The Australian Financial Review Part 2

This is Part 2.

Part 1 is here.

I thought after my complaint last week, I would have had this problem sorted out with the Fin, but alas, no. Not only have I not received a response, but I bloody well didn't get one delivered AGAIN yesterday.

So of course, I had to send another one off:

Hi folks,

Last Saturday I sent you this complaint. I thought that I'd take a few moments to let you know how it's proceeding.

Normally, it would be you who'd let me know how a complaint such as this is proceeding, but this appears to be a special case. It's a special case because in the week that has gone by since I sent you my first email, it's curious to note the following:

A. I have not received a response from you confirming that you'll, at the very least, look into it; and

B. Yesterday, for the fifth (5th) Saturday in succession, I didn't receive my Saturday edition of The Fin.

So please consider my second complaint. The substance of this complaint is as follows:

1. I still, to date, have not received a response to my original complaint (below) which I emailed to you last Saturday, 9 August 2008.

2. I have a fully paid annual subscription to the Saturday edition of the Fin, which I took out just before the end of the financial year for which I have only received one (1) of the six (6) which I should have received under our agreement.

3. Yesterday, I did not, and I'll repeat that, I did not receive a copy of the aforementioned newspaper delivered to me for the fifth week in succession.

We have complained to the newsagent. They have, yet again, advised me that they will tell their driver. They have, however, once again suggested that I complain to you. I did this last week, and have not yet received a response.

So I wish to advise that I would like, at the very least, a response to this email by close of business Tuesday. I believe that two (2) working days is ample.

In addition, I would like you to confirm that it has been made crystal clear to my local newsagent that my Saturday Fin is to be delivered, every Saturday, as described in my Confirmation and Tax Invoice letter from you dated 8 July 2008.

Finally, I would like to discuss with someone there about either extending my current subscription by five (5) weeks at absolutely no (0) cost to me, or getting a credit or refund for these weeks.

If you have any queries at all about this, please read my initial email below, and then feel free to email me or call me on 04XX XXX XXX.

The ball is in your court, and has been for over a week.

Yours sincerely,

Dikkii.

The clock is now ticking.

Posted for Cameron

Quick email to The Age online.

There is a small button that allows you to send new tips. So I did.

Tip Number 1: Find someone interesting to write Catherine Deveny’s column. Honestly it’s like watching re-runs of Burke’s Back Yard. BORING! Her opinions are about as relevant as a Hawiian tee shirt. Please, for the love of writers everywhere give someone else a go. Someone who is appealing, witty and purhaps semi attractive.

Regards,

Cameron Davidson

The Australian Financial Review

The Fin. They write great stuff about business. But if they can't sort out issues with their distribution network, then the message is clearly not sinking in.

Here's one I just fired off today:

Hi folks,

I have a complaint.

About a little over a month ago, I took out a new subscription to the weekend edition of the Australian Financial Review. It was a subscription for a year.

I got one delivered, and I thought "This is great. No longer do I have to traipse down to the local newsagent to get my Saturday newspapers."

But then, they stopped. No word from anywhere as to why.

The first weekend that this happened, I went to the local newsagent and informed them that I didn't get the Fin that morning. "Thank you for telling us," the girl behind the counter said, "I will inform our driver." I thought that would be the end of it.

Alas no. The following weekend, I received my copy of The Age, but no copy of the Fin was forthcoming. I set off to the newsagent again to inform them. "Thanks for that, and our apologies," said the girl behind the counter, "I will inform our driver."

And surely after two missed Saturdays, I thought that would be the end of that.

I was sadly mistaken. I went to retrieve my newspapers on the following Saturday morning to find that there were, yet again, only two rolled up packages waiting for me. Yes, you guessed it: Once again, only The Age had been delivered, and not the Fin. I had business elsewhere, that day, and so my wife went off to the newsagent to inform them about non-delivery. Once again, she was informed that they would inform their driver, and that would be the end of the issue.

And she was, just like me, misinformed. The next week, when I went down to complain, once again, the girl at the newsagent showed great initiative this time by not discussing the driver. Instead, she suggested that if it happened again, we should write to you.

So it was with great anger that I strode down my driveway in my pyjamas to get my newspaper, only to find that the Fin had, once again, not been delivered.

Folks, this is a disgrace. I want my weekend Fin delivered on Saturday mornings, and the newsagent is clearly not getting the message that I have a valid subscription. And I do not want to be having to go down to the newsagent every Saturday to retrieve a newspaper that should have been delivered that morning.

Please confirm that you will fix this immediately. If I do not get a Fin next week, I will not be visiting the newsagent to complain, I will be visiting you.

