ICICI’s Useless Buy 1, Get 1 offer with BookMyShow & their other farcial offers

I have an ICICI Bank Coral Credit card. Part of the ‘perks’ that the card provides is something which is enticing to all:

Buy one ticket and get the other ticket free, any day of the week, at www.bookmyshow.com. You can book upto 2 complimentary tickets in a month on a first come first serve basis.

Very nice! so I had tried to book tickets using this offer. I think I’ve succeeded maybe once. Off late, trying to book tickets using this offer has been an exercise in frustration. Every time, I ended up getting an error message:

Sorry, we can`t proceed with the booking for this offer since the Total Number of Tickets for Today has been exhausted OR You may have applied it to an ongoing transaction which is not yet cancelled. Please try again after 20 mins.

Since these offers have long ass weasel word terms & conditions, I tried to check to see if my transaction meets the conditions.

  • Valid credit card for the offer – ICICI Coral Card: Check
  • You can book up to 2 complimentary tickets in a month: Check, not booked any thing for the month
  • Ticket price less than 250: Check
  • Valid only for users coming directly to the BookMyShow Website and not via individual cinema sites: Check
  • The offer cannot be combined with any offer / discounts / promotions at the theaters: Check
  • The number of free tickets available daily are limited and customers can avail this offer on a First Come First Serve basis: Hello, what’s this?

Limited tickets? So what’s the count and when does it get cleared? I sent an email to BookMyShow Helpdesk:

I have a ICICI Bank Coral credit card which entitles me to the buy 1 get 1 free offer. I’ve been trying to use this offer for several previous bookings & without any success. I tried applying the offer for today’s Man of Steel booking, only to get the error message

Sorry, we can`t proceed with the booking for this offer since the Total Number of Tickets for Today has been exhausted OR You may have applied it to an ongoing transaction which is not yet cancelled. Please try again after 20 mins. For any queries please write to us at helpdesk@bookmyshow.com. (-4011)
Why am I getting this error? Some facts
– I have not used the offer this month, so I should be entitled to the free tickets.
– The booking is directly from your site
– The ticket price is Rs 250

So, BookMyShow Customer Care replies back to me: (hat tip for the quick response):

With reference to your mail, the quota of tickets available every day under the mentioned offer is limited and hence, the offer is not available for redemption once the quota of free tickets is exhausted for a particular day. Also, any revisions/decisions regarding the quota of tickets is at the sole discretion of the bank. The free tickets quota is renewed every midnight at 12 o’clock and hence, you are requested to kindly avail the offer when the quota is refreshed again at 12 AM.

Quotas for tickets? Book at midnight? What is this, IRCTC? I asked them what’s the quota amount:

Thanks for the info. What is the count of the free tickets that are allocated?

to which I get this reply

The quota for the mentioned offer is undisclosed by the bank which can be availed on a first come first serve basis.

So, for all the brand-whoring spanking partnerships, they amount of tickets is undisclosed? They can set the quota to zero or may be single digits & these wouldn’t know.

Learning: If you’re enticed by this offer, don’t bother. The offer is as useless as the free flight ticket offer that I got as part of the same credit card, which upon trying to redeem n number of times, I was told that the route in question cannot be booked under the offer.

What a fucking farce.

(ps: I’ve asked ICICI for the ticket quota count about half hour ago, waiting for their reply..)

 

Update:

From below comments, ICICI has clarified that the quota is 100 tickets for Debit cards & 200 tickets for credit card.

BookMyShow has updated it’s Terms & Conditions to mention this(thanks, Fishy!)

 

  • Free tickets will be offered under the Offer for each day in four blocks, starting at 10am, 12pm, 3pm & 5pm until stocks last.
  • The number of free tickets available monthly are limited and customers can avail this offer on a First Come First Serve basis for the month.

Read more: http://in.bookmyshow.com/static/icici-debit-card-movie-ticket-offers/#ixzz3C8WYIZU0

Now, that’s much better in terms of communication. Is it worth? Well, I’ll leave that up to you.

