From Bad to Much Worse

The last 10 years or so have propelled (pun intended) Air Asia from nothing to huge and in general I kind of like them.  I understand the concept of no frill and low cost and it works fine.

Except - for some bizarre reason - they can't seem to get the in-flight "menu" quite right.  I guess I fly Air Asia perhaps once every 2 month or so in average and they always change the menu completely between flights, and some of the choices are quite odd really.  I remember at one point they didn't have coffee on the menu (sure you could get that horrible 3-in-1 stuff - but plain coffee - nope).  Two things are in common of all these menus:

1. They are quite limited

2. Without exception - 80 % of the items are "out of stock"

I am not joking - they are always out of everything.  Take plain Nescafe for example.  It weighs next to nothing.  They must have a pretty good idea how many they need.  How on earth is it possible that they run out on the SECOND flight of the day?  And this is my experience - about half the times I fly Air Asia they don't have plain coffee, but only some disgusting pre-mixed sugar stuff.

Anyway - I started this post by claiming they went from bad to worse, and let me illustrate that with my latest experience only about 5 days ago.  Afternoon flight from Kuala Lumpur to Phuket - and I hadn't had any lunch whatsoever, so I was quite hungry. The first page of the menu looked like this:

Now, that actually looked pretty good, so I tried to order it.  Unfortunately - well you guessed it - Out of stock.

Then I flipped to page two:

The Vegetarian Briyani seemed ok, but well you guessed right again - out of stock.

Then I went to the next item, the Tandoori Chicken Wrap - out of stock.

By this time I was getting slightly annoyed and flipped to the next page:

I didn't really read it much - but just said: "OK, I'll just have a sandwich of some sort", thinking - sandwiches they must have in stock.  The flight attendant lit up and said: "Sure, you can have a Chicken sandwich" to which I replied: "Fine".

THEN - and only then - she added: "But you will have to get Pringles too, because Chicken sandwich only come as a set".  WTF?  I flipped to the next page, and surely:

I went: "But I don't like Soy Milk under any circumstances, and I don't eat Pringles, they make me fatter than I already am, so can't I just have a plain sandwich".  The flight attendants response was: "Only the vegetarian sandwich, that is the only one we sell alone".

Now, I find that fairly idiotic really, but what the hell - by this time anything, and I do mean anything, would do, so I told the flight attendant: "OK, just give me a vegetarian sandwich".  Her reply, and I bet you didn't see this one coming: "Out of stock".  What the hell - she suggested it herself!  What's the point - just teasing me with all the stuff I couldn't get?

By this time I really was getting annoyed, so I went: "Look, you're pretty much out of everything, why don't you just give me a Chicken sandwich?", to which she replied: "Sure, but I will have to charge you RM 1315 for it since it only comes as a set".  I somewhat strongly suggested that she took that up with her supervisor - or whatever they are called on a plane.  2 minutes later she returned and said:

"Ok, I'll sell you a chicken sandwich for RM 9, but ONLY because we're out of Pringles"

Priceless :)  A long argument about a set deal that they didn't have in the first place.  And she actually needed to use their own incompetence as an excuse to sell me a bloody sandwich.

How is it possible to screw up this consistent - even on a no frill low cost airline?

How to Piss of and Annoy your Customers

I've stayed in the central part of Kuala Lumpur for almost 10 years and one thing that is sorely lacking in that area is descent super markets.  There's a few "Giant" (OK for canned stuff but not for anything else), a "Cold Storage" (which is OK but severely overpriced and I get claustrophobic in their KLCC branch), "Mercato" (new kid on the block and probably the best one now) and then there is "Isetan" in Lot 10.


For years, Isetan has been the best option and for years it has been going steadily downhill - downhill to a point where it's becoming a bad joke.

One example is their "Non Halal" section.  For some utterly bizarre reason they insist on wrapping all their food in some rather ungreased grease paper.  I don't know what kind of discount product they are using, but the result is that after 12 hours in the fridge, the paper has dissolved into a rather nasty pulp that is sticking to the meat.  I have for years pointed this out to the Chinese lady that usually take care of that part of the shop but they are still using exactly the same paper, and I still avoid buying anything there that isn't shrink wrapped.


But by far the biggest problem is their bakery.

