandros Paros
• Serifos

I think that Ios would have to be the nicest place we visited, followed by Naxos. These are the two biggest islands on the trip. EasyCuise was nice for the price we paid, we ended up paying about €200 for the both of us for the week, which was pretty cheap. Or bar & drink (& coke) bill was closer to €350. There was a few situations where the staff didn’t really act so professionally, and didn’t have that polished appearance. Maybe this is due to their lack of training, or maybe it was just a big difference from coming the US to their. One of the strangest things, and most dangerous was on a planned trip organised by the boat staff. There was a mini bus that could hold 18 people. But 19 people had signed up. So these two people were forced to sit on extra chairs brought onto the bus. Once chair was positioned between the driver and the front passenger and the other one was in the gangway in the middle of the bus.

That being said we had a great time, and met some really nice people (hi to Matt & Paula, Chris & Holly, Glen & Lisa). The beaches in Greece were great, and the water was perfect for snorkelling. If you ever get the chance to go to Greece do ! It’s a great place and the people are super friendly. Once on the subway in Athens, L was lugging her baggage down a few steps and a young girl asked her did she need help ! So that’s a few words about the holiday (email me if you want to see the pics).

It’s good to be back in Mucich !

Today’s Complaint letter…. sixt

Here is the latest complaint letter, this time to Sixt Holiday Car rentals, who with an hour and a half before pick up decided to call me and say that I could only have one of the cars I ordered !

On Tuesday this week I booked two 7 seater cars from your office over the phone. The order number is 6xxxxxx. When I called I was told that it was possible to have these two big cars on Friday, and that they were available.Today approximately 90 minutes before I was due to pick up the cars, I received a telephone call from your offices in Munich, on Einsteinstrasse. They were calling to tell me that you no longer had a second car for me. And they couldn’t offer another one anywhere else in Munich today. So with 90 minutes to go I get this news that I would possibly have to cancel my weekend trip. And all your customer service agents could say is that “If someone doesn’t return their car to us, we cannot give it out to you“.

Putting it so simply was nice, but not offering me any alternative or a discount for being put like this really disappointed me. I have used your services over the last few years, and my company has uses you very often indeed. But still Sixt wasn’t able to offer me anything that could have helped me today. I was left in the situation of trying to call other car rentals companies frantically looking for a similar car within the next hour. And on a Friday evening, this was certainly something I would have wanted to avoid.

When I book a car, I would expect that my order would be granted and that you would do everything that you could to provide me with a car that I could use. But the best I could get out of your service agents was that they couldn’t do anything about it, and that it happens sometimes.

I feel very disappointed with the way I have been treated. And I am looking forward to hearing from you to clarify my points.

Sincerely,
Paul Savage

EDIT: Today (wednesday 23rd May) I got a reply from them today and they offered me a 30% reduction on the cost of one one of the cars. They always wanted to know if I had to get a replacement car and what was the costs, but seeing as we used two other cars instead I don’t think I will get any other money back. So all in all it pays to complain when you are not happy with the service. At least now the money will help towards a broken light on the rental car (don’t ask !)

What are you doing ?

This is the Greek way of asking “how are you ?”. Nice isn’t it. I’ve been learning a bit of Greek for my summer cruise with EasyCruise around the Greek Islands with L. So I’ve been using The Pimseleur’s Method, which is an audio guide which is pretty good. The only problem I would have with it is that the lessons are a bit too long, at 30 minutes I find that my attention for new stuff is starting to diminish. But the great thing about the audio lessons is that I don’t have to start learning their alphabet (Ελληνικό αλφάβητο or the Hellenic alphabet). What are you doing ?

It’s not every day someone threatens you with lawyers …

Yesterday I got an nasty email from a company (lets call them F), based here in Germany. I had purchase a product from F some time at the end of 2006, and I think they have an opt in email list on purchasing a product, which is checked automatically.

Granted there were problem with the order and I complained but didn’t even receive an apology. So in January I started to get emails from about their service times etc. I sent an email asking them to be removed from the mailings but sadly they continued, they don’t have an opt out link or details in their emails, so I guess sending a reply stating that they shouldn’t email me again would be fine.

Yesterday I had a bit of time on my hands, and when I got yet another email from F, I decided to forward it to spamcop (www.spamcop.net). I considered it SPAM under the Article 13(1) (Paragraph 2) of the Privacy and Electronic Communications Directive [here]. So I replied to the email address stating what I did, and the at around 8pm last night I get a call, thankfully I didn’t answer it. But it was the owner or a worker of F who said “I know who you are, you an an ex-customer of ours, I want to know why you did what you did, you will be hearing from our lawyers if any damage is done, etc…”. Fine I can see why someone is annoyed, but they clearly missed the whole point of why I had reported them. They even sent me an email, stating the thing about the lawyers once again. So I explained why I had considered it SPAM and told them to contact my family lawyers (back in Cork) in all further correspondence.

