This week sees the launch of Pick 'n Pay`s Home Shopping division, which I hope will live up to expectations. When the service was piloted some months back, I signed on, and was initially quite impressed with the depth of the offering.
Seems like consistency is the only thing eluding the Home Shopping initiative - here`s hoping they manage to pin it down, and soon.
Basheera Khan, journalist, ITWeb
What had me going was the promise of a customised shopping list - the basic idea being that if you`ve paid for goods at any Pick 'n Pay branch using a credit card or cheque, it would leave a paper trail which the Pick 'n Pay guys could trace your purchasing history.
Using that information, they would then compile a shopping list comprising the items regularly purchased, and save you the hassle of starting one from scratch.
It`s a very compelling offer. What a pity then that Pick 'n Pay Home Shopping failed dismally in turning results around in the 24-hour period promised. I selected this option on the pilot site at least three months ago, and to their discredit, have yet to hear anything from them - no apology, explanation - not even misdirected marketing bumpf.
Which, for what rumour has to be R12 million, is a pretty steep price to pay for non-delivery of a service which could swing the number of initial adopters quite dramatically.
Nevertheless, I`ve heard reports of other customers that have had sterling service from the site. Seems like consistency is the only thing eluding the Home Shopping initiative - here`s hoping they manage to pin it down, and soon.
Long live Tux
For those of you who haven`t yet heard, Linux celebrated its tenth birthday over the weekend. Although the local event wasn`t nearly as big as other parties held across the world in honour of the open source operating system, it definitely had me pondering on the differences between user communities.
Usually, the industry events I`m invited to focus on products that are meant to run in a predominantly Windows-based environment. These launches are almost always accompanied by flashy presentations set to various versions of the latest pop songs, name tags for all, and weird blue cocktails that end up discarded after one sip.
At Obsidian System`s Linux bash, the differences were marked by the absence of all of the above, and the presence of a 20-foot blow up Tux (well, not quite, but it got the message across). A very groovy touch was the music, which was completely off the beaten track, and played off an MP3 server hooked up to amps and speakers.
All in all, very different to what seems to have become the industry standard in celebrating anything at all.
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