Category: Complaints

I am 100% sure this can’t be legal or healthy. I live in Salmiya in the old souk on Salem Mubarek Street. Right behind my building there is an empty sand lot which is used as a parking by people coming to shop in the street. The sand lot is also used as garbage dump. It has around 7 regular sized garbage cans… and one big hole in the ground.

A hole in the ground! For some reason it seems the local baladiya or whoever is responsible for garbage collection can’t afford new garbage bins or something and have decided instead to dig a big hole in the ground and fill it up with garbage. Every morning a bulldozer comes and digs up the garbage.

Why can’t they place a large garbage bin or two or three more regular sized ones instead of digging a hole?

First of all the lot is heavily surrounded by residential buildings. Second of all there is a mosque just 20 meters away from the hole. Finally people use the lot as a parking lot. Salmiya is over crowded and lacks ample parking and people are forced to park in the sandy lot filled with garbage. At night the lot is pitch black since there isn’t any kind of lighting and people end up parking right next to all the garbage bins and holes. That can’t be healthy.

Hopefully by me posting about this maybe something can be done about this. It’s just too disgusting, I mean it’s a frickin hole in the ground that’s being filled with garbage!

I was recommended by a couple of readers to try out the burger at the English Tea Lounge at Avenues phase II. It’s an ostrich burger and supposedly very good so I passed by today for lunch around 3pm to try it out. The place was empty with not a single person there so we had our pick of where to sit. We got the menu and I quickly flipped to the page with the burger on it. My sister was going to have a salad but Nat just wanted to drink tea.

Then Nat noticed the fine print at the bottom of every page which said that the minimum order per person had to be KD6. I told her that’s probably when its packed but not when it’s empty. I called the waitress over and asked her if this KD6 minimum charge was enforced? She said yes. I was like wait, so if me and my sister want to order lunch but Nat just tea we can’t do that? She said no it’s minimum KD6 per person. WTF? The place was empty with no one there!? It’s a TEA lounge! I told her fine and got up and left.

What a very disappointing experience. Didn’t even know restaurants with minimum charges still existed in Kuwait yet alone having it enforced in an empty place.

One of the employees at my agency lives in an area close to Jleeb. Everyday for the past few days they’ve been getting automated power cuts. They have 2 hours of electricity and then 2 hours without, 2 hours with, 2 hours without non stop. Thursday they didn’t have electricity from 11 in the morning till 5 in the evening even. He called up the ministry and they told him there isn’t anything they can do about it and that the cuts are automated by the computer.

I think that is absolutely terrible. No electricity in this weather is just horrible. I’ve heard there are power cuts happening all over Kuwait although not to this extent. How bad is it for everyone?

I think now would be the perfect time to start a campaign to legalize car tints.

Picture by Zaid

I felt like breaking my no carbs in the evening diet and decided to pass by with Nat to Johnny Rockets near Sultan Center for dinner. For some reason I felt like sitting at the bar and now I am not sure if that was a good thing or a bad thing.

I was watching the cook prepare a bunch of burgers and noticed he put a piece of lettuce that had something dark on it. Since he didn’t react so I figured it was maybe just part of the lettuce texture or something and I ignored it. A few minutes pass and the cook starts placing the beef patties on the buns. He turns away and goes back to the grill and that’s when I notice something moving on the bottom bun of one of the burgers. At first I thought it was just my imagination and maybe it was a piece of the patty that fell off or something but then the cook came back with the top buns and put them on the burgers in front of him and that black thing I saw was now crawling on the top bun! It was a fucking worm! I am sitting there in shock cuz there was a fucking worm crawling on the bun! Then the cook starts wrapping the burger to place on a plate. I tell the waitress who was standing behind the bar that there was a fucking worm on the burger. She’s like what? I am like there is a worm on the burger and I point towards the burger. She looks and spots it and gives out a little shriek. The cook asks her whats wrong and she tells him about the worm. He quickly takes the burger and throws it away. I was like no thanks I’m leaving. I put 500 fils on the bar which was the cost of the bottle of water I had ordered and got up to leave. Two guys were sitting on the bar near by asked me what happened, I told him there was a worm on one of their burgers and I walked out.

This is extremely depressing. I spent the next hour wondering why I decided to break my diet tonight and why I decided to sit at the bar. Why did I have to see this? Why couldn’t I have eaten healthy tonight? Now I am never going back to Johnny Rockets again. In fact I am never going to have any kind of salad or vegetable anywhere outside my house. From now on I am going to order all my burgers without vegetables and I am not going to have any salad with my meals (maybe just at Le Notre since I pick my own salad at the bar). This is depressing! Where will I go from now on for a quick burger???

Posted by Z District

I got this in an email from a friend, and I’m shocked that any company can refuse an employee medical treatment for 2nd or 3rd degree burns such as this.

