Buying a Camera - Part 1

I decided to buy a new point a click camera and given I had a gift voucher from JB Hi-Fi they had the inside running on the purchase. First stop though was the internet and a miriad of photography sites that assess every aspect of a camera that your average point and click camera user could ever care to think about. I started knowing (I thought) the prices I wanted to pay, which started out as less than $250 and with a $100 voucher that would make for a reasonably good but I figured. 

Now image quality seemed an important feature to me, not important enough to buy a SLR camera at $800 plus, but naturally you want your photos to look good. I wanted to capture shots of a sorts team so it had to be able to zoom well enough to capture people on the far side of the football field, and have enough megapixels that I could crop the shot a bit and still be able to publish it on our teams website. Given most cameras do all of this, it was a matter of finding which camera did it best in the price range. Oh and as a bit of a geek, I'd quite like one that was wireless so I wouldn't need to connect the camera to the computer.

Well after reviewing cameras review sites for three or four weeks I had almost bought myself to the point where I couldn't find a camera that was quite right, well not in the price range I started out looking at. It turned out JB Hi-Fi stocked cameras that were generally over a year old, meaning some of the new features weren't available. I only wanted to point a click I thought but now I was comparing the shots cameras made when taking a shot of something a long way away, much further than the other side of the football field.

I'd looked at so many camera and read so many reviews, that I'd brought myself to a point where it didn't look like I'd ever make a decision. In Part 2 - how I decided what to buy and why.  

Airline Coffee and Tea

Once upon a time airlines even on short flights of under an hour would try and serve you some kind of meal, we meal is probably exaggerating what you got, you got a small tray that replicated in a mini version a meal. Over time the budget airlines came along and offered peanuts or cookies and before long the main airline in New Zealand followed suit. Now you get coffee, tea or water with a cookie or a small packet of potato chips. To me this all seems pointless because I can go half an hour or an hour without a coffee or tea and the airports are full of coffee outlets these days so that you have to walk past about five of them before you can get on the plane. 

So on my most recent flight there was a bit of turbulence during the ascent and the seat belt sign didn't get turned off for twenty or so minutes into a flight of less than an hour. As an evening flight we got offered beer or wine, which may well have helped some of the nervous passengers but is really just as pointless as coffee or tea. In this case because they got to start the distribution process a bit late, they didn't have time to complete the process before we were heading back down into the turbulence again. So they told everyone to hold on to the paper cups and put them in a rubbish bin as they left the aircraft.

I'm not sure if this providing drinks on short flights sells any extra tickets, all airlines do much the same and I would pay more for a coffee service, I'd happily pay less not to have it. There may be another reason I don't understand why they do it, it does after all give the air hostesses something to do on the flight, they would otherwise only have to respond to paying customers who wanted a drink, and on these short flights I can't recall a passenger ever taking up the offer to buy anything given the choice.

Australia is a three or four hour flight from here, I think over the longer distance it is good to have the opportunity at least to buy things like drinks if you want them. I noticed on this flight people are buying their own water on the airport side of security, so I'm sure if you want water it is easier to buy what you want and take it with you. I have to book some flights today, I will not be taking into account the in-flight service be it either drinks, food or movies, I'll be looking at the cost of the flights and the times. Everything else isn't going to change my purchase, even with entertainment now I take my own movies and other entertainment anyway - just get me there safely and cheaply.

Newspapers Still Have A Place

I get a Sunday paper delivered and when you sign up they promise you a delivery by 8 am on a Sunday. There don't appear to be any quality standards for the newspaper itself, I guess it is hard to promise a customer that the paper will be a certain standard as how do you judge that? But delivery on time is a hard measure I can understand, it doesn't relate to the quality of the newspaper but it sure leaves an impression on this customer.

Now the target is missed more than it is hi, delivery this morning was around two and a half hours late, not exactly sure because you don't tend to go out looking every five minutes after is late. But still it finally got here, it has been reasonably common that it doesn't come at all. The convenience of getting the paper to your door is the reason for persisting with this arrangement, personally I don't read much of this paper anyway as I have already read most of the news online. Other family members still like the actually paper copy, but they get annoyed at the late delivery.

Fact is I could go to a nearby shop and get more timely service delivery,but I'd have to make an effort and probably no one here would bother after a few weeks. So there is an incentive for the Sunday-Times to deliver before eight o"clock as I'm sure many subscribers would not bother to go out and buy it. These customer might eventually realise that they can read almost all of it online for free, and that there are much better online newspaper than the Sunday Star-Times.

I accept the occasional disruption to the printing press or storms in the winter stopping delivery, but today it is a beautiful day and you have to wonder if the delivery guy sleeps in most weeks. Personally I'd have cancelled this non-service years ago but it does have one advantage that gives it the edge over the online versions. We use it to make paper sticks from to light the fire. I think the Sunday Star-Times needs to change its marketing approach to "you'll get it eventually and it is useful for starting fires". I guess they'll never do it though in case their pyromaniac readers take it as an invitation. 

You Can Checkout Any Time You Like

On checking out of the hotel I was advised no breakfast was recorded for either day I stayed at the hotel, I confessed however that I had had breakfast on both days. The second day had no doubt not yet reached the check out people, so I have no doubt if I hadn't paid they'd have sent me a letter asking for the payment for the breakfast. The first it seems wasn't recorded, I have to suspect now the form that I was told didn't need to be completed actually triggers the bill. I can only conclude the waiter mistook me for someone who didn't have to pay. Either way one slip led to poor service and to a bill not being generated.

I have to say check out didn't pick up on the queue I wasn't happy, and still made me pay the full price for the breakfast they didn't know I had and knew I wasn't happy about. Remarjkably the customer survey form turned up and I told them again I wasn't happy without specifically telling them what had happened. I got a letter from the manager saying he would make sire it didn't happen again even though he hadn't been told what happened.  It seems these hotels are generally very good at following set procedues but they're not quite sure what to do when something goes wrong. The hotel manager didn't care about me as a customer, he was just sent out a standard apology letter as if that would somehow make amends. Funnily enough the breakfast incident itself would never have made me consider not staying at the hotel again, but the manager following up in such a robotic way might just might. 

Hotel Breakfast

I went to the ITSMF conference in Auckland this week and stayed at the conference venue, The Pullman Hotel. The first morning I came down to breakfast, and started to fill out the form that asked your room number and what type of breakfast you wanted. I was told the form wasn't needed and i was shown to a table. I waited a whil and nothing happened, there were only a handful of people in the restaurant so I proceeded to help myself to a continental breakfast and hoped someone would come and offer me a coffee (there was no self service for that). I was reading the news on my iPad so wasn't too worried about the lack of service but half an hour went by and no one even came to ask me if I wanted coffee.  Finally I went and found someone and they were helpful and coffee was supplied.

The next morning I arrived a few minutes after the Western Australian rugby team, the restaurant was full and it took time to find me a seat. This time I was asked to fill out the form and again initially served myself. However this time it was much easier to get peoples attention and they were very helpful despite clearly not having enough staff to cope with the influx to breakfast. I then started to think that not signing that form had something to do with the poor service the previous day, perhaps it triggered something in their process and by the seemingly helpful suggestion that I didn't need to fill out the form, actually led to me going missing from the perspective of how they operated. 

Shouldn't have mattered, it wasn't hard in a room of about six people to come and ask me if I wanted a coffee. In this case the process was no doubt and aid to the smooth operation of the kitchen, but if you noticed no one had got the customer a coffee you might just be organised well enough to notice the increasingly dissatisfied customer. So two things go hand in hand here, follow the process for sure but don't be so lost in your process that you forget to ask the customer about the experience.