The KISS principle was often invoked where I used to work. Don’t make the routine or the policy or the plan too complicated, keep it simple. It seems to me that the same should apply to receiving bills electronically.
Here’s my story. I receive 3 bills electronically every month, from my ISP, the folks I buy my long distance telephone service from and good old Bell Canada (our land line and our satellite TV service). Two of them send me my invoice as a PDF file attached to the email every month. Its not a huge file usually between 35 and 60 kilobytes. Its quick to download and easy to open and print (if I want). It tells me how much I owe them, the web address of the company in case I need to do a little business with them and that’s about it. It takes less than 30 seconds to open the bill and print a copy for our files. Fits the KISS principal very nicely.
Then there is good old Bell Canada, no I take that back, there is no good in good old Bell Canada. it is simply the only choice where we live. This has to be one of the most inept, uncaring, slow to change monopolies the modern world has ever known. Even now when they are not a monopoly anymore they are still backward and inept and they drive my BP right through the roof. I get an email from them every month that says that my ebill is ready and I owe $xxx.xx and to see my ebill login in on www.bell.ca. Thus starts a 5+minute process of tooing and froing and opening and closing and do I want to buy this and will I be subscribing to that. All this to get to my bill and then if I want to print it I have to go somewhere else. What in hell are these folks thinking, that if they piss me off enough I will buy more services from them? What a complete load of horseshit! Trying to get this friggin monolith to change would be like trying to turn a cruise ship by blowing through a straw against the stern of the ship. See I’m am almost incoherent. I keep thinking I should cancel my ebilling and go back to a paper bill but the thought of wasting all that paper every month stops me. It just pisses me off that they can’t send me a simple 1 or 2 page statement as a pdf file every month.hey ma bell do you think that you could try simple just once? Oh and while you are at it ditch that electronic helper will you PLEASE.
Any time I have too deal with Bell Canada, aka “The phone company” or any of its sudsiduries my blood pressure goes up. Just that first few seconds of “Emily” the annoying voice of the most satanic voice mail system ever devised is enough to drive me completely friggin’ wild. I avoid calling them like the plague. But today I had to and therein lies the reason for this particular posting.
We have had a Bell Expressvu system in our house for well over 10 years. The original receiver that we purchased back when is still in operation in our living room. It still works but is probably has the equivelant of an 8086 processor in your computer. It works but is old and slow and there are lots of new features that aren’t available on the old clunker. I have thought of buying a new one but I’m just too cheap.
Last week when we got to London we discovered that my sister had rearranged the main floor of her house and turned their family room into a mini-spa. Their giant tv now resides in the living room. The cable that connected their Bell Expreesvu satellite dish to said tv is not nearly long enough to reach said tv in its new location. My sister’s solution, cancel the satellite service and connect o Roger’s Cable. This is a workable if somewhat drastic solution. This meant that their two receivers wwere now surplus to their needs. I had a brain wave. I offered to buy the newer of the two from her for half the retail price and thereby upgrade my receiver at a good price.
We brought the receiver home on Friday and there it sat because I had to go to work Saturday and Sunday. During a phone call home Sunday mid-afternoon Val mentioned that she had connected the new receiver to our tv and it was working fine. Great. I got home last night and while surfing the channels I realized that we were getting the channels that my sister subscribed to not our usual package. This morning I set out to make the switch. I called Expressvu and after more than 35 minutes on hold I got person who said that he could help me. We were doing just fine until I gave him the serial number of the receiver and he told me that my sister had not de-activated it on her system. I wasn’t happy but now I knew. I left a voice mail for my sister asking her to call Bell and de-activate the receiver.
