Antony’s Personal Opinion

What is cold calling? According to Wikipedia, cold calling is:

the processing of approaching prospective clients, typically via telephone, who have not agreed to such an interaction. The word “cold” is used because the person receiving the call is not expecting the call or has not specifically asked to be contacted by the sales person. It is often very frustrating and difficult for those making cold calls because they are often rebuffed, hung-up on and rejected by those receiving the calls.

It would be interesting to know how effective cold calling is. For me, cold calling is always annoying. I believe many people have the same feeling too. If this is the case, why are those companies still spending money to make cold calling? I have no idea….

Recently, I had a problem with the number of “cold calling” to my fixed-line phone number. I receive phone calls offering products or asking donations almost everyday. That’s why, I never pick up any phone calls to my fixed-line number any more. Fortunately, I never published my mobile phone number. Otherwise, I may have gone crazy.

Actually it was my mistake to publish my number to the phone book. Why did I do that? Because my phone provider (Telus) charges $2/month if we decide not to publish our number (see the screenshot below). It’s ridiculous, isn’t it?

I have just asked my phone provider to remove my number from the phone book. Hope this will reduce the number of cold calling. Otherwise, I have to change my phone number….

Frustating with Garuda-Indonesia.com

Recently I was planning my trip in Indonesia. I am going to visit my home country for about 3 weeks. So I visited Garuda-Indonesia.com to look for schedule information from Yogyakarta to Jakarta. If you don’t know, Garuda Indonesia is the largest airline in Indonesia.

OK back to the topic. This is what I did: I entered Departure city, Arrival City and Traveling Time. Then I clicked Schedule Info button. Guess what happened? Nothing… I was waiting for about 5 minutes and nothing happened. Then my web browser displayed an error message. OK, I tried again a couple of hours later from my office. Same result, waiting for about 5 minutes and my browser displayed an error message.

Oh no…. what should I do now? I can’t believe this is the service from Indonesia’s largest airline.

Today I saw a very interesting advertisement in a local newspaper. The ad is about a new car model from one of the largest car manufacturers. It is published in one full page. There is a picture of a very nice car in the middle of the page. Just below the picture, there is price information; it is written “from $13.000*” (I forget the exact price).

I said to myself, wow… it is a very good price for such a nice car. But wait a second… there is * sign next to the price. There must be something wrong (just like many advertisement from American). Ok, I look at the bottom of the page. There is a paragraph written in a very small font so that we can hardly read it. It is written that the price of $13.000 is for different model. The model shown on the picture is about $18.000.

What the h*** is that? They put a picture of a product and then write the price below it, but the price is for different model. Am I too stupid or are they too smart? Yeah… I hate this kind of marketing. Unfortunately, this kind of ad is very often in North America. Another thing that I don’t like here is the fact that they exclude tax from the price list. If we see price list on American shops, we can expect that we will pay more. Not to mention, there might some other hidden costs.

When I live in Germany, if we buy something, the price we have to pay is what we see on the price list. An interesting fact, they have a law that requires every restaurants to put their food price near the entrance door. The purpose is, of course, to allow the customers checking the food price before they eat in that particular restaurant. The written price must already include tax. This is actually very good practice, especially from customers point of view.

Well… every country has different way of selling something. My advice, if you see an advertisement in North America: read carefully the small text at the bottom of the page. You will find the “truth” there. If you buy an expensive products, like car, make sure you know the final $$$ you have to pay. Don’t get surprise at the end….