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Archives for November 2011

Things I Didn’t Like About PayPal

Back in 2006, I heard about PayPal for the first time and was pretty curious to know what it was all about. It turns out PayPal is nothing but a way to make payment or get paid over the Internet. In 2007, I created my own PayPal account and started using it for receiving small payments from my clients. Small payments were mostly for writing content for my offshore clients. I was never worried about the limitations as my monthly PayPal receipts never exceeded $500 threshold until the end of 2008.

In 2009, I started getting more business from my clients and my dependency on PayPal grew bigger. I figured that I couldn’t withdraw more than $500 to my bank account unless I removed the limitations from my PayPal profile. And back then, unfortunately, the only way PayPal would allow users to remove the limitations form their PayPal profiles was through adding a credit card.

As a matter of fact, I didn’t have a credit card as I never needed one. I felt I needed to apply for a credit card just because it would help me remove the PayPal restrictions on withdrawing funds higher than $500. It’s crazy but by asking you to add a credit card to your PayPal account, PayPal essentially wanted you to verify your true identity so it makes sure you’re a verified PayPal user.

To get around the issue, I had to open multiple PayPal accounts to receive money from my clients but it was quite awkward. But, I kept on doing it until I got myself a credit card.

Applying for a credit card wasn’t really that easy for me. My bank (HDFC) was rather skeptical about offering me a credit card as I couldn’t comply with their requirements. When both of my attempts to get a credit card yielded no results, I was forced to go for a credit card against a collateral deposit.

Finally, I got my first credit card (with a credit limit of 9000 rupees) and added it to my PayPal account to verify my account. I felt like I’d achieved a milestone!

Today, PayPal doesn’t want you to add your credit card anymore. Rather, it sends two small deposits to your account and you need to check the statements of accounts to figure out those two numbers and enter the same during the verification process on PayPal.

Doing business with PayPal hasn’t been quite a pleasing experience for me for many reasons. To begin with, PayPal is a rather rigid and selfish institution who doesn’t care about what its users stand to lose. It changes its policies at its whim and imposes restrictions on its users as and when it feels fit. After the PayPal issues in 2010 and 2011, I decided to discontinue doing business with PayPal.

The downside of ordering money via PayPal is that it makes the finalization of company accounts rather complex for your chattered account. Plus, PayPal charges you arbitrarily and converts your funds as per its own currency rate. Worst of all, it keeps changing its policy updates whenever it suits its very own commercial interests. Here’s an example:

Nearly two months ago, a client purchased a SEO campaign service ($400) from our website and paid via PayPal using his credit card. Plus, he wrote me an email asking what details he should offer to get the campaign started. I immediately replied to his email and then he disappeared for the next 30 days.

While I was wondering what might have happened, PayPal sent me an email saying the buyer has asked for a Chargeback as his credit card has been misused. Since I hadn’t begun working on his project, I had no choice but to accept the liability and make the funds available for him to take away. Shockingly enough, PayPal, after returning $400 to the buyer, deducted an additional $25 from my account to compensate for the service fees involved in the transactions! PayPal sent me an email saying it’s a company Terms of Service which I had agreed with during sign-up with PayPal.

Crazy policy, isn’t it?

I feel totally gutted after that incident and was totally disillusioned about PayPal’s operations and customer policy. Therefore I decided not to use PayPal anymore and close my account. But, PayPal didn’t let me close the account saying there are limitations on my account as my account had a negative balance (created by PayPal itself). I left the account untouched and got on with life ignoring multiple reminder emails from PayPal.

I also have a couple of other PayPal accounts without any negative balance. But, strangely, PayPal doesn’t let me close those accounts either. It says the accounts are limited because I need to verify the account with PAN card details and stuff like that.

Currently, I have stopped interacting with PayPal and been ignoring their emails like plague. I don’t want to do business with a company that sacrifices its customer’s interests for protecting its own commercial interests and keeps changing its policies to suits its own agenda time and again.

What do you think could happen next?

Have you ever experienced the similar experiences with PayPal?

