It’s alright if you’ve never dine at Pastamania before. After reading this, you might want to try it to see if I’m speaking the truth.

#fail #1 – New Forks and Spoons at Pastamania

You love the design of the utensils, don’t you? Does the fork and spoons remind you of the chicken rice stall at clementi market? I don’t understand why they’re cutting cost to such an extent that they cannot to get those of better quality, like what they previously used (and still using).

fail #2 -Parmesan Cheese powder or Parmesan flour?

Correct me if I’m wrong – Cheese shouldn’t taste like flour. I’m not any specialist at food, but anyone who eats cheese rather often will find the parmesan cheese powder at Pastamania not at all cheesy.

I’ll complain no more about the cheese or they might keep the cheese powder and instead charge you for cheese in future. Ouch.

fail #3 – Bad taste!

Errr, taste is something rather personal, we all know. But my paste tasted like crap. Just tasted like lousy tomato puree with no herbs or whatsoever. Blunt taste. Trust me, they used to be better, alot better.

fail #4 – It’s getting very cramped.

Image taken from pastamania

Pastamania (above: Causeway point) no longer looks like the picture above. They’ve changed most (if not all) their tables to smaller rectangular tables. The whole place became very cramped and packed. Staffs that are of bigger size really have to say excuse me everytime they walk pass. So, those of you with big bags, leave it at home or put it on your lap.

fail #5 – Clearing your plates immediately.

You consider this good service? They pass you a big menu, tell you to order at the cashier, serve you with your food within minutes, you finish your food fast, they clear it and it just means you have to go. I actually missed out that the staff will always ask: “can I clear this?” – but will you say no if you’re done?

Be positive, think of it as decluttering your table for your desserts. Yah, right.

This is the 5th day I couldn’t connect to the Internet on a 3G connection. Terribly disappointing.

I seriously wonder if I’m the only person complaining about this problem. If not, why do they sound as if they don’t know what’s going on. Or maybe they’re trying to hide the problem and make it sound as if there’s no problem and its just your fault. Whatever.

I called up SingTel customer support. Pressed 1 for English, Keyed in my number 9XXXXXXX followed by #. Then pressed 0 to speak to Customer Service, and pressed 3 for other matters. This is how familiar I am now. Learn it. Next, when someone picks up and says who he/she is, you need to tell him or her your problem, identify yourself (owner of the line & IC number). How hard can this be? “Ok Mr So and so, thanks for verifying.”

Now you describe your problem. I couldn’t connect to my Broadband on Mobile. I could get the 3G Signal, but just its stated connection failed. Without fail, if this is the first time you’re calling regarding this, they will tell you to do a restart of your USB modem when you know obviously the problem doesn’t lie there.

Improvement #1: Customer Service offers need a much more flexible guidance book in front of them.

After that, they explain that for Broadband on Mobile, it’s actually on Shared bandwidth, thus you may be experiencing lag. Yes we all know. But I paid for nothing?

Improvement #2: Don’t oversell.

But again, that isn’t my problem. I cannot even connect in. Damn. Changing the APN won’t help too. Lastly the officer told me to switch to a GSM network (without 3G) – NarrowBand on Mobile.

Good job done: You found me a way to get onto the Internet which I cannot even load my Gmail.

I am making a guess. Did the problem just happened because you’re having some network or hardware failure which you cannot fix in time and thus you’re trying hide and not let us know?

Improvement #3: I don’t know, but I hope when you got a problem, at least let us know. We can be really considerate since we know it isn’t permanent.

If not, please unsubscribe me from this service and waive all the rest of my fees. I am not going to pay any penalty since I didn’t enjoy the service at all. I didn’t even utilise it to any extent!

Improvement #4: Don’t let us pay for nothing, especially when you got a service downtime, go by some SLA that waives our fees for the day or week. Learn it from some web hosting companies. In fact, they provide 100x better service.

Now, proposals to hire me go to my e-mailbox (felix[at]ker.sg). I should be able to help you improve. At least I think from a client’s perspective.

Improvement #5: I don’t sleep at 12am. And I always encounter problems after 12am. You need a team on too. Don’t tell me you are trying to cut costs too? 12-8am is another shift. Make more jobs. The government will love you more.

Now good night.

Before I start on this entry, I wish to say that this is my personal experience for the past few months using this service.

Introduction

I am staying at a rented room with my sister and thus we thought that we’re not going to register for wired Internet. Instead, we should just get SingTel’s Mobile Broadband (Mobile 1000).

Someday, some months back, we went down to SingTel at Bugis. Wow, when you sign a two year plan, you get the HSDPA modem (Huawei or Samsung) free. Free registration. Blah blah. We always love promotions, right? And so we signed up (Yes, 24 months contract).

First two months

First two months was ok. Decent bandwidth that I can get. I mean, pages don’t take very long to load. The latency is not that bad.

Now

1. MSN cannot connect. This is crap. Totally unacceptable.
2. Tibia (MMORPG) lags like hell. I logged in and tried to walk. I couldn’t even walk at all. I would lag for the next 60 seconds and get booted off for no packets sent/received. Damn it. You shall pay for what I paid CIP Soft.
3. Websites don’t load at all. Not even SingTel.com. Don’t even think about browsing facebook.com.
4. Emails not readable/reply-able. I cannot even get on the Internet smoothly, how can I read and reply my emails smoothly?
5. Think I can blog?

What can I do?

1. Get home, rest, shower and do face mask. After so much stress and sleeping late because the Internet tends to be not so bad after 12am.
2. I called SingTel 3 times in 2 weeks. I am still not getting any reply from their technical team regarding this shit.
3. Watch Hot Shot (篮球火). It entertained me for 1 hour.

Screw SingTel. I’m just bored. Internet sucks and I can’t do much.

SingTel, I want..

1. Waiver for my Internet bill for the past 2 months and current. (I paid them already, thinking it will improve)
2. Termination of contract.
3. Compensate me for my time (having to sleep late to use Internet)
4. Compensate me for my loss in not being able to get onto Tibia. You’re going to pay for my premium account.

If you’re using SingTel Broadband on Mobile..

I’d like to know how’s your Internet. Comments please.

Seriously, I haven’t seen anything uglier than this.

I would think twice in future if I were to start selling apparel of my own brand, really. If I were to do it, I will find a simple lady without makeup to be the model.

Xiaxue, your (photos) looks are getting from bad to worse. Fake nose? Bad makeup (or is it the bad photoshop skills/photography?)?

Here’s another rant by Shirley - Read (Titled: Sucks la~).

With my bad English, I shall summarize what she wrote:

It’s written that she ordered chicken conolloni (I think it’s Chicken Cannelloni) and was quite tasty. She was half way through and that was when she noticed a strand of hair in the cheese.

When she called for the staff, the working staff brought the plate of pasta to her supervisor and came back to her for advise (if she wants it replaced or void). No one apologized.

The bad service really disappointed her. The bad meal really spoilt her day.

Let’s analyze Spageddies:

Quote:
“The staff at Spageddies have been recruited and trained with one objective in mind – pleasing our guests. The staff are trained under a program called “Servizio Favoloso” which allows us to tailor our service to the needs of each individual guest. We are committed to providing attentive and friendly service that is perfect accompaniment to any meal. ”
Source: http://www.spageddies.com.sg/webtop/restaurant.phtml

Spageddies wrote on their website that they train their staffs, but I (we) don’t see the training applied.

For the overpriced Pasta, we expect good/better service provided. If not, any hawker selling pasta would just be good. That’s the difference.

To Spageddiesâ„¢: I think Shirley deserves an apology for the bad service.