Posts Tagged ‘philippines’

Why People Are Not Buying Online

http://www.blogzeel.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/07/online-shopping.jpgThis one’s not good news to online marketers. According to the latest research conducted by Chitika ad network, only two in 100 people who browse the internet click on advertisements that fund websites. The rest simply ignore the screaming ads place strategically all over the place. You think this research is right?

I do, absolutely. I myself have been prowling countless internet sites for the past ten years, reading content, doing school research, watching videos and listening to music but never made a single purchase in any of the products I see on the sites I visited. It was only late this year that I did an actual purchase online. Not that I was not interested. Ever since I learned that buying stuff on the internet became possible years ago, I wanted to jump into the bandwagon right away. The problem was that it was nearly impossible to do so in our area for the following reasons:

1. The first problem was the method of payment. Credit cards are not easy to come by for middle class Filipinos. Just a few years back, only those who really had money can have credit cards.

2. Lack of bank support. In the past years, our local banks were not really that inclined to support internet buying. Even today, many years after the internet was introduced to Filipinos, only one local bank has a program specifically designed for Internet shopping. All the rest simply offer general credit cards.

3. Currency conversion. Even with the advent of Paypal Philippines, buying online was still a bit difficult due to currency conversion problems. It was only this November 2009 when Paypal finally supported Philippine Peso.

4. Not many merchants are willing to do business in Philippine online market. Even iTunes, one of the biggest internet music retail store in the world, doesn’t sell music in the country.I don’t understand why.

5. Many Filipinos don’t really consider the internet as a shopping alternative. If anecdotal evidence is any indicator, I think I’ve heard lots of times that Filipinos spend more time on Friendster and Facebook than actually do anything else online.

I’m sure there are still many other factors why the internet remains an untapped potential in Philippine market. Whatever they are, they are part of the reasons why some advertisement companies in the US places a lower value in clicks and site visits from Philippine internet users.

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Werewolves Trampled the Dark Knight

http://images2.fanpop.com/images/photos/4900000/new-moon-new-moon-movie-4909367-510-755.jpgNow this vampire thing finally got me interested. According to reports, the Twilight Saga: New Moon just raked in a whopping $72.7 million on its first day of release, surpassing the record previously held by the Dark Knight’s $67 million opening back in July of 2008. Compared to its prequel, New Moon clocked $3 million more than the gross of Twilight in its first week in cinemas!

MSNBC reported that in midnight screenings alone, New Moon already registered more than $26 million, making it number 1 on the all-time list of top box office grosses for that segment in domestic markets. This is notably higher than Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince which made $22.2 million in midnight screenings in July this year.

The Twilight Saga: New Moon is based on Stephenie Meyer’s book of the same title. It continues the story of Bella (Kristen Stewart), a high school girl who has fallen in love with a vampire (Robert Pattinson) in the first part of the book, the Twilight. In New Moon,  the story focuses on the love triangle between Bella, her vampire lover  Edward Cullen and Jacob Black, the werewolf.

The movie opened in Philippine cinemas last Friday, November 20.

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Why MyDestiny Internet Is the Worst ISP in the Philippines

destiny blog1. Internet is always down at night time. Nobody tried to explain that to me why my connection is always cut off at around 5pm or 8pm EVERYDAY. Whenever I call customer service, I always get the same answer, “I’m gonna make a report about your case. In the mean time, keep resetting your modem.”

2. They have around 50 phone numbers to dial when you need to contact them. The problem is that they never told their subscribers who are on duty at what time. For you to talk to any one of them, you will have to dial each number until you find one that actually rings. If you’re lucky, you will have to dial all 49 before you get to the one that is active.

3. Their “call center agents” are home based. That means that most of them are not in their “professional mode” when they talk to you. Sometimes you hear dogs barking and babies crying  while you’re talking to an agent.

4. They have a website but there isn’t a single page where you can see an email address by which you can contact them. In their “Contact Us” page, you can see all the telephone numbers I mentioned earlier. Is it even possible to be in the internet business and not have one working, fully functional email address?

5. When I was asked to provide screen shots of my cmd page, they didn’t receive my email even after I sent them on three different ocassions using Yahoo, Google and my own web mail. Interestingly, the email address of their technical support is still a yahoo account, not a mydestiny webmail.

6. After my three failed attempts to send them email, I finally talked to their office-based customer support but Miss Leah told me that I have to send my complaints through email so their manager could read what I was trying to say. Didn’t I just send three emails that never reached their inbox? Why was she asking me to “send another email?”

7. I did send my fourth email and Miss Leah told me to wait for “three working days” before I would hear from them again because the manager is kind of busy at the moment, that is, he was having lunch. It’s been more than a week and nobody called me to explain.

8. Their technical team visited my residence four times in the course of one month to check on my internet settings. They couldn’t find anything wrong because they always come at daytime. As I mentioned earlier, my connection is always cutoff at around 5 or 8pm.

9. Whenever I complain about my connection, their representatives always tell me not to worry because they could simply re-compute my bill so that I won’t have to pay for the days when their was no connection. I’m guessing that none of them really understood that it’s not the bill, as important as it is, that bugs me all the time. It is their inability to fix a simple problem and their poor way of handling valid customer complaints.

10. These problems started on the same day they installed internet in my house. Until today, I’ve never had a decent signal for one straight day.

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