— Bob-a-job-alog-a-roonie

I went to buy this shirt, but figured I’ll look into the seller a bit more…

Search the contact details on Google…

The phone number is actually the fax number of a doctor’s surgery
The address is a farm in the middle of nowhere

Also, the domain is not a .com.au – you need to be an Australian business to register a .com.au, whereas anyone, anywhere can buy a .com

And, they only accept Paypal, which is less than you expect these days

And the domain name is only 50 days old – look up online using a WHOIS service

And, no reviews anywhere

Fake sites don’t create new or unique products, they copy them from elsewhere. So I found the same shirt at RedBubble, a well-known store, for $22.

Here’s the article:
https://www.pressreader.com/australia/money-magazine-australia/20171102/281663960248262

The author is co-founder of a site that tells people they can make money from buying classic cars, so he definitely has a motive to convince people that it is very profitable. As examples, he shows 6 models of sports care that have doubled in value, or more, in just one year. Clearly that seems fishy.

Here’s the problem – he didn’t take into account the age or condition of the vehicles. And they are all rare enough that looking on a particular day can offer a great variety in prices.
For example, Datsun 240Z. He says they were selling for $42,000 in July 2016 and $98,000 in July 2017 (funny how he using July numbers for a November issue…).

I look on carsales.com.au today and there are 11 for sale, ranging from $21,000 to $80,000. The average is around $55,000.  Some have done 100,000 kilometres, and some have done just 2,000. Hence the big range in prices.

Or the Nissan GTR R34 V-Spec II. Sounds like a very specific model. $61,300 in July 2016, and $200,000 in July 2017.  Today there are none for sale.  But plenty of R35s, but I guess their improvement in value wasn’t as impressive.

Clearly he has cherry-picked models that happened to have a randomly higher value when he looked. The only true way to determine if this is good investment is to track the prices of individual cars.

Smart people like me, once the phone is paid off, switch to a prepaid plan. Mine is only $30/month and there’s enough data for me. I could go cheaper with a different phone company, but the only reception I get in Creswick is Telstra.

Telstra would clearly make more money from people who just stay on the same plan after 2 years, and I figure prepaid has the lowest profit margin for them. So it is in Telstra’s best interest to make prepaid a bad experience:

1. Stupid data alerts – Telstra gives me data and then bonus data. When the bonus data runs out I get a text. I still have heaps of regular data, so I guess they are just trying to scare me into changing my plan.
2. Frustrating billing – I’ve set up recurring payments a few times now, and I’m not stupid and certainly not stupid with Internet stuff. Still, I screw it up every time! When you enter your credit card you’d expect a tick box for “please recharge every month”. No, there is an un-obvious box to save details that is off by default. You need to check this box, and then a month later, remember to set up recurring billing. They want you to fail.
3. 28 day plans. Yet you can only set up recurring billing on the same day each month. If you spend a hour on their site and give up and then contact their support department, you learn that if you have recurring billing the plan lasts for a whole month, not 28 days. Why on Earth would you say 28 days instead of monthly??
4. Double charges. This has happen more than once, and as I have said, I’m not stupid. I pay for a month, and then set up recurring billing for that day each month. Telstra happily takes my $30, and then recharges me the same day. It doesn’t take sophisticated software to determine it should wait until next month. There could be an option that asks when I want the recurring billing to start. Magazine subscriptions have no problem with this. And the ease of getting a refund suggests to me that this is the #1 issue their support staff get.

I think it is impossible for the bosses to not know about these issues. They must be deliberate. I’ll love to see a memo to that effect get published. C’mon whistleblowers!

1. When you set a show to record that is clearly not part of a series, it asks if you want to record the series.
2. If you don’t subscribe to HD, it will often record in HD and then say you can’t watch it. So much so that it is worth it to subscribe to save the hassle.
3. When you finish watching a show, how do you delete it? Search for it all over again in your recorded shows and then click delete. Painful.
4. When fast forwarding, the name of the show takes up the bottom half of the screen. No more watching subtitled shows at 2x for me 🙁
5. The interface is not intuitive. 3 months in and I am still finding it hard to navigate. And I’m not new to technology, or too old for it.
6. The remote has a pause button AND a play button. You have to push one to pause, and another to play. Contrary to the one button system that has been in existence forever.
7. The interface is slow. It looks really good, granted – but is much slower than the previous box.
8. It keeps telling me I am not subscribed to a channel when I am. Pushing the change channel button up and then down clears the message.
9. Connecting the bluetooth remote is odd. It works from across the room, but to connect it you need to be like 0.5 cm from the box.

