Telco wars

Those who follow me on Twitter will have seen a berating of Optus and who am I not to explain?

Optus sent me a bill for $1500 and whilst I was expecting a slightly larger phone bill for my new iPhone... this bill missed the mark by a long shot.

This resulted in the desperately avoided call to 'customer service'... Now a telephone company should not drop the customer's call 3 times... Sensing some KPI Management, I changed my tact by showing a seemingly new operator that their system could possibly be wrong... I did this by demonstrating that the $900 charge was actually meant to be $0... After another long stint on hold, the 'customer care assistant' offered a $400 discount on the amount, she even sounded convinced that it was a good offer...

When I explained that the offer was the equivalent of fining me $500, she placed me back on hold.

At this point I could imagine the flashing red lights of KPI failure...  when the new offer was made at less than a tenth of the original bill. But accepting this wasn't ever going to be the end of the saga... was it?

Dishonour fees (for not paying $1500), calls from their finance section (asking why I haven't paid the $1500) and 2 weeks later... Still not resolved.

So a communications company, maybe not getting the billing right is understandable but not being able to transfer the metadata of the customer from one person to another (let alone the computer that captures it at the beginning of the call) is really going to struggle in their bid.

White Noise

It is often a joke in Australia (the World?) to pull the mickey out of Americans for their ignorance but reading last month's The Monthly, I have to consider the effect of white noise.

If we are constantly bombarded by low level information at what point do we stop discerning. I read a blog that my boss put me onto that might have a point that news will find you...

So then do we surround ourselves with like-interested people who act as filters for us? isn't this what web2.0 is really all about? self-censoring? so then we can be responsible for our own ignorance... IF we know what we are doing... In a constrained environment (behind a firewall) then maybe it is a positive but societally I wonder about heading toward a place where Gatorade is used to hydrate crops.

On reflection of Something For Kate Your not the first to think that everything has been thought before... I would tell you that this article is related, but I didn't make it through before getting fidgety and ...

$58, no joke.

I have been somewhat slack... albeit a little the fault of my access to the net... Unfortunately, there is no access to social-networking behind the work firewall nor regular access to internet whilst in Wagga Wagga... Anyway, the direction of this blog is still working itself out.

Well I have some half-baked uses for the Cynefin framework that I intend to blog in the near future... One looks at training, which might actually be closer to KM than I anticipated and the other one looks at Military organisational structure.

Speaking of the Military, I wonder if the RAAF is aware of this revelation. This will not help their retention, I am sure.

To finish, I was shabbily in need of a haircut after my 3 weeks away so I went to the place I have used near work. Only to find that the Barbers had left for the week. This was fine I would simply find a place near home...

I googled a place in North Adelaide called Mens Hairdresser's (which seemed unambiguous enough for me) but once I got to the Village there was none to be found. So, now I wandered closer to home and started looking for a hairdresser. This is not hard to find on Melbourne St, but this uncomfortable feeling settled over me as I stood outside... I felt the need to ask if they cut men's hair... I avoid this and headed to the one with the picture of the bearded person amongst all of the women. Now I say bearded person because the model was somewhat androgynous and that should've been a hint...

I am still getting over the fact that they could keep a straight face whilst telling me that a man's haircut cost $58... I realised it was not a joke when they offered me 10% because it was my first time... Am I out of kilter with the world or did I miss something extra that was on offer here?

End of week 1

Well I have nearly made it half way through the two week course in Wagga Wagga... The course is far from challenging and any opportunity for it to be stimulating is cut off due to tight time constraints... It has been fairly full on 8-5 each day plus out of hours work for assessment... I have really paid off the assessment. So much so, when I woke up this morning (at 4 am) after a night on the gas I put in an hour and a half work in preparation of the tutorial...

I question the value of it all and all, but I guess it is a box-ticked...

I am not looking forward to much excitement, in fact I doubt I will even leave the Base... I should probably put some effort into my Industrial Relations Assignment

Evil ATM

So it turned out to be true... My debit card was not expired despite this rogue ATM's claim.

Luckily my bank is happy to send me a new card... to my home address... which I won't return to until 26 Jul... There has to be a better way...

Day 2 of course = 2h Safety Lecture + 6 h Legal Lecture, not as much fun as it sounds

Not quite...

Well I have arrived at Wagga and embarked on the first day of course... It is not quite coherent yet but we will see how it goes...

The experience was not enhanced by the attempt to withdraw cash from an ATM... it turns out that it did not like the opposition's card as it swallowed it. It gave a feeble excuse about expiring, which is only made interesting by the lack of replacement card and my inability to access one (due to two weeks in Wagga)... I think that part 2 of this will have to be explored tomorrow when I embark on the experience of actually talking to a strange and rare creature called a bank teller...

The particularly surprising bit is that there is an Internet Cafe around the corner... hence I am writing this... but don't get used to it, I might be a little sporadic in my engagement...

I do wish that I had sorted out a web-based RSS feeder before I had left though...