Why I hate Bell Canada (long)

We’re heading to the States for a couple of days so the spousal unit can run the Marine Corps Marathon in Washington on Sunday. Don’t ask me why – I’m just the driver, cheering section, and moral support.

Since we’re driving it seemed prudent to ensure our cell phone would work in the US in case of an en-route emergency. I have a Bell Mobility pay-as-you-go phone that gets used so infrequently that I am always carrying over excess unused minutes when I do a top up, unless I forget and all my accumulated and paid for minutes lapse are stolen by Ma Bell – the bitch! But that’s another issue and I digress.

I started with their web site only to find out, after waiting interminably for page after page after page to load, that I needed to phone them if I want to change my pay plan and activate the roaming capability.

Now I’m on the phone in auto attendant hell... “Please press 1 for English....”. About 6 levels in I have to enter my phone number so they can access my file. Progress of a sort, I suppose.

When I finally get to speak to a real live person, Sarah, the first thing she asks for is my phone number. Listen Bell computer system guys, it’s 2008. The technology to push that information to the agent’s desktop has been around since the last century! Get with it!

Okay, now she has my number and starts explaining the options I have to select in order to be able to activate roaming. And oh, by the way, a call will cost $1.80 plus $.99 a minute. That’s later clarified to be $1.80 a minute and $.99 a minute – total $2.79 a minute ... plus taxes. And it’s for any part of a minute – 3 seconds – that’ll be $2.79 plus taxes please. I explained that I wasn’t really interested in buying the company, I just wanted to use their airways, maybe, for a minute or two.

By the time she finished explaining the options, the plans, and the rate structures I was so confused that I was ready to pay her $2.79 a minute just to go away and take my headache with her. Clearly this wasn’t going to be as easy as I thought it would be (and as it really should be), so I gave up on Sarah and went back to the web to see if there was another option.

That’s when I discovered that what she told me did not agree with what was published on their web site.

Back on the phone. Auto attendant hell. Enter phone number. Reach Mat. Provide phone number again. Explain what I want to do and what I found online and now I’ve got Mat confused. On hold. Mat comes back and provides the right information (I hope) and clarifies the clarifications I got earlier. Problem is it’s still going to cost a small fortune to use the service (Sarah was right on that point at least) but Mat makes an effort to be helpful, suggesting it would be cheaper for me to just get a US phone if I was going to be travelling frequently in the States. Thanks for that! More questions, clarifications, answers, and it’s finally done.

So I now have roaming activated on my cell phone so I can pay outrageous rates to use it south of the border, I have provided Bell with credit card numbers so they can charge me on a regular basis for minutes I will likely never use and which they will simply take back when I don’t, and I have lost 90 minutes of my life dealing with Bell Canada that I will never get back.

And they wonder why they are losing business.

The Party

I was re-watching Peter Sellers' The Party last night (one of my favourite Peter Sellers flicks)and it occured to me that the opening bugle scene is a perfect metaphor for the health of my pension fund over the past 10 years or so. First it struggled through the the tech meltdown in 2000. Just when it was starting to recover from that, 9/11 hit. Got through that, painfully. Then it was nuked by Flim-Flam Flaherty's Income Trust backtracking. Nearly recovered from that just in time for the sub-prime fiasco. And now the market meltdown with its daily swings - usually 10% down but only 5% up. Being a good little investor I still follow my broker's guidance to hang in there, but the repeated blows are taking a heavy toll and I'm beginning to feel a little a lot like Sellers' character in that opening scene.

Regardless, The Party is a classic and, all metaphors aside, good escape for 90 minutes or so from all the goings on in the real world where, unfortunately, you can't just jump up and wash out the fake blood stains.

What a difference a week makes.

Harper will not commit to staying out of deficit.

No doubt they found some 'surprises' left by the previous Canada's New Government. Yup, that would explain it.

Aaarrggggghhh! But there's an explanation......

According to this item in The Star, "Canadians guzzled $18 billion worth of booze last year (2007) ... an increase of 4.9 per cent over the previous year."

The Citizen reports that "Moderate drinking shrinks the brain" leading to an increased "risk of dementia and problems with thinking, learning and memory."

And now, Canadians return the Harper Cons to power with a stronger minority.

Coincidence?

I think not.

The $25 Billion Not-a-Bailout Bailout

This is a simple question and I pose it because I really don't know the answer.

Where, exactly, is the $25 billion coming from that Flaherty is going to use to buy these mortgages? That's not exactly petty cash, and I don't imagine the Cons account balance at the TD Bank has that many zeroes attached to it, so where is it coming from? Are they simply going to print more money? Borrow it (increasing the national debt)? Go into deficit by tapping into operating expenses?

Somehow, somewhere, Flaherty is coming up with $25 billion and I'd like to know how they are going to do it. Perhaps I can use the same technique to replenish my RRSP after the thrashing it took in the past few weeks.

Sarah Palin and Michigan explained

It's all coming clear.

This story might go a long way to explaining why Sarah Palin felt so strongly about visiting Michigan. Clearly this whole witchcraft thing needs to be dealt with immediately, don'cha know? There are teachers to fire, and books to ban, and religious nutbars who need legal assistance.

Yup, fer sure.

We are truly sorry....

Apparently Sarah Palin has Canadian ancestry, so....

Dear Steve:

While you are apologising (sort of) to the arts community for your misguided Bill C-10 which you now say you didn't really mean, and to Canadians for your ill-advised and callous remarks today about the stock market crash creating a "buying opportunity", perhaps you could also shed a tear or two for our American friends and apologize to them for Ms. Palin, aka Mooselini, aka Caribou Barbie, aka The Pitbull in Lipstick, aka The Alaska Maverick, aka.... well, you get the point.

You now have but 6 days left in which to present the US with a formal apology on behalf of all Canadians for this historical wrong of truly monumental proportions.

And the way I figure it, you're pretty much wasting your time from here on in given that Canadians seem to be finally figuring out that when your lips move you're lying, so why not use that time productively and try to save Canada-US relations. Gosh durn it, it's the right thing to do don'cha know?

(Signed) A concerned citizen.