READER'S FORUM:Have your say
Derek Egan contacted us with a good news story which we are more than happy to publish. He says that in recent times there has been "a number of reports in the media of people having bad experiences with cut-price deals on the internet, but I would like to report on how, in one case at least, good service certainly overcame a difficult situation".
A few weeks ago he took advantage of a CityDeal (Groupon) for a round of golf for four at the New Forest Golf club in Westmeath.
"The deal included supply of balls at the driving range and a four-course meal, all at a very attractive price," he writes. "When we arrived at the New Forest Club, new management had just taken over the course and balls ordered for the driving-range had not been delivered yet. After the round of golf we went in to the restaurant for our meal but the
chef had rung in sick and there was no-one there to cook ameal for four hungry golfers."
Things were not looking good and the four were no doubt not entirely pleased with how the deal was working out.
"Luckily the staff at the club were extremely concerned at the situation and went out of their way to look after us. The barman provided us with a free drink and went in himself to the kitchen to cook up some bowls of chips to keep
us going while we contacted the manager of the club," Egan writes.
The manager then arranged for the four-ball to go to the nearby Castle Restaurant in Tyrrellspass and used his own credit card to pay for ameal “which was excellent”.
He then offered the group the chance to come back another day to the course "and enjoy the full package again at no charge, this time with the use of golf buggies thrown in. We did indeed return and enjoyed a lovely day's golf
on this fine course (it has a par-3 hole completely enclosed in a beautiful walled garden) and had a lovely meal afterwards.
What could have been a very disappointing experience was turned into a very satisfying one!"
Phibsborough pub serves value and charm
Another good news story, although one which is short on detail . . . Declan Carty writes that "in these days of more and more complaints about poor customer service and staff that don't care, may I commend the manager and staff of
Hedigans pub in Phibsborough in Dublin, for their excellent service and value-for-money for lunch this week. Six people left, wanting to return." Done.
Tangled web of some company internet sites
Tom from Dublin got in touch to ask us to highlight a couple of websites which he describes as “annoying”. We happen to agree and so are delighted to do so.
“Take Ticketmaster, for example, which we have to use because in most instances there is no other way to purchase tickets.”
He says that when trying to book any event you have to fill in the captcha (the squiggly letters the site uses to make sure we are real people) and select the type of seat you want “even if the event is already fully booked. Then you are left with nowhere to go. You cannot use the back button because the page has expired,” he writes.
"I recently wanted to book tickets for Dara O'Briain who was doing several shows in Vicar Street. I had to select each night, fill in the increasingly infuriating captcha until I found a night where there were seats available, each
time going back to the beginning of the booking process. Why not mark events as booked out? To compound matters Ticketmaster has no facility on their web site to leave feedback. I tried to and my email kept bouncng back."
Then there is the Aer Lingus website which has been particularly infuriating to Pricewatch of late. “When you first use it, it has a pop-up asking for your country, airport and language. This is unnecessary because the site could look at your IP address and deduce your country and city,” Tom says. “The browser also indicates the language being used. A lot of sites do this for you automatically. It then seems to write a cookie on your machine with this information so you do not have to enter it again – until the cookie expires (in, it seems, amonth) and up pops the screen looking for this info again. Once again there is no facility for feedback on the Aer Lingus web site.”
There’s more. “Another common annoyance is Irish websites insisting that we fill in post codes even though they should know that we don’t have that luxury in this country. I’m sure other readers have similar experiences and perhaps a campaign on this issue might force web designers to up their game.”
Well? Are there any websites that you find particularly annoying? Let us know.
