Fighting Ninja Turtles

When I wrote about buying my new phone I forgot to mention the other half of the saga that has now caught up with me. Not too much of a problem a simple phone call and everything was resolved. I think this story shows the character of people who work in the mobile phone industry.

I went into one All Phones store just browsing what they had. The manager came up to me and asked me if I was looking at going onto a plan. I’ve been on prepaid since forever and seeing I don’t spend that much on calls the prospect of going onto a cap seemed like a good idea.

After some discussion I decided to go on the plan and we began to organise the paperwork.

That’s where it got interesting.

The manager wanted me to give the 100 points for a credit check. Seeing I only had a drivers license on me he took a copy of that and I was going to head home to get some other paperwork. On the busride home I change my mind and decided not to go ahead. I rang up and spoke to the manger who seemed cut up about the fact that I was no longer interested. So much that he rang later in the day ‘reminding’ me to come in and finish the transaction.

I ignored it until yesterday when I recieved an optus bill for $249. $209 for a ‘handset payout fee’ and another for $30 monthly cap fee. At first I thought it was some sort of joke; I rang optus to enquire and it sort of playout like this:

O: Thankyou for calling optus
M: Yeah, hi I’m enquiring about a mobile phone bill
O: Sir, according to the phone number you have a prepaid account
M: But I recieved a bill for $249, this must be some sort of error
O: Sir, I apoligize sir, allow me to transfer you to the billing department

O: Hello, thankyou for calling optus
M: Hi I recieved a bill for $249. But I’m on prepaid
O: This must be an error, let me transfer you to the cancellation department
M: But…

O: Thankyou for calling optus
M: Hi I was transfered from the billing to your department
O: Yes how may I help you
M: I recieved a bill for $249 but I’m on prepaid not on a plan
O: According to this you were on a cap for four days then you moved back to prepaid
M: …
O: Hello
M: …
O: Sir?
M: A few of weeks ago I looked at going onto a plan but decided not to go ahead
O: Yes
M: Well, as you can tell by the bill, I didn’t make any calls; I didn’t have a phone.
O: I can see that, but you were charged for $210 for a handset payout
M: I never purchased anything, not even a handset
O: Did you sign any paperwork?
M: Nopey nope
O: Right well I’m going to have to refer this to my supervisor

O: Hello this is… I’ve reviewed your paperwork and we’ll waive the fees seeing you didn’t sign any paperwork. If you would like to make a complaint you can do so in writing.

M: Sure and I’ll make sure the whole world finds out about it as well.

O: Uhhh. Ok… Thanks for calling optus

So you get an idea of how it played out.

I thought that maybe by putting it up on teh intrawebs it may garner some attention about All Phones dodgy, unethical and fraudulent behaviour. We’ll see what happens.

If I was walking down the street and saw half a $10 note floating in the wind and caught it, would that half a $10 note be considered legal tender?

What if later that day, I found the other half of the $10 note. Would I now have $20?

Imagine for a moment, the $10 was broken up into smaller pieces would each peice be considered $10 or a value based on the proportion of each individual peice?

Just say’n.

This weeks TGI award goes to me: your friend and humble narrator.

So I’m at uni today and I spent most of the time talking to one particular female who is doing a different degree but because of the similarity of the courses we have pretty much the same units.

The conversation changed to movies that we had seen over the last few months, I was drifting in and out (what I like to call retard mode: I was there, just not paying attention) she mentioned that she wanted to see miami vice and didn’t want to go alone.

I hadn’t seen it either but like I said I wasn’t really joining the dots as to where she was going with the conversation. Not to say that I was infatuated by her but she’s one of the few ladyfriends that I get on with on a different level. My response was something like “heh good luck finding someone to go with you, I heard it’s shit anyway”.

It was the end of classes and I made my way off to Parliament to go home. I was thinking about the conversation and realised that I missed the perfect opportunity to ask her out. I saw her again a little later on another platform and I thought would it be to late to ask her out, who cares if the movie is shit, there are plenty of other things you can do in a darkend room.

But alas the train came and she was gone. Another weekend cold and alone.

Howdy friends,

I’m sick of seeing such poorly designed web sites dirtying up the internets that I have decided to do something about it. Here is a new fortnightly aword called Sites That Suxorz.

Candidates for the aword must satisfy the following criteria:

- Discriminates against the disabled and visually impaired.
- Content not checked for accuracy or quality.
- Has serious markup issues.
- Uses too much javascript or poorly validated javascript.
- Plain butt ugly.
- Must be commercial, personal sites are not allowed.

You can nominate the candidate if you see a bad site, just leave the deets in the comments. If you nominate FNT you’ll get a big FU from me.

This weeks inaugural award has been given to the Bruce and Phil web site. Clearly the designer of the site has l33t web skillz. I mean black text on a dark blue picture man, fuck modern, clean web 2.0 styling, we have 1995 Geocities coolness.

Considering the large marketing budgets a lot of radio networks have, why would a nationally syndicated radio show have such a piss poor web site design?

Click for largeness

I’m thinking of submitting this one to Media Wootch.