Few online scams are as insidious as the dating scam. Preying on the vulnerabilities of people looking for companionship, scammers work their way into the victim’s life only to rip them off at the first opportunity.

Most online dating scams begin with an imaginative profile on a dating site, coupled with a photo of an attractive person. Neither the profile nor the photo are real. Age, gender, ethnicity…virtually every piece of information can be tailored to the victim’s desires. More >

Here at Marcus Evans we take complaints extremely seriously and have highly defined procedures for dealing with them effectively and expeditiously. We always appreciate constructive criticism from whatever source and use it to consider any related improvements we might make to our modus operandi.

Our conference division has even run a range of events for third parties focusing on best practice and effective strategies for dealing with complaints.

Customer complaints are an incredibly valuable asset when well managed. In today’s businesses even the most dissatisfied customer can become an ambassador. Therefore customer complaints management can be considered as an excellent chance to deliver on customer experience, build loyalty, advocacy and customer retention by handling complaints efficiently and in a satisfactory manner.

Successful customer complaints management guarantees not only the sought-after return on investment but a golden opportunity for business growth; a constant fountain of market ideas and customer feedback to adapt and develop innovative marketing strategies, products and services to the taste of your target market.

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marcus evans energy – Cost cutting contributed to BP spill

The White House has said that cost-cutting measures made by BP and its partners contributed to the Gulf of Mexico oil spill last April.

President Obama had ordered the investigation following the disaster, which resulted in the deaths of 11 people and ravaged the coast.

The commission set up to carry out the probe released its final report yesterday has said that the oil giant BP and some of its partners did not have sufficient measures in place to ensure safety on the Macondo well.

“Whether purposeful or not, many of the decisions that BP, Halliburton, and Transocean made that increased the risk of the Macondo blowout clearly saved those companies significant time (and money),” according to the report.

A full review by the commission will be released next week. The panel has also been asked to guide future offshore drilling.

The group does not have any power to punish or establish policy but it is thought its findings could have influence over future legal suits.

The findings released yesterday contradict the commission’s initial report in November, when it said that there was no evidence that cost-cutting measures contributed to the explosion and subsequent oil spill.

marcus evans Energy presents cutting edge industry events, created by experienced professionals and with information presented by industry experts.

marcus evans Energy delivers the highest quality conferences tailored to meet the demands of the evolving oil and gas, and utilities industries.

marcus evans is the leading provider of conferences across a diverse range of industry segments.

marcus evans Energy – Ghana expected to draw oil for the first time

Ghana is poised to begin pumping oil for the first time, kicking off a lucrative new industry expected to bring a billion US dollars annually to a part of the world where most people still get by on less than two dollars a day.

But critics warn the west African country, one of the most stable and democratic on the continent, has yet to pass crucial legislation to avoid what is known in Africa as the “resource curse”. In places like Congo and Nigeria, oil or mineral wealth has fuelled conflict instead of boosting desperately needed development.

Iseq-listed explorer Tullow Oil plc is leading a consortium that will start producing 55,000 barrels per day from rigs off Ghana’s Atlantic Ocean coast in the Jubilee Field, which was discovered three years ago and holds an estimated 1.8 billion barrels of oil.

As new wells are built over the next six months, daily output is expected to increase to around 120,000 barrels – about 10 per cent of the amount pumped by nearby Nigeria, one of the continent’s leading producers.

Those figures are likely to rise. In September, Tullow confirmed the existence of a second large offshore oil field called Owo that holds as much as 550 million barrels under the waters of the Gulf of Guinea.

marcus evans Energy presents cutting edge industry events, created by experienced professionals and with information presented by industry experts.

marcus evans Energy delivers the highest quality conferences tailored to meet the demands of the evolving oil and gas, and utilities industries.

marcus evans is the leading provider of conferences across a diverse range of industry segments.

marcus evans energy – Growth in renewable energy sources

Overall energy use declined by 9 per cent in 2009

The use of wind generated electricity in the Republic of Ireland grew by 28 per cent on average, each year between 2005 and 2009, according to a new report from the Sustainable Energy Authority of Ireland.

