Oh boy
June 7th 2002 -
Where to begin. Firstly, Anna’s business has been going poorly. An evil competitor has opened up recently – they pretended to be after a job with Anna, got a lot of her business details, then opened up in direct competition nearby by offering specials, especially targetting United Airlines staff (who are Anna’s best customers – indeed, her trip to the US was to visit UA staff friends). So Anna’s just a bit pissed off with that, and has dropped prices to match. Still, they are stealing a lot of the Hilton business by virtue of being basec physically inside the Hilton.
Recently, Anna found out that they’ve been playing hardball – they called the Hilton complaining about Anna’s sign board being out the front, and Anna was forced to remove it for a while. Then she called the Hilton and asked why, and they said for public liability insurance purposes, and she organised a deal with them that would cover any additional cost.
She finally managed to gently fire the unreliable receptionist. This was a bit of an epic saga, as the receptionist is a known emotional manipulator and is certainly capable of doing very unpleasant things in the name of a grudge, but I think Anna’s managed to pull it off OK.
Her new business in Rushcutter’s Bay Hotel isn’t doing very well either. Anna found out through independant contacts that it was doing rather better than she thought, but one of the therapists wasn’t seeing fit to report some of their massages. She can’t fire them either, for reasons too complicated to go into.
The paperwork has overwhelmed her recently, and just when she got on top of it, our home phone was cut off for non-payment of bills. Oops. This is normally one of her bills, but in a fashion rather more typical of me, had gotten a bit disorganised. No big deal, you might think. The phone got cut off on Monday and we paid the bills on Tuesday and asked Optus when they could reconnect us, and how much was it going to cost?
Never, said Optus. Go elsewhere please. We’re sick of you.
Huh?
Get lost, said Optus. You don’t pay your bills.
But… but this is the only time we’ve not-paid the bills. This is the only time we’ve been cut off. Sure, there have been times when the cable TV has also been cut off, but our cable modem bills have always been paid on time. Are you serious? You don’t want our business?
That’s right, said Optus. Bugger off. We can’t tolerate slackers.
Oh, we said, rather shocked. OK. How about Andrew takes over the account? He’s never been late for bills. Would that be OK?
Sure, said Optus. We can connect you up in five working days. Just give us a couple of details so that we can run a credit check.
Here you go. Visa card details. No worries there, I’ve always paid those bills on time. Previous address, should be fine. Driver’s licence, does it matter that I haven’t updated the address on it yet? Good, no worries. Employer? I’m unemployed.
Credit check declined. You also, can bugger off.
I’m sorry? Credit check declined? Why?
Well you’ll have to ask them that. We outsource our credit checking. They’ll call you tomorrow. What number can they call you on?
And today was the day they were supposed to call to explain why my credit check was declined, but they didn’t bother. So at about 3:00pm we called up Telstra and got them to come in. They can connect everything up in two working days. As far as I know, my credit check is fine. So we’ll be back and with a working phone again next Wednesday, though with a new phone number – 9558 8198 (same last four digits as before).