Dear Stan, I have been a customer of MTC Vodafone, now known as Zain, for about three years. I love their service, especially their customer services. Agreed, there are some technical problems here and there occasionally, but more often then not, everything runs as smooth as silk. And, even though you may encounter those problems, the service and the willingness that Zain provides goes above and beyond in my opinion.
One such instance happened recently when Zain held its Business Village event at the Ritz-Carlton Bahrain Hotel & Spa. My colleague and I visited the function, did our rounds, collected some information and brochures and left.
As soon as we drove off the premises I realised that I did not have my two-month old Blackberry on me. As I sped around to head back, I recalled taking it out of my jacket pocket and placing it on the car so that I could hang my jacket in the backseat. After that I had driven off.
Now, I knew approximately where I dropped it and I could not have been gone for more than five minutes. However, that was more then enough time for some lucky soul to claim a great prize by just being in the right place at the right time.
In a panic and heartbreak I searched frantically. My life and future meetings all in the phone left me truly distraught. My colleague went back in to Zain and announced my loss to try to seek help.
Bader Taha Radhi, service manager for Zain, stayed with us through the whole ordeal. Now the loss was totally my fault but with that he still insisted on helping me search for the missing phone.
I was already embarrassed for being so stupid and was pretty furious with myself. But Mr Bader kept reassuring me that it would be found and kept looking even under the cars in the parking lot. I kept telling him that it's OK as I gave up, but he never did. He kept reminding me that I am a customer and that they take care of their own.
After I thanked him for his assistance, he gave me some advice about my phone to try to recover some data and how to block it from being used. I got in my car with my colleague and left. I decided to make one more desperate round and I managed to find parts of my phone, the cover, battery and my Zain chip tossed into the bushes near the hotel.
I let Mr Bader know the situation immediately. We both agreed that there was no way I was going to find my phone again.
It was a big loss for me and no matter what my colleague tried to do to cheer me up it just was not working. Less than half an hour later, Mr Bader called me back and gave me some wonderful news.
They had not found my phone but Zain offered to replace my Blackberry Curve with an even newer version, a model that was just recently released in the market.
All I had to do was turn up and give him a call. I thanked him profusely. He said: "Zain means a wonderful life. You are our customer and we have to make your life wonderful."
Once again, I would like to thank Mr Bader for all his help and all of Zain's assistance for replacing my phone.
It is not exactly an inexpensive piece of equipment so I truly appreciate them sparing me the expense of getting another one.
Even though we might bicker every now and then, I believe Zain does an amazing job. Thank you.
S P Camille,
Bahrain
Dear Stan,
This refers to the article on Climate Change (GulfWeekly - April 23-29 on Page 9).
The article was fairly dealt with on technical grounds. Climate change has become one of the burning issues of our time and a matter of grave concern.
It is no doubt that when the world is witnessing such dramatic changes in the climate pattern it can be attributed to human activity more than anything else.
The combined effect of the indiscriminate deforestation taking place together with air pollution due to industrial activity and automobile emissions has resulted in the changes the world is now crying about.
Apart from the various techniques of geo-engineering mentioned in the article some scientists I understand are also working on the idea of attempting to shift the orbit of the earth farther away from the sun to avoid global warming.
However, meddling with nature in such a way could turn out to be hazardous and a blunder.
Perhaps efforts should be made to make up the depleted precious green cover of our earth. We should concentrate the mind on saving the tropical rain forests.
Every country needs to co-operate in this regard or else one day it may be too late for us to do anything to make this world a better place to live in.
Seturam Aspari,
Adliya.