farmdoc's blog post number 410

Nowadays Sweetheart Vivienne and I don’t argue much. But a perpetual source of friction is that when I shop in the supermarket I write down the price of each item I buy, and after the checkout I compare the docket prices with my shopping list prices. I often find differences. But I only report those when I’m overcharged. Which happens much more frequently than undercharging. Whereas random chance suggests overcharging and undercharging should happen equally. So the die’s loaded in the supermarket’s favour. No surprise there. And the same with Telstra. The billing errors I find are almost all in its favour – including a recent one of a few hundred dollars. Last Monday Telstra announced it’s ending the pip tones that for the last 40 years have been heard at the start of all long distance calls. It’s labelled its phase-out part of the transformation process that’s turning Telstra into ‘a world leading media communications company’. And it said ‘the removal of STD pip tones will give fixed line users a consistent experience’. What horse shit. It sounds like corporate types are incapable of honesty when spin’s an option. The upshot, of course, is that no more pip tones encourages people to talk for longer without remembering they’re on a long distance call. Ho hum.