I saw this guy in “Oula” gas station in Kuwait City on march 8. I saw the Indian running over to fill my tank as I stepped outside, I saw the poor Indian’s hand and told him to back off; I will do the filling u just relax. I asked him a few questions about how and what happened to his hand.

This Indian employee accidentally burned his hand with hot cooking oil while cooking himself food at 1 am on the 3rd of March. He only had one day off which is the same day of the incident. Apparently the only reason he had a day off is to go to the doctor for checkup because his hand is very sore and it looked like a huge bubble growing within his hand. I spoke to the Kuwaiti man in charge and he said that he told the company that this man requires medical treatment but they haven’t allowed him to rest during this recovery period. He was there during the whole week working, and his hand was all puffed up and swollen and the puss burst from sores on his hand. He wasn’t able to move his hand at all but they refused him to take days off to recover. When he was trying to fill my gas tank his hand was shaking and he looks like he is in pain, and he is exposed to dangerous chemicals and his hand is in this state. He is on contract from Tanzifco to Oula gas station now I’m not sure who isn’t allowing him to take time off but this is a complete violation of human rights

I don’t know what exactly is the company policy but this is unacceptable in any human form. This man has 2nd to 3rd degree burns which may require major treatment or even skin grafting at the worst of it. Please keep in mind the pictures below are of graphic nature and not to everyone’s taste. I can’t believe any company would allow an employee in this state to continue working especially since his job is labor intensive.

UPDATE I: Click on GOOGLE MAPS for the location of the Gas Station. Its just by 1st ring road and Fahaheel Express Way (30), tucked on the right hand side just after crossing over 1st ring road while on Fahaheel Express Way (30) heading towards the city.

UPDATE II: Through a friend we were able to get to the Chairman/CEO of Tanzifco. He didn’t know of the issue and it will be investigated internally. They found the employee working at the Oula gas station that was mentioned above. They have now taken him from there and to have his hand checked, and he has been given two weeks off. Thank you all for your effort to help this man. A few friends and myself will be passing by today and every few days to fill up gas and to check and see if he is working or not. If anyone has an update on him when he gets back please do make sure to email me or comment please.

UPDATE III: Oula have responded [Link]

So I’ve been pushing DHL EasyShop a lot recently as a replacement to Aramex’s Shop&Ship but now it looks like I am going to start pushing Aramex again.

I received an email earlier today from a reader telling me about how DHL has new calculations for the weight. So I called them up and spent 20 minutes trying to understand how to calculate my shipping weight and honestly I still don’t know exactly how it works. The DHL employee told me its simple mathematics, I told him the last thing I want to do with my life is start plugging in formulas and make calculations to try and figure out how much my shipping cost will be. Here is what I understood:

If you get a package that weighs 2KG but it comes in a big box that gives you a volumetric weight of 8KG then you do the following:

8 – 2 = 6
6 > 5 = charged based on volumetric weight

So the formula looks something like

v: volumetric weight
w: actual weight

v – w = x
if x > 5 then you will be charged based on volumetric wieght
if x < 5 then you will be charged on actual weight Lets try it again. I have a shipment that is 6KG but the volumetric weight is 10kG the answer is? 10 - 6 = 4 4 < 5 so I pay based on actual weight The biggest problem is you can't figure out what the volumetric weight (v) of your package is until it arrives to your DHL mailbox which means you can't estimate the shipping cost. Seriously who at DHL came up with this smart idea? They had a chance here to gain customers that were pissed off with Aramex and now with this new change I think other customers like me will move back to Aramex. Update: I just passed by the Kuwait City DHL branch to pick up my package. What can I say, its hard not to like them. They’ve increased the amount of staff at that branch to 2 which is a good move since 1 guy wasn’t enough and I paid the regular shipping fee for my package which was based on actual weight since it was 2.5KG. I guess I will keep using DHL for everything under 5KG. I will use Aramex for items that are over 5KG but under 13KG and I will use MyUS for items 13KG and up. Life is complicated like that.

The menu cover above is the one Nat designed for the b+f Roadside Diner in Oman a year ago. The picture below is of the new menu cover for Chocolate & Macaroon. From all the restaurants in the world couldn’t they copy the menu cover from one that wasn’t Kuwaiti?

and here is a close up

b+f Roadsider Diner belongs to the same owners as Burger Boutique and Slider Station. It’s located in Muscat, Oman and here is a link to their Facebook page. [Link]

This whole week I was extremely sick from food poisoning. It all started on Friday, I had lunch at one of my favorite places (won’t say which for now) and then that evening I started getting the chills and after that it just got really bad. It was a horrible experience and I can’t recall ever getting that sick from food. I sadly won’t be ever going back there again. It’s not like I have a ton of places I visit on a regular basis so it’s disappointing I now have one less.

