We use your sign-up to provide content in ways you’ve consented to and to improve our understanding of you. This may include adverts from us and 3rd parties based on our understanding. You can unsubscribe at any time. More info The bunch Annie Ellis sent was smaller and the blooms less perky looking than she had hoped when buying, a […]

Vape chain Shosha has opened yet another retail store – taking its store footprint to 100 and making the business among the country’s largest retail businesses. The Auckland-based retailer which sells vape, sheesha and smoking accessories is popping up in the most unlikely of suburbs, setting up shop in shopfronts once left empty as a result of the Covid-19 pandemic […]

With the Covid-19 pandemic closing our borders for two years, there has been no shortage of opinions about the pros and cons of international tourism. Hotel Council Aotearoa strategic director James Doolan describes how tourists subsidise date night. You looked fabulous. You were witty, attentive and amusing. But the resounding success of your last date night was not all down […]

The battle over access to crude oil has been front-page news recently. Sanctions against Russia have cut its exports. This, in turn, has made the price of oil rocket above $100, which is near a record set just over a decade ago. The COVID-19 pandemic in China has dropped global demand recently, This has helped oil prices fall. Additionally, the […]

The township will have a central park, gymnasium, open spaces and so on and each set of residential towers is to have its  own playground, play school, and other amenities. Raghavendra Kamath reports. After years of living with his family in a poky 110 sq. ft. ‘house’, textile worker Sambhaji Surve dreams of moving into a home four times the […]

OPINION: Towards the end of my career I found I wasn’t enjoying it anymore. It had become a bit of a drudge. Instead of being an exciting rollercoaster of triumphs and (more frequently) disasters, advertising had turned into a stream of tedious, unsolvable tasks that I felt like hiding under the desk to avoid. Of course, the only thing that […]

Jay Binder, whose more than four decades as a prominent Broadway casting director included finding just the right talent for such productions as The Lion King, Beauty and the Beast and Jerome Robbins’ Broadway, among many others, died peacefully today at his home. He was 71. His death was announced by a press spokesperson. A founder and driving force behind […]

OPINION: Q: I recently received a refund on my Bonus Bonds. I bought $100 of bonds in 1985 and never won any prizes. My refund was $110, and I just wondered what my $100 would have been worth if it had been in a savings account for the 36 years. A: An online savings calculator shows that if $100 turns […]

“The customer is always right” is a motto dating back more than a century, popularized in one variation or another by successful American and European retailers. But not only is this aphorism often wrong — customers are not always right — but companies have not always valued the relationship between customer service and customer satisfaction or have had tools to […]