Posted by Derek Lee-Wo on December 5th, 2005 in Rants
It not uncommon to see mobile phone providers offering phones for free, or at a substantial cost reduction once you agree to sign a one or two year contract. Why is it that this can’ t be offered to existing customers whose current contract has ended and who are prepared to sign a new contract? After all, it is cheaper for a company to keep a customer than to try and earn a new one.
I was a T-Mobile customer for the last year and my contract was due to expire in 3 weeks time. I decided that I wanted to get a new phone with both Bluetooth and a camera. I checked the T-Mobile website and they were offering such a phone for free to new customers with a 1-year contract.
Armed with this information, I called T-Mobile to find out if I can get this same deal by signing a new contract. I was told I couldn’t and the best they could do was sell me the phone for about $70 and I would have to sign a 2-year contract. This is despite the fact that new customers would only be required to sign a 1-yr contract. Also, I would have had to buy 2 phones since I had a family plan and I wanted to upgrade the second phone on that plan as well. This was even going though their retentions department and they knowing that I was prepared to change providers. Maybe they figured they could call my bluff?
Well, because of T-Mobile’s policy, I was forced to move and I’m now a Cingular customer. I got 2 phones with the features I wanted and for free, and with the number portability, I was able to keep my phone numbers from T-Mobile, so there would be no disruption for people trying to call me.
When will these companies learn…or maybe T-Mobile has enough customers and they are willing to lose me as a customer. When my Cingular contract is up, I may well go back to T-Mobile, assuming they offer me a great deal, but for now, I get to enjoy my free Bluetooth and camera phone.
Posted by Derek Lee-Wo on November 4th, 2005 in Photography
Being a keen photographer, I am often asked for recommendations as to what camera to buy and where to buy it to get the price. This was the recent case with a relative. My relative was looking to purchase a point and shoot camera. She ended up doing a lot of reasearch on pricing and I recommended she check out Amazon.com , Buy.com and Newegg.com .
After doing her own research, she came across http://www.bwayphoto.com which she found in the back of a PC World magazine. The hair on the back of my neck immediately popped up. Why? Because these places are almost always scam artists.
As an example, the place she found was Broadway Photo & Video. Here is a picture of their store front in New York.
Would you buy an expensive camera from this place?
What these places typically do is advertise a ridiculously low price for a camera, but the catch is, the price is for the camera only. All the accessories that normally come with it (manuals, cables, started memory card, etc) have been removed. If you then try to buy the camera, the would force you to buy the accessories for a huge price and if you refresh, they would be suddenly out of stock. Don’t waste your time.
The only places I would recommend buying camera equipment from in NY are http://www.BHPhoto.com and http://www.Adorama.com . I’m sure there are other reputable places, but these are the ones I’ve dealt with and the ones most other people on the know would recommend
If you are not sure about a particular store, a good place to do some research would be at http://www.resellerratings.com
If you would like to see a picture of what these NY stores look like, check out http://donwiss.com/pictures/BrooklynStores/
Posted by Derek Lee-Wo on September 25th, 2005 in Software
I just had to vent a bit….I decided to redo my family portal at
www.LeeWo.net. I integrated WordPress and Gallery.
In trying to get the site to look nice and uniform, I had to fiddle with CSS and what a pain in the ass it was. There are still a few quirks when viewed under IE. Maybe I’ll get around to fixing them some day 
I miss the days of using tables to layout websites. At least then, I “knew” where various parts of my site would go.
I’ve been reading various books where authors explain how to do things that used to be done using tables and on many occassions, they admit that certain layouts cannot be achieved. This is progress???
Needless to say, my site still uses some tables so I’m not XHTML compliant, but you know what….who gives a shit? I’ll let the puritans stuggle with getting CSS to work the way they want it. I live in the real world and nothing’s perfect.
Posted by Derek Lee-Wo on June 20th, 2005 in Photography
I came across this Yahoo News article: Copyright-Worried Photo Labs Spurn Jobs
I’m thinking that I would actually be flattered if I was told one of my pictures looked too professional. This has never happened to me so I guess I have a ways to go . I’ve only ever sent prints to DotPhoto.com and EZPrints.com. BTW, I wouldn’t ever hesitate to recommend Ezprints.com if you’re looking for large size prints. Just a very happy customer.
For all my smaller-sized prints (8×10 and smaller), I print at home on my Canon iP5000.
