First I will admit I know very little about the whole US Debt crisis etc etc. I do know that (Correct me if I am wrong) that essentially the Republicans do NOT want to tax the rich, but instead want to pull money from social programs.

I think this is a load of shit.

Lets think about this. A single mother working minimum wage to try and support her kids NEEDS that funding for daycare, and other social programs etc. Millions rely on this sort of thing. It is incredibly important.

So why pull from them, when you can take money via tax increases for the rich? Someone making $1,000,000 a year will hardly (if at all) notice the tax increase.

“Oh No, This tax increase will mean one less trip on my private jet next year”. or “I guess I will have to wait a few extra months to buy that new Porsche I want”. Don’t you think that putting food in the mouths of those in need is just slightly more important?

Frankly it makes me angry. It is this mentality that makes the rich richer and the poor poorer. Where is Robin Hood when you need him!

How much money does one person really need? There are some people who could literally spend a million $$ a day and NEVER run out of money! What is that?? They have so much money they couldnt spend it if they tried.

Sure, not all the rich have THAT much money, but even a salary of $500,000 a year is far more money than anyone NEEDS. Those that have this kind of money – those making huge unreasonable salaries got there on the backs of the poor – it is time they said “Thank you for making me super-duper rich, here are a few $$ back to try and pay down the debt”.

Grr. It all just makes me angry to see this.

First off, I can’t imagine a world where I would vote for Harper. There are a number of reasons why he will not get my vote, but to be honest, one of the biggest ones is the use of Attack Ads. I hate them. Its ridiculous. He spends all his effort saying how “bad” everyone else is, and little to no effort saying why he is the “good” one. Come on grow up. This is ridiculous.

So I guess, this post is actually directed at all the other leaders. I know that most of what I am about to post is really just a pipe-dream. I am a realist, and know that you need money for this stuff, but if even a small portion of the following could be put into place, it would certainly be a good thing.

Free Recreation

Forget the current tax write-off limit of $500 for recreational programs for kids. Instead fund these recreational programs and make them free! In reality, this could potentially save money in prevention of health issues. There are obesity problems across North America and Canada is no stranger. If Kids could enjoy sports programs, gym memberships, pool passes, etc for free, they would be more active and healthier Canadians. This would ultimately promote a life-long healthy lifestyle which in turn would help eliminate some (not all) future health issues, saving the healthcare system money in the long run.

Environmental Subsidies

The Environment is a hot topic these days. There needs to be better funding for people to do environmentally friendly things. Big government rebates or tax write-0ffs for things like the purchase of hybrid and electric cars, solar panels, solar hot water systems, and other products that can lessen the strain on the environment. There are some programs for some of these things, but they aren’t good enough – they are no where near good enough to convince someone to go this route on these merits alone.

While you’re at it, why not also extend this to things like bicycles and bus passes. These would help keep people out of there cars for there commute. Free mass transit would certainly convince some people to leave there cars at home.

Right now there is absolutely NO financial incentive to be environmentally conscience, and without that financial push, many people just won’t do it.

Legal Marajuana

First I want to say I am NOT a pot smoker, never have been and never will be. BUT, those who smoke pot are going to do it anyways. Period. And this fuels crime related to smuggling, grow ops, etc. It also costs taxpayers millions upon millions in law enforcement.

Just legalize it already. Then tax the shit out of it. Not only will this SAVE money from the removed policing costs, it will be a huge revenue stream in tax dollars. Then use those dollars to further fund health care or education, or some other worthwhile cause.

0% Interest on Student Loans

Why is it that we have interest on Student Loans? There are several countries out there that grant student loans at 0% interest. One complaint people have is that Canadian talent moves south of the boarder for employment. Not all, but at least some of this, would be due to the insane student loan debt that they need to pay off. A 0% interest rate on these loans would help lessen the burden slightly, keeping some of these people here.

This would also help improve the pruchasing power of recent graduates, which helps to stimulate the economy, so indirectly, the government would still get much of this money via other taxes (HST for example).  We would also have a system with slightly fewer bankruptcies, fewer people needing government assistance etc.

Well, thats it for my rants for now. I will put a Part 2 out there soon!

Well, after much complaining, and eventually even contacting an exec, our issues regarding the promised and reneged $10 / month discount have been resolved.

I am pleased to note that I received a phone call this morning from the man I contacted a little over a week ago. He noted that while he could not find any evidence that we were offered the $10 discount, he has gone ahead and given us one anyways!

While having to go through all this hassle to get what we were promised was a huge pain, It is great that once we connected with the right agent, he was able and willing to help us, and has made us whole. Just goes to show that persistence pays off.

Well, after some complaining and an email targeted at a high-level exec, we have made some headway on our issue with Bell Canada.

Here is the summary of our initial issue:

• When we first phoned, the rep promised us a $10 / month credit for 12 months, in ADDITION to the $200 PVR Programming credit
• We got the $200 credit, but they refused to give us the $10 credit, essentially saying that the don’t offer such a thing.