When they do have bread it is actually one of the better bakeries in Malaysia - as in their baguettes actually last more than a few hours and they are almost acceptable the next day.  Unfortunately they don't seem very keen on selling any and mostly their shelves look like this:

They seem to have two modes of operation.  If I go there before - say 2 in the afternoon (the above pictures were taken at 12:30), without exception they will have bread in "half an hour".  If I decide to go later - say around 5pm, the shelves are equally empty and they have "sold out" (with no plan to restock).  I am NOT joking here - they appear to have a random window of about an hour or so, sometimes in the afternoon, where the bakery actually sell freshly baked bread. I think I see fresh bread there one out of 10 times I pass by and that is NEVER in the morning and NEVER in the evening.  And this problem have been steadily getting worse over the past few years.  4-5 years back (before the renovation) they usually had bread at all times, these days - almost never.


Typically when buying groceries one has got quite a lot to carry and it is damn annoying to have to go somewhere else.  I've had situations where I had shopped for a nice salad only to find that there was no bread available whatsoever.


The result of this is obvious.  I have started to go to Mercato instead.  Their bread is not nearly as good as it was in Isetan (back when they still bothered to make any) but they are always well stocked and I never had to leave the shop without what I intended to buy.


I find it difficult to get my head around this ridiculous business practice.  Sure, no shop like to throw out food that has gone bad, but flour is about RM 1.50 pr. kg and there's probably what - 150 gram in a baguette.  If Isetan lose ONE customer on this practice (and they have mostly lost me and I have seen other people complain about it) they already lost more than if they had to throw out 10 baguettes a day (and surely they could find better use for them before they expire).  On their website, they have the nerve to write:

"Isetan's 'customer first' guiding principal is embodied in all aspects of our services"

I am sorry but this is  absolutely ridiculous - surely they mean "customer last".  As obvious from the experience I have described, Isetan couldn't care less about their customers - all they wish is to save a few bucks and run the operation as cheap as humanly possible, no matter how badly it hurts the quality of their products and their service.

I have send the link to this blog entry to Isetan in Malaysia (through their web-site) and the holding company in Japan (also through their web-site) and any reaction or lack thereof will be added here.

Update Jul. 20, 2011

As mentioned, I did use the contact form on their web-site, but obviously this "customer first" company couldn't be bothered to send me a reply.  Absolutely useless and non-existent customer service, which is a bit of a surprise considering Isetan is Japanese and the Japanese usually take customer interaction quite serious.

Oh - and their web-site hasn't been updated since 2009 and it has been hacked quite badly (try to click on the Facebook logo).  Amateurs!

Excuse me - Kiss your what? Sure thing baby!

During a walk to Pavilion (Bukit Bintang, Kuala Lumpur) today, I came across a huge marketing campaign for the Chinese car maker Chery.  What really caught my attention was the name of the event:

Now this could be an attempt to be very funny - but this being Malaysia and Chery being Chinese I somehow just think they forgot to - or was too stingy to - check it with a native English speaker.

One thing for sure - I am glad that it was Chery that was responsible for this event and not Hyundai or Hino (Japanese truck/bus manufacturer).  I can only imagine what could come out of that.

Kiss my Heinie?

Chery's paddling around in the pool is still better.

Why Bother?

If there's one thing I hate it's "customer hotlines".  Usually they are a total waste of everybody's time.  However, one thing is to support existing customers poorly, quite another is to support potential customers poorly.

The battery in my Asus Eee PC have gone quite bad after about 1 1/2 years or so, which in this climate is just about what can be expected.  So today I called Asus just to hear if they have any replacement batteries in stock and if they had, where to go and purchase one.  The guy I spoke with was obviously going according to a script and refused to deviate from it.  He insisted on serial number (which with my eye sight is next to impossible to read), name, email, phone number and in each case I had to repeat it about 4-5 times and spell it out before he got it.

After about 5 minutes or so (+ the 10 I had been waiting in their queue) he finally got around to asking me how he could help me.  I asked my question and he promised to call back.

Needless to say I never got any call back.  If it wasn't for the fact that I just bought an IdeaPad I would say that Asus lost a customer, but they actually did that even before this happened.

My question is - why do they even bother to pretend to be helpful, when they have absolutely NO intention of helping?

Solid Car

Solid build quality is not the first thing I would relate to Proton.



Almost as bad as the Naughty Volvo.

Another question is - can a car "have" criteria?

Steve "Big Brother" Jobs is Watching You

Anybody remember the 1984 Macintosh ad:



It's highly ironic that a hidden file recording all movements of iPhone users has just been discovered.

No information yet what Apple is doing with that file but it apparently records location from GPS, Wifi Access Points and GSM Cells several hundred times a day and keep those records in a hidden file on the device forever.

Here's a discussion from the people who discovered this:



I think this is quite amazing.

Really Tasty

Lately this ad has been popping up online:

Colored burgers???  That look _really_ tasty :)