 

Slides from my talk on “Password Management & You” at Barcamp Bangalore

I’ve been going to Barcamp Bangalore since quite a while now, and it was only at last time’s Barcamp Bangalore that I actually gave a techlash session on Automated backup. This time, I decided to give a general session with focus on how & why people people should improve their passwords & password management skills. Embedded below are my slides.

And the very next day after my talk, Evernote gets compromised & has issued a password reset. You still believe in bad password practices? Wake up, smell the coffee. Improve your passwords. Use Lastpass(disclaimer: referral link; if you signup using this, both you & me get a month of free LastPass premium. If you rather not want to use the referral link – head straight to their site).

Update: To download the slides – click on the Settings gear & select the format of your choice. If you’re having problems, here’s the link to the presentation. Open it, then click on File menu → Download as and select the format of your choice.

A look back at 2012

Last year, I’d written a 2011 year in review, thought that was a nice way to recap the year. Continuing the same trend, here’s how 2012 went by

Gadgets /Software bought/acquired/reviewed

So, that’s about it for 2012, I guess. Happy New Year all & here’s wishing the upcoming year is as awesome as it was last year.

 

Contacting Bank of America from India via phone without International outgoing using Collect Call

If you’re ever stuck in a situation where you need to contact Bank of America from here in India, but don’t have International outgoing available, here’s a quick tip:

  • Check out AT&T’s Direct Access Dialing Code for India(at the time of writing this, it’s 000117)
  • You’ll reach an Operator. Tell him/her the number you want to Dial. This should be 602.597.2395 for Bank of America. Will be different for others.
  • You’ll be prompted to Enter Calling Card number. Skip entering anything
  • You’ll be asked if you want to initiate a Collect Call. Say yes.
  • Done.

This should work with any organization which uses AT&T and accepts Collect Call, but I haven’t tried with others. I’m writing here because I want to document this for my future use.

This will come in real handy especially in situations where BoA detects Irregular/Fraudulent card activity and wants you to verify the transaction by dialling in – but you have no way of reaching out to an International number. Have your card number & other details ready

The case of the expanding, exploding iPhone 3GS battery

Way back in March, I got a bit tired of iOS and jumped the ship back to Android, purchased a Samsung LOLSUNG Galaxy S2 as my main phone. I won’t get into iOS v/s Android debate now, suffice to say I prefer Android to what it lets me do with the device. Anyhow, I didn’t want to give up on the 3GS – it’s a nice device and always a good idea to have a backup handset. As days passed by however, I more or less stopped using the 3GS.

Till couple of days ago – I wanted to try out of iOS 6 and some iOS apps to review. I had removed the abomination that is iTunes long ago and had no intention to install it again to do the iOS 5 -> 6 upgrade. Since Apple now offers an OTA upgrade, I went by that, taking well over 12 hours to complete the OTA download (the first OTA download failed after God knows when, second attempt was successful).

With iOS 6 on, I tried out some of the “improvements” that is iOS 6 maps.

I decided to carry out my iOS 6 experiments later on. That’s when the initial set of problems seemed to appear. In the evening, I noticed that the battery had completely drained out. That was quite surprising, since

  1. It was running only on WiFi, there was no SIM card in the phone
  2. From my previous experience, I’ve known the 3GS to last at least 2 days on standby on WiFi, if not more.

I connected the 3GS to the USB cable connected to my laptop, and then observed that the device was stuck on the Apple logo screen.

This morning, I got a whole bunch of responses on twitter, telling me what next to do, and following them I go the familiar “Connect to iTunes” logo. Since I didn’t have iTunes installed, I was pretty much SOL. As much as I didn’t want to install iTunes, I had no option and decided to download iTunes anyway. While iTunes download was under progress, I noticed that the battery had died out again. *Sigh*Proceeded to connect the iPhone to the USB cable and I waited for iTunes download to complete.

About 10 minutes later, the download was completed and I was about to start the install when I heard a loud bang very close to me. Moments later, I realize that the bang came from my iPhone – the battery had swelled to such an extent that the iPhone’s LCD had popped out of it’s casing.