Please, share them with me in the comment section below.

How to Search Your Best Cyber Monday 2011 Deals?

Are you worried about losing out on that great doorbuster deals on Black Friday?

Don’t worry, you can definitely take advantage of these Cyber Monday 2011 Tips!

Yes! Apart from buying swanky electronic gadgets at dirt cheap prices, you can also grab hot holiday travel deals at awesome discounts. According PriceGrabber, nearly 39% of consumers are planning to shop on Cyber Monday, which is as much as 37% higher than last year.

According to an infograpic by SEO.com, the total spending in November, 2010 was whopping $13.6 Billion and on Cyber Monday, 2010 alone, the consumers shopped goods and services worth $1 Billion! The consumer spending propensity towards Cyber Monday is only getting stronger each year and ComScore predicts the sales on this Cyber Monday 2011 to hit $1.2 Billion figure.

Click below for The Best Cyber Monday Deals


So Why is Cyber Monday 2011 So Popular Amongst Consumers?

Although Black Friday is fun and ushers in lucrative opportunities for consumers that yearn for shopping till they drop, many consumers finding online shopping a more convenient option for holiday shopping. And, quite a few of them also want to avoid falling victim to incidents like Pepper Spray at Walmart.

Here are some other reasons why most American adults will chose to shop online for holiday gifts:

  • Get the best prices and deals (64%)
  • Have the convenience of shopping from home (57%)
  • Avoid crowds (47%)
  • Research and find the best gifts (36%)
  • Access better inventory & selection (32%)
  • Save money on gas (16%)

Alright, so now that you want to make it big this Cyber Monday 2011, it’s important to note that you need to make a shopping list and have the right information before you’re ready to go online on Cyber Monday!

So, here’s how you should prepare yourself for Cyber Monday 2011:

Google It: Whether you’re looking for Xbox or Holiday Travel Deals, do a little Internet search and find out what most shopping sites are offering for Cyber Monday Deals. This could help you find out the most lucrative Cyber Monday Deals you can grab at great discounts. Plus, you will have an idea about the products and services available across the sites and compare their prices and specifications before you zero in on any specific sites to grab your deals from.

However, don’t limit your search to Google alone. While Google and Bing are two most popular search engine options for you, you should also check out CyberMonday.com, BestCyberMondaySales.com, Yahoo.Shopping.com and Shopping.AOL.com.

Here are three great sites which help you through the Cyber Monday shopping:
WalletPop.com
GottaDeal.com
CyberMonday.com

Here’s a blog post which shows a list of Cyber Monday Travel Deals for you.

Click below for The Best Cyber Monday Deals


Facebook: Facebook is a great place to catch the best sites that offer Cyber Monday Deals 2011. All you have do is friend all popular shopping sites and retail stores and follow them to find out deals available at discounts. There are many travel companies that offer incredible discounts on holiday travel packages on Cyber Monday and make sure you grab the offers while they last.

Twitter: If you are on Twitter, make sure you follow @CyberMonday , @CyberMondayNews , or @BestCyberMonday . Try following specific retailers–like @WalMartSpecials –for the latest on their 2011 Cyber Monday deals. You can also ask your other twitter followers to help you with finding the best Cyber Monday Deals.

Scam Signs: While Cyber Monday is a great time for shopping, you must be careful not to fall victim to scam sites masquerading as great Cyber Monday Deals 2011. There are a couple of things you must remember while shopping online. A genuine shopping site would never ask your credit card information or social security number via email. So never ever respond to such emails. No company would ever ask your address via email, and if you do get any email asking you for your address for FREE Shipping, ignore them. Also, be careful of look-alike sites that pretend to be offering great Cyber Monday Deals.

Cyber Monday Discount Coupons: While a lot of sites offer great discounts on their Cyber Monday deals, sometimes you can secure additional deals by abandoning your shopping card mid-purchase. Usually, the online retails would send you additional incentives (discount coupons or FREE shipping) to shop at their sites again. So you can always try out this trick.

