Reviews | The Gremlins Umbrella Authority

Vodafone: Bad Business

December 14, 2009 | Written by -GRUMBA- | Topic: Advice, My Views, Reviews, Scammers | Comments (0)

It has been a while since I have posted anything of merit. I will try my hardest to start producing some more informative content.

Independent of where you originate from, you will have more than likely heard of Vodafone: the mobile phone carrier originally set up within the UK in the eighties.
Over the years they have gone from strength to strength, last tax year earning a post tax profit in excess of £3 billion. Running businesses within 20 different countries, and employing 79,000 worldwide gives off a general aura of a well run business. Wrong.

Now I appreciate wholly that I am a tiny fish in the grand scheme of things, however a sample of ‘me’ suggested that 100% of Vodafone customers were extremely disappointed. Stats do not lie !

I have been a Vodafone contract customer for the past 18 months. Prior to that, I had previous contracts with them. My family all have mobile contracts, and the majority of them are with Vodafone. We give them a few thousand quid a year, so logically they would want our custom right? Nope.

Having lost my phone, I decided to get a new contract. My previous contract expired in 3 months, so compared to what it could have been, it was a minimal financial loss.
Thus, knowing I could not cancel my contract I went into Vodafone to change my contract to a lower tariff. I.E Rather than spend £35 a month on a phone I did not have, simply spend £15: a saving of £20 monthly for 3 months.
After ‘a period of time which made the effort not worth it’ the woman told me I could only reduce my contract by £5 a month. I stated that with previous contracts we had reduced the contract in one lump, but she was having none of it. Essentially Vodafone wanted to make £30 extra out of me over a 3 month period by making ‘me saving money’ excessively complicated.

What Vodafone in fact did is make me decide that I did not in fact want to take out another contract with them. On the assumption I would have taken out a £30 monthly contract for 18 months, they lost a whopping £510 for having no business sense. Further to this, I have informed all family members to stay away from Vodafone when getting a new contract. We can multiply that number by 5, and state that Vodafone will essentially lose £2,500 bi-anually (minimum), and it is all their fault.

I am ridiculously stubborn, and business acumen influenced. Vodafone have ticked every box for me as a company NEVER to deal with.

‘boo hoo’ book review

August 20, 2009 | Written by -GRUMBA- | Topic: Reviews | Comments (0)

I found an old book stashed on my bookshelf a week or so ago. I picked up the book many years ago because it was a book about an e-tailer which crashed after the dot com boom. Given that I was interested in online business at the time, I thought it would be an interesting, and informative read.

‘boo hoo’ is written by Ernst Malmsten, one of the founders of boo.com back in 1999/2000. The book outlines how the company began: the idea, the development, the situation, the investments, and then goes on to outline how it crashed and died under its own weight.
It is an interesting read, and well worth reading if you want to know what not to do.

The book outlines how hundred of millions of dollars of investment from some extremely infamous names were obtained.
This money was spent on developing the technology, and infrastructure to run an online fashion, and sportswear retailer, as well as for advertising, staff salaries, contractors etc

Some extremely interesting bits include:

The server which they bought from Sun Microsytems. It cost a measly $1.3 million dollars, and housed 64 processors. Amusingly the biggest worry was that it would crash through the floor of the data center under its own weight !

The fact that they spent millions of dollars on their website which I could have developed for a few thousand bucks !

The fact that they bought boo.com in 1999 for $3,500 !

What I found stunning about this book is the apparent ‘by-the-book’ attitude of companies within the corporate world. If you have an idea, you do not need to get significant investment from banks. boo hoo outlines how their first big trial was getting millions of dollars of investment based on an idea. In reality you do not need this. Some of the most well known start ups in the world started with nothing, and crucially flourished: see facebook !

The book essentially portrays a story of 3 somewhat naive businessmen/women who wanted to build a global brand the easy way. They got lucky with an early investment but failed because they wasted their money. Rather than develop their website in house for a small amount, they outsourced to Ericsson at a cost of tens of millions of dollars. What a waste.
Furthermore the attitude the book portrays is that when something small needed fixing, they would hire a new employee. After all they did have the money. Only once all the money was gone did they have to fire most of their staff, and concede defeat.

Success, and arrogance will never be found in the same sentence. Success, and easy will never be found in the same sentence. This book outlines this perfectly, and is well worth the read.

The best thing about this book is the fact that it was written by one of the founders, who in hindsight realized their mistakes. An honest, and informative insight into the logistics of running a business. 7/10

Yes Inn review.

July 17, 2009 | Written by -GRUMBA- | Topic: Reviews | Comments (0)

The Yes Inn is located in the center of Hong Kong, Hong Kong.

We booked this hostel in advance because it was the first stop in our trip, and we wanted to be organized.

During the flight into HK, I realized that I had made a mistake. Given the time difference, I had actually booked the hostel a night early. Essentially we turned up and were expected to pay for 7 nights instead of the 6 we were staying. Admittedly this was my fault, but we had to pay £40GBP extra for beds in a partially full hostel.
My point being the staff at Yes Inn want your money, not your custom. They run a cut throat business.

If you take a look at these pictures of Yes Inn rooms, you will get an idea of exactly what you will NOT get. I went into a few rooms during my stay, and none looked anything like any of the pictures on their website. I think they just took some pictures in Ikea, and put them on their website…
The rooms are located in large ‘incense filled’ tower blocks. In each, YI own an area, or part of a floor, but it is a public block. The security guards are more than likely on minimum wage, and are unfriendly (Although this has nothing to do with YI). On one occasion I have vivid memories of me and Andy getting confused trying to open the door (the whole push/pull scenario), and he went mental (just as well we could not understand him).

The room we stayed in had two single beds in it, with uncomfortable mattresses on them. The room was the size of these two beds plus about 1m. The room was really small, and really grotty. It had not been painted, it had bars on the windows, and a view of another building. There was a tiny on suite toilet/shower in the very corner of the room, but just our luck the toilet got blocked on the 1st day.

The one thing in favor of the Yes Inn was the staff. There was a very friendly local woman who spoke English. She was very helpful, on numerous occasions pointed me in the right direction, and when I lost my wallet was very helpful. The staff even lent me 20HKD at one point !

At the end of the day the room was small, and in a large tower block BUT it was cheap for a large city center (£20GBP/$30USD)… actually not THAT cheap. I would stay there again: it is tried and tested, and the staff do raise its ratings.