Tom Doyle :: TALK

A few weeks I decided to purchase a DVD recorder, you know, one of the cool ones that allow you to pause live TV, allows you to record to an internal HDD aswell DVDRs etc.

After much searching of the shops I decided I’d go with a Philips DVDR3597H (scroll to bottom), which seemed to have everything I required. In the shops they were ranging from €250 to €290 a pop. When I went into one well known electronics store, they were displaying a 20% off sign, when I asked them could I buy one, they only had the display model left. I don’t know why, but they wouldn’t give me anymore off the ragged looking display model, so I didn’t buy it then and there.

A friend of mine who frequently uses eBay recommend an eBay store by a crowd who call themselves Luzern Tech. I went onto eBay to have a look at them and the product I wanted was on auction for only £10 GBP.

I thought “great! this is my lucky day”. Well how wrong was I…
I won the auction for £71 GBP. Delighted, I paid the £71 + £8.50 delivery charge. In total it worked out at around €102. Happy days!!

When I received the product about 10 days later, I set it up and had it all functioning perfectly. Now, the box that arrives with the product has a lovely page stating that all products are fully tested before leaving the warehouse - worringly they had a longer explaination on how to return your product.

Anyway, when I tried to use the most basic and fundemental part of a DVD player, my world collapsed around me. I inserted my favourite Pearl Harbour DVD (;)) and bang, the disc tray kept opening and closing. It simply wouldn’t play any DVD.

More disappointed at the fact that I’d have to untangle all the wires again to put it back in the box, I decided to email Luzern Tech to find out the process from the horses mouth. 2 days later I still hadn’t heard back from Luzern Tech. Looking at their negative comments on eBay, I shouldn’t have been surprised.

One of the negative feedbacks that stuck out to me most was one where a guy won an auction for a few pounds and when he didn’t receive the product questioned Luzern Tech as to why. They said they were out of stock, which is against eBay’s rules as far as I know!

Anyway, I kept faith and just thought I’d been a little unlucky since they did have a fairly high rating of 97% on eBay.

When I finally got a reply from Luzern Tech, I realised something was wrong. They sent me a RMA number and asked me to deliver it back to them. At no stage did anyone ask me what was wrong with the player.

So I went off packaged it up and delivered it back to Luzern Tech’s warehouse in Blanchardstown, Dublin. When I got there, I found an office block with a logo the very same to Luzern Tech’s except it was called Luzern Solutions.

When I rang the bell, another shocker came to me… The guy at the end of the intercom said “You have a delivery? Is it a return? You are in the wrong place if it is”. The first thing that struck me was “Is it a return”, obviously well used to people coming to the wrong door to drop off a broken product. The second thing was, “you are in the wrong place”. Granted the main entrance was only at the other side of the building, it just seemed very shady to me.

Anyway, I dropped it off and didn’t hear a word from them until I went chasing them again. A few days later, I got what looked like an automated response from them stating that I would be getting a refund.

Again, no-one asked me at all what was wrong with the player. It was as if they already knew it would be returned anyway and were just happy to give me my money back.

So today I got my refund, except I was only refunded for the price of the player and not for delivery. I guess the motto of this story, be very careful when dealing with this crowd. If you buy something, make sure it’s at a decent price or you’re likely to get a dud.

My belief is that I bought something for well below what it should have sold for, so in order to fulfil the order, the just sent me out a broken player knowing I would send it back and they could give me my refund.

Oh and this is all from a company that say they are reputable - take a look at their website - www.luzernsolutions.com

They even have the nerve to state:

“PROOF! …..

We know we’re good!!  We have the highest feedback rating on eBay of any high-volume refurbished product reseller. We also maintain customer feedback ratings with the very same systems, staff, and procedures. “

That’s a blatant lie as many users of eBay will be aware of.

I’m now just fighting to get all my monies refunded, but do you think I’ve heard from them? You got it… no

Just back from a weeks break in Lanzarote, hence the lack of posts last week. Have loads of work on so I’ll keep this short.

My wife, little girl and I stayed in the Hotel Los Jameos Playa Hotel which is on the border of Playa de los Picollos and Playa Matagorda in Peurto del Carmen. In the sweltering heat, it’s about a 25 min walk to the centre of Puerto del Carmen.

The hotel itself was fantastic, I had read horrible reviews about the place before we left, but to be honest I’ve been in worse 5 star hotels.

My only criticism of this hotel was that it was overrun with Germans, not that that’s a bad thing of course. But if you want in anyway to be social and get to know people, you’ll need to know a little German. It was hillarious though watching my 1 year old daughter stare blankly at them as they tried talking to her

But she was over the moon. She had plenty of space to run riot and cause havoc! There were 3 pools that we could safely bring her to, with only 1 being too cold for her liking. There is also a playground and a pond loaded with fish!