The following video says why Cyber Monday is better than Black Friday

Click below for The Best Cyber Monday Deals


5 Facebook Behaviors That Ruin Your Image Online

Just as you wouldn’t judge a book based on its cover, don’t judge me based on my Facebook profile yet!

According to a recent survey, India ranks as the third highest Facebook users on the planet with around 38,045,000 Facebook users across the country. While this shows the burgeoning popularity of social networking sites across the country, it also indicates how many potential Facebook users you are exposing your profile to. In other words, you need to be much more aware of your social behavior and make sure your Facebook behavior and conduct don’t ruin your image. Therefore, it is important to handle your Facebook profile with a great deal of discretion instead of using it as a sounding board for your emotional eruptions.

We’ve seen the worst consequences of people abusing Facebook today. If you’re not aware of them, here are a few Facebook Stories that made it to the Times of India this year:

Even as your Facebook behavior will never lead to any of the above consequences, you still need to be careful of how you conduct yourself on Facebook. As a matter of fact, how you behave yourself on Facebook is how you allow others to judge you as a person. While Facebook may seem too tempting a platform for you to hold your thoughts back off your mind, take a couple of moments and consider if they are going to ruin your image in any way.

So what are the aspects of your Facebook behavior that might land you in trouble? Here are 5 things you should never do on Facebook:

Washing Dirty Linen

More often than not, many people tend to allow their deep-seated grudges make it to their Facebook wall. While some express their frustrations publicly, expecting the opponent to take note of them, it effectively expose their inner persona to people they never meant to share their personal life with. As a result of this behavior, they allow others to gradually build a certain opinion about their personality. Doing this will do you more harm than good as you allow others to perceive you as an emotionally weak person who doesn’t know how to take control of his/her personal life.

Clinical psychologist and psychotherapist Varkha Chulani, says, There’s a fine line between sharing of information and emotional exhibition.” “Love you darling. Muah”, “Thanks for last night”, “We need to talk” and “I think your sister is fat” does not need to make it on the Wall. These conversations are best had person to person. And if this is not the kind of thing you would say to his/her face, it makes it all the more cowardly to say it online.

Posting Trivial Updates

It doesn’t really matter how less or more frequently you post updates on your Facebook wall. What really matters is the nature and content of your updates. Posting trifling details about your daily life will not only bore your followers, but also establish you as a person with no discretion. If you are in the job market looking for an employment opportunity, you have to be twice as careful while posting petty updates on your wall. Your prospective employers could judge you based on your Facebook behavior and they will think twice about hiring a person with no discretion.

Launching Personal Attack

Nothing makes your profile more unpleasant to watch than launching a personal assault on somebody you have serious issues with in real life. You definitely don’t want a whole bunch of people watching you make scathing attack on someone whom they hardly know personally. Chances are you will lose your social credibility in the process and project yourself as a temperamental jerk. Worse, some people will unfriend or unsubscribe you from their Facebook.

Tagging Friends without Their Consent

Tagging is a great tool of uniting friends together on Facebook when you have something worthwhile to share with everybody. However, quite a few of them tend to misuse it by tagging others without any discretion or consent from others. For instance, frequently tagging people that are mere acquaintances to you on Facebook, might tick them off and invite unwanted attention from them. There are people who may be getting disturbed or annoyed by recurrent Facebook notifications arising from your tagging them on nearly every photo you upload to your wall. Resist the temptation of tagging people indiscriminately before they report abuse.

Commenting Immaturely

This is probably the most endemic of all Facebook behaviors. Nearly 80% of the comments on Facebook are either made without a second thought or targeted towards another person on purpose. Either way, it is not going to establish you as a person of repute among your friends on Facebook. Likewise, indulging in frequent commenting only shows your lack of depth as a person and puts your juvenile social behavior in perspective. Make sure you comment only when it adds some meaning or value to the discussion and not make your wall turn into a virtual chat box for others.

