Re: Hard-Sell

As mentioned in my previous post, I am quite happy with my current gym membership, although it's a result of hard sell too, which I am growing to hate the practice. Since my gym membership contract almost comes to an end, I am always offered with new contract which is longer and cheaper. Although I am interested, I always decline to it, as I am not sure I can commit to such period and it's a one time off payment. But, I think I will just sign one day to the contract.

When I read one post in one discussion forum offering cali membership, I just asked how much he would charge for the same contract offered to me before. The reply asks me to PM him for more detail, so I PM him with the detail, and his reply was to ask me to give him my phone number(wtf). I declined to do so, and I asked him if he can provide cheaper rate. Since I was quite busy, I only checked my PM 2-3 days later, I saw two replies in inbox that span between 1 day. One to answer me that the rate is about the same + useless bonus, and the other reply:

"Urgent Request: For those that i've shared with you the rates and promotions, pls reply either by PM or SMS if ur interested or NOT. As if u don't i will take it as ur only wasting my time and in future of any awesome promo package, i will not inform or shared it with you. If ur not interested i will really appreciate if u cld TELL ME SO... so that i'll know that it's not within your budget and.. i will inform u of any new promo package in the coming future.. I'm really hope that u'll understand wher i'm coming from as i've saved u the trouble to come to the club and enquire. least u cld do is to let me know if ur keen or not.

Thank you for your kind understanding.

Have a good day to all."

I found that reply was kind of rude ("wasting my time, etc"). Come on, you're the sales people, and you already lose your patient by no reply to your message in 1 day??. Since I believe that he only took about 3-4 minutes to reply my message and he already lost his patience by wasting his 3-4 minutes, I don't know how he handled real people in the gym that just want to use free visit which can waste the sales people time for hours for hard sale.

I am very happy that this weekend will be a long one, but I don't have anything on plan. So, I planned to chiong all the way in gym by attending multiple classed this Saturday (step, zumba, step again, and pump), but the night before, I found a bit pain in my back, not sure if it's result of the thursday's jacelyn pump. So, I think it's better not to do so many classes, and in the end, I only did Daniel's step and Colin's combat in orchard. There's long time in between, we go shopping with gym buddies, and eat so much sinful food. So, in spite of we plan to pump out all the calories, we pump in more. Haha..

Hard-Sell

It's been a regular tactic that is used by sales "professional" to push their product to the customer. Just use whatever words or actions that can motivate people to buy their products. And, nowadays, this hard-sell tactic can be seen anywhere from MRT to bus stop, office lobby, and even changing room (omit last one). Although customers has the last say to accept or reject the offer, but sometimes they are already pushed to far to say no, and after the "cooling-down" period passed, mostly they will feel they have purchased or signed something that they don't really need. I myself have been the victim of several forms of "hard-sell", from should-bargained-more gym membership to the overpriced personal trainer, not-that-useful facial, too-expensive laptop, overcharged-premium insurance, etc. Most of this hard-sell involved considerable amount of money to spend or certain time frame of commitment, and the most I have spent and the most I regret is personal trainer, although I like the gym membership. This article should highlight some of us felt.

There is one way to fight back this hard sell is to accept that you are weak to sale tactic. I don't realize this before, and when I tell myself that I am very weak, I will be more careful when I face another hard sell tactic. And, another one is thick face, just don't care whatever pity face or how attentive the sales person is. I just went to one of the massage center to have a quick back and shoulder massage, and after the session, I was offered a package that was started from 20 session to 10 to 5, and the price keeps dropping with more free stuff throw in like foot massage. But I successfully walk away, although I already felt a bit tempted. Lucky..

Greed,,

It's been clear that the whole global financial market is in crisis now and everything is so messy, that some journalist has stated that "capitalism has collapsed". Financial market has been running with full of greed this past years. CEO and the so called "executive" have been paid with such a fat green check for the amount of money can be generated into the market, not matter it's a real or fake money. The collapse of Lehman Brothers had been at least cost some retirees to lose most of their life savings, and it's quite shocking to read the news that just several months before it's collapsed, the company had paid 20 millions to several executives that quit the company. AIG has been spared, but ugly news reported that the executives had celebrated this bailout with $44,000 spa. Well, mess has been created, we can just hope that small people like us will not be impacted so much by this crisis/recession, and not much damage will be created in the history.

After tiring but good step class at novena last Sunday, there's a fire problem near the male changing room that caused bad smell smoke (like burning wood) and the electricity was cut off. I rush to changing room to take all my thing and leave. But, surprisingly, all people in the changing room still moved in slow motion in the very dimmed light. Even there's one fat guy still slowly walk around naked, not sure what happens if there's immediate evacuation.

Well, in the middle of bad things going around, we just need a song to relax ourselves. I like this version of "Over the Rainbow", which according to the description in YouTube, is sang by Israel Kamakawiwo.