What it sounds like happened is that the rep did not know the services very well, and mistook the $10 PVR rental credit, to think it applies to all new sign-ups regardless of if the PVR is purchased or rented. That is how their current promo works apparently, however, as a customer calling to ask what they could offer is to determine if we should switch, one has to assume the rep knows what he/she is talking about.

In the end, the rep made an offer, we accepted it, and Bell declined part of the offer. Even if the rep made a mistake, it should still be honored.

Well, all of this made us angry, after all $120 in credits over 12 months is a decent chunk of change. While reading a forum thread where people were complaining about Bell I stumbled on a post that had the emails of some high-level execs, so I thought, if customer service won’t help me, maybe these guys will.

I fired off an email with my situation, and left it at that, never expecting to hear from anyone about the topic again, however, later that day, I got an email response from the assistant to the exec requesting my account number.

Today that assistant called me and we spoke. They are investigating and will be looking up that initial phone call. He said that if they can find the original call that promisses the discount, then they will honor it. That’s fantastic news. He promised to call me back next Friday either way with the outcome.

Now, IF they are able to dig up that original call, I know for a fact they will hear the offer, and should give us the credit. If this happens, it will restore much of my trust in this company, but not all of it – after all, this issue should never have been an issue in the first place!

My bit of pessimism tells me though that this assistant could do nothing and then simply call me back noting that the call could not be found, and decline the offer again. I would hope they are honest enough to look into it, but time will tell. I’ll post an update when a final decision is made.

Interesting Note: The manpower they are using to investigate this is costing them more than the $120 in credits – it would have saved them money to just give us the credit in the first place – oh well.

Bell Canada, Oh why did we switch to you? You tempted us with $200 off in credit if we bought a PVR. We got this credit. You tempted us with better programming options than your competitor. We got that programming. You tempted us with $10 off per month on programming for the first year. We got…wait? No we didn’t get this….

We called you to find out about switching from Shaw Direct, and what you could offer us. You told us, on more than one occasion about the $10/month programming credit. That helped cinch the deal, we signed up with you, we canceled our 5 year relationship with Shaw Direct – then you decided to breach this contract by reneging on part of the deal you offered to us to get us to switch!

We called numerous times to complain, and finally the best you could offer was a $20 credit, not the originally contracted and promised $10/month for 12 months. – yet we are still bound to your two year contract!?! We took the $20 you offered, cause lets face it, $20 is still $20.

We are in a touch situation here. In most cases this $100 deficit in your contracted promise would result in us canceling service with you and switching back to Shaw Direct. But you have us over a barrel

While we are extremely UNHAPPY with you, and will NOT recommend ANYONE to ever use Bell Satellite services we will stay with you. Here is why.

First let me note that we don’t care about the contract. If we wanted to cancel we are not worried about those contract cancellation fees simply because you breached the contract first. Its that simple. It will not go to court or anything like that, but if it did, you are clearly in the wrong. You breach first, you lose. (I may be wrong here, but because we are not canceling, this us a mute point anyways)

The reason we will stay with you is because the loss of the $100 in promised credit is exceeded by the cost to switch providers. If we were to switch back to Shaw Direct, we need to buy a new PVR. Even after credits etc, the cost of a new PVR would ultimately far exceed that $100, so financially it actually makes sense to stay with you, even though we hate you. Your programming / channel line up is great, we are happy with that. It’s just your policies in handling customer disputes that we are, well quite frankly, pissed at.

You say you record all calls – why you refused to listen to the original call from when we signed up is beyond me. It really makes me wonder how many other people have been promised an offer, signed up, then had that offer reduced with no recourse. Not a good way to run a business…. Or is it? You are probably making Billions off it.

This last weekend my wife, daughter and I spend some time in Richmond (BC). Richmond, and really most of neighboring Vancouver, are full of rich folk. Here I am driving along in my 2008 Mazda 5 surrounded by vehicles like new BMW 7 series, Mercedes and Austin Martins with the occasional Lamborghini and Ferrari thrown in. Thank god there is also the odd mid-80’s Nissan Sentra, and Hyundai Pony’s around to keep me from the bottom of the food chain.

People have money – they buy nice cars, I get it – I’d do the same, but what get’s me is the parents that buy their kids half million dollar cars as their first vehicle. What’s up with that??

For those who are unfamiliar with BC law etc, The graduated licensing system in BC requires student drivers to have a red “L” on the back of their car (it’s a little 5 x 7 inch magnet), and new drivers, in their first 2 years have to display a green “N” on the back.

On this trip I saw many green N’s on BMW’s and other fancy cars, but there were two that really caught my attention. One was on a new Audi R8 – cost, about $160,000. The other was on a new Lamborghini Murcielago, cost about $450,000. Are you kidding me? Really? What on earth has a 17 year old done to deserve his parents buying him a $450,000 car! New drivers should have to drive cheap little beaters till they learn how to properly drive – I seriously doubt that any 17 year old can truly handle a 631 horsepower V-12. But I could be wrong.

