Good Luck Happens!

I had the notion that most of the online sweepstakes, free coupons and similar such things are just to lure us in revealing our information and thereafter getting spammed was the end result. Also I had this belief that in case of any lottery, surprise gift cards, scratch cards etc. my luck is very bad. However, one fine days a few days ago I received a mail from Indiblogger with the subject titled "free KFC coupon".  

I was about to delete the mail but thought of reading it and then delete. Upon reading the mail I landed on the Indiblogger website which asked for my details for that free coupon to be delivered. Just to give it a try I gave my address details, although I was sure that nothing is going to happen. But then Good Luck Happens! I recieved a courier yesterday with the free coupon. What this has done is this shaken my earlier belief and I learned that yes good luck just happens, but only if you try.

Here are the pictures of the coupon that I received, thanks to the Indiblogger.com team:

Help a child

If you read and follow news then you would definitely know about "Super 30" which has gained attention among the major cities of the world and has been praised all over.

The idea is talented students should get the opportunity to showcase their talent. But, sometimes finances get in the way. I have studied under an education loan. I was lucky to get a loan and fulfill my dreams. Not everyone is Lucky or financially able to get a loan. But there are immensely talented students out there. The following is an NGO working for the dreams of such students.

Help A Child to Study sponsors the higher education of meritorious underprivileged students, supporting them to achieve dreams of a better future. We sponsor all formal courses above 10th, including 11th and 12th, diploma courses, degree courses, B.E., M.B.B.S. and Postgrad. Through education our students are able to escape the cycle of poverty through their own talents.

We are very proud of our students - who are the children of labourers, small scale farmers, weavers and other families with low incomes. These students have enormous potential to succeed and only need financial support to do so. We are thrilled that today some of our graduates are placed with large companies such as Mahindra Tech, L&T, and TATA Consultancy Services.


Support: Education, higher education, sponsorship of students.

For more details you can visit them here: Help a Child

This post is a part of BlogAdda's Bloggers Social Responsibility (BSR) initiative. I am exercising my BSR. You can too with three simple steps. Visit http://www.blogadda.com/bsr/ and support the NGO's.

Caveat Emptor: Let the Buyer Beware!!

Websites that offer huge discounts on products and services in your area/locality/city are burgeoning like mushrooms these days. Mostly the products or services on offer are not the everyday necessities but in general cater to giving you a slice of that lavish lifestyle you always dream of. 

Courtesy : americanbedu.com

The general idea is to get many buyers for the seller and thus create a win-win-win situation for all. The seller is happy as the sales reach the peaks. The buyer is happy to get hold of a good bargain and the service provider is happy to make a commission out if and create its loyalists.

SoSasta was a start up which became an instant hit when Groupon a World Giant in this field decided to enter India and bought the start up.  Having subscribed for the Kolkata deals and regularly getting tempting offers, I decided to buy a watch given the huge discount on offer. The process to buy the voucher was streamlined but the customer would always keep wondering about the delivery and purchase options as full details were missing.

The contact number provided keeps ringing and no one picks the same. I was lucky to reach them on my tenth try and spoke to lady who was very helpful to stating that apparently there is no voucher required for the sale whereas the email I received stated that voucher will be sent soon. Next I was asked to send a mail with all details but no response from the service providers till today. Every business organization must understand that this is the era of customer satisfaction. While a prompt service might not have forced me to blog about it but poor service will always do…

One search on twitter and I learnt I was not alone:

‎	PurpleMossE‎ Hello someone from @SoSasta pls write back...one of ur offers bought has incomplete details... Twitter - 700032 16 May 2011

‎	sum1‎ @SoSasta Sent 2 emails to contact@sosasta.com. Last one was 10 days ago. Still no reply. Call that customer service bcoz I don't

While the online shopping scenario is picking up speedily in India with international service providers heading to the country like Amazon which now provides free shipping and sites like Flipkart are creating benchmarks in customer delight, such bad experiences will leave people with a bitter taste in mouth. 

Update: 
People from SoSasta have explained about the issue with their vendor for the deal and have also mentioned to take steps towards informing the customers about such situations in future. Its good when companies take the extra pain to reach out to all their customers big and small.


This episode also explains how internet and social media interaction is changing the dynamics between Businesses and consumers.

The curious case of Internet Meme

Disclaimer: The following post is a very useless post about one word that got me into spending some time on the net discovering what I present below. Please read further only if you have nothing better to do except wasting time on Facebook applications.

Type any twitter handle into Google and we get to see a host of websites using twitter feeds, twitter handle groups, follower lists, re-tweets etc. I found something interesting here’s a screenshot:

It was interesting to find the last website, at first I did not much understand the meaning of the website except may be it filed my tweets with cricket as the keywords. But I was interested to know the meaning of the word “meme”

As per Wikipedia:

A meme, a relatively newly coined term, identifies ideas or beliefs that are transmitted from one person or group of people to another. The concept comes from an analogy: as genes transmit biological information, memes can be said to transmit idea and belief information.

When I checked into the website www.tweetmeme.com I came to understand that what it did was, to classify the most shared or rather discussed links on the micro blogging site twitter. The what how and why has been answered by them here

So what is the concept here? I thought it may be just a stand alone website catering to twitter like the ancillaries to big businesses. But no, we now have many such “memes” across the internet that helps the reader to check out the latest trends and discussions on the web on a particular topic of interest. For example techmeme is solely catering to technology news and updates being shared by us the users.

This is pretty much what I could do with one word. If you are genuinely pissed off after reading this article, vent your anger in the comments section.

hi,
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