— Bob-a-job-alog-a-roonie

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!