The picture above is of one of my favorite places in Lebanon called Canadian Burger. I eat there very frequently, last time I was in Lebanon I actually ate there daily and not once did I ever get food poisoned in the 20 years or so I’ve been going there. It’s a tiny store located in one of the slums where sweaty guys with no gloves work over the food all day and where their special burger costs only 300fils. So how do I get food poisoned at an international franchise that’s open in the best mall in Kuwait?

The beautiful Slider Station garden was destroyed by the baladiya. Another victim of the green is bad campaign…

Thanks B!

I love Kuwait with all its flaws except for one, the tree cutting for no reason habit. I can never understand why beautiful green trees get cut down in Kuwait. I am also not the only one who hates this because their is a group on Facebook called “Keep Kuwait Green! Stop the Izala from cutting our trees!” which is fighting to stop this. Here is information about the group:

After the government came and removed our 35 year old Rubber trees without any warning, it made me realize that there are many other houses being effected.

People started calling about the same thing happening to them, and told me stories of horrible murder like incidents of the trees they once planted.

The mission of this group is to report and post pictures of all wrong doing by our government and the removal of trees. Please post the address of the places that you see them removing trees that were not used as a personal garden. If possible post your pictures also.

We will be posting and sending the pictures to all newspapers and blogs and anyone willing to listen to us. Some of the trees in Kuwait are a part of our history.

They have been here long before we have.
Let’s unite and try to keep Kuwait greener!

I would like to add one more thing which is the trimming of the trees and bushes. The Gulf Road area near Burj Hamam was looking pretty green and natural for awhile now and then suddenly yesterday they started trimming all the trees and bushes into cubes. Can someone tell whoever is responsible for that to stop. Trees that look like cubes might look pretty at Disney Land but not on the Gulf Road and they definitely don’t give any shade or protection.

So if you think the government should stop cutting trees down then please join the facebook group and voice your support. Here is the [Link]

One of my favorite skyscrapers in Kuwait just got slapped on with a tacky blue signage right on the top. Wasn’t there a nicer way to do it? I’ve noticed a lot of buildings use this blue cheap looking plastic for the building names but it really ruins the look, there must be a better or more tasteful material that can be used.

Note: Sorry about the blurry photo

I don’t understand why they would demolish it. Couldn’t they leave it standing there all alone? It’s very sad. [YouTube]

via Q8GEEKS

Qualitynet are having problems again! I can’t even talk to support because their lines are so loaded. The automated answering system won’t even put me on hold because there are no waiting slots available, they’re all taken by other customers waiting. Sucks!

Update: Qualitynet were just over. According to the support guy my DSL modem was very old and was causing me the problems. They’ve swapped my black wireless Speedtouch modem with a white wireless Netgear. Hopefully I won’t have anymore problems after this!

There is one thing I find very frustrating with Aramex Shop & Ship and that’s their formula for which package ships out first and which package stays behind until their next flight. It doesn’t look they have a formula but more like it’s completely random. I could have 5 packages in my mailbox and they would ship one, the third package that arrived, something random like that. So I sent them the following email today:

Dear Aramex,
I have 4 packages that arrived in my mailbox in the following order

1) Private Mail 08/29/2009
2) Amazon 4255 Anson Blvd 08/31/2009
3) HONGKONG SERVICES PO 09/01/2009
4) Mail & Magazines 09/02/2009

They all weigh less than 0.5lb which qualifies them for the daily flight from New York to Kuwait.

This is the order that the packages were shipped:

1) Private Mail 09/02/2009 (early morning Kuwait time)
4) Mail & Magazines 09/02/2009 (evening Kuwait time)
2) Amazon 4255 Anson Blvd 09/02/2009 (late evening Kuwait time)
3) HONGKONG SERVICES PO 09/02/2009 (late evening Kuwait time)

All four packages were shipped on the same day but on three different flights!
Package (1) got shipped in your regular slow shipping
Package (4) the least important because its a magazine got shipped with overnight shipping and I am expecting it this morning
Packages (2) and (3) got shipped regular slow shipping

What I would like know is what is your formula for deciding which shipment goes out and when? Why weren’t ALL my packages placed on the same flight as my magazines since they all weigh less than 0.50lb which I was told was the requirement to be on that flight and they would have ALL arrive today? Why wasn’t package #2 shipped before my magazines since it arrived before?

This complete random and unorganized (at least to us consumers it looks like that) is very frustrating. For example shipment #3 has an item which I could have used while traveling later tonight so its very frustrating for me to see a magazine arrive before something I really wanted to get here first.

thanks
mark

Now while looking through my previous Aramex posts I found one dating back to January 2008 when Aramex said it was going to introduce online payments. What happened to that?