photo credit: kagey_b If you’ve ever had to travel for business, you know all about the risk of luggage going missing on your trip. But you don’t know the real dismay and the sinking feeling in your stomach that comes from realising your bag hasn’t made it. Most of the time, your bag gets found, but sometimes it doesn’t and you can kiss all your belongings goodbye. You may get something back from the insurance, but the sentimental value of…
Image via Wikipedia It’s interesting to see FlyBe preparing for a stock market flotation with a company valuation of £300 million. If you’ve never heard of them (I guess if you’re out of Europe they’ll be new to you), they’re a discount airline which has spread from humble roots to routes all over Europe. Their website is quite intuitive, after all, you’re not looking for a life insurance online quote, but they do try to attach extra charges for everything…
On the subject of paying attention to detail, there’s another thing you must always watch out for, and that’s thresholds. There are a number of systems out there that use graduated costs and knowing where the thresholds lie can help you save a packet. Let’s take house prices in the UK for example. There’s a tax on house purchases called “stamp duty” which is a graduated scale based on the price of the property. Here’s what the scale looks like:…
Interesting article on the BBC website talking about how Bank are charging “sneaky fees”. It’s an interesting look into what’s happening to the bank overdraft market, where legislation has clamped down on unauthorised overdrafts. In return, the rate of authorised overdrafts has increased, with an average of around 19%. That’s an average, so while there are some that are lower, there are also others that are higher. It can be quite awful to be hit by unexpected charges, so make…
If one of your customers has a problem, how long does it take you to respond? I’ve had a number of opportunities to interact with companies here in Europe and the usual experience is as follows: Send an email to the company Get an automated email saying that you’ll be contacted within the next 48 hours Wait 2 days Get a customer service representative emailing back Reply saying that I’ve solved the problem in the meantime or switched to a…
Image via CrunchBase There’s an interesting movement happening in the journalism world at the moment. You could sum it up as a battle of wills between Murdoch and Google, but it’s more than that. There’s a cost involves in collecting news and someone has to pay for that in the end. Here are some costs The Times faces: Indicating the costs of quality journalism, he said it had cost the Times £1.5m to run a Baghdad bureau for the duration…