Archive for the ‘News’ Category

Hurricane IKE’s impact on Houston & Galveston

September 16th, 2008 Vijaianand
Hurricane IKE showed it’s wild act by devastating Texas coast – Galveston and Houston on Saturday – Sept 13th, 2008. After a week long speculation of whereh and when IKE will be headed, it finally made the landfall on Texas coastal line with the eye just brushing Houston on Saturday inking his footprints in the history of Space city. It will be talked for years to come as one of the hurricane which devastated the city like Hurricane Alisha and Carla.

Houston, the fourth biggest city was totally devastated and halted from it regular busy schedule for the few days because of IKE’s horrifying act. It was big storm labeled as Category 2 Hurricane with 110 mph wind speed when it hits Galveston and inland it was like 60-80 mph hitting us pretty hard. I never heard a wind gust like that ever in my life. It was that bad and fast. I can see out of my window, the trees were torched and many couldn’t withstand breaking into pieces. As of Sept 16th, the death toll was 40 and expected to increase as the rescue teams move into more destructed areas of the Galveston coast.
Due to well planned Preparedness by the city officials both in Houston and Galveston compared to the never came Hurricane RITA few years ago, loss of life was reduced. Traffic Jam wasn’t bad for people who tried to evacuate the day before the storm. It was very well managed except some hicupps in getting the help for the aftermath.
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Price Profiling – An Unknown Business Strategy

July 11th, 2008 Vijaianand

Few years back(2003), when I was living in an apartment complex owned by a property manager&companies(PMC). I was forced to renew the apartment lease every 6 months which was new to me moving from Boston. I came to know thats common in Houston area giving away a free ride to PMC to jack up the rent more frequently.




Many will agree obviously that is bad as tenants and shares my frustration. Most likely the rent will be increased 10% which PMC will be keen on instead of trying to retain the tenants. At the sametime they offered really good deals for the new tenants especially with free half month rents and cheaper rents to trap them.


When I enquired with the PMC folks asking them “what happened to old customer courtesy?”. We are your tenants already and don’t you like to give a good deal for us instead of jacking the rent compare to new guys. They would say, “NO, it won’t work like that way”. Once you are tenant, you don’t get any promotions and you are prone to increase in rent every renewal. They just don’t want bend.



There were lot of apartments near by so many tenants just took the pain of moving to different apartments every time they jack up the rent hoping to save some money in the long run. But some just stick with the same apartment not willing to take the pain of moving. This trend continous till today as I know from my friends who live in apartments. PMC people just don’t care about you these days, they just want to make money somehow.
 
At that time, I really didn’t understand it. Usually if you are customer with any business for sometime, they tend to show you some customer courtesy and appreciate being their customer for long by offering discounts to let you stay with them. I wasn’t really thrilled that time and so just moved on bought a home to avoid all this trouble.



I see same type of business strategy used in many businesses like Airlines, hotels, Events Tickets and other industries more in past years. I was wondering all about it and I am sure many of you might also thought about “why some of us has to be dirt cheap price and others end up paying Himalaya price”. I just thought its just the way of business until recently. I found the real answer for my unasked question in SmartMoney magazine. There was an article digging deep about this strategy. I just got to know the real essence of this tactics and wanted to share to you guys.


This common business strategy which is unknown to ordinary consumers is called “Price Optimization“. There is no more long time customer courtesy anymore, its all about how much many money a consumer should pay taking into account the current market condition, geographical location, local demand and lot more parameters with complicated calculation done by the computer software.


I know its getting interesting now. I have lot more information to share on this topic like “What other industries are starting to do ?, “How as consumer can try to escape or be on the otherside of the fence to take advantage of it” and much more with my realistic research in my next part. So stay tuned.



Have a good weekend folks…

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