How long will you wait for your ad earnings cheque to arrive? 1 week? 1 month? 2 months? Well, to me, the best would be to get the cheque within 1 month. After all, we have to give a little time for the staff to do the processing. But two months?

I understand that it seems to be the norm for most people who are cashing out their ad earnings, but it is pretty frustrating to know that they are grossly inefficient in their job. I’ve been talking about Nuffnang and how they don’t seem to listen or respond quickly to customer satisfaction. But now the problem is Advertlets take their own bloody sweet time to pay me my ad earnings.

That’s not the main problem though. I just wish that I can at least know when my cheque will arrive. Making me wait this long (since 4th of May), and the whole status is listed as ‘Unpaid’ doesn’t make my life easier. Sometimes you want to get a little money to spend, or satisfy a particular craving, but at this rate my craving will probably end before the money arrives. In Advertlets, there is supposedly different statuses like processing, and according to their website, processing takes 1 - 2 months, to determine click fraud and stuff. But my status is still at ‘Unpaid’. It’s not even processing! Should I be waiting for another 2 months? That’s totally inefficient! I really hope there’s a good explanation for all these, after all, i’m not the first person to think the duration is too long.

Many people have complained, and I guess when you see that your customer is not satisfied, you should do something to check. There is not much checking needed for me for click fraud. Hell, most of my earnings are through visits and not clicks anyway.

So what if their company is from Malaysia? I think it’s time for them to decide if Singapore bloggers are worth the trouble. If Singapore bloggers are worth the trouble, set up a Singapore office to process the cheques faster. Hell we can even go down and collect the cheque and save on postage fees.

Seriously, I think the only credible ad agency amongst the 3 is Blog2U. So far I have not received any ads through their auto-accept system, but I’ve seen people having ads run. However, I have gotten reviews chances from them, and their representative Shirley is really nice and polite. The best thing is that they process the money quick and by bank transfer. The money is fast, the service is good, I think the other two companies should learn from them. Perhaps they do not have such a big customer base or publisher base, but I will choose them over the other two anytime because what matters to me is myself. I guess as long as a company demonstrates that I am important to them, I will stick to their company. It makes perfect sense right?

So Advertlets, how long do you want me to wait before my status even proceeds to ‘processing’? Are they trying to wait till the exchange rates change? It makes no sense.

Taken from http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/cgi-bin/comics/archive.pl (June 15th Comic)

Don’t you think that is rather true? Click on the image to see the whole comic. The image is too large to fit in the blog properly. I mean, you can be a great stuntman when you are alone with yourself, but people won’t recognize you for it because no one ever seen it. But if you are down on your luck, a certain unlucky event can give people the wrong impression of you. In this case, people will think you are clumsy.

Sometimes all it takes is for something bad to tarnish your reputation. A clean politician embroiled in a scandal that was created to cause a bad image of him will ruin his reputation and career forever. No matter what you have done before that, people will always remember the bad things that happened. Take for example Edison Chen. I don’t even listen to his songs or watch his movies, but he’s the idiot who took the sex photos. There you go. Bad names stick.

But the main point really is, nobody knows how we feel deep down. We may have the purest of intentions, but things may go wrong. This is always the case. You feel like doing good for something, but a certain misunderstanding causes you to seem like you’re doing bad. Or you may be stressed out and momentarily confused, and something you accidentally do, may cause people to have a bad impression of you forever.

But should it be the case? Should we judge people like that, based on one event? Or should we only have the right to judge a person only if we know him fairly well and understand his character? For all you know, that particular guy down the road didn’t mean to accidentally spill his drink on your favourite shirt. Before you condemn him to the lowest of levels, perhaps, we should be more forgiving of certain faults?

We are truest when we are alone, and we understand ourselves better. We know our intentions, but other’s don’t. All we can do is to hope people don’t judge you for one event but what you did for a whole lifetime. All we can do is to make sure we don’t judge people for one event but what they did for a lifetime. That, is perhaps the beginning of a better world.

Got this in an email from a friend, I got to say, these photos look very suggestive. Haha. I wonder who did all these. Enjoy!

Now give them some love, won’t you?

I’ve always dreamed of starting my own business, or at least something small whilst in University. I keep seeing success stories of how some undergraduates got together, started something up, and earned their pocket money. To me, how much I can earn is not a problem. I want to be able to do something, and at least earn a bit of pocket money. However, I have to admit that I wasn’t very successful.

If you ask me, I probably have a million reasons why I wasn’t successful. Have you ever found yourself wishing to be an entrepreneur but for some reason or another, you have had obstacles and problems lying in front of you from time to time? I guess I could say I was lazy, and I lack help. Starting up NextTutor is easy, all I need is to learn how to do PHP programming, but maintaining it and having activity is difficult. If you are aiming on a larger scale, say selling clothings online, or providing a service to a thousand people, you are probably going to meet up with some problems.