According to the report ‘Energy in Ireland’ overall renewable energy, which includes biomass such as wood chip boilers and biofuels for transport, grew by 15 per cent overall each year during the period.

The increase in the use of renewable energy sources, in addition to the decline in economic activity also resulted in a fall of energy-related CO2 emissions of more than 10 per cent in 2009.

Significantly the report also found the new vehicle registration tax and road tax systems had resulted in a dramatic increase in consumers choosing more fuel efficient vehicles in the A and B label bands.

The report found some 80 per cent of new cars bought in the first 11 months of 2010 were A and B label vehicles up from 25 per cent prior to the new tax band introduction.

The research also shows that overall energy use declined by 9 per cent in 2009, with sectors such as industry at 13 per cent, services at 12 per cent and transport at 10 per cent witnessing the greatest fall.

Commenting on the report, SEAI chief executive, Professor Owen Lewis said: “’Energy in Ireland’ 1990-2009 reflects important trends in our approach to, and management of, energy demand and supply in Ireland.  

“We are seeing some positive results shine through as renewable energy continues to grow and energy efficiency continues to improve across all sections of society. As energy becomes more central to enterprise and our economy, it is increasingly important for us to keep a close eye on the emerging trends.”

marcus evans energy presents oil and gas industry events, created by experienced professionals and with information presented by industry experts.

Irish-owned oil company Maxol says it is phasing out the sale of the ethanol-based E85 motor fuel.

The company says it has made the decision because the duty derogation on the fuel runs out at the end of this year. Maxol will start phasing out the marketing of this fuel from January 1, 2011.

The company said that, as a result of the Government incentive’s coming to an end, E85 will become significantly more expensive at the pump than normal unleaded petrol. It added that the ‘already extremely modest’ demand would inevitably disappear.

Maxol started offering E85 in 2005. It says it will continue to market E5 unleaded petrol, which is five per cent ethanol.

In a statement, Tom Noonan, chief executive of Maxol Group said that while bio fuels continue to be heavily marketed in the motor fuel business in places as the US, Sweden and Brazil, it appears that a similar policy is no longer fashionable in Ireland.

marcus evans Energy presents oil and gas industry events, created by experienced professionals and with information presented by industry experts.

Remaining nimble in today’s business environment is one of the key challenges facing every individual organisation and industry.

According to Gary Avin of Florida-based utilities company LCEC, recognising the economic hardship facing its customers was a major step forward in steering the company through the current downturn. Avin will be a speaker at the marcus evans Utility Customer Experience, January 13-14, Boston

Located in an area that has the second highest foreclosure market in the US, yet was the fastest growing city in the country only a few years back, unprecedented challenges have presented themselves. Within a space of around four years, as the crisis gathered momentum, customers have found themselves in a dramatically changed landscape that many are struggling to adapt to.

The importance of reacting to this new reality is underpinned by meaningful engagement with customers to enable both sides to work together, Avin says.

He believes that among the key considerations for a company to remain nimble in today’s business climate is acknowledging and assisting customers that are experiencing economic hardship due to the economy.

“In the utility industry it is very important to listen to what our customers are saying. Our customers are struggling in paying their current bills and a lot of the shift now is to better prepare our customers to lower future bills. Right now energy conservation programmes, trying to find what appliances in the home are affecting their bills, are the greatest way of educating our customers to lower those bills.

“I believe you have to listen to what customers are saying, their hardships, and give them agencies in the community that can help them pay those bills, because the last thing that we want to do is have our customers be without power. Even though we are not in a regulated industry here in Florida, it’s very important to treat our customers as if they have a choice and they can go elsewhere. Once we have that mentality we provide better customer service to our customers. In the long run you have  a more satisfied customer who understands that we are here to help them lower future bills and offer assist agencies in the community if available.”

A progressive step is educating customers about how to manage their bills, Avin explains.

“We have a campaign here to educate all our customers who are calling about a high bill concern or a bill that they were not able to pay. We focus greatly on trying to reduce future bills by those energy conservation, daily usage views. Customers are also looking for free energy advisors and home visits at times. Customers today are now more involved in web transactions, daily usage text messaging, where a threshold for daily usage is set. The ability to provide quick, instant information is how our customer base is really changing.”

