MaxUhu

Well, @ozimoron comment is partially correct, with a NAS you can connect to any router, however there are also ways to connect a USB external hard drive to the router, however that requires a router with a USB port (which not all have) and SMB sharing software on the router as well.

 

ASUS, DLink and linksys sell routers like this in Thailand which run usually between 1500 and 1800 baht for routers with 1 USB port and between 2600 and 4000 baht for routers with 2 USB ports, all depending on the wireless protocol and speed they support.

 

Send me a PM if you want some pointers to some of the right routers. 

 

But as said depends on the HDD you want to connect and what you want to do with it, what kind of router you need. 

1 hour ago, torturedsole said:

... or helping out the poor, MaxUhu.  Try it as might lift your soul.  

It's interesting how some people just have to put a negative spin on everything... Even if it has nothing to do with the actual post... 

 

But to answer your question... We are paying our staff full salaries, even our business is temporary closed and they are all at home, plus we take care of a few of the poor as well... So yeah I have enough things going to lift the non existing soul.. 

With all the locking in here in Pattaya and to be honest my laziness included,  over the last few weeks I have taken more and more up the possibilities of ordering food to my Condo, instead of actually cooking myself.

 

As my condo is 500 m outside the official boundaries of Pattaya (just wanted to be on the Ocean at a reasonable price), my options were for a long time restricted to Pizza Hut and The Pizza Company, but over the last year, step by step the general Food Delivery services popped up and included my areas as well, even for a very short time FoodPanda, but due to whatever reason, for the last 3 months I am officially again outside their delivery area.

 

So, I tried quite a few of the different options to me with more or less success and satisfaction, which sometimes may have been due to my own fault of ordering the wrong thing or just picking actually a bad restaurant, but I had positive experiences with all, as well as negative. 

 

So, with not much else to do right now, I decided to do an actual test on the three Food delivery services available to me and making it as fair as possible, but ordering the same items, from the same restaurant at the same time from all three delivery services...(Decided to invite the security guys of our Condo for lunch, as the poor guys are mostly forgotten here).

 

Here my personal experience from today, Sunday, April 19, 2020 ... (I write this, as this is just that, a personal experience and may be completely different for other people, but may still be helpful)

 

ORDER PRICES:

 

1 ordered 4 different THAI dishes from Blue Restaurant in Jomtien (a place which I ordered several times from before with actually good experiences in terms of the quality of food)

 

GRAB FOOD:    The prices on Grab Food were different than the one's on Hungry Now and LineMan, as the restaurant ran a promotion on many items, including the items I ordered, because of that, my Order total for the 4 items was nearly 100 baht lower than the order two services, which did not have this promotion.  Delivery Fee for the Order was 41 Baht, which was quite low for a distance of 11 km.

 

LineMan & Hungry Now:    The prices were exactly the same, apart from of course the already noted higher prices, due to the non-availability of the promotion on their apps.

Delivery Fee for LineMan was 81 Baht, so nearly double that of Grab Food, however the delivery fee for Hungry Now was 0, which was definitely the best deal here...

 

PAYMENT OPTIONS:

 

Grab Food is the only one, where I could actually pay by Credit Card as Hungry Now, does not offer this option (yet), and LineMan did not have Blue Restaurant as Partner Restaurant, so there was no LinePay available.

 

APPS:

 

In general, are the Apps quite easy to use, but LineMan still has the issue, that 95% of the Menus are in Thai only (not a problem for us, but for pure Farang households definitely a problem) and to a lesser extend also Grab Food still has a lot of restaurants with only Thai Menus. Here, Hungry Now offers pretty much all the menus in English, however they have currently as well also much much less options and restaurants in their system. In terms of dialogue messages, the Hungry Now people, need to look at the standard messages, as they are done I presume by Thais, who do not understand all the individual words 100%, so some messages are a bit strange, but that's not a big deal to be honest.