And I want this weekend's edition sent to me immediately. The weekend edition is quality reading that doesn't just contain news.

Yours sincerely,

Dikkii.

All I want is the Fin delivered on a Saturday morning. Is this too much to ask?

Harvey Norman complaint written for work collegue

To Whom It May Concern:

Go Harvey Norman Go! The light is green! Hello?? Harvey? Norman? Anyone? If anyone is listening or has the most basic of literary skills, this is the second time I have attempted to contact you in the faint glimmer of hope of a response. So, let me return to start of the situation and then move on to the comedy of errors and deplorable customer service thereafter.
My experience began on the 23rd of May at your Melbourne City outlet. Being armed with what I thought was the knowledge of you being a reputable organisation or franchise, whichever suits; I entered and ordered a couch/sofa/lounge, whatever suits, once again. Upon embarking on this epic, which it has now manifested itself into; I was assured by one of your representatives that the delivery timeframe would be 4-6 weeks. Understandable. Unfortunately, my item had not been delivered at the beginning of July so I decided to contact the store to get an update on the situation and a possible ETA. I was then advised that I would have to be contacted back. Understandable once again. This is the point where the real fun began.
Two days went by and we had not received a call. Great work. As you will have already guessed I was forced to call a second time. This particular instance I managed to speak to a person by the name of Paul who was my original sales person. After enquiring about the ETA of my item, Paul advised that there was a delay from the suppliers end and the delivery time would be another two weeks. Needless to say with the lack of communication and basic customer service at this point I was not a happy camper to say the least but I am a fair person and do understand that problems similar to this do occur from time to time.
However, after spending another four weeks sitting on a mattress in my lounge room where my non existent couch is supposed to reside and no correspondence between myself and your relevant department, my patience and understanding had fallen to a most inauspicious level. Therefore I again, AS THE CUSTOMER, was obliged to contact you find out what is or is not happening with the delivery. And here I was, thinking it was your job to do that. Silly me. This occurrence was on the 30th of July where I was lucky enough, or so I believed at the time, to speak with the sales manager by the name of Lee. May I just stop at this point and enquire what Lee is required to do as a sales manager? If he could have been more unhelpful and there was an event for this at the Beijing Olympics, he would be going home with the gold. If the sales manager is this incompetent and has such woeful customer service skills, it is not startling to discover that this is passed down through his department like an old footy jumper.
The next stage, when you could not even imagine it getting any worse, Paul managed to learn how to use the phone; 1 bonus point for him, and advised me that there was an “error”. The error I refer to was that somehow my couch had been sent to the Sydney warehouse and wouldn’t arrive here for yet another week. Bonus point deducted. And just when you thought I had finished, Paul advised he would contact me on the 5th of August to confirm the delivery date. Here’s a shock, HE DIDN”T!
If this entire debacle is not enough, the only compensation I have been offered is a $50 voucher. This is grossly inadequate and insults my intelligence. To add insult to injury, pardon the cliché, I decided to write a letter of complaint which no one has replied to of course, hence this displeasing jumble of words.
In conclusion, with all the “errors” and blatant lack of necessary customer service you require operating a business such as yours, the $50 voucher and non reply to my complaint is nothing short of a slap in the face. In direct accordance with this fiasco, I will not be doing business with your organisation ever again unless something is done by YOU, not me, as I have done everything else, to rectify this situation with the amount of compensation and customer service it truly deserves. Once again, if you did not get it the first time, which has become a pattern, a $50 voucher and no reply to a complaint, on top of everything else, is cringe worthy. It is quite distasteful, but in any sense, if this is not responded to, I WILL take this matter further.

Yours begrudgingly,

Kelly Simpson.

Posted for Camerom-Another Connex complaint

To whomever,

I wanted to provide some feedback on the pathetic situation I was faced with this morning.

Upon arriving on time at Surrey Hills Station this morning to catch the 7.37 express train I was confronted when walking up the ramp to the platform by about 20 people trying to use the validating machine. I walked past the group only to find that the only other validating machine was not working.

Rejoining the queue the train arrived, and due to the fact that I could not validate my ticket in time to catch the train I missed it and thus got to work late. This is where my issues lie!

1 – Why the hell does a station like Surrey Hills, which is one of the last zone one stations and has a car park that supports about 200 cars only have 2, yes that’s right 2 validating machines?! The same amount as Hawthorn that has a car park that supports 10 cars Surely Connex isn’t doing so badly in revenue that you can’t even afford validating machines so that normal paying customers can do the right thing and validate the tickets they bought!

