6/10/2020

Nutrition Station, Niddrie, Melbourne (permanently closed)

Fresh good quality food. The staff is helpful and customize meals without fuss. Friendly atmosphere. I had a veggie burger with sweet potato chips and it was quite lovely. However, the placed lacked ambience or character. Despite the place being semi-empty, the service was unacceptably slow and the staff had limited English. The meal was also a bit tasteless and poorly seasoned. Overall, not worth my money. 
 


 

2/23/2020

Amazon Mechanical Turk (Paid tasks Platform)

 
Nothing good about this program unless you live in countries where 1 or 3 American cents, or 1 dollar, if you are lucky, are a considerable amount of money in you local currency.

Amazon has opened a platform and made possible slavery salaries to be paid for tasks. Right, some of them are easy, but some of them take a lot of time, and paying 1 cent, or 3 or 5 in a developed country for something that requires more than five minutes is ILLEGAL. This would not be legal in the EU ever.

They have basically made possible for people who you want to work for them for almost nothing, to do so, so they pay you a misery, take your time, and can take up to 30 days to pay you. If you are lucky. Amazon just provide the house, so to speak, but get out of it and doesn't want to be that much either.

You won't be able to make considerable money unless you sleep on your computer and keep doing gazillion cent tests/tasks/surveys.

They ask you for your tax details and personal details even though they don't provide you with a contract or with any sort of decent anything.

How is that legal?

I love Amazon, the shop, but this 'work' rather slavery platform shouldn't exist.

2/22/2020

Userlytics (Online Platform, Paid Tests)



This is a review of my experience as tester.

Userlytics is a legit company offering UX tests to testers from around the world. In fact, this is the only site that got me a test on the same day I registered. 

 POSITIVE
Unlike most usability tests companies, they don't require an entry test. It is great for testers. If they perform well, no test was needed; if they don't perform well, they'll get low ratings and won't get many paid jobs. 

They don't ask for too many personal details when you join. That is, they don't profile you as hardly as other companies do. 

You can cancel your account any time on your own if you aren't happy with the opportunities they offer. 

They have a nice simple app recorder for Android. You don't even have to login, because, when you get an invitation, there is a unique code with your details that you can use instead; this makes the login into specific tests way faster.Their desktop recorder is easy to use, very intuitive, and also works by code.  

They do send you tests and pay you for them.

Customer support is existent and relatively fast. 

NOT SO GOOD
The fact that they don't make you do an entry test tells me that their panel of testers is way inferior to any other company's panel.

For the test to be considered payable, one has to produce a proper recording. That's totally fair. However, as they provide the recording programs, and they aren't very good, any malfunctioning due to their incompetence, will result in you spending your time in producing an unusable test that won't be paid.  
  
Both their Android and Desktop recorders are sub-par, full of bugs and a clear indication of the company's caliber. If an UX company does not have a reliable system to record their tests, why would anyone want to pay for their services? My experience is that their Android app is not reliable, so you might end wasting your time for no income, and in my case also conflicted with my phone, and that's never good. The desktop recorder is bulky and interferes with testing. In my case, it started uploading my video without me touching anything and while I still was recording the test. Fortunately, I found a way to stop it. Then, the file, about 15 minutes long, took a good amount of time to get uploaded.


Customer support is really idiotic and unnerving. They are unable to provide specific instructions to fix any issue you might have with the app. "Check your settings for accessibility" is not a reply to the question, "What exactly do you want me to check for this specific problem?" You know, testers have the basics under control, that's why they are testers. It is innate. You would not bother CS for basic stuff on your phone.

You cannot update your PayPal email yourself, you have to contact CS. However, since they are quite incompetent, you will find problems to do something as simple as that. In addition, sharing personal info via email is a no-no for security reasons.  I had to exchange a considerable amount of emails for them to do that would not do it because I was writing from another email, the one I wanted to link to my new Paypal. I was so unnerved that I decided to erase my account without being able to change anything. They could not find me in the system, even though I provided them with a valid email account.  

IN SHORT
The company line is "The most advanced user testing platform". Having been a tester for them, and having experienced many other UX testing companies and platforms, the tagline is just bragging not something that reflects what I have experienced. I do tests for many online companies and this is perhaps the less advanced, the buggiest. 

They are a legit company, so I don't think you have anything to fear, if you get a test and do it, and their recorder works, you will be paid. However, there are greener pastures out there. Just saying. 
 
REPLY FROM THE COMPANY ON 9/1/24
Thank you for sharing your comprehensive feedback about your experience as a tester with Userlytics. We appreciate your positive remarks regarding the ease of entry, app recorder functionality, and prompt customer support. However, we understand your concerns and frustrations with the number of available tests, the quality of recording programs, and the challenges with customer support.

Your insights are crucial for our continuous improvement, and we're actively addressing the issues you've highlighted. We apologize for any inconvenience caused and value your continued support as we work to enhance our platform.

Best regards,
Userlytics

2/11/2020

2/07/2020

Respondent (Online Platform, Paid Tests)


 
 
This review is as tester for this site.

There are a few paid tests, studies or surveys available on this site, at least for some parts of the world.