The marcus evans Utility Customer Experience, will take place on January 13-14, in Boston.

Global energy and petrochemicals company Shell has announced that it will implement a new enterprise-based model for tackling global development challenges.

The report entitled Enterprise Solutions to Scale was released by the Shell Foundation and charts its ten-year journey towards cost-effective, sustainable solutions whose impact can grow to a global level over time.

Shell Foundation has set out to share the lessons learned from their successes and failures over the past decade to deliver scale of impact through applying enterprise-based approaches.  The intention is that the foundation’s transparency, as well as the lessons learned, is of broad interest to their peers who equally seek to achieve scale and sustainability.

The approach, which focuses upon establishing pioneers with new ways of working that target scale of impact and financial viability from the outset, has evolved continuously since the Foundation’s creation in 2000.

Enterprise Solutions to Scale documents ten years of highs and lows in applying business thinking, models and disciplines to a host of development challenges. To illustrate the impact of working in this way Shell Foundation recounts the co-creation of four strategic partners, tackling markedly different development issues (sustainable transport, growing small enterprises in Africa, reducing indoor air pollution and promoting ethical trade), that have each successfully achieved scale.

Drawing from common features underpinning these partnerships, and also from what didn’t work along the way, the report offers a new model to deliver cost-effective, sustainable solutions that can have a global reach over time.

The key findings of the report include:  

• The need to catalyse disruptive change: achieving scale by co-creating new entities, using new business models
• The importance of building sectoral partners: large-scale change is hard, requiring “more than money”, time, patience and considerable investment
• Moving from subsidy to earned income: targeting financial viability means less reliance on aid. Growth benefits more people and innovation means enterprises can provide customers with more affordable goods and services.

marcus evans Energy presents oil and gas energy events, created by experienced professionals and with information presented by industry experts. 

The key findings of the report include:

·    The need to catalyse disruptive change: achieving scale by co-creating new entities, using new business models

·    The importance of building sectoral partners: large-scale change is hard, requiring “more than money”, time, patience and considerable investment

·    Moving from subsidy to earned income: targeting financial viability means less reliance on aid. Growth benefits more people and innovation means enterprises can provide customers with more affordable goods and services.

marcus evans Energy presents oil and gas energy events, created by experienced professionals and with information presented by industry experts.

If managed properly and in an environmentally responsible way, oil and gas production can provide substantial benefits to countries. Oil and gas production also raise profound developmental issues. Extraction contracts must benefit host governments and support future exploration and production, and tax revenue from these projects must be carefully accounted for and be maximized for the benefit of the country.

A marcus evans Oil & Gas event entitled International Conference Building a Winning Distribution Strategy in Oil & Gas Sector in Russia and CIS will take place in Moscow on 23-24 September.

The issue of international cooperation has always been of the highest importance for the oil and gas sector because the external trade of Russia and several CIS countries is based on export of energy products.  This marcus evans Oil & Gas conference will explore how Russia and CIS are moving to develop transportation infrastructure by means of long-distance pipelines, marine and railway transport.  However, the majority of oil and gas fields are located far from the final consumer. Therefore, the major pipeline and marine transportation is becoming the primary priority and irreplaceable alternative.  

From the ecological point of view, safe and economic pipeline transportation is taking the leading position in the oil and gas sector, thus the question of construction and effectiveness of pipeline exploitation is one of hottest topics for the oil and gas industry.

Therefore there is an increasing number of national and international pipeline construction projects created in order to widen the pipeline system and networks within CIS and abroad. The energy strategy in Russia and CIS focuses on the issues of the international cooperation that becomes the crucial factor of economic stabilisation in oil and gas sector and simultaneously ensuring the energy and economic safety of the countries. 

This timely marcus evans Oil & Gas conference is an excellent opportunity for the executives of the leading oil and gas companies in Russia, CIS and Europe to gather in order to discuss the hottest issues, share experience and ideas in order to identify the new perspective business development directions in the real market conditions and choose the top-priority development strategy.