Perhaps you should invest money in keeping your machines operational rather than investing in millions of dollars in “fare evasion” advertising. Or have you just invested in technology that was outdated 20 years ago. The fact that when purchasing a ticket from a machine the machine a) doesn’t accept a credit card even though there is a button for it on the console b) when buying a ticket with an EFTPOS card the machine takes longer that an espresso machine to make a coffee to spit the ticket out, and c) the machine can’t even work out change of more than $20. It’s absolutely pathetic!

I really wish I had something good happen to me on public transport so I could email positive feedback. The fact that on a daily basis I arrive at work angry and frustrated that such a simple process as catch a train can be made so painful that I would consider just paying the $75 per week to drive in myself and wreck the environment for future generations.

Get back to me as these things are really grating on my happy demeanour.

Cameron Davidson

Herald-Sun Disgrace

Posted to Herald-Sun feedback

I don't think there is a strong enough word I can use that will accurately show my disgust at the Herald-Sun, its editor and anyone else who was involved in Thursday’s issue on the 10/07/08.
According to the Herald-Sun, it would seem, they hold the Olympics as a more important and newsworthy issue than the war in Afghanistan and Jana F#cking Rawlinson above the brave SAS digger who’s name you did not even mention on the front page.
Your headline reads, in case your moral and ethical standards temporarily blinded you: “Jana Out”, “Injury shatters champion’s Beijing Olympic dream”. To top it off, you plastered a picture of her sorry ass face draped in an Australian flag over two thirds of the page with an article underneath stating how heartbroken, numb and shattered she is. Did anyone, and I do mean ANYONE, give one seconds thought as to how the family and friends of Sean McCarthy (he is the digger that got blasted to pieces in case you didn’t hear due to Jana’s whinging) may feel? Did anyone consider they might be heartbroken, shattered and numb at the loss of their loved one?
Clearly that is a rhetorical question as we can all plainly see you did not. To have Jana draped in an aussie flag directly above shadowing a digger who has been KILLED defending our right to freedom and peace, was an even greater testament to your callousness.
Let me be the first to say, what an absolute f#cking disgrace and insult to Sean’s family and friends. Not to mention the rest of us. May I ask whose idea and decision it was? Was it the editor’s? Was it Jana’s? Or a collaboration between the two. Neither of these would surprise me as the all the editor cares about is making himself look good by selling papers and all that Jana cares about is herself.
Good to see our fallen digger made it to page three though along with tiny pictures of the other five brave souls who have given their lives serving this country on the ultimate platform. Unfortunately written words will not accurately portray my sarcasm in case you did not pick it up.
To follow it up, if that was not enough, on page four you continued by giving Jana more space to whinge and cry. First was her blatant arrogance in stating that, and I quote, “If the Olympics had of been last year, I would have been Olympic champion now. But it is not and that is fate. That’s sport”. And to follow, “I’m trying to remain positive and I’m looking beyond the Olympics to other challenges”.
For starters, it truly amazes me how one can assume that they will be world champion without even competing. The sheer arrogance and over confidence of this girl is astounding to say the least not to mention her talking about fate and looking beyond the Olympics to other challenges. How about the fate of Sean McCarthy? And if she wants a challenge, how about going to Afghanistan or Iraq and trying to come back alive? But I guess her sore toe and an accolade for sport is more important than the loss of a life, family member and friend.
In any event, it was a complete slap in the face towards Sean McCarthy, his family and friends and the armed forces who are risking their lives everyday for the sake of a better world. But hey, who cares? Lets just all go out and grab a box of tissues, take them around to poor little Jana’s place, dry her eyes, be a good listener while she whinges, embrace her selfishness and give her toe a massage in the sheer hope that we can get her back on her feet so she wins us aussies a gold medal in four years. I wonder how many more of our diggers will no longer be with us then.

An open letter to artists everywhere (reposted)

I originally posted this at my other blog. Although it wasn't sent to anyone in particular, it qualifies as a complaint.

Enjoy.


Oh man, this could be controversial. I risk being misunderstood, but, well, that's art for you.

Dear artists.

I've been reading avidly in the media about the Bill Henson affair, and realised that I don't like you very much.

Henson, I'm sure that you recall, may be charged with certain crimes for taking nude photos of young children and attempting to profit from them. Some people might call this porn, but Henson, and some of you, appear to think that because Henson did this as art, it's fully justified.

Personally, I'm staggered at the disingenuity of your assertion that Henson's photo's can be defended on the grounds of "art" or "culture", when you had a veritable arsenal of stuff that you could have used to defend this. Freedom of expression is one. Realism is another, given the fact that 13 year old girls are occasionally nude.

