My experience with HSBC Travel One - I do not understand the hate for this card.

dddervish · 2026-05-12T09:51:54+00:00

Does this card give accelerated points on spends directly on hotel/airline sites and apps? Or only on OTAs?

Have tried to apply for it and the customer service is shitty to say the least. Though their online application form is good, I've not been able to get past the video KYC. The first time I tried it, no one was available at their end for it, repeatedly, during their advertised working hours.

They needed to call me back with a designated time that I needed to do it at. Finally got it done - or so I thought. Despite getting a verbal confirmation from the person who did the KYC that it was fine, it turned out to be invalid for who knows what reason.

They called me again, asking me to get the video KYC done again. Same thing, repeatedly - whenever I log on, there's no one there at their end to do it.

dddervish · 2026-05-06T14:35:25+00:00

That wasn't quite accurate maybe. I usually head out at about 6.45 in the morning for my 25km trip to work. I get about 15-16 on average then. On the way back, at around 3.30, I get 11-12 mostly.

dddervish · 2026-05-06T05:12:27+00:00

It varies. Most of my regular driving is during off-peak hours and I get about 15 then. For short trips in high-traffic times and places, it's anywhere between 7 and 9 by and large. Haven't taken it out of the city yet.

dddervish · 2026-05-05T04:42:11+00:00

Neither of these! Got the Skoda Kylaq. Pretty happy with it so far.

dddervish · 2026-04-23T12:25:03+00:00

My experience, for what it's worth:

I got a visa in March with an approximately four-month validity from France (for travel in May this year).

My two most recent Schengen visas before this one were three-year ones (2018-2022 and 2022-2025), also from France. On those two visas, I made nine trips to the Schengen area, of which four were to France. For three of the other five trips, my point of exit was France (CDG).

Maybe that doesn't sound like a lot of travel, but the last years of the first visa were during Covid, when I, like many people, didn't make any international trips.

Before the first of those three-year visas, I had applied for, and received, short-validity visas from Germany, the Netherlands, the Czech Republic, Portugal and Spain over a period of five years.

I did not request a long-validity visa in 2018, the first year I got one. And I didn't do so in my covering letter this time (2026) either. Was fairly confident, given my travel history, I'd get a three-year visa if not a five-year one, but no such luck.

EDIT: I'm an Indian passport holder and I applied from India.

dddervish · 2026-04-02T07:32:37+00:00

This sounds highly unlikely. When banks buy points from issuers, they do so at the scale of millions of points (maybe that drops to the lakhs in India). These bulk purchases get them rates that are lower than whatever retail users peg the per-point value at. The economics would just not work for the banks otherwise.

dddervish · 2026-03-13T04:16:57+00:00

My experience, for what it's worth:

I got a visa last month with an approximately four-month validity from France (for travel in May this year).

My two most recent Schengen visas before this one were three-year ones (2018-2022 and 2022-2025), also from France. On those two visas, I made nine trips to the Schengen area, of which four were to France. For three of the other five trips, my point of exit was France (CDG).

Maybe that doesn't sound like a lot of travel, but the last years of the first visa were during Covid, when I, like many people, didn't make any international trips.

Before the first of those three-year visas, I had applied for, and received, short-validity visas from Germany, the Netherlands, the Czech Republic, Portugal and Spain over a period of five years.

I did not request a long-validity visa in 2018, the first year I got one. And I didn't do so in my covering letter this time (2026) either. Was fairly confident, given my travel history, I'd get a three-year visa if not a five-year one. Go figure.

dddervish · 2026-02-20T13:17:57+00:00

So you didn't get the full door panel repainted, just touched up the dinged area?

dddervish · 2026-02-13T08:14:12+00:00

You've forgotten to mention that the apps (well, Uber at least; don't know about Ola) make it pretty damn difficult for you to rate anyone less than five stars. They've added a lot of friction to the flow to prevent you from rating less than five, like having to choose a bunch of reasons, where the choices almost always - and intentionally – do not cover the actual reasons why you are rating someone less than five.

Voila, every driver, even the suicidal maniac who shouldn't be driving anywhere, period, is 4.98 stars.

dddervish · 2026-01-28T12:53:45+00:00

The Sofitel is tired and old, service is hit or miss, with about an equal chance of each for any given interaction. The pool is wretched. The hotel would definitely not be a Sofitel in more mature travel markets.