The funny thing in all this is how someone thinks that they can threaten to sue me for damages after then sent SPAM. Also when someone starts to mention lawyers, I am no longer playing around. I would have take the time to explain it properly to them and maybe what they should do in future. But now that they say the L word, I am no longer interested in helping them, I did point them to the reference I quoted above. Hopefully that will keep them busy for awhile and maybe they will even update their policy for sending mailings.

See it’s not always good to feel wanted

New Week, New Layout

Today I’ve busied myself with upgrading feckthat and adding some nice new features(i.e. arcade). But besides that the main other news is that I’ve started to finally get the blog into some shape and form that I actually like. So let’s see if it will encourage me to post more frequently.

Nothing too crazy happening here in Munich, except that Yahoo! Weather thinks that we are going to have around 3° C for the rest of the week. And they even hint at snow. This seems funny as so far to date this winter we’ve only had 4 days of snow, compared with 6 months of the white stuff in 2005-2006 winter.

Anyway time to make dinner !
again … if you read .. please comment

Back with a Bang and some sound !

The last time I posted, I mentioned that I had gotten an iPod Shuffle 2G from L for Christmas. It’s great, easy to use and long battery life. But, here’s the crux, it’s too easy to misplace ! For the last 2 weeks or so I’ve been looking around the apartment trying to find the little fellow. But because of it’s size it really makes it a challenge to find it. Thankfully I found it this morning in a pair of cords and now I am able to drown out the sound of German people in the morning It’s not like a mobile phone,where you can give it a quick ring when you misplace it. Maybe that would be an idea for Apple, maybe they should integrate some sort of phone home feature for people like me !

In other news I updated the blog here. It’s a new style/new version of wordpress, so all that is left for me to do is to add some more posts in here ! And of course if you read, please (please) leave a comment !

Backward Thinking, no really.

Irish rail are in the news a fair bit these days, with their price hikes and the roll out of so many new carriages which is supposedly making them the fastest growing network in Ireland (oops, I mean Europe). Well I guess there is a fair bit that we have to do to be on a par with Germany or France and they don’t really need to improve as much as we do. And the other day I was reading via mulley.net about one guys problem getting the Cobh train out of Kent Station. So is anyone happy with public transport in Ireland ?
So I present today’s nugget of fine thinking, the LUAS guys are going to introduce a levy, yes you read right, a levy on travelling at peak times. Should it be cheaper, who wants to pay a premium for having to stand, squashed like a sardine for your journey ? In case you can’t be bothered reading the report….

“The higher fare will operate between 7.45am and 9.30am from Monday to Friday.

The LUAS operators say it is designed to alleviate rush hour congestion by encouraging people to use the service at different times.”

The mind boggles, really it does !

Time to go back :’(

After a few short days I am back in Dublin Airport (stealing electricity & free WiFi). The last time I was here there was a multitude of fog, but now the skies are a bit clearer up here 8 days later. So it was a hectic week and a day, meeting people, spending quality time with the parents, and trying to find that special Christmas gift for L. Also factor in some pretty heavy nights of boozing (I’ve had G&T for the first time in my life), enjoying the Beamish & the Guinness (I also tried the Guinness North Star special brew, which is a little more spicy, like cinnamon and nutmeg tasting), so it’s been all go. Last night was great fun, with the annual Noel Doherty Stir Fry, kudos to him for putting up with us again ! This hectic social life has left me pretty tired and looking forward to being in Munich and resting.

It was great to see everyone for the first time in a year. Thankfully I got to see everyone at some stage.

Funny it always seems that when I travel back to Ireland I’ve got some kind of illness, and currently there is nice green stuff being coughed up and my throat feels like I’ve eaten barbed wire. I guess that is due to the intensive partying.

Now it’s time to check in them bags !

Declaring a Republic of Connaught

Looking around the net today I came across this : http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Republic_of_Connaught. Apparently in 1798 the Republic of Connaught was declared with with French military support during the Irish Rebellion.

So just imagine if it had been successful and grew even larger, we could been speaking French instead. From Wikipedia “The republic was proclaimed following the victory of French and Irish forces at the Battle of Castlebar under the leadership of French General Humbert. The president of the Republic of Connaught was John Moore”.
But sadly “Ultimately defeated by Cornwallis at the Battle of Ballinamuck the republic ceased to exist and the Kingdom of Ireland was absorbed into the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland in 1801″. Other countries that could have been can been seen here, like poor Lajtabánság that existed for 32 days.

Thinking of getting fit ?

You’ll have to check this out, plain weird !

It’s time to start thinking about getting fit in the New Year.

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