 

In terms of tracking your order, Grab Food actually does the best job here by a mile, maybe also due to the fact that their App is based on the Grab system itself and at all times you know exactly where is your driver with your food and it is actually real-time tracking. In comparison, both, Line Man and Hungry Now, need to work on their systems here quite a bit more, with huge jumps of the drivers from 31 minutes away one moment to 3 minutes away the next and than again 20 minutes away, etc... Was quite hard on these two apps to follow and expect the drivers to arrive.

 

I was able to put special instructions (like to bring change for 1,000 Baht) into Grab Food Order as well as Line Man, but Hungry Now does not have an option to add any instructions, except for the individual dish, so I had to put my instruction for that into the notes for one of the dishes, hoping they would read it!

 

ACTUAL DELIVERY:

 

As said, I placed all three orders at all three services at the same time, with all of them promising me to have it delivered within 31 and 35 minutes (which I knew of course already before would not happen, as they are always very optimistic about their delivery times.)

 

Grab Food:   The order arrived 39 minutes after placing the order and all items I ordered were correct, but quite heavily shaken up from the ride, one of the containers had leaked allover the other containers with curry, which made the whole thing quite a bit messy, but it was not soo bad that I had to send it back. The driver was extremely friendly and was able to follow the instructions and guidance from his app easily to find our Condo (sometimes not that easy) and was wearing a mask and cloves. The change for my money was prepared and correct and after giving the guys a small tip, he left happy and with a smile.

 

LineMAN:    The order arrive about 48 minutes after placing the order and all items I ordered were correct and properly packages. Interestingly enough, their order was differently packed than the order from Grab Food with the curry in a small sealed plastic bag, which avoided the whole issue of spillage. Also here the driver was very friendly and had only a small issue finding the place, which could be fixed with a short phone call to us. He was wearing a face mask, however no gloves. The change was not prepared already, but he had no problem giving me the correct change and he as well left happy after a small tip.

 

HungryNow:    This order took the longest to arrive, with over 1 hour and 7 minutes, which may be due to the fact that they have dedicated drivers which go from a central location (near Central Festival it looks), to the restaurant and than to the delivery location. They as well have different packaging with their own branded paper bags and somehow complete different packaging of the individual items (don't ask me why!). Everything was properly packaged, however 2 of the 4 items of our order were completely wrong, which I discovered only after the driver left, so I am not sure if it was an ordering mistake, or if they have an issue inside the menu of their app pointing to different menu items?? Really not sure, as the mistaken items were kind of similar, but still quite wrong (example, ordered Chicken Curry with Coconut Milk, but received Pork Pandan Curry, kind of similar, but at the same time quite wrong!) The change for my money was prepared, however wrong by 20 Baht.  Once i mentioned it to the delivery driver he wanted to give me the missing money from his own money, but I told him to to worry about it.

 

 

Personal Conclusion:

 

In my little test the delivery service which came out on top was Grab Food, even the items delivered were a bit mangled up and spilled, it made not enough of an impact to change the fact, that it was the lowest prices order, the fasted delivered order and all in all also still the hottest order to arrive.

 

LineMan is similarly good, but the high delivery fee and longer delivery time reduced their rating for us a bit more, even I hear they pay their drivers better and don't take as much commission from the restaurants, but that is something I just heard and am not sure if its true. 

 

The new kid on the block Hungry Now, seems to have to farthest way to go to become a regular option for us to order again, as not only it was the longest to deliver and the only one who actually screwed up the order, but also seemed to have issues with the cash management for the driver. The say all the time on Facebook that they are are still in BETA, which may explain some of the hiccups, but order and cash management is something quite essential to a delivery service! There is also no way to talk to a customer service or anybody in the App once the order is delivered, so, yeah, guys, you still need to improve your app and approach quite a bit... 

 

 

I said it right at the beginning already, but want to repeat it here again, this is nothing else than a subjective review of my little test I executed today, and this may or may not be completely different on a different day and with different people, but I hope it still helps at least some people locked into their homes here in Pattaya...