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By Posted on Posted in Bad Experience, Hypermarkets, Lebanon, Services, Shopping No Comments

Saturday afternoon I dropped by TSC Mega at CityMall but my experience that day was quite bad.

When you enter the store, you look around for those blue or red plastic shopping basket which you don’t find then you decide to pick one of those trolleys which are not clean and struggle to push them as their wheels are not working properly.

Then I hit the non-food section to pick up what I came for, and there was the biggest surprise, very bad lighting, huge and long shelves almost empty showing those stocks of unsold products that gives you a feeling that the store is going bankrupt very very soon.

Of course you barely can spot someone from the staff to ask any question in any section (and most probably if you ask a question you won’t get the correct answer).

After getting the few small things in that huge trolley I had, direction check-out.
39 check-outs in the store and I guess not more than 7 were open on a weekend with a huge line at each check-out, even the check-out stating “10 items or less” was full with clients pushing trolleys full of stuff and more than 10 items and nobody from the staff cared about it (I had less than 10 items)

Then the cashier starting scanning my items, after the 1st item, he stopped and started arguing with the supervisor of the porters and totally forgot that I was standing there, then restarted the scanning process, I paid and left.

No wonder you hear on the market that TSC is going thru bad times and it looks so obvious after my visit.

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 Services No Comments

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By Posted on Posted in Services No Comments

Whenever you are running out of mobile battery all you have to do is to drop by one of these stands, available in shopping malls in Kuala Lumpur in Malaysia, where you can recharge almost any mobile for free, cool service.

By Posted on Posted in Services No Comments
I have a Romanian Vodafone (previously Connex) GSM prepaid sim card that I usually use during my trips, I recharge it everytime I visit Romania. I never tried to recharge it from any other Vodafone network outside Romania, but I know that you can recharge any Vodafone prepaid card from any other European Vodafone network.I was really happy seeing a Vodafone store at the CityStars Mall as I wanted to recharge my card, unfortunately Vodafone Egypt is not offering this service so far, hopefully they will do soon.