Archives for 2009

Lanzarote Aeronautical Museum

November 24, 2009 By 6 Comments

The aeronautical museum on Lanzarote is located in the old terminal building at the airport. The museum seems to suffer a lack of visitors, as its homepage states that one of its aims is to increase awareness of its existence amongst the local population.

I had passed it on previous occasions, but being en route to the new airport to catch a flight to Madrid I did not have time to visit it. Instead, I always made a note of going there on my next visit.

Das Luftfahrtmuseum am Flughafen von Arrecife, links ist der original Passagierausgang zum Rollfeld
The aeronautical musum at Arrecife airport, the original passenger exit is on the left

This time I actually managed it, and although I was not disappointed, I did begin to understand the problem that the museum has, because there was almost no-one else there!

The building is located further inland than the current terminals, near the main road. It has its own car park, but for some reason the entry to the visitors’ car park is confusingly preceded by a sign declaring that “authorised vehicles only” may pass.

Although Lanzarote did have an airport in the 1930s and was even flown over by airships on their way to the USA, this closed during the Spanish Civil War and it was not until 1946 that a civilian airport was opened again. The passenger terminal was very modest, consisting of a few rooms and a small control tower on the front. The aircraft would roll up to just in front of the building, at which point the passengers would come out through a side door and walk over to them.

So sieht es im original Tower aus
Inside the original control tower

However until the 1970s the only flights were to the other Canary Islands – there was not even an air connection to Madrid – so this was probably more than sufficient. In 1970 the current Terminal 2 was opened, and flights to the Spanish mainland started.

The museum contains interesting photos and artifacts of those years, and as such is worth a visit. You can even go into the old tower and see the radio equipment that used to be operated by a single person. Entry to the museum is free and the staff speak Spanish, English, German and French, although most of the descriptions of the photos are only in Spanish. Tours can be arranged in advance, but are not a requirement. Opening times are Monday to Saturday, 10am to 2pm.

Filed Under: Arrecife, Lanzarote, Museums Tagged With: , ,

Zahlungsmoral: Some customers just don’t like paying

November 23, 2009 By 8 Comments

The Germans have a word for it, they call it „Zahlungsmoral“. Literally translated it means „payment morals” but a better way of saying it would be “payment culture”. People use it when they are talking about how willing people are to pay off a debt.

It is something that many German businesses have to deal with. The larger ones, of course, have employees to chase after the bad debts, but for smaller businesses and especially self-employed people like myself, it can be an additional workload that would be unnecessary if people just paid their bills as they should.

If I am doing work a client at their home, then I will usually require them to pay cash when I am finished. I tell them this in writing in advance, to avoid the “I haven’t got that amount of money” type of expressions once I’m finished. I still get that once in a while, but thankfully no longer that often.

But it does not always work like that. Businesses that I visit on a regular basis will want a bill sent to them before they pay me, so I make sure that they sign off the work that I do on each visit. Sometimes I work from home, on a website for example, so then even that is not possible.

This means trusting the client that they will pay, and they usually do. But sometimes they need a little reminder.

The “little reminder” is called a “Zahlungserinnerung” and is a sort of friendly reminder that they owe me for the work I did for them. After that you get into “Mahnstufen” – that is when you start setting deadlines by which payment has to be made. After three of these, the final step is to register the debt with the local court. If all goes well and the customer does not contest the debt, then you can pass the court documents on to a bailiff to go to collect your money.

By this time you have court costs, bailiffs’ costs, and costs for recorded delivery mail – all of which the bailiff can collect for you at the same time. But all the same, have still spent a lot of time going through this process. Time that you could have probably better spent on other projects.

Luckily, I have only had to go through the entire process once. All other debtors have paid up sometime before it got to the final stage. And after a while you get to know how your customers are. Some pay immediately, others pay on the last day before the reminder goes out, and a certain number only pay up when they receive the reminder. A handful wait for the final demand.

This is the “Zahlungsmoral”. It is often quoted by self-employed people in Germany as once of the main reasons for giving up their business, or even going abroad to find work.

Because at the end of the day, you have to eat.  Your customers may be able to put off paying you for a couple of weeks, but that just doesn’t work at the supermarket…

Filed Under: Business Tagged With: , , , , ,

Cold calling

November 21, 2009 By 1 Comment

In the past few weeks I’ve noticed an increase in the amount of cold calls that we have been receiving. It strikes me a strange, as since a change to the law in Germany a few months ago the call centres now risk a fine if they do not transmit their telephone number when they call you.

This seems to have held them back somewhat for a while, but now there is no stopping them.

Recently we have been getting calls on a daily basis. Sometimes these were so-called “ping” calls, where a computer dials a lot of numbers at once and connects the first ones that answer, dropping the other lines when all the call centre agents have been assigned. Other have called us “on behalf of” a publisher – several times.

It is, of course, now a lot easier to track who is calling more than once because you can match the numbers up. I was able to therefore confront the lady telling me that I had won a weeks holiday at the Edersee with the fact that her colleague had called less than an hour beforehand to offer me something to do with mobile phones.

Furthermore, having told her that I would report her company to the telecommunications regulator if they called me again, I was able to remind her next colleague of this a few days later when she called to ask if I would like to test some new products. I also reminded her that I would be reporting her employer.

Reporting a company to the regulator is fairly straightforward. You download a form from their website and fill out as much information as you can before sending it off. I did this last week and was surprised to receive a letter back within a few days, confirming that the case would be looked into.

German companies are having a hard time finding new customers at the moment, and with consumer laws being so tight here it is not easy for them to use direct marketing methods. All the same, to cold call someone once is unfortunate, to do it three times is asking for trouble…

Filed Under: Business Tagged With: , , , ,

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