Mohamed Salah: Local Search, Yellow Pages and Web Technologies

It does not take a marketing expert to know that the advertising campaign by Telecom Egypt is pretty much “weired”. They are offering prizes if you pay your bill on time! Is it some kind of fast cash grab or aiming to  increasing loyalty of the customers? I don’t think it is the second one, i would only be loyal to a Telco company if they include me in a point collection program, which they don’t have.

Surprisingly enough, it seems that the campaign worked,  the reason i know this is that their online bill inquiry service could not handle all the incoming requests. It has been down for almost 1 week.

Telecom Egypt bill inquiry service down

Now if you try to hit their website, you get this error message:

Telecom Egypt bill inquiry service still down

I wanted to withdraw some cash and i was in a real hurry so i used Bank Masr ATM under my home. I entered the card and my pin code and then booooooooooooooom!

The machine started printing without stopping empty papers with a smiley face!!!! a smiley face from the ATM! Can you believe it? could it be a software bug or a Virus software that tests the printer was running in the wrong time??

It’s more likely to be a virus, i suggest now one to use bank masr ATMs…

Update:

OMG, this turns out to be something that happened before in Singapore… A global virus

Update:

Sources in Bank Misr bank say that this incident is not a virus, it is a software that tests the printer of the ATM. Probably i was at the wrong place at the wrong time when they were testing the machine printer.