Telus Tells Us That Customers are Dumb and Should be Taken Advantage Of

Today's rant is not so angry and not full of rageahol, but it would have been ... about half an hour ago. I forgot by one day about topping up my cell with the Pay and Talk thing through Telus, and I was in for a mean surprise when I filled it this morning just before driving off to work in the Rav4. The account balance was zero, no thanks to my stupid memory, and the rate was now nearly doubled from 25c/min (ridiculous anyway) to a terrificly gouging 40c/min.

I was absolutely livid all day, but I didn't have time to rage at any service reps until I got home a while ago. I spent the whole day rehearsing in my head all the irate customer phrases that I always read about, where people make seriously silly or amusingly irritating demands to the service people.

I, myself, have never done any sort of negotiations (read: angry raving) in that sense, since I'm such a square that I follow the laws and regulations and other ridiculously arbitrary rules imposed by some faceless authority.

But after reading a few articles in the last few weeks about negotiations, creating opportunities, or just punching your way through a crowd (which I have had to do more recently like through Oxford Street, without the punching), I felt ready to give them the most convincing ANGRY IGNORANT LADY CUSTOMER conversation. The following dialog is an embellished paraphrasing.

Me: I just topped my account this morning with this card, and I want to know why my rate has changed.
Rep: You let your account go to zero. The rate goes up when you recharge. That's how it is.
Me: Wait, so you're telling me that since I missed recharging by one day, I can't get my rate back down?
Rep: You'll have to buy a 50 dollar top up card.
Me: I don't want to do that, that's ridiculous!
Rep: Sorry, that's how it is.

I'm not one to back down anymore, especially being so mad at stupid things lately. Like having to deal with my kids running around the computer class this afternoon clamoring at their classmates' computer components, going "This is not your own! OUR OWN!" (I'm so evil.)

Me: Well, I find this completely ridiculous. I try my best to top up every month, and this one time I miss the expiration by one day and I get this? I want to get my rate back!
Rep: Well we can change that just this one time.
Me: Yeah, you do that.

***ROCKIN'***

OK, well... I don't think this deserves a *rockin'* since I actually negotiated away the remaining balance that I did have, but it was much better to get my rate back by sacrificing the little balance I had, than to pay 50 dollars for another card that I was never going to use up anyway. (You'd have to look at the Telus Pay Per Talk plans to understand more how this works.)

MS Office Excel Still Wins :(

One of the things I have been telling my students (especially the most clueless ones about computers) is that there is software out there that they don't have to pay for. In fact, there is such a massive, continuous supply of freeware, shareware, open source awesomeware, that one never needs to buy software... unless it's for k-12 schools. :(

The software suite I am talking about is MS Office. Nothing really major wrong with it - it's definitely a useful set of programs - but there are a number of things that I can point out that need to be removed, fixing or enhancements. (Formulas, for instance. I don't give a @#$%ing crap about MathType. Stop asking, dialog box!)

On the other hand, the free alternative, Open Office, offers the same functionality for 100% less money. That is, maybe you might have to pay for the electricity and internet connection to download it, but it's freeeeeeee.

However wealthy a person may be, the moment someone says "FREE", anyone and everyone with half a brain would jump on the chance to try it out. Hence, I have been recommending to the masses to use OOo (OpenOffice.org) when their trial software has expired, to avoid going through the "Miss, I couldn't write my essay because Word just expired" crap.

Too bad I discovered today that OOo has one big, huge, black mark on its awesomeness. I can't believe that after 5 years of so many people asking for chart and regression options such as giving the equation of the regression line, and no one has made it yet.

I especially find the second to last comment stupid, about how he believes that because it is open source means everyone is at fault. (We're soooo sorry that we don't know squat about coding. We're soooo sorry that we want to use this program in schools and my students don't know what the crap is going on, let alone how to get a stupid regression line to show up. And on top of that, we're soooo sorry we like your program and want to make suggestions, while nobody asks how this should be done.)

TRIP OVER :(

I wrote a bit about the trip on Facebook because I already uploaded the photos there and on Flickr, but I don't have the link up yet. Well, if you do find the Flickr account, the photos are there as well. In the meantime, here's something you won't see from either of those collections: