I am a strong advocate of online shopping and have been evangelizing the savings and benefits of shopping online to my peers and through this blog. This is a story where an online store lost a potential sale because of its inability to provide the most basic customer service.

In December 2011, I was looking around for an online store to purchase an HTC smart phone, a replacement for the Apple iPhone that I lost. I came across KimStore. A lot of bloggers and forum discussions were raving about this online store because it was selling original items and offers the lowest price compared to your standard brick & mortar store. In short, I decided to purchase my phone from KimStore. I was satisfied with my initial purchase but then I sensed something was off.

Delays, delays, delays

I noticed, that during the course of my transaction with KimStore, the text/SMS replies were a bit delayed (4-6 hours). Realizing the popularity of the site, the owner, or whoever is behind the text/SMS responses, might have been inundated with a lot of inquires from potential buyers and therefore could not keep up with the volume of text messages so I just shrugged it off and didn’t mind it at all.

Recently, I decided to inquire about a gadget from her store and to see if the response time has improved. Sad to say it hasn’t. I texted the mobile numbers posted on the website and even called the landline number numerous times but nobody seems to be answering. An information on the website indicating the business hours would have eased the pain and frustration. I wondered why the owner didn’t care much about this detail as it was very basic.

If the problem was the volume of text/SMS, a system can be bought to allow a store owner to answer text/SMS using a computer instead of a cellphone. Using this system, the store owner can effectively keep track of inquiries from one single system without having to jump from one cellphone to another. The text/SMS can then be fed to a customer relationship management (CRM) system so you can tell if the text is from an existing customer or a new one. You can even use the CRM to follow up or cross-sell items to that same customer.

Differentiating yourself from the competition

In this time and age, when you have competitors selling the same stuff and price as you do, it is important that you differentiate yourself from the competition. You can read a lot of marketing books that will tell you how to do this but the most basic is customer service. Customers expect a certain degree of service where the seller is supposed to answer customer inquiries in the most pain-free manner. How can you answer customer inquiries if no one is answering your phone or is replying to text messages?!

To cut the story short, I ended up inquiring (and buying) the stuff from KimStore’s competitor. Will I buy again from KimStore? Maybe.

Attention online store owners: there’s better and and more effective way of “centralizing” customer inquiries rather than having to deal with separate systems. Contact me if you’re interested.

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L adies and gentlemen, prepare yourself (and your wallet) for the latest iteration of the most succesful gadget from Apple, the iPad 3.

Boasting a better and faster processor, a high resolution screen (retina), longer battery life, and better graphics, the iPad 3 is rumored to be released late February or early March of this year. With the anticipated release of iOS 5.1, the iPad 3 is said to feature a quad core processor (A6) but that appears to be false according to industry analysts. Siri, the voice recognition assistant which debuted in the iPhone 4S, is also expected to be in the latest iteration of the iPad.

The unit might be available in the Philippines 4-5 weeks after the official announcement from Apple. Expect iPad 2 prices to go down by Php2,000 to Php5,000 when the unit hits the local market. A brand new iPad 2 costs around Php23,000 in the gray market.

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The Corona impeachment trial is currently fixating the entire country because of the many aspects of the case where the Senate is in a dilemma to go head on against the Supreme Court or not.

The truth of the matter is — even if the Supreme Court granted him the TRO preventing the Senate from examining his dollar account, the prosecution team was able to show, through his peso accounts, that Chief Justice Renato Corona failed to truthfully disclose the correct figures in his SALN. The discrepancy is big enough that you cannot just shrug it off as a simple mistake but a blatant mis-declaration.

Corona claims that the money he and his wife have is fruit of their hard work over the years and living a simple lifestyle. If it is indeed product of honest, hard work, why didn’t he declare it truthfully in his SALN? Why go to his Supreme Court buddies and ask them to hide his dollar accounts behind a TRO? Isn’t that already an indication of guilt? If an honest man has nothing to hide, why does he have to resort to legal remedies? Clearly, this isn’t the case.

I just hope that he spares the entire country from going into political chaos because of his unwillingness to quit from office. In this time and age, it is difficult to find persons who are willing to sacrifice personal ambitions for the good of the country and Chief Justice Corona isn’t one of them.

In a dissenting opinion written by Supreme Court Associate Justice Antonio Carpio, he said “Chief justice Corona has the ‘obligation’ to disclose these foreign currency assets to the people, who have ‘the right to know’ his assets.” Source: Inquirer.net

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I‘ve been banging my head for a couple of days now trying to solve a technical problem with one of my client’s server and sending emails over a particular port. I was trying to send an email over port 465 (SSL) to a Microsoft Exchange 2003 server from my Mac using Apple’s Mail.app.

