Teknovis

Today is Teknovis’s birthday! So it is fitting to celebrate this with a blog post.

I am getting increasingly strange adverts from Amazon.

I do not mind that the adverts are not relevant to me. Indeed, this makes sense, because I generally restrict (as much as possible) my personal information from being shared.

The thing that fascinates me about these adverts is that I do not know what most of these products are, or what function they provide. This seems somewhat like an advertising failure for two reasons:

• If you do not know who your audience are, should you try to advertise something useful to a large proportion of the population?
• If it is not obvious what a product is or does, should you include a title and/or description of the product?

I will include some of the adverts below. My personal favourite is the toilet roll drying machine 🤣

Tags: Amazon

It really has been a long time since I blogged! I was booking flights with Ryanair during the week, and I noticed this recommendation:

In general I think that Ryanair’s website is excellent. However, its recommendations are really bad for the following reasons:

• I have not flown to or from Gatwick ever with Ryanair, so it should not show me flights from Gatwick.
• The vast majority of my Ryanair flights are return flights from Dublin, so it should not suggest that I visit Dublin.
• All my profile details indicate that I live in Ireland, so it is highly unlikely that I will ever fly to Belfast, Shannon, or Cork.
• I am not sure why Alicante is there!

It really seems that Ryanair’s recommendation system is worse than a random suggestion engine!

Tags: Ryanair

A friend brought Amazon‘s latest announcement to my attention today – Prime Air! I think it is really impressive, although I am not sure if Amazon’s goods are particularly suitable. My Amazon orders tend to be bulky, relatively heavy for air lifting, and fragile!

Several people have questioned if this is a hoax, but I think it is believable!

Tags: Amazon

Wow – I recently read that Ryanair uses HTTP Cookies to remember when a user returns to book flights for which he/she previously checked the availability. Fair enough, but apparently Ryanair charges a higher fare in this case!

I do not know if this is true, but I think it would be unfair and deceptive. This sort of practice certainly strengthens the arguments for the current EU proposals regarding HTTP Cookies!

Tags: Ryanair

Last weekend I needed to book Ryanair flights. I have a Visa Electron card, and I used to use it all the time to avoid the 5€ per flight administration fee. However, Ryanair changed the rules so that the only card that does not attract such a fee is a prepaid Mastercard. This is described in Why is there an administration fee when I reserve my flights?:

As a special offer to Mastercard Prepaid Debit (MP) card holders, Ryanair, will not apply an administration fee to those customers paying by this method of payment.

I am sure that the only reason for this prepaid Mastercard exception is that Ryanair can still advertise the fare excluding the fee, and it is probably the least common card type available.

Anyway, over Christmas I was lucky to receive a gift voucher for use in a large shopping centre (Whitewater). This gift voucher is actually a prepaid Mastercard, so I decided to give it a try.

Unfortunately, it did not work. I got a generic payment failure error instead of the page with my confirmation number and booking details. Perhaps this was related to the fact that I used my home address as the cardholder’s address, even though my address would not be associated with the card.

I was tight on time, so I went ahead and booked the flights using my normal credit card. If I had more time I would follow it up directly with Ryanair.

I have since read a very interesting thread describing how other prepaid Mastercard shopping vouchers have successfully been used. See Prepaid Mastercard No Loading or Purchase Charges (Works with Ryanair).

I will try one of these the next time!

Tags: Mastercard, Ryanair, Visa

It is getting close to that time of the year when we all start buying Christmas presents! I have not started yet, but more about this in a few weeks time!

I have bought many things from Komplett in the past. I always found it good value, and I thought that the service was good.

However, I have had two incidents in the past few months that are making me rethink this. In both cases I had to email customer service within 24 hours of ordering. In the first case my order actually arrived before customer service responded to me, telling me that my order would be shipped soon. In the second case I got billed several times for a single order, according to my online backing statement. They problem was acknowledged, and I was refunded, but again it took weeks.

The other thing that is making me think about bringing my business elsewhere, is that Komplett charge me the Irish VAT rates. I consider these are excessively high, and hence I normally purchase from low VAT countries.

Tags: Komplett, Tax

I recently received a good recommendation for CafePress, so I decided to buy some t-shirts as presents during the week. I am delighted to report that my order arrived very promptly, and that I am very happy with it.

The two things that particularly impressed me were:

• I can shop in Euro :)
• The company seems very Web 2.0 friendly (check the blog)

Next I will treat myself to some nice t-shirts :)

Tags: CafePress

I have fallen in love with a new eCommerce company! It is called Moo, and it prints all types of business cards!

I received my MiniCards in the post today, and I am really impressed! They are so nice that I do not want to give them away!

Like many Web 2.0 companies, Moo makes great usage of its blog and other popular social networking sites.

Tags: Moo

I have almost completed my Christmas shopping for 2009. I did all of this online for the second year in a row! (Last year’s shopping is described in Online Christmas Shopping 2008.)

I did not buy a single item in Ireland this year, and this was mainly due to the ridiculously high costs. I understand that part of this is due to the higher VAT on items in Ireland (see Online Shopping just got Cheaper), but I also think that retailers are still ripping-off consumers. Indeed, the most expensive single item I bought was a piece of Japanese electronics. The Irish price was over 50%  more expensive than the price I bought it for abroad!

While I am writing about shopping, I came across a very entertaining online shop – http://producten.hema.nl/ (You need sound, and a small amount of patience, for this :D )

Tags: Ireland, Tax

I read two interesting articles in the paper earlier this week about Irish people and shopping online.

The first article contains the results of a survey of 1,000 Irish people. The main finding was that Irish consumers spent an average of 1,700€ online in 2008, and that approximately a quarter of these people expect to spend more online in 2009. I certainly spent more than the average online in 2008, but I am probably in the majority who do not believe that this will increase in 2009 :o

Another interesting finding of the survey was that 90% of shoppers believe that they can save money by shopping online. I am certainly agree with this from my experience, and the recent increase in the Irish VAT rate has only exasperated the price differences!

The full article is Shoppers spent average €1,700 online in 2008.

The second article, Downturn speeding up revolution in the way we shop, argues that speed, adaptability, and agility, are the key business traits that will enable companies to survive the current economic downturn. The author then proposes that technology will be the key enabler of these business traits. It is interesting reading, and I share the author’s sentiments!

Tags: Ireland, Tax