Perhaps I am just jealous. When I first got my license I was stuck driving my dads 85 Ford Bronco II. For a 16 year old it was great to have access to a car, but still, it’s no Lamborghini.

I have had some nice cars since. My Mazda 5 may be a mini-van, but it’s practical for my family, and still kinda fun to drive… Fun to drive? A mini-van? Did I just say that? Man I must be getting old. I miss my 07 GTI, and old 72 Datsun 240z.

Okay here is my rant for the day.

I am sick and tired of calling businesses and having the automated system ask me for an account number, phone number, or any other piece of information, only to finally reach a real person and have them ask me for the same thing. If your automated system asks me for it, that should be it. Why are you asking me twice? If the live agent can’t see the info I enter into the automated system, WHY DOES IT ASK ME FOR IT?

Yesterday I had to call both Bell and a government office. Both systems asked me for info (one was my phone number, the other my social insurance number) and in both cases, I had to repeat the info to the live agent.

I told my wife that I was going to bitch about this in my blog today and her comment to me was:

“I don’t even bother, I just hit ‘star, star, pound, star, zero, star, pound’ till I eventually get a real person.”

I think I will have to take up that technique cause it seems to work for her.

There are some companies out there who do the job a bit better though. For instance, when I call Mazda to book my car in for servicing, their call display pulls up my account info before they answer the phone.  They usually answer “Hi Scott, calling to schedule servicing?” or some other comment relevant to my account. I like that, makes believe that they remember me and care (even if it is an illusion).

Not too long ago the provincial Government announce the launch of the HST (Harmonized sales tax) which is to be put into place later this year. This tax came as a surprise to most, and for the vast majority, most people are seriously ticked off about it.

The new HST will also show all restaurant bills jump up from the previous 5% tax up to 12% tax. That’s an additional 7% on all food purchased in restaurants.

People are fed up.

A petition has been started at www.NoMealTax.ca . I urge you to visit the site, and if you agree, sign the petition. As of the writing of this article 164,315 people have signed the petition so far.

Last year I put up a post (I Don’t Care What They Say – Merry Christmas), asking if readers would be offended if someone wished them a happy holiday for a holiday they did not celebrate. Out of 180 voters, only  6 voters said that yes, they would be offended.

I wanted to re-introduce this poll to see if any new voters/readers out there would like to cast their opinion here.

I celebrate Christmas. Its my favorite time of year. I would like to say Merry Christmas to people I come across, and send “Merry Christmas” emails to my clients, but because there are a few out there who are offended by this, I am reduced to saying a generic “Happy Holidays”.

If someone came to me and wished me a Happy Hanukkah, or any other holiday greeting for something I don’t celebrate, I would never be offended, in fact, it would probably put a smile on my face.

I was at the Home Depot looking for a Christmas Tree stand, and when I asked an employee where I could find one, he quickly developed a sour look on his face and said “I don’t Celebrate Christmas, I think they’re over there somewhere” and he pointed in the general direction. Are you kidding me? You don’t celebrate it, but that doesn’t give you a right to be rude to me about it – especially when I am looking for a product that you sell!

Why can’t we all just get along.

Well the contest has closed and the winners were announced. Before I go on with my rant, I do want to congratulate the two winners. Out of all the videos submitted I do actually believe that theirs were in the top 5 for sure. The winner “Captain Kirk” I thought very early on had a strong chance of winning, and I do believe that he was a good choice for the grand prize winner.

But here are my complaints.

The rules stated that the grand prize winner would be chosen by a panel of judges from the top 10 videos with the most votes. Second place would be determined by the video with the most votes.

Well, it seems that for some reason the judges scrubbed ALL the votes resulting in a score of zero for all videos. They then chose the grand prize winner out of ALL videos, not just the top 10. Kirk was somewhere in the mid-teens in terms of his position.

If for some reason they deemed the voting system to be flawed and as a result resent it, then fair enough, but then why was the second grand prize winner chosen based on votes, should he not have also been chosen by the judges review? Perhaps he was, but there is simply nothing stated about this…

I am not at all upset that I didn’t win – to be honest, my video was far from the best, and others deserved to win over mine. My only complaint is the lack of clarity towards how the winners were chosen, seeing as how it is obvious that it was not based on the criteria stated in the official rules.

Many submitters went out of their way to try and promote Lottomax and this contest by means of blog posts, twitter, Facebook, and other social media platforms, not to mention word of mouth. (I for one am certain that my twitter followers probably got a bit annoyed with me).

Lotto max still got additional exposure by people assuming that votes mattered and spreading the word, but in the end all this time was basically for nothing as the change in rules seems to have made votes irrelevant. (If votes had nothing to do with it, entrants would probably keep their mouths shut as it could create more competition, so the whole angle of votes helped to promote the contest)

I would love to see an official statement from Lottomax as to what has happened and why. Perhaps some transparency in the whole situation will make it seem less like some kind of a scam.