caretaker

The decision came yesterday:
"On Monday, the court ordered that the defendant, who cannot be named under German privacy laws, must sell or donate the tank and an anti-aircraft cannon to a museum or collector within the next two years."
Good grief, Helmut's got an 88! The Panzer looks like it's in decent shape. $300,000 is a hefty fine.

scrubbedexpat091

We are not far off now that the promo pricing we had expired on July 31.

Speed test says speed is 583.16 down & 108.45

The promo price was good, but not worth $119/month.

Upside we can downgrade to a cheaper plan, will save $14/month.

This is what my dad gets for $116 US per month.

• Up to 940 Mbps download speeds
• Up to 35 Mbps upload speeds
• 1.25 TB (1280 GB) monthly data included
• Easy access to over 3 million wifi hotspots

+ cable TV.

He gets way better value than we do in BC I

Now if my income increased at the same rate food, gas, internet and everything else has, wouldn't be so bad, but income never seems to rise fast enough to keep pace.

scilly

who is it with? Telus or Shaw or ???

scrubbedexpat091

Shaw.

Telus wont let us have service because we don't have credit worthy enough for the all powerful Telus King..

I would switch to the $90/month plan they have however the data cap is too low for our needs, we have been averaging between 550gb and 700gb of data per month now.

The 3 alternative plans are these.

scrubbedexpat091

Not like Telus is any better price wise. If your stable enough housing and financial wise, Telus will cut off $10-$15 per month if you sign a 2 year term with them. However Telus wanted a $500 deposit, and that is way more than we could ever afford, $500 isn't something we can just get, that takes a few months to save up, and really the savings isn't there with Telus to justify that.

We had tecksavvy for a bit, was around $60/month however it was a nightmare, non-stop problems, and they would blame Shaw, who would blame Teksaavy, and it was just a nightmare, we went several times 5-6 days without internet, and at the time my wife was working from home so it caused employment issues, total nightmare.


h

scrubbedexpat091

Upside to chat support vs phone calls, don't have to wait on the phone or talk on the phone.

Downside is the chat agents almost surely are toggling several customers at once so it often ends up taking longer or its not really a human, sometimes I think its AI automation.

"Welcome to live chat support! My name is Leo and I will be your Web Advisor for today. Hello, I hope you're doing well today!"

"Understood sir Justin. let me check on this for you Okay sir, I have checked on this for you, sir."

"Understood sir Justin, I've cancelled that for you already sir and cancelled that for you sir."

I said have a nice day thank you.

"Understood sir, sorry sir, i dont understand sir."



Sometimes doesn't seem like a human writing, the above is an excerpt from a chat with support, just didn't seem like a human on the other end. The above just doesn't seem human written, anyhow the end result was still accomplished even with the weirdness of the whole thing.

Siouxie

I always use the chat facility (or emails) as I like to have a record of the conversation so they can't deny it at a later date or if they pass you onto another 'customer service representative' (I always copy and paste the whole convo into notepad).. also useful to get your point across without any misunderstandings!

I recently negotiated a deal for my phone, reducing the montly cost down to $20 (for unlimited calls / texts / incoming calls and images/mms etc., and 1Gb of data), after repeatedly being told it would cost more than that for 250mb of data, with the first 'chat agent'. I used the old 'I think it's easier if I leave this company and go to one of your competitors - unless you want to pass me onto retentions.. They did, retentions supervisor gave me the 'care package' then they wiped off the remaining month's fees as a gesture of goodwill. You can really get to the point without listeniing to them make excuses, when you use the 'chat'

scrubbedexpat091

I almost always use chat when available, just noticed a couple times it hasn't seemed human, but maybe Amazon is beta testing AI and I was a test subject.


I have pulled the well go check the your tape of my last call before, if the company is recording calls for quality assurance & training purposes, it usually works to get them to fix things, if they don't record it wont work, but all these big companies or their outsourced call centers do, they literally score agents on staying on script.

I was always getting into trouble with my calls for going off script, usually they would pull 3-5 calls a week for each of us to randomly listen too. My average was 89% out of 100%, but the goal was to be at 99%, oh sorry I am not near perfect for this crappy minimum wage job with no benefits.

And of course raises were based on having at least 97% accuracy.

I wasn't purposely going off script, its just sometimes natural conversation ends up happening as some people are just really friendly and chat like crazy and there is no script for those, but I did learn to just put the talkers on hold which is what everyone did to keep their metrics up, another trick was because aside from the 30 minutes out of 10 hours you got for lunch, any bathroom break, or break to go get something to drink (wasn't allowed drinks at work stations.) each second on pause brought your metrics down, put someone on hold, run to the bathroom, that wouldn't hurt your metrics unless the person hung up and other calls came in and missed them.

And we never knew how long people were on hold for, every other person, you know how long I was waiting, no I don't know, I know its busy though because there isn't even a 10 second gap between calls, on a slow day, you might get 30-40 seconds breather between calls.

And unlike government our que doesn't close early to ensure we go home on time, hours were 8am to 10pm, but people could call in up to 9:59:59 and get in que, so our 2pm to 10pm was more like 2pm to 11pm/12am in reality.

Never work in a call center, they are horrible places to be.

scrubbedexpat091

https://www.ctvnews.ca/health/canada...port-1.5533045


Found an infographic for the report.

Danny B

Hell no

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-58105044

caretaker

That isn't a rare one, it's just a Sheepshead. They catch them off the Skyway Pier in St Pete's and they're supposed to be delicious. Their nickname is prisoner fish or convict fish because of the stripes.

scrubbedexpat091

Amusing in a way the advice of my wife's mental health worker is to go into debt to survive by getting credit, been there done that, not a viable way to stay above water.

caretaker

I agree with you. I was hardly making any money and ran a Can Tire card up to around $2500. Finally I cut it up and paid it off but it wasn't easy and took a long time. Now I use one credit card, pay it off several times a month so I have a credit rating and pay no interest and I think there's a boomer plan that means no fees. I'm a boomer so always like to have cash but since the pandemic became used to using credit more often, and it does earn a few points. I won't even use a remote ATM from a 3rd party that charges for the withdrawl, not worth whatever it costs imo.

Jerseygirl

Mum’s rule was, if you can’t pay for it, you can’t have it. I have always lived by that rule. I have only one credit card, the full amount is paid automatically from our bank account every month. I say one…I mean Canadian. I have one US and one UK credit card, which is used when I am in the respective countries, then I do not pay any fees. Both those cards are paid in full automatically at the end of the month used. We have never paid a penny interest. Nor do we pay bank fees…or we would move our accounts.

I am with you on the 3rd party ATMs.

spouse of scouse

Yes that's a really bad thing to suggest, in fact I'd say that in this context the 'advice' appears to be a case of professional negligence.