Last week, U.S no-frills air carrier Jet Blue received a lot of bad press from irate customers and the media following lengthy delays at airports around the U.S and poor service in general. Instead of pulling an SAA, Jet Blue immediately responded by posting an apology on YouTube and announcing a ‘Customers Bill of Rights’ to prevent the same thing from happening again.

Below is the email I received from then since I am on their members list for some reason:

Dear JetBlue Customers,

We are sorry and embarrassed. But most of all, we are deeply sorry.

Last week was the worst operational week in JetBlue’s seven year history. Following the severe winter ice storm in the Northeast, we subjected our customers to unacceptable delays, flight cancellations, lost baggage, and other major inconveniences. The storm disrupted the movement of aircraft, and, more importantly, disrupted the movement of JetBlue’s pilot and inflight crewmembers who were depending on those planes to get them to the airports where they were scheduled to serve you. With the busy President’s Day weekend upon us, rebooking opportunities were scarce and hold times at 1-800-JETBLUE were unacceptably long or not even available, further hindering our recovery efforts.

Words cannot express how truly sorry we are for the anxiety, frustration and inconvenience that we caused. This is especially saddening because JetBlue was founded on the promise of bringing humanity back to air travel and making the experience of flying happier and easier for everyone who chooses to fly with us. We know we failed to deliver on this promise last week.

We are committed to you, our valued customers, and are taking immediate corrective steps to regain your confidence in us. We have begun putting a comprehensive plan in place to provide better and more timely information to you, more tools and resources for our crewmembers and improved procedures for handling operational difficulties in the future. We are confident, as a result of these actions, that JetBlue will emerge as a more reliable and even more customer responsive airline than ever before.

Most importantly, we have published the JetBlue Airways Customer Bill of Rights—our official commitment to you of how we will handle operational interruptions going forward—including details of compensation. I have a video message to share with you about this industry leading action.

You deserved better—a lot better—from us last week. Nothing is more important than regaining your trust and all of us here hope you will give us the opportunity to welcome you onboard again soon and provide you the positive JetBlue Experience you have come to expect from us.

Sincerely,

David Neeleman
Founder and CEO
JetBlue Airways

While this was obviously done as damage control on their side, it’s a damn good start to regaining lost customers and convincing others that this was a once-off slip-up. We all know that customers’ voices and public perception are way too important in the Internet Age and it’s about time that more companies start realising this, especially in South Africa!!!

This may sound like a rant, but I don’t care. In some of the best news I’ve heard of late, cellular provider MTN have announced amazing new deals on their HSDPA data bundles starting off with a very affordable, entry-level prepaid option. But what really appeals to me, and I’m sure to countless others, is their new main offering whereby you receive a free Fastlink USB modem and 2GB of data transfer for ZAR 479 for the full 24 months.

That works out to around 23 cents per megabyte or ZAR 240 / GB which, surprise surprise, is cheaper than a comparable fixed-line ADSL package with the state monopoly Telkom. The benefits include national mobile coverage, a simpler, reliable service, fast connectivity, no waiting lists and a better than average bandwidth cap. There’s also the ideological and principled argument against a smug and unapologetic behemoth, but I’ll leave that one alone for the moment.

The greater question at present is what does this mean for the growth of Internet usage in South Africa and competition in the marketplace? Well, I wouldn’t go as far as to say that this news is the answer to all our prayers and will result in Internet users’ doubling over night — at least not directly. The truth is that there are other factors besides the high cost and barriers to entry in getting Internet access in this country, namely, access to suitable ICTs and techno-literacy. While the new MTN offerings might be groundbreaking and good news to many South Africans, the sad reality is that they’re still too expensive and a low priority to the vast majority of our population. But let us not forget though, that these new prices will also apply to existing voice contracts, which should result in a higher uptake of GPRS and 3G usage via mobile phones, by far the most ubiquitous Internet-enabled devices in this country.

Another likely positive spin-off of the MTN announcement is the price war that is sure to be looming between Telkom and the remaining two cellular providers (one of which Telkom has significant stakes in) as they are forced to sharpen their blades and drop prices to meet or beat the MTN bundles. This is obviously a good thing for South African consumers as well as the country leading up to 2010. Respected researcher, Arthur Goldstuck, has predicted that broadband data subscribers will roughly double by 2008 to 533 000 (up from 277 000 in 2006) and this news seems to confirm this calculation and possibly give impetus to crush it.

From an online industry perspective, I think we are all likely to see benefits in true cause and effect style and it’s a real window of opportunity for those companies with limited or non-existent online strategies to update them pronto.

I for one will be standing in line to sign-up for a new 2GB contract and am proud of the fact that I can go to sleep at peace with the knowledge that I can retain my un-relationship with Telkom and get my popcorn ready as they dig their own grave in the Internet space race.

UPDATE: As predicted, Vodacom have bounced back by announcing drastic price-cuts on their mobile boradband packages, whilst Telkom are still dragging their feet…

This is no joke. I wish it was because it seems that Windows is not the only unsecured product that $MS dumps on the market. While was having a couple of drinks with friends on Friday, some random person/bot/thing signed onto my MSN account and proceeded to piss off most of my contact list.

Thanks to Mike Saltzwag for sending through this bizarre chat history:

Colin Daniels says:
Hello
mike says:
brb
mike says:
wasup
mike says:
sorry
mike says:
was just on the phone
Colin Daniels says:
Sorry, i just come, what is born?
mike says:
what?
mike says:
speaka da english, please
Colin Daniels says:
Sorry, i dont speak very well
mike says:
why not?
mike says:
are you not colin?
mike says:
hello?
mike says:
??
Colin Daniels says:
I want to known
mike says:
what?
mike says:
?
mike says:
?
Colin Daniels says:
I'm africano and you?
mike says:
hmmm
mike says:
are u pulling a sneaky
Colin Daniels says:
No, why
mike says:
why u talking shit
Colin Daniels says:
Thats true, i'm of mozambique, you know?
Colin Daniels says:
Wassup?
Colin Daniels says:
I have sent you a voice message! To hear it click on the link below:
http://media.am-im.net/m/?id=Kx7iQIcqq1
Sent from a mobile phone with AgileMessenger
mike says:
listen, who are you?
mike says:
why are you using this msn account?
Colin Daniels says:
I'm P.R. Dogg and you?
mike says:
i'm the pope
mike says:
what is your email address?
mike says:
hmm, hi?
mike says:
?
mike says:
u there?