I’m sure there will be more to come…

I was fetching my car from a mechanic the other day, and as he was explaining the work done the phone rang. He answered it and talked for a minute or so.

Then he apologised, he said “I thought it was just another one of those scam phone calls that I hang up on”.

That’s how bloody prevalent they are.

I get roughly 5 per week. They outnumber all other landline calls I receive. They are an incredible inconvenience and sometimes get me angry – and that’s not my type. At least I am smart enough to not be fooled. Clearly some are fooled, enough to fund major telemarketing operations.

The ACCC received 84,000 complaints, and that was just in 2012 – I imagine it would be many times more this year, and that’s just people who complain to the ACCC!

The main types of call are:

• we are Telstra, you have been unknowingly downloading illegal files, you will lose your Internet unless you do as we say
• we are Microsoft technical department, you have a virus
• we are Qantas/Jetstar, you have won a free trip (automated)

More at:
http://www.smartcompany.com.au/legal/43364-telstra-warns-phone-scams-have-increased-400-in-12-months.html

I wouldn’t call it war or terrorism, but it something like that – foreigners attacking our vulnerable citizens.

What really pisses me off is that Telstra could surely end it tomorrow if they chose. And they choose not to. I’m unsure if it is:

• not wishing to acknowledge fault/blame
• not wishing to spend $$$
• they make $$$ from the incoming phone calls

The thing is, Telstra is a phone company. The number might come up as unlisted on my home phone, but Telstra must know who the caller is. And that means that when they see thousands of calls coming from the same number in the Philippines, they could do something. I suggest one of these:

• phone them and ask who they are calling on behalf of. Ask enough questions to verify them, and cross-check it with their Aussie hirer
• implement a *SCAM (7226) number for people to call and report their last received call as a scam
• require all foreign telemarketing companies to register with Telstra, else their calls will be blocked

There has to be a solution.

Nobody else seems to be mentioning this online, but I don’t think I am mad…

When you put down a word and the game gives you new letters “from the bag”, it is taking a look and deciding which replacement letters to give you. It isn’t random.

I’ve played enough games now to notice that when you put down a small number of letters – 1, 2 or 3 – more often than should be by chance you either get the same letters back or the same type of letters. Put three vowels down and get three vowels back.

I understand how someone could mistakenly think this was a bug if they only focused on when it pissed them off. I don’t think I am guilty of that.

For example, I just played one letter, an H. It gave me an H back. So I played that H, and I got another back. 🙁

This is rotten to the core. Australians who pay the electricity bills will be paying an extra $60-$220 per year to cover the cost of smart meters. Collectively that is over $1 Billion over 3 years.  Approved by the government, the bill was passed so it would hit the news on Melbourne Cup Day, typical of something being sneaked past us. Installation is not optional. It’s the equivalent of Telstra forcing us to all buy a new phone, and it is wrong, wrong, wrong.

The promise is that the consumer will see savings, eventually. The reality is the power companies will save money. They amount they can increase electricty prices each year is limited, but there’s no requirement for them to pass on savings. Buy some shares in a power company, that’s my advice!

More at the Herald Sun

[I originally wrote this back in January, but neglected to publish it…]

I received a renewal form in the post, to fill out if I wish to remain a subscriber to Wired magazine. I’m happy with my subscription, $US70/yr delivered, way cheaper than buying locally. But I don’t like being lied to. When I go to resubscribe online, after logging in I learn that my subscription ends in May 2011. This is in stark contrast to the letter they sent, which says;

…your subscription to WIRED has expired. And, unless I hear from you immediately, you will no longer receive WIRED magazine each month.

Yep, except for the 3-5 months I have left, you wankers!

Still, I resubscribed. I have vented.

BTW, I am not the only one to tell this story online, for there is one other:

Long ago I gave up expecting halfway decent service from any Australian phone companies. My wife’s iPhone arrived today after a 3 week delay – not a problem with that, it was forewarned. The packaging is lovely, and the Apple side of things is all good. Perfect probably.

Problem 1 – SIM card

Given that Optus have sold I reckon 30-50 thousand of these, a single photocopied page of instructions would have been nice. We had to Google how to insert the SIM card. Imagine the frustration towards Optus up to 50,000 people are already feeling!

Problem 2 – Registering Online

After activating the SIM, Optus provides the Billing Account Number for us to write down, although this isn’t necessary if you wish to register for an online account now – so I continue. I fill in the details and click enter and… “due to technical issues we are unable to proceed with creating your web profile to allow you to access your account details online. Please try again later and ensure you have your Billing Account Number”

Yep, that’d be the number they said we didn’t need to write down as we were registering now. Yay for Optus!