Ok iPhone battery swelled up to such an extent that LCD popped out of the case

My immediate reaction was to disconnect the iPhone from the USB cable, to prevent further charging / damage to the battery. Having done so, the expansion and the accompanying bangs continued to happen

Ok iPhone battery swelled up to such an extent that LCD popped out of the case

Ok iPhone battery swelled up to such an extent that LCD popped out of the case

By now, an hour had passed by since the initial big bang(!) and I decided to go have some breakfast. I moved the iPhone away from my computer, to my hall and kept it in the corner and went for breakfast. Fast forward about half hour later, I see that the battery’s swelled to such an extent that the LCD’s at nearly a 30-35 degree angle to the iPhone base. And the mini bangs were still continuing.

iPhone 3GS after it's battery expansion

Couple of hours later, the situation had stabilized and this is how the phone ended up looking like

iPhone 3GS after it's battery expansion

iPhone 3GS after it's battery expansion

Taking a cursory look at the iPhone, I see that the metallic backplate holding the PCB is bent pretty badly. Not quite sure what to do with this – the phone’s about 2 years old and I doubt Apple India will acknowledge this.

Reddit’s secret santa and Guinness World Record for most email addresses in To: List

Way back in late November/December last year, I took part in reddit’s /r/secretsanta. I found it was pretty cool, to (hopefully) get a random gift based on my barren, lurking reddit account, though a small search would reveal a lot more about me.

Anyway, after Ashwin’s feedback(“my santa didn’t send anything. I was reassigned. second santa also nothing. #foreveralone”) I didn’t expect anything. A month or so later, however, my secret santa confirmed shipment of the gift. And I received it couple of days later.

Sweet! What I didn’t realize, till couple of weeks ago, was that the folks at /r/secretsanta were trying set a Guinness World Record for “the largest online secret santa game” and were successful at that! So that made me a Guinness World Record holder too! Woohoo!

Achievement Unlocked

Soon enough, I put forward an order for my Guinness World Record certificate and things were all set. Or so I thought. Couple of days ago, I received an email from Guinness stating that due to high volume of orders, the shipment would be delayed by another couple of weeks. That was fine, but then the person who sent the email did the biggest goof up ever. The person put the email address of about 1,072 people in the “To” field. Not even the cc, the frigging “To” field.

Epic Facepalm

Image courtesy http://www.comicvine.com/

  Here’s how it looked like

Naturally, I wasn’t too pleased

and neither were the reddit folks. Kicker was the contents of the email, with a disclaimer stating:

The contents of this e-mail from Guinness World Records Limited are confidential and intended for the addressee only.

If you are not the intended recipient you must not copy or further distribute this e-mail, and delete this message from your computer system.

Riiight.

Marco Frugatti, SVP Records, however did send an email apologizing the data breach

I am writing to you from the Guinness World Records Management Team regarding our company’s recent breach in relation to email data for a group of our record-holders for Largest online secret Santa game.

I can confirm that this breach was a human error by one of our own staff. Naturally, we take this matter extremely seriously and are conducting a formal investigation to ensure an event like this never happens again. I would like to offer you our unreserved apologies for this situation and any inconvenience it has caused.

However, I fear that this breach will have even more serious repercussions, given how lax people are with passwords. Good thing is that Guinness owned up to the mistake and have confirmed that they have initiated refunds for the payment of certificates. Time will tell who’ll be hit more – Guinness or the individuals in the email. My bet is on the latter.

Being on the other side of the Interview table

Attending an interview tends to be a scary, nerve-wracking event for most, me included. It’s like college exam 2.0 – you don’t do anything building up to the event, panic & do a splash and dash the previous night(though in my case, it’s more like “ah, fahgettaboutit”), start wondering and worrying what’s about to be asked prior to the event, with your mind racing about – “what if x comes, oh shit I forgot about y”, the big moment where you stammer, blabber and spit out something and then keep worrying till the results are out.

Last week, I got a call from the HR team asking if I’d be available and willing to come to office on Saturday. The reason? We had a weekend hiring drive and they wanted me(among others) to be an interviewer. My first reaction was – “mm okaaay but I’ve never done this before”(though never is not true, I did take up an interview, but that was for my team & was more of accompany-the-project-leads-and-ask-a-few-questions). This case, however, was different. It’d be a face-to-face interview. With people willing to join the organization. I decided to say Ok. Hey, it’d be a different experience.
Read More→

On Contact Lenses and Bausch & Lomb’s Pure View “HD” lenses

I’ve been wearing contact lenses for more than 10 years now. Switched to contacts from my clunky spectacles when I started my PU(aka 11th).

