Emotionally Speaking

Photo: SBI ATMs spew out torn notes

See the photos after the text: slightly torn notes (two) as we withdrew 10000 Rupees from the SBI atm. It is not very uncommon hearing people getting spurious (nakli/fake) notes from ATM machines, torn notes, and improperly working ATMs deducting money whimsically. Be careful while using ATMs and check notes after you are done (in [...]

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Rail Booking Site IRCTC continues to disappoint

Official Railways Reservation website irctc.co.in continues disappoint though the situation is slightly better now. I recently wrote an email to the customer care after some server issue (which is common on that site) and got a quick reply. I am sharing it with all. I sent email to care(at)irctc.co.in on 15 April—Please also mention the [...]

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Having bought >120 books, I recommend Flipkart.com to buy books online (India)

UPDATE: June 2010. Now I have shopped some 350 books from flipkart.  Flipkart rocks! Flipkart now also sells CDs, DVDs, Music and games and have raised $8 to $10 million dollar VC funding (source); so expect more! I had a very bad experience with online shopping (I was cheated by Rediff Shopping and then had [...]

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5 Things Hospitals Can Do to Improve the Customer Experience

We have many things wrong with our healthcare system. But, one thing we do right is give Americans (or at least those with insurance) plenty of choices in healthcare. Large cities often have many hospitals for patients to choose from, and even smaller areas offer competition among hospitals for patients. So, what can hospitals do [...]

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Indian Rail reservation site IRCTC sucks

The Indian Railways’ Train Reservation website IRCTC.co.in is the 22nd most trafficked site in India according to Alexa rankings and it is one of the worst websites in India! Here is my truncated list of woes and I am sure most (if not all) experience all/most of these problems. The site is slow, very slow, [...]

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On choosing a good web hosting service : Experiences of a layman

I am planning to self-host two of my WordPress blogs [including this one] and recently did a lot of research online in finding some good web hosts, finding free WordPress themes [mostly magazine themes, my favourite] and ran into a lot of good information and useful tips and tricks. This is a brief collection of [...]

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