* Posts by Matt Underwood

12 publicly visible posts • joined 15 May 2007

Groupon offer burns cupcake baker’s profits

Matt Underwood
Unhappy

I recently took a Groupon offer up for Sports Massage and Consultation. Speaking to the business owner about how successful it was he said that it had worked well, but that Groupon had oversold his offer. He wanted to sell around 250 and they had gone on to sell 400. Each massage and consultation takes him 1 hour. So he needs to fit in another 150 hours of work at a much lower rate than his standard fee. Plus he still needs to accommodate his regular (non-Groupon) customers.

From Groupon's point of view they don't really care. They collect £18 for each one they sold (and passed on £6). They make more money if they oversell.

Their response to him was that, "surely this was a good thing - more potential customers" (except this means 150 hours at £6 an hour), and "why not contact the 150 over subscribed customers and explain (Groupons) mixup" (i.e. he would be the source of the bad customer experience).

He'd heard of several other businesses suffering similar problems.

GM Volt to deliver three-figure fuel economy

Matt Underwood

Which journeys?

Great - A car that is only economical on the kind of journeys where you should be walking and biking anyway.

Wacky Jacqui spanked by husband

Matt Underwood
Thumb Down

Reg. misses the spot just like all the other media

Why are all the media getting sidetracked by the two 18 rated rentals? There are 5 movies on the monthly bill including two showings off "Oceans 13" and one of "Surfs Up". The fact that these were paid for by the tax payer rather than Mrs Smith is just as bad as the cert. 18 ones. Did she watch any of these 3 other movies? This is just one months bill, what about previous months bills?

Any politician that feels the need to qualify the statement "I did nothing wrong" with "according to the rules", is clearly aware that they have indeed done something wrong.

Expedition to probe cavern lake 3km beneath Antarctic ice

Matt Underwood
Thumb Up

Surely easier to just wait..

Might as well take advantage of global warming and simply wait for the 3Km of ice to melt.

Still I'm looking forward to Grendel's Mother popping up - providing she looks like a giant naked golden Angeline Jolie as I've been led to believe.

Original lightsabre sale brings big, big bucks

Matt Underwood
Unhappy

Uh oh. Somebody's going to be upset

Imagine parting with 240 grand for a Light Sabre only to discover it's something somebody cobbled together out of old flashgun parts. It's like your worst eBay nightmare come true.

Hopefully the seller is putting the cash to good use by buying plutonium for his DeLorean based time machine.

David Tennant quits Who

Matt Underwood

Thank god for that.

Well, since they've already trashed the Doctor Who brand, taking it from Cult Sci-fi and making it a Saturday night family special with 2 comedy guests per episode (oh, look the bad guy this week is Ainsley Harriot mummy), why not go the whole hog and have a guest Doctor each week too.

You could get the current load of easily pleased 'Who fans creaming by engineering ridiculous plots where Billy Piper is the doctor for a bit, and Tennant comes back as a space alien Santa for a christmas special.

Virgin Atlantic site reveals sky-high employee disgruntlement

Matt Underwood

Poor photo

What I don't understand is why the photo in the middle of the site is so rubbish. It looks like it's got a scratch across it. Couldn't Virgin provide a better graphic of a Virgin aeroplane?

Jules Verne gets intimate with ISS

Matt Underwood
Thumb Up

Missed trick?

I do hope the boffins in charge of this have had the good sense to get it to play "Blue Danube" when it goes though it's autodocking sequence.

Nintendo to introduce online play charges

Matt Underwood

Wii update

It was a quick update - didn't seem to contain much at all. In the blurb it just says that if updates are available on a Wii game disk, the disk channel icon will indicate an update is available. Similarly if an update is available for another channel (like it was for the Every Body Votes channel a while back), then that channel's icon will also indicate an update.

Now where's my PS3 update with Home in it?

Hint of next PS3 spied on web

Matt Underwood

Drop Blu-Ray drive?

Seems unlikely as that's the delivery mechanism for the games.

2012 Olympics logo debuts to whalesong

Matt Underwood

Don't worry!

Yes I too thought it was gobsmackingly awful when I saw it. Luckily there's a get out clause in more whale speak.

From the london2012 site, " the new emblem is modern and will be dynamic, evolving in the years between now and 2012."

Evolving eh? Ah. So they've got a chance to have another stab or two at it before we settle on the real one.

Matt.

Useless government IT adds self-nomination features

Matt Underwood

Directionless spelling

Following a typo for my own in www.directionlessgov.com I was surprised to see how many government sites actually published with this misspelling. The word I typed incorrectly was 'recyling'. I then tried a few more words...

democacy

goverment

enviroment

Quite fun really.