Why My iPhone4 is A Survivor: The Story of My iPhone4

Of all gadgets I’ve acquired in my life so far, I look upon my iPhone4 as the most valuable possession. I acquired it in February this year and, if I let you in on a secret, it has me possessed ever since. I’ve held it close to my heart, my mind and my soul, spent most of my time with it and even allowed it to witness some of the very intimate developments in my personal life which none other person seems to know (not even my closes buddies).Still, there’s another reason why I believe my iPhone4 has been the closest anyone or anything can ever get to me. I personally consider my iPhone4 and I lead nearly a very similar life, have the same story to share and even, seem to have the same destiny.

Consider this: all my life, I’ve had everything the hard way, struggled my way up and become a self-made person. I still fight today for every single thing in my life, from dawn to dusk. So much so that I wake up every morning preparing myself for something untoward, something seemingly insurmountable. Speaking for my iPhone4, it shares a similar story.

How? Read on to understand the similarity…

My iPhone4 was conceptualized by Steve Jobs, put together somewhere in China and sold in the open market, and then landed at an unscrupulous trader in the UK. It never had a father who could take care of it, until it found me. Despite my best efforts, it has still sustained multiple scratches, survived several falls, and been jailbroken nearly 9 times since I adopted it back in February, 2011. Well, it might sound dramatic but it’s real. Here’s the full story of my iPhone4:

The Acquisition Anomaly: They say the sweetest of things in life are the hardest ones to acquire, and the entire ordeal I went through to get my iPhone4 delivered only reaffirms the truth. On the 29th of December, 2010, I ordered an iPhone4 from the UK. It was sent via Royal Mail and was paid for tracking services as well. I was skeptical about using Royal Mail and unsure whether it would reach me in time as I knew how the government offices in India work. However, the die was cast and there was no turning back.

But I didn’t like what followed thereafter.

When I tracked my parcel online, I found the parcel was yet to take off even though ten days had already passed. I became restless and tried contacting the Royal Mail customer care department using their Twitter account. They promptly replied saying that there had been a delay in sending the item and but it must have been with the Customs at New Delhi Airport. After my frequent conversations on Twitter, I found the Twitter address of India Post, and was happy to know they are on Twitter.

From then on, I contacted the India Post on Twitter and they were ready to extend their help with regards to the issues with my parcel. Here’s the Twitter conversations that followed:

Finally, on the 5th of February this year, I received the parcel in good shape, although I had to cough up a hefty 720 rupees for custom charges (it was 2% on the parcel value).

OMG, It was Jailbroken: After battling my ill-fate for nearly 2 months, my iPhone4 was certainly within my arm’s length; but it was still out of my earshot. It turns out the iPhone4 (32GB version for the price of 16GB) was jailbroken and I needed to use a micro SIM card to be able to use it. This effectively meant I should get my existing SIM card replaced with a brand new SIM card that supports my iPhone4. But, blame it on the BSNL staff, it didn’t come easy either.

I’d already cut my old SIM too short for them to accept as it didn’t have ICC-ID (Integrated Circuit Card ID). But, after a negotiation of nearly 2 hours, I was able to receive a new micro SIM card for my iPhone4. But then again I had to borrow the iPhone4 SIM cutter from Soam to resize it and insert it in my device. It worked fine and I managed myself a smile after a good sixty days of that fateful 29th December, 2010.

iPhone4 Baseband Upgrade Catastrophe: Just when everything seemed fair in love and war, and my romance with the new gadget was on full throttle, I committed an innocent yet potentially irreversible blunder by upgrading my current iPhone4 iOS to its latest iOS firmware on the iTunes software. After the update, the iPhone wouldn’t recognize the SIM card anymore, and after a little online search, it turns out I’d ended up upgrading the baseband of my device for which the Dev Team didn’t have a software patch ready. It’s a day I could barely forget in my entire lifetime. But then, after a week of regret, I started learning to live with it and life was back to normal.

Ever since, apart from surviving several falls from as high as 2 feet, my iPhone4 has been jailbroken nearly 9 times (the latest being for iOS 5.0.1). But, it still works as incredibly as it should for me.

