I became suicidal today, yes, this was the worst 2 hours dealing with customer support in my life. I call customer support of many companies, there are great ones and there are bad ones, DU is simply THE WORST.
Two Hours and I still did not get any info. Yes, I repeat I have spent two full hours and I still did not deal with my issue, I did not get any info, at all. The thing started when I got the "DU Call Select" device, I think they call it "Autodialer", am not sure. The phone number which was printed on the device and in the manual was 800155, so, silly me, I called the number and chose the Arabic language, after that I waited and waited and waited and…. you guessed it WAITED. I tried my luck in the English language hoping some human might answer and I waited and waited and oh! I suddenly heard a voice, could it be a human voice I said hello and the employee said hello… YESSSS!! At Laaaaaaast….
My dream came true and I reached someone and when I asked the first question he said "please wait" and the same obnoxious music started playing AGAIN, he didn’t even wait for me to say a word. I was thrown from one employee to another, don’t forget that until this moment I still did not ask any important questions this was only me starting a conversation. Anyway, eventually I reached another employee who was shocked why I am stressed and shouting, I told him why I was pissed and he said "oooh! you called the wrong number, you should have called 04-3905555" those are the ones who deal with landlines, but I made it perfectly clear I did not want help in "DU Land Lines" I want help in "Du Call Select" which has a device that when connected to regular (ETISALAT) landline you can call in DU’s rates.
He totally ignored my point and told me he is 100% sure that calling 04-3905555 will end my problems. So I called the number and after chatting for couple of minutes the lady tells me that they are not the ones who deal with this service and they deal only with DU Landlines and broadband and TV!!! So… She gives me another number, I call them praying that they can actually help or even answer my first question, but when I call them the guy says "Oh, I guess you made a mistake…", so I tell him "Don’t tell me that this is the wrong number, please do not give me another number", he laughs and say "well if you want help you should have called the number printed on the device, 800155"!!!!. I hangup, and laugh hysterically, non-stop tears run out of my eyes and I keep on laughing for around 15 minutes until I get myself under control and decide that this should be shared with my blog visitors & subscribers.
I think it is really a big big SHAME that a company such as DU has this low quality customer support, I believe that 800155 should be able to help current or potential customers in any matter ever, I like Etisalats new approach where calling 101 will lead you to each and every aspect and departments of the company. I am not saying that Etisalat customer support is fantastic but for sure they are million times better than DU. I also think that with DU not having such a great mobile service as everybody actually keeps complaining on the weakness of the network and mainly how crappy the reception is, I would have thought that they would be having a better customer service . Thank God that I do not have a DU card, my father and brother got it and they keep on having nervous breakdowns at least once a week.
Note: Please share any of your positive or negative customer support experiences with any company, especially Du or Etisalat.
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October 8th, 2008
To those who do not know, Stumbleupon is a website that allows users to rate websites and share them with their friends and with other users who have the same interests as them. Just by installing the Stumbleupon toolbar on Internet Explorer or Firefox the user sets his interests and by just clicking “Stumble” he will be able to jump from one website to another, so for example if one of his interests is gardening he will come across gardening websites, then he can rate it and like that Stumbleupon will understand what the user likes and dislikes to refine choice of websites to be stumbled.
Web surfers in the United Arab Emirates got the bad news two days ago that Etisalat the largest Telecom Company in UAE have blocked access to StumbleUpon and users were getting errors when clicking on their StumbleUpon Toolbar. People were angry, mad, and all kind of bad feelings you can think of, all sort of people from your regular web surfer to the Web Developer, all did not like the news and tried to contact Etisalat and ask why is this happening, but you always would get your regular answers. Some Web Developers and Bloggers actually use StumbleUpon as a way to promote their websites.
But today morning, and like every morning (I know am addicted 
) I clicked on “Stumble” button of the StumbleUpon Toolbar and was shocked that it worked, I tried again and again and it worked, then just to confirm it I went to www.stumbleupon.com just to check if the homepage would load fine and it did. So I hope this comes as good news to all stumblers in UAE .
