GrabCar, Uber Brings Relief to Decades-old Taxi Shortage

All the King's Horses and All the King's Men could never solve the critical shortage of taxis in Singapore.

For decades, you can see the look of frustration - some even bordering on panic - in the eyes of locals and tourists alike, as they stood in hour-long queues, or running up and down the road vying with one another for the scarce cab that comes along, all figuring out if they should pay the hefty booking fee or tolerate the one to two hours wait standing in line for a cab.

Then there is the constant "Change Shift" drive-by; the cabs which magically appear around the corner only after you activate the booking fee; disappearing cabs during rainy days; and the cab drivers who put the green sign on yet zoom past on their own errands. 

The scene still persist, but there is noticeable relief for consumers in the more agile alternatives of GrabCar and Uber.

Just hope that competitors rise to the challenge in terms of service standards, and not try to kill a good thing.

American Express ~ Making Life Easier

Customer Service Officers at American Express Hotline are known to provide exemplary standards of customer care.











We put their standards to the test:-

January to September 2015 : 5 stars all the way.

October 2015 : 2 stars.  Polite and helpful.  But gave wrong information.

October 2015: 1 star. Impersonal, promise to call back on wrong information, but went MIA.

New Taxi "Operators" on the Road

Other than Uber, Grab Taxi, and other taxi app services, there appears to be a new class of operators on the road.  We call them "Zippies".

No fear of competition, however, since these cabs have the Green Light on, i.e. no passengers, yet choose not to stop.  No matter how we hail, they simply zip by blatantly, thus we call them "Zippies".

We hope this is not a new tactic to beat the authorities at their game, because ever since the Land Transport Authority (LTA) impose taxi availability standards for the major operators (Comfort, CitiCab, TransCab and Premier), we are experiencing an increase of taxis driving around with Green Light on and not picking up passengers, where prior to this, they would have the Red "Hired" sign on to indicate that they are not available.

The current taxi availability mileage counters that monitor the minimum daily mileage of 250 km that the cabbies have to log in, may not be sufficient to curb some cabbies' habit of using their cabs for private use.

POSB's Puzzling Overseas Spend Promotion

Despite voicing the puzzle to POSB Hotline, there has been no clarity to this computation in relation to POSB's 2% rebate for Overseas Spend.

Promotion link:-
https://www.posb.com.sg/personal/cards/credit-cards/posb-everyday-card


In the promo link, it says:-

Get 2% Cash Rebate on your Overseas Spend
Your POSB Everyday Card now lets you enjoy more savings when you travel. Charge to your POSB Everyday Card when you travel and get 2% cash rebate⁵ on your overseas spend!

However, in the T&C, it says:-

Full terms and conditions

5.   Subject to a minimum total spend of S$1,000 on your POSB Everyday Card within the same calendar month and capped at Daily$10 per Card account per month (effective 01 February 2015).

?!?

First off, to qualify for the promo, spending $1,000 is a must.

So happily, you would think that you are getting $20 as rebate based on the promo of 2% on $1,000.

However, according to the T&C, your rebate is capped at $10 (Daily$10 per Card account per month).

So after spending a minimum of $1,000 to qualify for the 2% rebate promo, you can only get a maximum of $10 rebate.

The effective rebate is therefore 1% and not 2%, as claimed in the promo.

The Customer Service Officer agrees with me.
I've asked for a revert confirmation from POSB Marketing in May.

But there has been no clarification till now.

Furniture Movers

Yesterday was a day of drama.

Auntie Pearl finally got the key to her resale apartment, and a mover was supposed to move her furniture from the apartment she sold to the one she bought. 

Repeated queries as to whether he can handle two truckload's worth of furniture met with no objection.  In the end, despite us waiting till close to midnight, the mover was a no-show.

A blessing in disguise because when we opened the door to the resale apartment, we had the shock of our life.  Bundled up black plastic bags and items were strewn everywhere.  The stench of musty, old stuff was pervasive throughout the house.  This was surprising because the house had looked and smelled completely different during house viewing day.  Guess we didn't eyeball each nook and corner and sniffed enough during house viewing.  Now it look like we had wandered into a hoarder's smelly compound.

Either the seller ran out of timeline to clear the space, or simply junk the stuff onto us. 

It took us a full night to clear just one portion of the seller's loot, sufficient to create space for the furniture to be shifted in.  As it turns out, it took another few days to complete clearing the loot from every room.  That's how much stuff was left behind for us to clear.

We are lucky that the gentlemen who bought Auntie Pearl's house was obliging enough to allow the massive haul of furniture to reside there though the house now belongs to him, till we locate a new mover. Many movers could not fulfill last minute requests or would charge a premium.

Thankfully, mover Jervis (Mobile 94899985) came to the rescue, moving the stuff across the very next day.  His team of workers were polite and resilient despite the two truck's loads of hard work.

Now, our journey towards turning this house into a livable space begins..

Ceiling Fans Review

After years of living with various types of ceiling fans (12'x12' rooms), these are the ones we wish to avoid --

Ceiling fans with Dome Light

Translucent dome light shade blocks off the glare but that means lighting is not sufficient bright.


Ceiling fans with Individual Light Bulbs

The light bulbs need constant replacing as compared to bulbs which are fixed onto walls or ceilings.

Every brand of ceiling fans or light bulbs that we change to promises that theirs won't see incidence of constantly fused or blown bulbs.  But with each change, out of four bulbs that are fixed to the base of the ceiling fan, only one or two would finally remain.  And the remaining ones eventually blew up faster than those fixed onto concrete surfaces.  We read that the bulbs fixed onto ceiling fans sees constant vibration as the blades move, thereby shortening their life span.  In fact, Philips refused to replace our light bulb despite their one-year warranty, because it was fixed onto a ceiling fan and not on solid surface.


Ceiling fans with any sort of light attachment

Finally got tired of the 3-switch options: On once for light; click twice for fan; click thrice for light and fan.

Just want to go back to the simple life when one flip of the switch puts the light on, while another dedicated switch deals a one-time activation of the fan.


Other aspects

We tend to think that more blades is better.  But we are beginning to realize that five blades do seem to add clutter to the already small space.  We also do not seem to use the topmost speed so we should do fine with lesser blades.

Research indicates that three or four blades may be the optimum number of blades for best air moving performance.  Five blades may be less efficient due to the higher aerodynamic drag on the motor.  Coincidence or not, our five-bladed fans see more breakdown than our friends' three-bladed fans.  More blades to clean as well. 

For a 12"x12" room, Reka offered us a 56-inch ceiling fan when their 42-inch stock ran out. They didn't charge extra.  However, it was a mistake to accept the free upsizing. The rooms looks overwhelmed. The noise level appears "upsized" as well.  Its only saving grace are the acrylic blades, which maintains well and has good blade pitch that moves the air well.


The above reviews are based on the following brands: Mountain Air | Reka | Crestar. 

An electrician friend recommends that we go for the made-in-Japan KDK brand in our next replacement.

Irresponsible Cab Driver

Mid-way through the journey, this cab driver started to frantically chomp on lozenges.

Oh-oh.

A sign he's trying to suppress a cough.

Nearing the last leg of the journey, he couldn't suppress it no more and coughed violently to the extent we thought the cab was going to crash. 

We were too nice to tell him we want out - right there and then. 
Bad mistake. 

To cover the awkwardness, he struggled to talk about how he was cheated with fake US dollars followed by another cheat who ran off in the middle of Chinatown's heavy traffic.  You could hear from his shaky voice that he was not well.  He shouldn't be driving.

He spread the cough virus of course, causing us a loss of 3 days' work as we lay bedridden.

Before he picked us up, he must have coughed and coughed to his heart's content.  By the time we boarded the cab, it must have been infused with virus.

Very irresponsible.