The food was great, plenty of choice for every taste. The evenings were perfect too, they had kids entertainment for an hour every evening and straight after that there was entertainment for the adults. It was OK to have the kids at the adult shows too.

A lot of the reviews complained about the staff being unpolite. I only encountered one of them and it wasn’t rude enough for me to be too concerned.

All in all, I’d definitely recommend this hotel to anyone who is planning a sun holiday.  It’s particularly suited to families or older couples. It’s a nice quite place without the hussle and bustle, but within easy access to the great night life in Puerto del Carmen.

Ever wondered how much your website is worth?

Whether it’s a personal blog or a corporate website, your online presence is bound to be worth something.. right?

Well according to websiteoutlook.com, this blog is worth $4,555. Not bad for a site that is purely hobby for me - huh?

But it pales in comparison to some of Ireland’s most prolific bloggers:

1. Damien Mulley - $22,491.30
2. Tom Raftery - $21,724.80
3. Michele Neylon - $19,841.40
4. Grandad - $16,695.10
5. Twenty Major - $13,972.20

So what’s your site worth? Find out now www.websiteoutlook.com

DISCLAIMER: Please don’t use this as a real guide to the value of your website - it’s just a bit of fun…

http://www.dealextreme.com/details.dx/sku.11379

Came across this “tool” today - my god I’d have so much fun shotting the guys in the office with this…

We’ve been working on a project for a couple of months now, it’s a pretty standard website with the only major piece of coding being the used car search.

The client was already a signed up member of CarZone and really had no need to ditch them because the system worked quite well for them. However, what they did want to do was integrate the search more into their website so that they make it easier to use and get more content on their website.

On approaching CarZone, they gave two ridiculous integration options that in my mind are beyond belief.

Option 1 was to template a hosted solution on CarZones server. This wasn’t a goer for us because the site also had a Content Management System. So if anything changed, like the navigation or special offer etc. we would have to provide them with a new template each time. Obviously this didn’t make sense at all for the client.

Option 2 was for the results to be provided in an iFrame. Of course in my opinion, the further away from iFrames the better. We all know about the compatibility issues surrounding them, never mind the the fact that they can be quite restrictive in terms of layout etc.

After much consultation with CarZone, I was left feeling quite disappointed and badly treated when I tried to find other integration options. They refused to take simple suggestions on board that could have made this an easy integration for both parties. Even waving money in their face didn’t make a difference!

I was told, even after insisting it wasn’t, that the iFrame was an adequate solution. I’m sorry, but from a professional developers point of view anything to do with iFrames is not a solution. Maybe it is for beginners - but certainly not for pro’s who can do other things in a similar timeframe, yet have a much better solution in the end.

What’s really sad is that in this day and age, with all the hype about Web 2.0, one of Ireland’s leading websites can’t make the simple transition to providing basic xml feeds for their clients.

Come on CarZone, be a bit more creative instead of just sitting back and taking your clients money! Start providing a value add!

MySpace are planning a redesign of their popular website. The idea is to improve usability and maximise its ad space. Here’s a sample of what it will look like:

I know it’s early yet - but so far the indications are that the Lisbon Treaty looks set to be thrown out by the Irish.

Disturbingly enough, our government have come out to say that they have nothing planned on how to handle the treaty being rejected. So although I think it’s a good thing that it’s been rejected, I have little confidence that our government have the competency to organise a strategy for dealing with this situation.

Where does Ireland go from here? Our goverment have been too naive, arrogant and ignorant over the whole Lisbon Treaty. To expect the country to just sign up for something that they were told nothing about was just as I have said before… ridiculous…

So Google and Yahoo! are now partners on search ads huh? My god what next??

I have to say I think it’s a great deal for both parties. Yahoo! can greatly increase the monetisation of their pages, while Google can continue to grow their penetration of the search advertising market.

Here’s Google’s apparent reasoning for the joint venture : http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2008/06/our-agreement-to-provide-ad-technology.html

ConsoleSource.com, the games console accessory online store have published all their affiliate members profiles online.

Today I was notified by email from a source calling themselves GamerGenesis.com, that all my information, including my home address(!) has been published on the ConsoleSource.com website.

In an obvious security breach, you can access their affiliate list at the following address : http://www.consolesource.com/affiliates/admin/print.affiliates_all.php

Adding to the breach, GamerGenesis.com questioned whether any affiliate had actually received payments from ConsoleSource.com.

So if you plan to buy anything from or sign up with ConsoleSource.com be very careful as to what information you provide.

EDIT: Apparently this has now been “remedied”.

Another handy little tool for all your developers. IETester is a nicely presented tool for checking how your website(s) look in legacy IE browsers and of course the latest IE 8 beta!

Download and more information here:
http://www.my-debugbar.com/wiki/IETester/HomePage