Unfortunately, I didn’t know that Microsoft Exchange’s SMTP server requires the client to issue a STARTTLS command prior to it securing the communication channel using SSL. I also thought that this wasn’t necessary since I un-checked the “Require TLS” option for password authentications on the Exchange server. I also didn’t know that Apple’s Mail.app does not send a STARTTLS command if it’s not the right port — in this case, port 465. Switching to port 587 did the trick and I’m now a happy geek

One technique I learned though was how to check if the SMTP port has a working certificate. You can do this using the openssl client that Mac OS X comes with (part of the OpenSSL suite). To check if the port has the appropriate certificate, run this command via Terminal:

openssl s_client -starttls smtp -connect {hostname:port}

Where hostname is the server’s full qualified domain name (FQDN) (e.g. smtp.contoso.com) and port is the port where the service is listening (e.g. 465 or 587).

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A 17-year old Filipina is the new 2011 Ford Supermodel of the World. University of the Philippines Fine Arts student Danica Flores Magpantay won this year’s prestigious model search sponsored by Ford Models, Inc.

The morena beauty, standing 5’9″, trumped contestants from over 50 countries to bag the price of $250,000 modeling contract with Ford Models, Inc. Supermodel of the World (Ford Supermodel of the Year, formerly Face of the 80s) is an international modeling contest established by Eileen Ford in 1980.

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What’s so irresistible about Cherry Pie Picache‘s breasts that made Baron Geisler grab it? Was it a case of drunkenness or just plain stupidity? An unlikely ally, Mother Lily Monteverde, feels that Baron was also a victim.

What really happened? According to Cherry Pie Picache‘s complaint, the breast-touching incident happened when they were taping their television series “Noah” over the weekend. It appears that Baron was drunk during that time. Geisler was also the center of two similar complaints — the first was with actress Yasmien Kurdi and second was the daughter of actors William Martinez and Yayo Aguila.

Because of this incident, the Professional Artist Management, Inc. or PAMI issued a statement prohibiting their talents from working with Geisler. PAMI is the Philippines’ biggest association of talent managers.

Despite the prohibition statement of PAMI, Mother Lily is still willing to give the troubled actor projects because “he’s a very good actor.” Asked about how she felt about Geisler–”Nakakaawa. Naawa ako kay Baron parang he’s a victim lang, parang biktima lang siya, naawa ako,” Mother Lily said.

(Source: ABS-CBN News)

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Country pop-princess Taylor Swift is scheduled to be in Manila on February 19, 2011 at the Araneta Coliseum. This is part of her Southeast Asian tour to promote her latest album, Speak Now.

About Taylor

At the tender age of 20, she already has 13 million albums sold, 25 million song downloads, and over 50 awards under her belt. Her first album Taylor Swift went 4 x platinum in the U.S., then her follow-up project Fearless was marked 6 x platinum and reached number one on the Billboard 200. Locally, her Fearless and Fearless (Platinum edition) albums have reached 8 x platinum in both retail and digital sales.

Members of the Taylor Swift Fans Club Philippines can buy their tickets exclusively starting November 5. It will go on sale to the public this November 8.

For reservations and inquiries please visit any Ticketnet outlet, or call 911-55-55, or go online: www.ticketnet.com.ph.

Unfortunately, tickets to the Taylor Swift concert are already sold out. You might want to call Ticketnet for more information about this (source: Inquirer.net)

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Just like the App Store for your iPhone, iTouch, and iPad devices, Apple recently launched its Mac App Store — an App store for your Mac!

Following the success of their App Store, Apple realized they can make more money by tapping thousands of developers who already have applications running on the Mac and putting them in an online store where Apple gets a piece of the pie. The good thing about this is that the developer doesn’t have to worry about setting up a distribution and payment system for their applications and the users also don’t have to worry about keeping track which applications need to updated. It’s a win-win scenario.

You can get access to the Mac App Store by upgrading your system to 10.6.6 — no significant changes except for the new Mac App Store that sits in your dock. The first app I installed after upgrading my system was the Twitter client.

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Some iPhone users have reported their one-time alarms not firing off when the clock rolled over to the New Year. Here’s a simple fix to solve the issue.

Not until Apple fixes the bug, this is the only workaround that seems to work. Set your alarm to recurring instead of one-time, then disable the alarm once it has sounded. According to 9to5, the problem should “fix itself” on January 3, 2011.

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All you Justin Bieber fans, rise up and rejoice for your idol is going to be in Manila this year. Yes, it has been confirmed that teen singing sensation, Justin Bieber, will be performing live in Manila on May 10, 2011.

Part of his My World Concert Tour, Bieber will be performing at the Mall of Asia (MOA) concert grounds. Ticket prices are going to be announced real soon. Watch this page for more breaking news!

Update (1/20/2011): TicketWorld has started selling the tickets to the concert last December 20, 2010. Here are the ticket prices: P8,000, P5,000, P3,500, P2,000 and P750 plus applicable fees. For more information, call 891-9999.

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