So strange as it may seem, you went and chose the one excuse that really shits me about art and artists, and the weakest and least defensible of the whole lot: Anything done in the name of "art" is apparently OK all round as far as you lot are concerned.

You are a pack of complete fucking idiots.

What's more, you are a fraudulent pack of complete fucking idiots. You're quite happy to defend Henson, because he seems to be well connected amongst the tortured artistic milieu. Yet for years, photographers in the porn trade have been ridiculed by you lot, mainly because they lack the airs and graces that define your artistic stereotype, which you only seem too keen to conform to.

And what's more, I'd say that there is someone busted for kiddie porn once every couple of months and sent to gaol in this state alone. When was the last time you defended their art? You disgusting hypocrites.

You defend Henson, because you contend that "art" was his intention. You complete bunch of nob ends.

It's quite possible that art was his intention. But so what? Society's laws and values, sadly in my opinion, aren't based upon intentions, with the exception of some. Like the ones in this case that mean that Henson probably will escape prosecution. Yet I don't see you campaigning to see other laws brought into line.

In France, a trader is awaiting charges based purely on the consequences, not the intentions of his actions. Where were you during this, eh? When did you speak out against his charges?

Thanks to you, we're now likely to get a barrage of kiddie porn thrown at us under the guise of "art". It doesn't take a genius to see that any porn photographer wanting to profit from exploiting nude kiddies will now just throw up a gallery somewhere and stick up their photos which might not only involve kiddies nude, but possibly "doing stuff" as well. Fuck you.

It goes further than that. I heard not long ago about people having their cameras confiscated on Australia's most famous beach, merely because they might have been photographing chicks in bikinis. I didn't hear a single one of you complain about this. Maybe if they'd uttered the word, "art" they would have been able to keep their cameras. You sanctimonious morons.

What, you don't like my "thin edge of the wedge" argument? Well, why the hell are some of you content to trot it out then? I watched the news tonight, and I saw some of you complaining about the potential for increased censorship across the board as a result of this.

Yet none of you complain about existing censorship regarding porn. For that is what Henson's art is.

I have to laugh, whenever I hear some of the lame excuses trotted out by you lot. So the children's parents consented. So what?

Ms Jones, I like your work. You paint nice. And your 15 year old daughter would be considered technically nubile in some cultures, but not here. So why are you defending Henson's work on the parental consent line? Didn't you tell me that you recently told your daughter to stop pleading with you to allow her to have sex with the young brickie next door who she's been flirting with outrageously? Why won't YOU provide consent? Because you can't legally?

Well then, Ms Jones. Why aren't you campaigning to have the laws changed so that you can? After all, you're happy to defend the parental consent line in Henson's case.

"But it's not sex," you say. So what, Ms Jones? You're still being inconsistent.

OK, so I made this scenario up. Let's call it "art" and that'll make it alright. I hate that. Why can't I just be an exaggerating idiot? Is there something wrong with calling something what it is? Why do Henson's nudie shots of 13 year old girls cease to be exactly that when they're called "art"?

Well fuck you, artists.

I hate the fact that you expect government grants and complain about businesses being provided with tax concessions.

I hate the fact that you hate intellectual property laws except where it's your copyright over your work.

I hate where you resort to defending bad taste, mistakes and half-baked concepts as "art", yet criticise fellow artists when they dare to do stuff that's entertaining.

I hate the fact that you sell your stuff in galleries for outrageous prices, yet criticise anyone deemed to have "sold out".

I hate the fact that you're so fluid with your definitions on what "selling out" actually involves.

I hate the way that you insist on being branded as "eccentric" and have the nerve to criticise anyone for pointless pigeonholing.

I hate the tortured artist thing with an absolute passion.

I hate public arts funding, and wish it would stop. I hate the way that our national broadcaster insists on foisting arts programmes on to the rest of us.

I hate the way that you believe that it's your right to profit from a hobby.

I hate most of your work.

I hate myself for liking quite a lot of your work.

I hate the fact that you're all so fucking hypocritical.

I hate the way that because I'm a musician and writer, this makes me one of you and therefore just as hypocritical as the rest of you.

And I hate the word "art". Seriously, it should be fucking well banned. The vast number of the rest of us do not want to hear you claiming that your latest unentertaining installation of questionable merit is good merely because it's "art".

Put jam on it and jam it up your arse.

Dikkii.

PS: I'm not deliberately being ironic - I know that this technically qualifies as art. Fuck you.

Believe it or not, people wonder why I get so frustrated with the term "art". I don't think that this is going to make it any clearer.