Stuff We’re Not Loving This Week!

Usually this is the “stuff we love” space where we feature a few nifty products that we’re hankering after, but this week we thought we would switch it up a bit with stuff we are not loving this week!

Usually this is the “stuff we love” space where we feature a few nifty products that we’re hankering after, but this week we thought we would switch it up a bit with stuff we are not loving this week! Be sure to let us know what you are not loving this week, please email the stuff you are not loving to us, and we’ll publish the best three responses next week. Let’s get the whining started with our top pet peeve of the week: off-shore, customer-service call centers. Yes, many, many people have seen the really funny MIT produced video that sent up off-shore, customer call centers. But in real life, it just is not that funny to sit on the phone for twenty-five minutes while the person on the other end halfway around the world in the Philippines laboriously works through a scripted set of greetings/questions/responses/farewells. And you can only hear every second or third word.

We are talking about airlines, MAJOR airlines, who use off-shore reservation centers and have a crummy, Internet-based, phone system so every word is on a five-second delay. Airline stocks in the US really popped this week, some carriers enjoying up to 50 percent increases in the pps since Q1. We suggest they take some profits and use high-quality phone systems staffed by people who do not need a script to make it through a call. So, bad connections and scripted customer care is something we are not loving this week. Or any other week. Delta? Can you hear me now? Hello, hello?

Which brings us to Facebook. While President Obama warned US school children of the dangers of Facebook postings following a child to college (college admissions officers just love reading about the racuous party a prospective student attended last weekend, complete with candid photos taken with a cell phone), we think he should have given a heads up to adults who are addicted to Facebook. Do we really need to know that you are ordering a chai latte at Starbucks and then headed for a pedicure? I guess many people think we do judging by some of the stuff we are seeing and definitely not loving! We also aren’t loving the bastardization of the English language. What would make a grown adult post publicly on the Internet while using their teenager’s vocabularly usually reserved for text messages? Having said all that, we think Facebook would be a superb platform for a trip journal/blog on a round-the-world jaunt, destination wedding (complete with video), or a honeymoon with postings from exotic locales, foodie reviews of Michelin-starred restaurants, gripping underwater images of the new hubs swimming with sharks, etc. So many possibilities, yet so many people using Facebook lack creativity and let’s face it (pun intended) must be rather bored to bore us with hum-drum “status updates” from the drycleaners. AirTreks.com, a San Francisco-based RTW specialist, launched TripJournal back in the early 90s and pre-Facebook, pre-blogs. A brilliant idea for travelers to upload images and send shout outs to the folks back home. We look forward to exploring Facebook pages that are chock full of travel images, stories, review,s and recommendations from anywhere there is an Internet connection. As long as you’re not posting from your dry cleaners!

What are you not loving this week? Let us know! We will publish the best three pet peeves next issue! [email protected]

About the author

Avatar of Linda Hohnholz

Linda Hohnholz

Editor in chief for eTurboNews based in the eTN HQ.

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