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I think the title was changed correctly, I tried to follow HN's guideline of having the same headline as the source, but this is more accurate.
That's the point, the policy is to retain the original title, no matter how nonsensical. And here the original title was perfectly correct and concise.
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Maybe I am. What's the difference and how does it apply to what I'm saying?
Because when you are laying people off and giving them a severance, you are taking more care of them than you would be if you were firing them. That's the entire basis of this comment thread.
There's only laying off with a severance and firing for cause, where firing for cause is by design > hard to do. And it's definitely not something that can be done to masses of people at once without all the government authorities coming to pay the offending company a visit ASAP.
> That's the entire basis of this comment thread.
Not if you figure out the entire context of this event.
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Unless you had to drive over broken car windshields to get there, unless you were greeted at the barbed wire festooned gate by a man in a string vest with a hole in it from where he perpetually picked his bellybutton, unless the room had a bucket of decomposing semen and condom soup in the corner, unless you got up in the morning to find two pimps taking turns to beat a girl on the hood of your car, I promise you you…
I'd say some parts of your story cannot be attributed to the hotel room or even to the hotel as a whole, but rather to the place that hotel's been located, but let me ask the much more important question: what's that hotel's score on booking.com? To me, that sounds like a 3.6!
Man, another Kazakh hotel story - stayed at a “premium” hotel in Shymkent, which they advertised as having a pool, which sounded just amazing having spent the previous night in said amusing hotel. Got our room, my god, it’s great, let’s put the AC on and crash for an hour before hitting the pool. Wake up 20 minutes later, REALLY hot. Decide to see if the heat exchanger for the AC is obstructed, as it’s blowing lukewarm rather than cold air.
I open the curtains. It’s dark. Which is weird because it’s 3pm. I go to open the balcony door - and the handle is almost burning hot. As is the glass of the door and windows. And then I realise they’ve bricked up the balcony, because that’s of course where they’ve built the pool - and is where the heat exchanger lives, doing its damndest to pump even more heat into what had already become the inside of an oven.
So, we get a new room, after noting that the lobby is full of dozens of huge freestanding AC units and their heat exchangers, and having some trouble explaining the problem to the staff. New room is fine, and has a nice view of the … still under construction pool. 8.4 on booking.
We got so drunk that evening. Thoroughly recommend visiting Kazakhstan. Lovely people, and there’s never a dull moment.
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You have, by law, two weeks to return any item you bought online for any reason whatsoever, and you have 6 months essentially "no questions asked" return for defective items - on top of the actual warranty periods (that, again, are by law). As far as conventions go, I check some larger retailers from Europe, like Zalando, and they offer a 100 day return policy [1] by convention. Maybe Switzerland is the outlier here?…
Zalando is famously an exception in multiple countries I’ve been in, to the extent that some shop there because of their lenient return policies. I’m not sure how unique Switzerland is here. It seemed relatively similar in Germany, for instance.
In practice some stores do accept returns if you have a receipt, but personally I have never done that, didn't know it was even an option before an expat was asking about this online. The default is to sell forward in online second hand marketplaces. Especially gifts you receive, those are never returned (as apparently happens in the US said that expat).
In Germany this isn't a legal move. One of my former employees (global telco everyone knows) tried to do the same, namely moving the contracts of the employees to an other company. 200 of them started a class action and won easily. The company had to terminate their contracts (which means the employees are eligible for unemployment benefits, etc.) and had to pay a good severance. Something like (years of employment)…
Why is it illegal to fire people in Germany?
Disregarding how horrible it is to do that this way, ... The employee says he's french, so either he didn't have a french work contract, or what he is saying is untrue. While you can transfer an employee from one company to another, it must protect every employee advantage, his history, etc ... So he has the same severance as on his original contract, with the original timeline (his time of employment isn't reset to…
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This may be one of the reasons for the uproar. The CS employees far outnumber the rest of the company, and the in-house customer service was one of the moats B.com had against the competition. To have them suddenly transferred to a third party is shocking. It’s hard to imagine the same level of service can be provided by call centers tending to multiple brands/products at the same time.
I’ve worked there and I can confirm that the customer service was very impressive and able to deal with particularly gnarly problems, in so many languages and cultures. It was a very large part of the company. It was under-utilised to understand customers’ concerns. There was some effort to include them: dedicated product org, include impact on CS metrics in A/B test results, but it often felt like the ugly duckling.…
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Or just pick up the phone and call? found it to be a better option in some cases. Got better prices than booking.com too. The only problems we had with booking.com is that they give you no protection whatsoever. One case, the hotel clearly gamed the reviews and posted false info. It was so bad that we had to leave. But we were still charged the full amount, and booking.com just stood aside. Just recently, my wife boo…
For the cherry on top, the hotel would cancel your booking on their side - then you won't be able to leave reviews either.
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Or just pick up the phone and call? found it to be a better option in some cases. Got better prices than booking.com too. The only problems we had with booking.com is that they give you no protection whatsoever. One case, the hotel clearly gamed the reviews and posted false info. It was so bad that we had to leave. But we were still charged the full amount, and booking.com just stood aside. Just recently, my wife boo…
> OT: but are there any banks or credit card companies in Germany that actually help you when you're in this situation or need a chargeback? In my experience the Sparkasse is pretty decent, but since they're regional institutions YMMV. > it seems like the low card fees in EU means much worse customer service compared to the US, or is it just my wishful thinking? We just don't have much credit card usage since SEPA-EL…
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Because when you are laying people off and giving them a severance, you are taking more care of them than you would be if you were firing them. That's the entire basis of this comment thread.
Most of the employees in this announcement are in Europe, where there is no "firing" (i.e. at-will employment aka employer abuse). There's only laying off with a severance and firing for cause, where firing for cause is by design > hard to do. And it's definitely not something that can be done to masses of people at once without all the government authorities coming to pay the offending company a visit ASAP. > That's…