Run For Hope

I happen to have the chance to go for Singapore Run For Hope, a charity event for cancer research, this morning. The marathon was started at 730AM, so I had to wake up very early to be there on time, which is very difficult thing for me to do. I am a late-sleeper, so I also wake up very late in the weekend. This is also my first time joining this kind of event, and being first time, it's better to start with 4 KM, rather than 10 KM. Taking cab from Bedok, the traffic to east cost was quite bad, so I decided to alight outside of east coast. The event was started with warming up, by a fat ang-moh with big tummy, which is quite un-motivating. Mr Teo Ser Luck flag off the race. After passing 3KM, I felt like running out of breath and my leg feel a bit burning. But I managed to arrive at finish line around 30mins, not a very good time, as a lot of other people had been standing there enjoying apple or banana that was provided by the organizer. The cooling down was instructed by the fat ang moh again. There were also quite a number of hot uncles there doing cool down, with half-naked body :). Overall, it's quite fun and look forward to another event like this.

Bangkok Dangerous

Bangkok Dangerous is a typical movie about bad guy turns good when he meets beautiful and innocent girl. With a little twist here and there, the view of Bangkok and some special effect (as Pang Brother's style), this movie is quite good and watchable, although it's quite boring here and there. Nicholas Cage acted well in this movie, although nothing so special, Charlie Yeung is very sweet and lovable, and the thai guy play "ah kong" is hot :). It also offers several view spot of Bangkok like the night club, with all the sexy pretty ladies dance on the table (although not sure they are really what they look).

I just attended Daniel's Partner Step this afternoon. Partner Step or usually called Shared Board is when two people use one step board to do the routine. It's very exciting and quite confusing for the first time, and I keep making mistake here and there. Overall, it's a good class and look forward for his next Partner Step again :D.

Nokia N96 and Google Chrome

Well, there are a lot of buzz nowadays in mobile phone industry with the just released Apple iPhone in Singapore several weeks ago. Nokia, as one of the leader in the worldwide mobile phone industry, also come with the new high-end devices with N96, N85 and N79 (Isn't it N78 just released into market?). Well, I have been targeting for N96 since the news breakout that it will support live TV on the phone, which Mediacorp is also in the testing period for this technology. Hope it won't die before getting popular. The release date of these phones hasn't been announced yet. However, after this major release, I hope that Nokia can really come out with the real new model like they started N or E Series several years ago. All of the current release is just like a refreshment to their current model. I expect that their next phone will be touched-enable phone, which is aligned with the next Symbian technology. I heard that Nokia has patented the technology that the screen will go down a few milimeter when pressing to give the button-touch feeling. Cool. And, HTC will be expected to release new phone with Google Android Operating System soon.

Google has also recently released a beta version of their own browser, called Google Chrome. First impression, it's loaded much faster than IE or Firefox, the UI is minimalist (it's Google!!), the rendering and web applications that are heavily based on Javascript (like Gmail) run faster, and..... that's all about it. It's still beta anyway, hope more things to come. It seems that Google emphasizes a lot on their Tab browsing, which is said run on their own process, so one tab crash will not impact other tabs. It also comes with features to monitor the memory and bandwith taken by each tab. If you want to experience it, download it here. There's a good comic book to explain what Google Chrome is, quite interesting and easy to understand. In the meanwhile, I will stick to my IE7 and Firefox 3.

Well, this is one of the first advertisement for N96:



Well, I need to sign out of Nerd mode now.

Mistakes

I read with amusement an article in the newspaper that Bloomberg has mistakenly published obituary of Apple CEO Steve Jobs. Bloomberg, with such a big well known news company for its accuracy and transparency, has acknowledged the mistake. This news has been exaggerated (same as iPhone?) because Jobs had appeared in thin shape at the last conference, which trigger some worries about his health. Apple still needs his figure so badly. It seems that someone in the Bloomberg's obits department might be in deep trouble over this mistake.

Flipping through the other pages, it's quite amazing to read how high people expectation can be. Government has decided to increase maternity period to 4 months, which cause some worry to SME company. There's a comment in the newspaper that suggests maternity period should increase to 1 year, not 4 months. She even put some threatening remark that she won't give birth anymore if the maternity is not increased to what she expected. Wow..

At last, I manage to attend Tim's bodypump again on Monday. As usual, his class is quite full. Tim is a very motivating and(/with) good looking. It seems that there's always energy in the air to pump more during his class. I saw one of the blogger in the class but too shy to even say hi. Tuesday, I went for both Daniel and Collin level 2 step classes. Being motivated by other stepper to try again Collin's level 3 on wednesday after the disastrous class last week till I need to stand on the board during finale, I gave another shot at his level 3 class again, and I am still not sure how to do his class, too complicated. Redeem this embarassment, I went to Harry's class on Thursday, and decided it's a good time to rest on Friday. Tomorrow, I will do one more exercise: squeezing all butt muscle to get into Comex 2008.