After supper Val was watching tv when all of a suddent here were no channels being received. Ah ha! Cathy had made the call. So I called Bell back and after a mercifully short wait I was again talking to a live person who promised to help me. We got to about the same spot in the process as this morning and he advised me that he could not activate the receiver on my system as my sister had not given her authorization. She had called and de-activated the receiver but apparently had unknowingly not taken this vital second step. I was furious and let the call centre agent know it. I told him that I had not been told if this requirement during the earlier call etc etc. He was very sorry but because of policy could do nothing for me. Now I was really pissed off and in full flight, it wasn’t very pretty and as I write this 1½ hours later I am feeling pretty juvenile. I told him in no uncertain terms that I wanted his co-worker reported to a supervisor for giving me the wrong information. The next thing I knew I was talking to a supervisor, thats a first! I told him about the long wait and the wrong information and he was very sorry but company policy etc etc etc. I finally ended the call and emailed Cathy to ask her to call Bell yet again.
A few minutes later she called to say that she had an Expressvu rep on her other phone and a few minutes later we were all three connected on a mini conference call. The person we were dealing with this time was very helpful and got everything sorted out in jig time. She also had me download the latest version of the software for the receiver. Then just as we were finishing up she told us that she would be reporting the two staff from the previous call because in fact the authorization for me to use the receiver was in the notes! Agh. My faith in the competence of Bell is re-established just a little.
Losing one’s temper is not a good thing to do. In fact it is very counter productive, I know that. I used to instruct tactical communications and and I know all about maintaining your cool. A well used and still true adage I have taught many times is “If it feels good, don’t say it”. This is particularly important when you are going to make a sarcastic or rude comment, or raise your voice in anger. To know something intellectually and then to put it into practice yourself in a stressful situation are often two very different things. This started out as a rant against the phone company and it is turning into a something totally different. In spite of the fact that thiose two workers tonight made a mistake as did the first person earlier in the day it did me absolutley no good to lose my temper. I feel like crap.
I am going to go now and turn on the tv and see if the software update is complete and we are back watching tv in the living room. But I still detest dealing with Bell and I always will.
I got up early,as usual, spent some time catching up on the news.Most important news this morning was that over night new pictures of Arlo arrived electronically from the west coast. He is the most beautiful child and I can hardly wait to see him and hold him in a couple of months. The second important piece of news was that yesterday Arlo and his Mom saw a Japanese Elvis! You can see anything in BC.
After that it was pretty well down hill. I listened to someone talking about feng shui on CBC this morning. IMHO this is right up there with the power of pyramids and crystals. Then on The House I listened to yet another discussion between two academics on how we should achive our Kyoto targets and whether in fact we can achieve them. Great, lets discuss this thing until well after its too late and then we can spend another decade or two blaming each other for our lack of action. By the end of the discussion I was so friggin’ upset that I was almost chewing on the firewood I was supposed to be putting in the basement. I blistered off an email that, because of some intemperate language, will either be heavily edited or not read at all. I don’t really care I felt better when I pushed the “go” button.
I googled Tomi Swick- he is the opening act for The Bare Naked Ladies tonight. I wanted tofind out what I was getting into bfore the lights go down. When you go to his website his whole new album starts palying and I have to say that I like what I hear. He is described as a rock singer but tome he sounds a little more singer/songwriter. Definitely mellow rock. I am looking forward to hearing him live.
all in all a pretty ordinary Saturday morning but then the phone rang, it was the west coast with the news that they land in Ottawa on May 5th for a two week visit – yahoooooo!
If you have read any news releases or listened to any speeches delivered by members of the current party in power federally in this country you will have read or heard over and over and over and over ad nauseum the phrase ” Canada’s New Government”. This is really starting to get up my nose. I don’t like that pale eyed prick who calls himself Prime Minister and I don’t like that nasty bunch of hangers on that he calls a government. I don’t like most of the things that they are doing, I don’t like their sense that even though they have a minority government they feel free to act as though they have the biggest majority in Canadian history and I can not stand them walking around calling them self “Canada’s New Government”. There is nothing new about them. They are the same crap in a different bag – note I did not say new bag. They are opportunists and politicians which means to me that they will do anything and say anything they have to in order to stay in power because IMHO that is what these folks are all about, staying in power. The perks, the graft, the pigs are in the trough.
