Oinkster’s Indulgence

Yesterday, I saw a mass mailing requesting for participants to a survey.

Check out the content…

Hi all,

We have a new project on Photo Printer Usability. The discussion is
about photo printing. Here are the details:-

A. General Criteria
In-depth Interview(One-to-One Basis)
- 7 Singaporeans/PR and 3 Caucasians
- Male/Female(A good mix)
- Duration of test: 2 hours
- Test to be taken during office hours from 9am to 6pm
Aged 19 to 59 Male or Female
Education: A good mix with Min. GCE “O” levels
Mixture of ethnicities: Including at least 3 Caucasians
Not in sensitive working industry
NO participation in market research project for the last 6 months
Must own and use a photo printer at home: Mixture of different
printer brands (HP, Epson, Canon etc¡ )
Must own a digital camera and use their home photo printer to print
their photos
Computer experience:
- We are looking for users who are proficient in
computer who are beyond beginner level
- Regular users of photo printers

B. Admin Matters

Respondent Incentive
- Singaporeans/PR: $100
- Caucasians: $120

Dates of Usability Test ¨25/09/07 to 27/09/07(Tuesday to Friday)
Please submit names using the recruitment profile template
(attached)

Please take note that you have to go through a thorough screening
before they can be invited to participate in the test. Hence, not
all names submitted will qualify for the study.

Thanks.

The thing that struck many of us when we saw the mailer is …
How come Caucasians are given $120 while Singaporeans/PR are given $100?
Why is there a different of $20 even tho both are going through the same survey? Shouldn’t there be equality even in this?

Hmm…

Since May 07, I have signed up for this starhub corporate data plan that a colleague got me hooked up to. Cool! Now I can stay connected 24/7 whenever and whereever in Singapore (except at venues with no or low phone reception =D)

I have no complaints with the service but with starhub billing dept.. i have heaps! Till now, I have received about 4 bills and each of the bill is WRONG! The contract that I signed specially said that I signed up for $X plan. However, the first bill came in jun … i racked up almost $200 bucks. Something is wrong…. I called the account manager and he told me to ignore that bill and they will rebill me with the revised bill. He mentioned that this is a special rate that he has to “over-write” the system and the subsequent billing would be correct. Agreed. I waited. But no revised bill. Since I know that the payment should be $X + GST, I juz paid that amount. In jul, again the bill was wrong. I had to call them to rectify the problem. Come aug, same thing happened again. In Sept, the bill is still wrong! To my surprise, they did “secret” upgrade of our data plan without informing us. The bill reflected a “new” plan of $X… which apparently has better bandwidth. However, we were not informed about the upgrade. I checked with a few folks who are on this $X plan and they too had their plans upgraded without any notice.

Isn’t it unethical to do so? Shouldn’t there be at least a written notice or a friendly call from the customer service to allow customers to opt in or out of such upgrade?

I have since called the customer service for a consecutive of 2 weeks now. Each time, they said they will get their account manger to call me but they never returned call. My colleague also called but at no avail. Tonight, I called them up again, demanding that this issue get settled once and for all. Again, the reply is… we will get your account manager to call you tomorrow. We will let them know its urgent. Well, we shall see. i guess tomorrow might not come.