Internet at Apartment with Hypernet

Experience with Hypernet has been pretty efficient and pleasant so far (crossed fingers). I must give them credit, but they are really efficient.

If you are living at Kelapa Gading MOI Apartment and looking for an Internet provider, you will realize that the apartment has 3 providers. Hypernet was the natural choice, because of their prices!

This is a timeline of their efficiency:

30th October 2012: Enquired at the administrative office, and was given a slip of paper with information of their 3 Internet providers

31st October 2012: Decided on Hypernet. Hypernet covers other residential buildings including
Apartemen MOI, Kelapa Gading Square
Apartemen Best Western Mangga Dua
Apartemen Pesona Bahari Mangga Dua
Apartemen Robinson Jembatan Dua
Apartemen Mutiara Bekasi
Apartemen Puri Indah
Apartemen Parama Pondok Indah

 Received an email from their customer service officer, and was informed about their rates at MOI. I decided to go with the 100mbps connection at Rp250,000 (+10% PPN) per month (Pre-paid). Cable installations cost Rp550,000. So I made the payment over bank transfer, and informed the sales support over Blackberry Messenger. He informed that there is a waiting time of 2 weeks for cable installation. However, surprise surprise. By afternoon, someone from the apartment called to inform that they will be installing the cable now!

1st Nov 2012: Checked with sales support when network will be activated. He says someone will contact me. True enough, customer service called to inform me that someone from Hypernet will be coming to activate the network at 10:00AM the next day.

2nd Nov 2012: At 10:00AM SHARP, they arrived to activate the network, informing me the network password. This was done in 15 minutes... However, I'll need to get another router, as the current ADSL router is only suitable for Speedy connections. No idea whats the difference, but just do so....

Now, I'm typing this from my new internet connection setup in less than a week! Amazing!

The angry Google Basketball Player

Have you tried this today? Courtesy of GOOGLE in celebrate of the Olympics 2012.

My Google Basketball player got so mad at my lousy dunking skills in such a cute way, with the black ball of yarn-look-alike above his head.... LOL.

Why PAYPAL are robbers in broad daylight

I've been a Merchant Account holder of PayPal for the business, for almost over a year.

In the beginning, I was starting to hold PayPal in awe, for being one of the only online payment systems to accommodate payments from all over the world. However, after what happened today, PayPal has officially been BLACKLISTED and SCREWED in my dictionary!

For PayPal users out there, whether or not you are a personal account or Merchant account holder, do beware and do your research before opening a PayPal account. PayPal tends to hold in high regard the words 'security measure' and 'security risk', but they are actually using their corporate and market monopoly power to abuse the definition of security.

If you have not heard, PayPal has the 'power' and 'authority' to close your account without any due notification. What they do, is to send an email template stating:

For the safety and security of the PayPal network, we often review accounts for potential risks. After reviewing your account, we have decided to close it because of security issues.

We are making every effort to minimize any disruption to your business.

If your PayPal account balance is zero, and you have no unresolved buyer complaints or chargebacks, your account will remain limited.

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Disbursement options

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Option 1. If you owe refunds to any of your buyers, you can use the money in your PayPal account to refund them.

To refund your buyers:

1. Log in to your PayPal account.

2. Click "Contact Us" at the bottom of any page.

3. Click "Contact Customer Service."

4. Under "Choose a Topic," select "Sending/Receiving Money."

5. Under "Choose a Subtopic," select "Refund/Cancel a Payment."

6. Click "Continue" and follow the instructions to refund payments.

Option 2. Money in your PayPal account will be held for 180 days. After 180 days, we'll email you information on how to receive your funds.

We regret any inconvenience this may cause.

Thanks,

PayPal

Please do not reply to this email. This mailbox is not monitored and you will not receive a response. For assistance, log in to your PayPal account and click the Help link in the top right corner of any PayPal page.

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Copyright © 1999-2012 PayPal. All rights reserved.

Consumer advisory- PayPal Pte. Ltd., the holder of PayPal’s stored value facility, does not require the approval of the Monetary Authority of Singapore.

Users are advised to read the terms and conditions carefully.

No, you didn't read wrongly, and it does state 180 days! That's 6 months of funds stuck in a PayPal account which does not offer you interest returns, on top of that, with the fluctuations of USD currency exchange, and the rate of inflation! 

According to the PayPal User Agreement: 

We may close, suspend, or limit your access to your Account or the PayPal Services, and/or limit access to your funds for up to 180 Days if you violate this Agreement, the PayPal Acceptable Use Policy, or any other agreement you enter into with PayPal.  We may also use proprietary fraud and risk modeling when assessing the risk associated with your Account. If you wish to open a Dispute through PayPal's Online Resolution Center you must do so within 45 Days of making your payment or initiating your transaction in the case of Pay After Delivery; or if you use the PayPal Grace Period payment feature, you must open your Dispute within 60 Days of receiving your email transaction statement.

When a call is made to clarify for such actions by PayPal, their reply is simply 'Our decision after internal review'. Upon demanding for explanation of 180 days hold, their explanation is that it is required in the situation that customers require a refund. 