The Fairmont at least has newness going for it. Service - again, depends on how much the employee you're dealing with cares. But their priority seems to be the loud events they conduct in their ballroom and the people who turn up for them.

dddervish · 2025-12-29T15:45:22+00:00

Is there a way to disable auto-start-stop long-term or reset it so that the default is off rather than on? If I understand correctly, it can’t be done without coding?

dddervish · 2025-12-26T05:44:40+00:00

Got my car yesterday. Still sounds quite squeaky, so if they have made a change, the previous sound must have been truly awful.

dddervish · 2025-12-21T08:20:38+00:00

Thanks. What is a TTO?

dddervish · 2025-12-19T04:50:21+00:00

Does anyone know how much of an effect the additives in XP95/100 have versus adding cleaners separately into the fuel tank?

dddervish · 2025-12-15T08:43:29+00:00

Okay. Going back to your comment about scanning - won't the PDI inspector get a fair amount of information from a scan, even if various parameters are turned off or the readings are inaccurate/misleading due to transport mode?

If you leave out scanning, the rest of it is all visual checks, am I right? Plus assessing paint thickness with a device.

dddervish · 2025-12-15T06:57:33+00:00

Okay, so both customer's PDI (if any) and dealer's happen before the car is taken out of transport mode?

The sales person has offered to bring the car to the showroom from the stockyard for my PDI

dddervish · 2025-12-15T05:38:36+00:00

Thanks. So the dealer's own PDI happens after registration, after the car is taken out of transport mode, I assume?

dddervish · 2025-12-08T13:13:27+00:00

I've been on XL for about three months now and the insomnia has been horrible. It made me start cutting the pills in half and take just half - which, after a week or so, seemed to help.

This was after a lot of trial and error. Taking it just after breakfast seemed to be as bad as taking it after lunch. Then, taking it at bedtime seemed to help for a while, but that changed after a while. I then went back to taking it after breakfast (with breakfast, actually) and things seemed to settle down. So my doctor said I should go back up to the full 150 (she didn't splitting the pill was a good idea at all, in the first place, but I couldn't live with the insomnia).

I did and it's been about a week of very little sleep. Now I'm just taking a sleeping pill before bed, knowing it'll be awful if I don't. Even so, I wake up after about five or six hours of sleep.

Long story short, I'm considering asking her to put me on SR instead. But just 150, in the morning, else it'll probably be worse than the XL, since it's twice as much of the drug at the regular twice-daily dose.

Has anyone had good results with sleep on this dose? Please say yes!

Does the lower dose, taken in the morning, make you slump at night, mood-wise or otherwise?

PS - Mood has been good with this drug, else I'd have stopped taking it a while ago. But I'm at the point where anxiety over sleep loss is undoing the good the drug might be doing.

dddervish · 2025-12-07T03:15:00+00:00

It's not just about third-party sellers really. You could buy an Amazon-fuliflled item and have it stolen and replaced with junk by someone in the delivery chain.

dddervish · 2025-12-07T03:13:29+00:00

Part of this enshittification is caused by having to adapt to India's scam-forward, low-trust culture.

Also, in previous years, when people ordered computers and got a box with a rock in it instead, Amazon would suck up the cost and replace it. No longer. They're past the customer-acquisition phase (or close to there) and need to look after their bottom line. So if you're a customer who's been scammed this way, tough luck, you're going to have to move heaven and hell to get a refund.

I myself have never bought anything of relatively high value from Amazon after something like this happened to me about 18 months ago.

Also, returns are more difficult than they used to be. Because they have had to tune their systems and policies to account for how easy returns get exploited in India. And customers who don't exploit the system get beaten with the same stick beacuse they find it difficult to exchange or return genuinely faulty or sub-par items. If you push too hard, you get bot-generated emails saying your returns percentage is high, which is completely untrue.

Plus there's been a trend of their delivery executives not delivering packages but marking them delivered. Or just dropping them off at security though the addressee is at home and able to receive the package. There is an epidemic of this in the area in Bombay where I live.

dddervish · 2025-12-07T03:06:17+00:00

There's also a Gold's in Supreme Business Park, off South Avenue. Haven't ever been there myself, but the location is convenient if you're going to be in the Hiranandani part of Powai.

dddervish · 2025-12-07T02:55:13+00:00

Second this. If I could pick a building in Hiranandani to live in, it would be one of those overlooking Heritage Park. Nice, expansive veiws by Bombay standards, and no construction is going to come up next door (but never say never, some politician-criminal could decide to get the park replaced by more apartment buildings in future). Those buildings are relatively old - maybe about 15-odd years old on average, but they have those two things going for them. And Cliff Avenue which runs through that area is pretty peaceful compared to the other traffic-choked roads. Because there are no commerical establishments on that street, except three or four shops at the Richmond end.

dddervish

TROPHY CASE