Guess who I am & win!

Guess who I am & win!

When you use something for 16x7x365 (I won’t say 24×7, since the lenses are off when I’m sleeping), you tend to know it inside out. And especially when it’s something like contact lenses, which sit on your eyeballs, every little change will result in instantaneous result. For instance, if you put on your lenses with an every-so-tiny speck of dirt that it’s bloody invisible, trust me, you will know about it & you eyes will water like there’s a big pump pushing out all the tears.

Anyways, all these years I’ve been using Bausch & Lomb’s SofLens monthly disposable lenses. They’re great. Actually, scratch the great part. They’re fantastic. Fits perfectly, no shifting, no dryness nothing. If coloured lenses are your fancy, they come in various colours, but I’ve been on the stock ones, which have a light-blue visibility tint which is awesome if you ever do the scary part of dropping your lenses on the ground or in the kitchen sink.

I’ve tried some other lenses, mainly B&L’s “permanent” ones(in reality, they’re supposed to be changed every year or so), but these didn’t suit my eyes & would go bad in less than 3-4 months. Also tried Johnson & Johnson’s contact lenses, they were fine, but not as comfortable as SofLens.

Over the past few years, we’ve had HD shoved down our throats – everywhere from video to audio. Heck even FM stations started touting “HD quality radio” crap. And joining this “we have HD” queue is… *drumroll* B&L.  Yes. Bausch & Lomb claim their lenses have “HD” optics.

Whatever the heck that means. And on their webpage they have pretty, pretty pictures(albeit served as Flash, so if you’re on a laptop, move it away from your thighs else you’ll have a Seekh Kebab down there) showing what happens when you wear their “HD” lenses. Apparently “blurred” images become crispy, squeaky clean & sharp. No more halos. Excuse me you brilliant folks at B&L PR and marketing, all those (blurred images, halos) are signs of a person wearing lenses NOT suited to them.

Curious to see how they actually work – I took the bait & bought them. For a pretty steep price. Lenskart took about 10 days to deliver them. They forgot to ship the free lens solution & case which was to be included as part of the offer, but after a support ticket, they sent them to me via courier.

Been wearing these for about 2 months now. And as expected, the HD’s just marketing gimmick. Everything looks the same. And to answer those who asked me on twitter, wearing “HD” lens and viewing a “HD” movie on “HD” monitor doesn’t give you a 2160p display. Har, Har.

It’s not just the ludicrous steep price that bothers me. These lenses don’t have any visibility tints. Trying to find where the lenses are in the case itself is like fishing in the deep sea with your eyes blindfolded. Don’t bother searching if you’ve dropped them. While there has been no “shifting”, the lens tends to get dry a wee bit faster. And not to forget, the lens is a dirt magnet. Picks up dirt way faster than anything else that I’ve tried.

So to sum up: Don’t buy ’em. HD or no HD, you won’t find any difference. And you’ll save some cash to buy another pair of lenses. Or for some shopping. Or beer. Whatever you prefer.

Redbus.in’s long weekend reminder mail

I’ve been a huge fan of redbus.in ever since I first used their site back in 2007. For someone as lazy as me, the idea that I could sit on my ass, check for all available tickets & book them at the comfort of my air-conditioned room was pretty awesome.

Didn’t hurt that they had a very nice, clutter free UI. Off late, they have been sending these long-weekend emails.

 

We usually write to you about happy things in life – upcoming holidays – and here we are once again, informing you about some festivals and long vacations in March.

Holidays in March

Holi March 8 (Thursday) Book now
Ugadi / Gudi Padwa March 23 (Friday) Book now

Tip for hard-working employees (employers, please ignore): Take an off on March 9 (Friday) and get a 4-days long week-end. After all, playing Holi can get stressful.

Perfect to remind you well-in-advance and get those tickets booked ahead of the rush! Another thing to notice: the cheeky sense of humour contained in the emails.

Well done, redbus! Thank you very much for the lovely service that you guys are providing!

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