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July 8th, 2008
I have been hearing about it for a while now, but never saw it or thought it is that bad, well for two weeks in a row now the Dubai International City, especially the England side of it, got flooded by sewage. Car parks and roads are all filled and covered with stinking sewage. Only a meter separates the sewage from the entrances of some of the residential buildings in the England area. So the people are driving through the pools of “Sewage”. Of course there are tankers pumping out the water, but they sort of create even more hassle.
What really amazes me is why this was not taken care of while building the city? This is a newly built city, what?! they FORGOT about this thing. I know every time it rains here Dubai gets pools and pools of water in the roads and car parks. But we sort of understand that this is happening in OLD DUBAI, although still not acceptable and should be solved, but this is NEW DUBAI !!!!! I know it is different, but why this was not correctly planned for from the start?!
Dubai International City has around sixty thousand residents, so you can imagine what kind of health hazards this is. And the only news they are getting is that it will end soon.
A Nakheel spokesperson said: “A specialist team is currently working on measures to resolve a situation related to the sewage system at International City and we expect operations to normalise by the end of the week.
In addition, design and supply waste water treatment company Metito was appointed in May to double the existing capacity of the sewage treatment plant located within the development and these works are also expected to be complete by the end of the week.”
[Via Gulf News]
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July 3rd, 2008
So yesterday we got the news that Britain have issued terrorism attacks warnings for their citizens in UAE. And I know many who just did not take this seriously, saying that USA still did not issue any warning of that sort. As if the USA is any better reliable source. Anyway, so now Washington replies by issuing the same warning of a possibility that there might be a terrorist attack in UAE. Australia is the third country to do the same.
At first and like many people I thought that this is just an attempt by both countries (UK and USA) to affect the economy and tourism in UAE. But after reading what Brown and Bush said yesterday and then how Iran have withdrew 75 Billion Dollars from Europe, all what I can hear is the drums of war.
For full info on the U.S. threat warning read Reuters Article.
Lets just hope that this passes safely and lets also pray that we see no more violence this summer in the Middle East.
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June 17th, 2008
I just knew few hours ago that the British Embassy in the United Arab Emirates raised the terror alert level from (General) to (High), I heard that some Britons and people from other nationalities are panicking and it looks like most of them are taking this seriously, as we all should, and trying to avoid going to public places. This was posted on the embassy’s Foreign and Commonwealth Office website (www.fco.gov.uk) this Saturday:
“There is a high threat from terrorism. We believe terrorists may be planning to carry out attacks in the UAE, Attacks could be indiscriminate and could happen at any time, including in places frequented by expatriates and foreign travellers such as residential compounds, military, oil, transport and aviation interests,”
The website also states that over a million British visitors travelled to the UAE in 2006, and more than 100,000 British nationals are resident there.
None of the other western countries such as USA have issued any warning of this sort yet.
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June 16th, 2008
Hi. I debated the issue of creating a blog between me and myself for a long time now. I kept saying to myself one thing, whats new that i can offer in this vast blogosphere?
I realized later that I can only answer this question by going through the experience. So here I start.
Ok. Here how it goes. I surf the net for at least 16 hours daily. I read tech news, sports news, read all sorts of blogs, follow politics all around the world, watch allot of TV, watch allot of movies and play games.
Oh and i want to press on one thing, i watch alllllot of football. Not American football, football who some people might call it soccer.
I am a fan of Arsenal, Real Madrid, Inter Milan and Alahly(Egypt).
So as you can see I watch allllllot of football.
Alright then, the only remaining thing that you should know about me now is
that my name is Ibrahim Hussein, and that i am Jordanian from Palestinian roots and that i live in dubai - United Arab Emirates.
Looking forward to fill this blog with allot of useful and good quality posts.
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October 19th, 2007
Tremors were felt at around 3:00pm Dubai local time, at first I thought it was only me but I confirmed it with family and friends. It lasted few seconds, but sure felt as minutes. The source is a 6.1 magnitude earthquake in Bandar Abbas in Iran. In Dubai tremors were felt most heavely in tall towers.