It still feels magical every time I touch its screen and work on its apps. If you have never had an Apple Device, you might feel either jealous of me or think I’m just a plain jerk, but if you’re one of those luckiest lot who have ever used an iPhone4, you know what I’m talking about.

The Takeaway: It’s weird though, being a big fan of Steve Jobs, I’m still rendered helpless to use a jailbroken Apple device. I wouldn’t be surprised if his spirit started hunting me for retribution 🙂 . Sick jokes apart, I might as well buy a certified Apple Device in 2012. Maybe, an all new iPad3, if not the much talked about iPhone5 .

5 Facebook Pet Peeves and How I Protect Myself from Them

Ok, so just about everybody on the planet loves Facebook these days and quite a few of them are actually offcially addicted to it. A research on Facebook Obsession conducted by Onlineschools.org reveals shocking realities about people and their craze for Facebook. As of 2011, there are 500,000,000 active Facebook users which is approximately 1 in every 13 people on earth. Nearly half of them are logged in on any given day.

The number is growing even faster and speaking of my own experiences, I get nearly 3-5 friend requests daily from people I’ve never met or known in my life before. I know some people prefer keeping their Facebook profile quite private and like sharing updates with people they are really close to. I can say the same for me.

This is why I avoid accepting friend requests from people I don’t know at all. Adding you to my friend list precisely means I’m letting you gain an access to my private space even when we’ve barely interacted in person. Well, the worst thing that can happen when you add an unknown person (even if they are friend of someone who’s already on your friend list) is they will start intruding into your personal space right away. It’s really quite annoying of them to show up and start chatting with you without any introduction. That is when you regret friending them on Facebook.

Does that mean the ones that are already on your Facebook friendlist gives you a high? Not at all. Here are the 5 most common things they do that just get on my nerves:

Unnecessary Status Updates

Some people on my Facebook friendlist are so addicted to Facebook that they nearly flash every minute detail of their daily life. The biggest mistake people do is sync their Twitter updates with Facebook status wall. Consider if you have a dozen of them on your friendlist – you certainly see an eyeful of trivial updates that just clog your newsfeed and bore you to death. Rarely anyone is interested to know what you just had for lunch or if you’re annoyed with your boss today. Stop imposing an overdose of personal updates on your friends, please!

So what do I do to get rid of this? I simply “Hide the Story” or “Unsubscribe from Their Status Updates” depending on how irritating they are.

Perennial Change of Profile Picture

How often do you change your profile picture on your Facebook reflect a little about your addiction to Facebook. Some people change it on a daily basis. Seriously? What makes you change your profile picture as frequently as you change your underwear? Do you really have anything more substantial to do in your life? If you have, I’d rather listen to that. Else, I will just ignore your profile picture update and move on to better things in life.

Annoying App Requests

If you have ever been invited to Maifa Wars, Farmville or any other shitville for that matter, you would know what I’m talking about here. So when you invite me to “Click here to find out how to maximize your weapons stash”, I feel like hiring a mafia gang who could scare the crap out of you before you send me the next one. How about asking me if I care about those games at all! Don’t spam my inbox, please!

Thank God, Facebook empowers me with the option to “spam” your app requests. Else, I would dump Facebook for life!

Queer Quizzes

Nothing sucks more than a bunch of completely stupid quizzes such as the one shown below.

What possesses you to spare your time on some silly questions is beyond me! Worse, some people take these juvenile quizzes so often that you almost HAVE to “Hide Quizzes” to clean your newsfeed. Certainly, you can’t unsubscribe from their updates but for those silly quizzes.

Join-My-Group Junks

Sometimes, you either invite me to your Join A Group that I’m hardly interested in or worse, add me to a group without my consent. Well, you would do me a big favor if you could just tell me via message that there is a group I could benefit from if joined it. That would be cool enough of you. Forcing me to join a group is like coaxing me into buying a drink for you which I’m not very fond of.

I could easily have left my private settings on Facebook as default but for the above reasons. I hope my friends on Facebook take note of my Facebook Pet Peeves and spare me the horror. No hard feelings, but let’s make Facebook a better place to socialize at.