I listened to John Baird our new federal environment minister last Saturday tell me and a lot of other Canadians that the environment only became important to me since the last election when my priority was dumping the evil Liberals. What a load of crap. I was concerned about the environment when that arrogant asshole was still in school. It became important to him and Harper when they got crapped all over for their Clean Air Act and it will remain their priority until oh lets say two days after the next election assuming that my worst nightmare comes true and they form a majority government. Then it will be back to locking up every poor son of a bitch they can find (scare the crap out of the middle class and you can get away with anything) and cutting government just like Mike Harris did in this province and we are still paying the price for that monster’s reign of terror.
New Government my foot! I’ ll feel a whole lot better when they are putting out news releases that start “Canada’s former government said today………….”. Ya that sounds better.
I do not watch a lot of TV anymore as I find a lot of what passes for entertainment bores me. I tend to watch news and public affairs. A good historical documentary every now and then but not too much else. However, I do listen to the radio a lot, almost exclusively CBC. I pay attention to what CBC puts on the radio. Lately I listened to a lot of chatter on CBC shilling two new productions on CBC TV. The first was a 2 part movie called The Dragon Boys, a story about the “realities” of Chinese gangs on the Canadian west coast. I watched it Sunday and Monday night. I have no idea how realistic it is but it was, I thought, a good production. It held my attention, it had more twists and turns then the highway through the Rogers Pass. It covered bullying and racial stereotyping. It was violent, brutally violent. In spite of the violence I liked the show.
Then there was the other show, Little Mosque On The Prairies”. Boy did they shill this one. Everybody, including the kid on the set who gets the coffee was interviewed earnestly on virtually every show that CBC radio produces. They have been playing clips on TV for weeks. They even covered CNN’s coverage of the show as a news item the other day. Well last night I was parked in front of the tube at 8AM, Rick Mercer was on followed immediately by LMOTP. All through Mercer an annoying little box kept popping up telling us how long until LMOTP. Every commercial break showed the same trailer for LMOTP and ended with 16 minutes until LMOTP starts , 10 minutes etc etc). It was really getting up my nose. Well my expectations were, sadly, met. The only good laughs (?) are in the trailers. The set looked like the production company spent about $5.27 on it and the lines were so predictable and lame. This could have been a great one. But unless chapter two is immeasurably better than chapter one this one is a big dog, a piece of crap, a huge disappointment IMHO. I’ll give it 5 minutes next week and thats it. Too bad.
Musings from Lot 12
It is common knowledge that the health care system in this country is a bit of a mess. One huge problem is a shortage of doctors. Our medical schools can’t produce enough new docs to replace the ones that are retiring especially given lifestyle changes. Lots of new doctors have decided that as well as practicing medicine they would like to have a life – vacations, time with family, hobbies. You get the picture.
One source of new docs is foreign trained docs who decide to immigrate here for a better life. Trouble is that as with masny other foreign trained professionals their qualifications are not recognized and they have to spend large amounts of money and sometimes years requalifying to practice their profession in Canada. In the meantime they drive taxis, clean buildings or work in factories. What a waste!
The day before yesterday I caught a news story from Halifax on my beloved CBC. A European trained doc who has come to Canada was being profiled. Before coming here he was a certified rheumatologist and taught family medicine in a medical school. Because of the time and cost of qualifying to be a doctor here this person has decided to go to nursing school. How stupid are we as a society. Here we have a highly trained individual who wants to practice his profession here in a field where we could certainly use his skills and we won’t help him come up to our standards! This seems incredibly stupid to me. Some provincial Ministry of Health should grab this person and offer, in return for a promise to practice in a mutually agreed location to support him or her during the retraining period. Given the need for more docs I believe that this would be money well spent.
I know from my involvement with the local hospital board of directors that we have a critical shortage of both family docs and specialists. We have a local doctor recruitment program that has a huge annual budget and a less than stellar track record. Why can’t they invest some of their budget in a doctor like this.
This seems so simple to me but then I’m a fairly simple person!