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AVIS car rental and billing currency

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There are two sides of AVIS:
1- the cars they rent are quite new and good value.
2- the billing process is a scam.

On my last two rentals outside Switzerland every single piece of contract says the price in the local currency of the country where you rent the car. This last time in Iceland it even explicitly mentions the total bill will be in Icelandic kronas even though I’ve decided (over internet) on a price on Swiss Francs. I said at the counter in Reykjavik again that I want to be billed in kronas. Today I check my credit card and it was billed in Swiss francs. With a bad exchange rate. AVIS got an email. The previous time, upon no understandable answer from their customer, I’ve complained with VISA which at the end reimbursed me for the price difference. I’m afraid this time will go the same way.

Language preference and cookies

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Webmasters: Please keep the language choice into a cookieOne can not like cookies, but they can in some situations be very useful. I have as preference in my browser the languages in the following order: English, Portuguese, French.

In Switzerland with several national languages most websites have by default the German language. First time I visit them I change to French or English. Second time I visit the same website I would expect that he remembers that I read the website in other language than German. Unfortunately this is not the case.

Webmasters should think about using cookies to keep the language preference of the user. I see none in Switzerland doing it.

Some sites have different web addresses depending the language they target – meteosuisse.ch, meteoschweiz.ch or cff.ch, sbb.ch, ffs.ch. This works well. But the remaining – coop.ch and sunrise.ch – always in German; swisscom.ch – defaults to browser language, english site for me; migros.ch, orange.ch – defaults to browser language, german site if brower asks english…

Dear webmasters: please use cookies instead of obliging the user to change language each time he visits your website!

 

Cave 12 est de retour

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Après 6 ans et demi, “ma” Cave12 est de retour. Dans des nouveaux locaux. Aussi une cave, avec une configuration assez semblable à l’ancienne. Comme était bon de revoir Fernando et Marion dans leur monde et écouter un concert de musique d’improvisation/expérimental.

Le bar (fini les bières SuperBock, maintenant c’est Baarer)

 

La scène, avant concert.

Pas de journaux

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Ce matin Le Temps n’était pas dans la boite aux lettres. Probablement problème à l’impression. J’arrive à la gare pour prendre le interregio en direction de Lausanne et une ambiance plus soignée que l’habitude. Oui, il n’a pas de 20minutes, le journal gratuit. Quel différence de ne pas avoir déjà à 7heures du matin la gare pleine de “vieux” journaux feuilletés en 5 minutes et laissés comme des mégots. Je crois à un gros problème d’impression.

Google Reader continues?

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Today, after receiving a message at the top of the Google Reader saying “An updated version of Google Reader is available. Refresh”, I saw that the “Reader” link is back to the top bar.

Soon after the announcement, months ago, that Google Reader was going to disappeared, Google had removed the link from the top bar… Hopefully they changed ideas!