According to Market Share, the release of Firefox 3 has helped the much loved browser break over the 19% market share barrier. They reckon the release grew its worldwide use by as much as 4%, mostly at the expense of poor old Internet Explorer.

Apparently over the same period, Apple’s Safari browser has seen its market share rise to over 6%.

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The latest saga surround the comments I left on eBay. Needless to say, I left negative comments. Here’s what I wrote:

Absolute scammers - delivered broken, refused repair, no postage refund

In response to this, the scumbags (sorry I can’t call them anything else) responded with a complete fabrication:

Reply by luzerntech (01-Jul-08 12:43):
Customer given a returns number for a replacement wanted a refund

For those of you that haven’t been keeping up with events, I basically returned the item looking for a replacement. Without anyone contacting me or asking what was wrong with the unit, I was told I would receive a refund. When I questioned it, they told me (and here’s the exert from the email):

“apologies ,we do not have repair service and we have received the item from the supplier as ready to send.
Anfortunately because of insufficient stock we do not have the item for the replacement”

 So yet again, this crowd have shown themselves to be completely untrustworthy. I’ve so far reported them to eBay, if I don’t get my complete refun, out of principle I will take this further.

Anyway, I insisted again I wanted my money back from the original delivery charge, they replied saying that they won’t do this. So again I have insisted they pay me before I take this further.

Will let you know how I get on.

OH!! And I noticed today that this shower of chancers are IIA members - http://www.iia.ie/membership/member/2826/luzern-technology-solutions-ltd

Since I’m no expert on the subject, I avoid answering any questions and simply leave the comments to grow as long as there is nothing illegal going on.

One question that I’ve got a lot of personal emails on recently is how to get missing channels back on The Box. Apparently Channel 4 and Sky 1 have disappeared.

So if you are looking to get these channels back, you should check out David McGettigans Blog, in particular his post on the latest channel dump for Dublin - http://www.davidmcgettigan.com/?p=169

I hope this helps all those who have been in touch!

I spoke about it before and my attitude has still not changed. This law is well overdue and all the silly provisional license holders who believe this is a joke, need to get a reality check.

92,000 second provisional license holders - off the road… but are they? It was kind of weird this morning, I deliberately set out to spot the number of L plates on the road this morning. I didn’t see one, granted even in bad traffic it only takes me 30 mins to get to work.

So where have they gone? Have people simply peeled off their L plates as I predicted or have they actually stopped driving their cars? I spoke to a relation of mine this morning who works in a junior school and she said that there were a lot of women who were walking in the rain with their kids, who would normally be driving.

Have we just drove these drivers underground with this new law?

Adobe released a press release today, stating that they are teaming up with search industry leaders, namely Google & Yahoo! to “improve search results of dynamic web content”.

Adobe have given Google & Yahoo! access to the Adobe Flash technology to allow them to improve their ability to index flash files/websites.

So what does this mean for us, the search engine optimisers and web developers? Well at the moment, very little it seems. We’ve all known for quite sometime that Google has been able to follow links and index some content from within a flash flash file. At the moment, all this does is give Google and Yahoo! insider information on how they can get to information, previously unavailable from within the flash file.

Will it make a difference? Will flash websites now have a better change of being indexed? In my opinion, I don’t think this will ever happen. Flash just doesn’t offer the flexibility that plain text based HTML does. You’ve a lot more scope within plain HTML than Flash to optimise your website.

It’s an interesting development, but not one I see making a huge difference for a long time.

I got an email back today:

Hi,
apologies ,we do not have repair service and we have received the item
from the supplier as ready to send.
Anfortunately because of insufficient stock we do not have the item for
the replacement ,
regarding to this circumstancess we have issued the refund .
Please accept our apology ,our terms & conditions stated as we do not
refund the postage cost and original freight cost.

Let’s ignore for a second the terrible response in terms of grammar and spelling from a supposedly “one of Europe’s leading eSolution providers in the area of consumer electronic asset recovery and disposition” - straight from the homepage of their website www.luzernsolutions.com.

I’m going to go straight to the “we have received the item from the supplier as ready to send”. On their eBay store however, they say:

“Important point to note
The items have been tested and are 100% functional. However, they may have minor cosmetic blemishes e.g. small marks or scratches normally associated with brief usage.”

So who exactly tests these items then?? If they are taking them and just sending them on, how can they say that the products are 100% functional??

The next point to note is this:

“we do not have repair service”

Funny they should say that when on their website they have the following statement:

“If a defect does occur during the period of the warranty, you should immediately notify the parties listed below. At the sellers option, the product will be repaired or replaced.”

So that’s a lie too then yeah?

Anyway, I just hope their potential customers and clients recognise what a shoddy operation they run.

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 for any reason you would like to get to know people or simply make basic conversation, you’ll need to know a little German. The funniest part was 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 one being too cold for her liking. Not to mention 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 some kids entertainment for an hour every evening and straight after that there was entertainment for the adults, but it was OK to have the kids at the 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.

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…