Truth be told, the projects they have pay more than well, but they are directed to super specialised business and professional people in leading positions in their companies, those who are already earning a fortune, so why would they want to waste their time doing a paid test or survey?

Unless you work on very specialized fields, you won't be able to take any test even if you have a high level of education.

I was there for several months and never got a project I could take. 

The surveys to participate in upcoming projects never actualized in anything concrete, even though they were asking for every-day sort of things for which you don't require any preparation, education or nothing.

If you want to earn some money this is not your site unless you are already a well-paid individual in top leading jobs in certain companies, specially tech.
 
I didn't like the fact that they somewhat force you to put a photo of you, even though don't provide you with anything.  

Besides the member area as buggy, which says a lot about a company, as every time I would log in, I would get the message that I had already had three screeners on a day and I could not take more. In fact, I had taken none that day or most days. So that's a bug, right there. 


It has been a waste of time for me, and I don't recommend the site at all. I guess they collect your personal data and that's their biz, playing with it, or using it, or whatever. 

 Avoid.

12/28/2019

Kmart Australia (Online Store)


I've I've bought a lot of items from Kmart throughout the years, both from my nearest store and online, and I'm very pleased with the variety of products on offer, the pricing and the service provided. They are perfect for people with low means, like young couples, students, retirees and anyone wanting to buy some trendy stuff without blowing off their budget. 
 
The variety of product is enormous. They sell trendy design items and styles at much cheaper prices than other cheap retailers.

Some of the Kmart brand appliances are really cheap and good quality. Yes, they are basic, but if you don't want anything too fancy or too posh, or the latest model in the market, they are terrific.

They have a fantastic returns policy.

The staff in the shops tend to be very young but really lovely and expedient.

You can buy online and have it delivered at home. If necessary, they gather the items from different stores to fulfill your order. Delivery takes little time to reach metropolitan areas.

Their online reviews are legit. You cannot review a product if you haven't bought it online and receive a link from Kmart to review it.

DOWNSIDES
> Hit and miss quality. Sometimes you get really good quality products at bargain prices, but others you don't. Some products start to fall to pieces rapidly, or the assembly instructions are messed up, or the screws are all mixed up, or the quality isn't good despite how pretty the item looks in the photo. So, there is no consistency in the quality of their products, and you can't see that until you start using them.

> Poor sales. Their Black Friday and Boxing Day offers and sales are sub par when compared with all other cheap retailers.

> Online deliveries are charged. Shopping online is easy, but, unlike many other retailers (Target Australia included) they do charge for the delivery, regardless of how much you spend in one transaction.

> Online reviews. They are diminutive in length. They discard legit reviews that are detailed, which is what I personally would like to read. That was the case with mine, which never saw the light. Mind you, a reviewer saying," I love it", it is not a review, that's an enthusiastic statement. A very different thing is a reviewer saying, "It looks great, but this product has this and this issue" and commenting on it in one long paragraph."  It might be just the design of the reviews area, which is diminutive itself. I don't know, but most of them aren't helpful. 

12/27/2019

The French Salon (Oslo, Norway)

The French Salon 
Norway National Gallery
Universitetsgata 13, Oslo
Phone:    (+47) 21 98 22 70
Email   
Website
Timetable:
    Mon - Closed
    Tue-Fri:    11am-5pm.
    Thu:   11am-6pm.
    Sat-Sun: 11.30am-4pm.

Located beside the National Gallery's gift shop and inside the building of the National Gallery of Norway, the French Salon is a lovely café that surprises for its intimate elegant ambience and its simple but tasty menu.

The premises are very French neoclassic decorated in green marble and white marble busts inserted in walled niches. The tables are simply but elegantly set and the place is very cozy and comfortable. 

Sometimes you are hungry and want to eat wherever the closest place is. This was the case for me when visiting The French Salon. We wanted to continue our visit of the gallery and needed a break, so going outside was a bit pointless and a waste of time. Art Galleries cafés are rarely cheap, so I checked the menu and pricing in advance, and to my surprise it was average price in the city, nothing really overpriced or expensive.  

Their menu was small, but the dishes on offer were yummy, Norwegian inspired, generous in size and nicely plated.  They also have a small selection of cakes and slices displayed in the cabinet, which looked fabulous but we didn't try. 

Their coffee was also good, and they have cortado on offer, something I always appreciate when I am overseas. 

Although I loved this café, there was some issues with the service that would need to be fixed. The main one was that the café was understaffed. The staff were extremely friendly, welcoming and apologetic with some customers who complained about a mishap. Despite the speed and diligence of the waitresses, they couldn't cope with the constant flow of customers, even though they wasn't any group visiting or too many visitors. Two waitresses had to clean the tables, get the orders, usher the people in, serve food, and get the payments. The result was chaos in the service and stressed waitresses.  You cannot enter and sit at will but have to wait to be ushered in and seated, and I had to wait over 5 minutes at the door waiting for that to happen. The cafe needed at least another waiter at the time I visited and perhaps two or three more at rush hour.


Having said this, I really love this place. It has something special that is difficult to explain. The patina of history, perhaps. Pity the chaos in the service. The rest was lovely and I would love to go back.