If you have already thought up on the problems that you are going to face being an entrepreneur, take another step now and think, if you have the authority, what would you do to help yourself become an entrepreneur? Would you get the government to create a fund for aspiring entrepreneurs? Or make it easy to be mentored by existing entrepreneurs?

Now if you have at least an idea of what you can do to aid yourself, then you are on the way to winning S$1000! This is because ACE is organizing this contest titled “Why Not?”.

The idea is this: Everyone, and I really mean everyone can participate in this contest if you have new ideas on how to:

1. increase Singapore’s attractiveness as a place for business
2. nurture entrepreneurs of tomorrow
3. encourage innovative and competitive businesses

Any one of the three will do. Just choose one of the three questions and give your opinion and idea, and you can stand to win a sum of money. In fact, having some cash would make it easier to do many things. For example, if I have the money, I would at least be able to print more fliers and pay people to distribute them to gain awareness of my own website! Hence, why not give your idea now?

The prizes are as follows:

Prizes
1st Prize: S$1,000 Cash
2nd Prize: S$500 Cash
3rd Prize: S$300 Cash

5 Consolation Prizes: S$100 Cash each

So how are they judging on your idea? What do you need to fulfil so that you can WIN? Your idea must be innovative, and it takes up 50% of the score. Do not say things like “Give more money”, because anyone can do that. Your idea must be feasible, and this takes up 25% of the score. If you say things like “Get the minister mentor to personally mentor every aspiring entrepreneur in Singapore”, you are probably going to fail, and badly too. The last criteria is that, if your proposal is implemented, whether the impact of the change will be good enough. That’s 25% too. Now if you are going to say that slapping young children to make them realize the benefits of entrepreneurship, I am going to slap you. Whilst the impact is great (pun intended. Impact of your hand on their faces), this is not the kind of impact they would want.

After reading all these, are you up for the challenge? Can you think of the unique idea that is going to win S$1000? Well if you win the money, and you applied because you read this here, do give me a comment, I’ll be happy for you and I will expect some commission ok?.

I will also try my hand at winning some money. After all, even winning the consolation prize is good money. (Can pay for my web-hosting! :P)

This advertisement is brought to you by BLOG2U!

M1 has been in the “limelight” recently, a positive limelight I would say. They have kicked off the You Deserve Better campaign where they get feedback from mobile users in Singapore, whether you are with M1 or not. The campaign has long been over, and they have come up with many different plans that are “catered” to our needs.

I must say I’m a little skeptical. The amount of feedback they gather is very little. If I remember correctly, there are only 2 parts (other than your basic information), which the first is being something like what do you think telcos should improve, and the second being an open ended on suggestions. To me, they may have already planned out the service plans they are going to launch before actually launching them. In a way, it feels like they value our feedback. But whether or not this is what they did does not matter. The end result is that they achieved their aim, and they have launched new plans to cater for different people.

My 21st month with M1 is ending on the 23rd of June. If I do an upgrade now, I have to pay a $100 more. Since I knew I would be busy from 23rd onwards, I wondered if I could do an early upgrade. The M1 shop says that I can do the upgrade without the $100 surcharge, since it’s only a week more to go. However, the phone that I wanted costs $168 in the M1 Shop, vs $98 if I buy it online or via phone. (Delivery is free too).

Hence it makes more sense to purchase via the online shop. However, computers are dead and they don’t make mistakes, neither do they have any human feelings. The online shop forced me to pay $198, which I do not want to pay. Hence I just emailed their customer relations department to explain my situation and ask if I could do an early upgrade. They replied a few hours later on the same day, telling that I can now proceed to do a purchase via phone, and they have granted me approval for early upgrade, and that they have input that via the system so the representative at the other end of the phone will know of this.

I called the M1 Shop phone number, and was made to wait for a representative to talk to me. Whilst it took some time to wait, the lady at the end of the line, Tracy, was very nice and polite. She listened to what I had to say and asked correct questions. I didn’t even have to finish explaining that I spoke to customer relations. The whole process was completed in a fast an efficient manner. She explained that the earliest time for delivery will be the next day, and gave me the time that I could select. Everything was conducted in a fast and efficient manner.

Thanks to their quick and efficient customer service, I solved my problem within a day. Now, when they tell me “you deserve better” and that they listen, I really believe. It’s these kind of fast, prompt and polite service that gives a customer the satisfaction to continue allowing a company to provide the service. I will definitely continue with M1 all the way, unless their customer policy changes. As I see it, M1 is definitely superior to Starhub in terms of coverage. My old provider was Starhub. I did not use Singtel, so I cannot speak about Singtel.

Thanks M1!

/*Updates: The M1 guy came over at 2.15pm. The time they told me was 2-4pm. Well done M1*/