Saturday, March 31, 2007

Hutch sucks!!

I know I know.. there are a countless number of posts complaining about Hutch Service.. yes, you are correct this is just another such post.. plus one to the countless number of hutch's frustrated customers.

Just got a call from Hutch billing department, its a third party* asking me to pay my bill. I told them that I have few uncleared issues with the technical department and I will not until they clear those, not at least this time... as in the past I have made the same complain and they did nothing about it. So, the agent is furious (I don't know why) and hangs the phone on me. Hmmm, I was speechless... and after 10mins I get a call from another agent.. and asks me to pay.. Here goes our conversation..

Agent: Hello sir.. I am calling from Hutch billing department.. you need to pay the bill.

Me: Oh, 10mins ago a agent called me and I told her why I am not paying it.

Agent: Why Sir?

Me: I told her, do you want me to repeat it. Can I speak to your team lead.

Agent: She waits for a 2secs and says she is the team lead.

Me: (Laugh) Don't lie.. you sound like a fresher... go to hell. (I hung up)

I was sure the agent was no team lead... may be a trainee.. agent sounded like that. After 30mins I get one more call.. this time from a Manager... here goes the conversation..

Me: Hello...

Manager: Hello Sir, I am Ramya calling from Hutch, manage platinum and gold customers.

[I am their platinum customer.. because I get a huge bill at the end of every month, isn't this ridiculous that they differentiate their customer on the basis of how much they pay. So, that means they provide least service to the person who pays less.. or don't really care about them.]

Me: Its the third call in the past hour.. What do you guys want?

Manager: Sir, please tell me what is the problem I will solve it.

Me: I already made a complaint.. check the records.. solve it and call me.

Manager: Sir, according to the records you have some network issue.

Me: Its not some network issue.. I specified what it is.

Manager: Yes Sir.. you have to call a number thrice to get through it.. as it gives a network busy message.

Me: Yes, there is one more issue.. please report me on that too..

Manager: Sir I just have the record of one issue. What is the second one.. can you please let me know.

[Me... surprised that they did not even record my complaint :( ]

Me: I spoke to Leena, team lead of customer service department.. I made sure she understands everything.. so, she will know it.. please put her on conference.

Manager: Sorry I cannot do that..

Me: ok, please speak to her and get back to me.

Manager: Tell me what is the issue.. I will solve it.

Me: I don't wanna repeat it.. talk to Leena and get back. Also, did you guys at least made a note who the 2 agents who called me in past hour and what did they speak..

Manager: Yes.

Me: Can you please tell them not to lie and hung upon on the customer.

Manager: Sorry, they are from a agency and I will report. What did they lie?

[Ok.. here comes.. thats when I know it was third party (a agency) who called me]

Me: You said you know what they spoke.. listen to the recorded call again.

btw, did you observe she stopped saying sir and please.. Not that I want someone to call me sir or request me but I just sensed that she is pissed of me...

Manager: I will get bye.. you have a great day..

hehe.. she said that.. and hung up before I said bye.. lol.. these people will never change..


I have been having Network problems from past few months and after n number of complaints they don't solve it.. and they send me some stupid sms asking me to download HOT AISH, HOT BIPS.. hehe.. they do.. seriously.. So, all I asked them was to solve these network issues and stop sending me those crazy sms as I am paying for the service... they cannot advertise for the service I am paying...

The team lead (Leena), whom I complained about this issue asked me to send a sms to some 4 digit number (I don't remember the number) with a keyword 'DND' and that would take 72 hours to update that. AND THAT WOULD COST ME Rs.3... lol... can you imagine.. you pay for the service.. they still send you crazy download sms without your permission and then when you ask them to stop sending those sms.. they ask you in turn spend Rs. 3 to stop those ads.

I googled a bit and found out that I am not the only one who go through such horrible service.

http://www.complaints.com/directory/2005/september/3/9.htm
http://www.complaints.com/directory/2006/october/23/54.htm

Yeeks.. check this... "Results 1 - 10 of about 195,000 for hutch sucks. (0.09 seconds) "

Oh.. btw.. by now you might be thinking why don't I cancel the service and go with some other provider..??? Listen.. I have this number from past 4 years and cannot really give a trouble to my clients asking them to update my contact just because I am have a issue with it.


**Third Party, most of the service providing companies which think that they cannot get money out of few frustrated customers outsource this service to another company whose work is just calling such customers and make them pay the bill.

Monday, March 26, 2007

How does an IPOD Click Wheel works?

The Click Wheel is a touch-sensitive ring that we use to navigate through all of iPod's menus and control all of its features. It provides two ways to input commands: by sliding finger around the wheel and by pressing buttons located under and in the middle of the wheel.

Under the plastic surface of the Click Wheel, there are four mechanical buttons (Menu, back, forward, play/pause), and there's one button in the center (select).



Click Wheel face

There are five buttons and five corresponding contacts on the motherboard. When we press, say, the right side of the wheel while you're listening to a song, the wheel pushes down the forward button. The underside of each rubber button is metal, so pressing it completes the corresponding circuit on the motherboard. The motherboard tells the processor this circuit is complete, and the processor tells the operating system to fast-forward through the song.

The Click Wheel's touch-sensitive function lets us move through lists, adjust volume and fast forward through a song by moving finger around the stationary wheel. It works a lot like a laptop touchpad. In fact, the company that supplied the Click Wheel for the 4G iPod was Synaptics, most widely known for making laptop touchpad’s. For the 5G, Apple created its own proprietary Click Wheel design based on the same capacitive sensing principle as the previous Synaptics-designed Click Wheel.

Under the plastic cover of the Click Wheel, there is a membrane embedded with metallic channels. Where the channels intersect, a positional address is created, like coordinates on a graph.

At its most basic, a capacitive-sensing system works like this: The system controller supplies an electrical current to the grid. The metal channels that form the grid are conductors -- they conduct electricity. When another conductor -- say, finger -- gets close to the grid, the current wants to flow to the finger to complete the circuit. But there's a piece of nonconductive plastic in the way -- the Click Wheel cover. So the charge builds up at the point of the grid that's closest to the finger. This build-up of an electrical charge between two conductors is called capacitance.
The closer the two conductors are without touching,
the greater the capacitance.

The "sensing" part of the system comes in with the controller. The Click Wheel controller (see above) is programmed to measure changes in capacitance. The greater the change in capacitance at any given point, the closer the finger must be to that point. When the controller detects a certain change in capacitance, it sends a signal to the microprocessor. As we move finger around the wheel, the charge build-up moves around the wheel with it. Every time the controller senses capacitance at a given point, it sends a signal. That's how the Click Wheel can detect speed of motion -- the faster we move our finger around the wheel, the more compacted the stream of signals it sends out. And as the microprocessor receives the signals, it performs the corresponding action -- increasing the volume, for instance. When the finger stops moving around the wheel, the controller stops detecting changes in capacitance and stops sending signals, and the microprocessor stops increasing the volume.