Upon Googling, I realized that I am not the only victim of this clause! Other PayPal users from all over the world are experiencing such frustration with PayPal. You could say that PayPal are robbers in bright daylight! 

So if you are reading this post, and experience a somewhat similar situation, you can try to find some resources at http://www.paypalsucks.com/. 

If you are reading this post, and wondering what I'm talking about. Stop wondering. Just STAY AWAY FROM PAYPAL! 

Half a mind to turn Vegetarian

So I saw this on the way to work, and was pretty much following the truck for almost 15 minutes.

I now have half a mind to turn vegetarian....

My Jakarta: Didit Sucahyo, Train Operator

What was you worst experience of getting stuck?

It was around five years ago. I was running an evening economy-class train and there was this fallen tree blocking my path because of a heavy downpour. As the ‘captain,’ I couldn’t abandon the train and had to wait for six hours, until 2 a.m. when the tree was finally cleared from the rails, before I could continue the trip to the final station.

Did the passengers wait, too?

No, when a train is stuck for a long time in whatever scenario, the machinist usually suggests that passengers abandon it and take another form of transportation. What hit me the most was that there was this passenger who stayed and waited. As it turns out, he spent the last of his money for the train ticket and had no more money to get home. That was very sad.


What do you do when people climb up on the train roof?

In economy class, when traffic is low, usually around noon, we often yell and threaten to cancel the trip if they don’t climb down, which usually works.

But in the early morning or late afternoon when the train is fully packed with passengers, yelling at hundreds of ‘train surfers’ or threatening to stop the trip will just get me killed [laughs]. The worst thing is that this happens not because they can’t afford the ticket — because they can. They say they climb up for the breeze, and some of them even play cards up there; it’s just unbelievable.

Mybox

The business by Mybox cannot be more examplary of the quote by Warren Buffett,' Buy commodities, sell brands'.

Mybox is pretty much a homegrown business, probably by a young Indonesian lady, who realized that there must be a better solution to organizing her shoes closet? In this case, there is no better way than Mybox: kotak sepatu transparent ajaib, or otherwise translated as the 'transparent magic shoe box'!

Marketing Tools:
- Website: Considering there is a decency to purchase a domain rather than using one of the free domain hosts, the website has a page rank of, wait for it.... 0! Only available in Bahasa Indonesian, the website is a simple 1-page interface, with no sort of visitor interaction. It is purely, a 1-page information website.
- Facebook: With a fanbase of 111,851 members, this is a very impress & pretty successful fan page! If you are probably thinking that 111,850 members are sleeping members, you are wrong!
Product Range:
- 1 product only! Although available in 4 colors, at the end of the day, its really only 1 product!

Last but not least, my lesson learnt from Mybox:
1. Find a niche product
2. Market
3. Sell
4. Earn

If only it was as easy as it looks. Time to sift through Alibaba.com!.

Dear Mybox founder, thumbs up to you!

P.S. This is not a 'business' advertorial for Mybox

Crash Course: Online Payments in Indonesia

The era of e-commerce is coming to Indonesia, and its definitely staying and thriving! 

If anyone has noticed, e-commerce/online payments in Indonesia is quite difficult and limited in options. For my business, we've been using PayPal for almost 6 months, and it has been really great and easy with using the payment gateway for our customers. At the end of the day, we need to get the cashflow going, and we need payments coming in, in, in.... and timely! 

3 features that we have been very satisfied with PayPal: 

- Integrated payment buttons: These payment buttons look great and they are easy to integrate! See sample: http://www.jakartaairporttransfer.com/book-now.html.  

- Payment Invoice: For customers that require customized invoices, with PayPal, we can easily issue an online invoice in 5 minutes! The invoice will be issued, sent to customer by PayPal, and the customer makes credit card payment from there directly.  

- Pay as you get paid: Unlike some payment gateways (i.e. RBS WorldPay), PayPal does not require merchants to make a fixed monthly fee. With PayPal, payment fees are according to your payments as received. This is very helpful for start-ups & SMEs on a cost point of view. 

However, a BIG minus point, is the hefty commission fees! PayPal commission fees are often pegged onto a percentage of between 5-10%, depending on the country of credit card used. Yes, you didn't read wrongly, 10%. This makes much difference to our margin, and we have to absorb the cost on behalf of our customers. On top of that, PayPal does not recognize Indonesian Rupiah currency! So we've been searching for other alternative and cost-effective online payment gateways from Indonesia. In the past year or so, there has been a spring-up of different private organizations tapping onto the e-commerce scene in Indonesia. The local banks such as BCA & Mandiri is definitely also catching up on the trend! They have established affiliates with big e-commerce sites such as Kaskus, Disdus, Garuda Indonesia, DealKeren etc.

Current payment gateway players in Indonesia, and I'm sure that more are coming up! 

1. Unik.com: One of the newest player, Unik was first launched in December 2011.
2. iPaymu.com: iPayMu integrates your online business with 87 banks & ATMS across Indonesia.
3. IndoMog.com: A specialized online payment gateway for the Indonesia's videogame industry. IndoMog adheres to a 'pay & top-up' system. 
4. KasPay.com 
5. Doku.com 
6. KlikPay BCA 

Freelancer - INDO version

Interesting...

http://freelancerandco.com