Home › Archive for Lebanon › Page 2

Category: Lebanon

By Posted on Posted in Banks, Lebanon, Services No Comments

2 days ago, I was at Bank Audi for a very small banking operation, while waiting for my number to pop up on the screen, I noticed a special credit card issued by the bank for the Armenian community of Lebanon.

When you open the brochure, the first paragraph reads: “Express solidarity with your community: Apply now for the Hi-Card credit card and take advantage of this opportunity to hold a unique card with exceptional benefits that reflects the Armenian Heritage.”

Bank Audi is probably one of the Lebanese banks that issued the highest number of debit and credit cards for the last 10 years and me when it comes to this Hi-Card (Hi means Armenian in Armenian language), me being an “Armenian client” of the bank, I have never been approached by the bank regarding this special card which touches and reflects my heritage, as the brochure is saying, I just discovered it by myself while waiting at the bank.

Is it too complicated for the bank to run a search on their clients name and come out with a list showing all their Armenian clients and inform them by phone or text message about this card? For those who are not aware, Armenian family names, always end with “IAN”.

Another marketing strategy that could the bank use for its advantage, how much would it cost to issue Hi-Card to all their Armenian clients and offer it to them for FREE?

On a separate note about my banking experience that day, I arrived at the bank and picked my number at 12:41, then I got my transaction done at 12:58.

I had to wait 17 minutes to execute a banking operation that took less than 1 minute, while 2 of the customer service employees of the bank where chatting and playing with their smart phones (1 Blackberry and 1 iPhone).

I could easily take a photo of both of them and post it on my blog, but I did not. Maybe the bank management should roll back their security tape and discover it by themselves.

By Posted on Posted in Hosting, Lebanon No Comments

This morning, while I was going thru a classified-ads magazine left at our doorstep, I saw the below web hosting ad. For God’s sake, we are in 2012.

I am not sure if the guy/people behind this service is/are dumb or they are trying to offend the intelligence of people seeing their ad, or there are still out there many ignorant consumers when it comes to web hosting.

50mb of hosting space and 2 email addresses for 60$/year, come on… wake up. While a free email at Gmail give you now 7GB of space and you can get almost endless space for cloud hosting like Box.net or SkyDrive or many other service and in case you are looking for a straight hosting service, you get “unlimited” everything + a domain for even cheaper than $60/year.

I personally use HostMonster for many years now and they never let me down (this is not a paid blog entry by hostmonster), I am just a happy customer.

So please, stop being stupid or making us feel stupid.

By Posted on Posted in France, Lebanon, Retail, Supermarkets 1 Comment

Monoprix, the French retailer (www.monoprix.fr) is back to Lebanon after leaving the market for 3 years, following the deal of selling their previous point-of-sales (5 super and 1 hyper) to the Kuwaiti group, The Sultan Center.

The 1st come-back store is located in Jnah, between The Sultan Center and Spinneys, few meters from the old biggest Monoprix outlet and is much smaller in surface size from the previous one.

Once you enter the store, you definitely feel the “French retail touch”, which totally disappeared when TSC took over the previous stores. After strolling the aisles, you will certainly notice the strong presence of the Monoprix private label, almost in all categories with quite good visibility.

I am not sure about this private label presence policy, if it is a strategic move for the future or tactical, to put suppliers under pressure during the opening of the few coming stores in 2012?

Valet parking service is available at the location.

Next year will definitely bring lots of surprises on the Lebanese retail scene, specially if Carrefour will be ready with its 1st store scheduled for 2013, located at Beirut City Center, the $40 million USD super structure shopping mall on the outskirts of Beirut owned and operated by Majid Al Futtaim Holding.

By Posted on Posted in Lebanon, Retail, TV Commercial No Comments

Lebanese supermarkets are rarely on television, unless it is Easter or Christmas season or they are running a heavy corporate promotion to push clients to their stores.

Fahed Supermarket in Furn-El-Chebak, Lebanon (not linked to Fahed Supermarket in Jounieh, even they are cousins), decided to go on TV.

Their TV commercials are the worst that I have ever seen for any retailer, at least in Lebanon.

Who would use such animation in 2011 and what the hell is “Red & Pink Panther” doing there?

By Posted on Posted in Lebanon, Qatar, Retail, Saudi Arabia No Comments

If you are in Lebanon and you shop for 20,000LL at Coop or Giant Stores, you might be a lucky winner of one of the 200 gold coins.

Unfortunately after searching long on the internet, I could not find any website for Coop Lebanon, except the website of Giant Stores with no much information about their Lebanese operation.

Giant Stores Lebanon and Coop Lebanon are under the management of Al Muhaidib Group.

in Saudia Arabia, Giant Stores POS were merged with Azizia Panda and in Qatar, they were bought by Al Meera.

By Posted on Posted in Lebanon, Retail, Supermarkets, Websites No Comments

Below are screenshots of the websites of major Lebanese supermarkets. Unfortunately there are lots of work to be done on their online presence compared to European and American retail distribution chains.
Monoprix will be back in town soon & Carrefour will open its 1st store in 2012, hopefully their websites will be more attractive.





Click on photos to see in full size