Increasingly large supermarket chains are importing substandard food produce from foreign countries, some with quite appalling health and safety practices as frequently reporting in news investigations. Newspapers also frequently report Australian farmers are struggling with their prices consistently being driven down at market due to international competition, in some instances it’s really made me feel Australian food produce in is a slowly dying industry.

I would like a propose a suggestion that I believe could have a number of flow on effects for Australia at large. Increased import taxes on food produce (meat, poultry, fruit, veg, pre-packaged etc..) readily available from within Australia.

I believe majority of Australians being the patriotic country we are willing to pay that little bit extra to support our local economy. But longer term through economies of scales I would anticipate local competition would drive down prices for consumers. The flow on effects I mentioned is bringing a burst of life back in to our agricultural industries, providing opportunities for Australian made products/produce to increase their market share, and by doing so support thousands upon thousands of local jobs.

Another big topic in Queensland is bringing life regional communities and encouraging growth outside our big cities, what better way then to provide more opportunities for people in regional areas?

I’m not even in the agriculture industry I’m just an average Joe working in an office job in Brisbane, but I’d like to start seeing more Australian made quality products competing fairly at my local super market!

Thanks for wasting our money Gillard and Conroy… 705,000 results for a search “hack internet filter”… Why spend billions waving the Child Pornography flag when any police officer will tell you they’re not traded through websites but through technologies the Conroy’s filter can’t filter… Not to mention it’s easy to circumvent, and completely legal too according to Conroy from articles I’ve read.

Would you wast money on building a barbed-wire fence on 1 side of your property? Is it for looks? Is it suppose to gain votes? Maybe it would if you didn’t advertise you couldn’t fully fence the yard so people can walk around it. Or perhaps Conroy and Gillard take us for idiots? “Oh my children are safe now we have a filter, praise the lord, amen…”, “Luckily kids theses days aren’t smart enough to get around that…” (sarcasm)

Surely everyone else has noticed Conroy is looking after too conflicting projects too.. maybe he hasn’t yet? I mean the National Broadband Network (faster internet) and the Internet Filter (slower internet).. maybe after spending billions on both projects we might just come out the same as we started? Just a little be less money in the wallet to spend on more important things.

Do not purchase a Nokia. Do not use a Nokia Service Centre. Do not Pass GO. Don’t even think about collecting your phone…

I recently purchased a brand new Nokia 6280. I was completely satisfied with my purchase for the first day or two. This is the story how this satisfaction turned to deep regret for my purchase, and more recently vowing never to purchase a Nokia again (after being a devout parton, only ever owning Nokia’s).

Since purchasing the phone a little more than a month ago I had begun noticing more and more problems with it. I’ll admit some of those ‘problems’ maybe not be a huge concern to everyone..

A good example which had me in tears (but likely not everyone else) is that the phone doesn’t store Company names in the phone book, only First and Last names. So when I transferred all my contacts to this new phone I had 30 nameless numbers in the phone (which were named in the past)… Yay!

Oh and if you’re an organised person who stores birthdays against your phones contacts… Yep.. It doesn’t store; and lost them as well… Sorry everyone, wish yourself a Happy Birthday this year for me! Mum that includes you… Its June sometimes isn’t it? Hehe!

Of my complaints with the phone, more serve problems included:

• Periodically decides to restart…
• Loses reception, needing to be turned off…
• Only pretends to send some SMS… (No, you can’t tell which!)
• Dictionary randomly decides which new words are worth remembering…
• Automatically calls your parents during sex…

Ok so the last one was made up, but these are only a small selection of the unabridged list I had. I took the phone in for repairs to the Aspley Nokia Service Centre a month ago. The girl ‘checking the phone in’ went to ask the next question about 3 times while I was in the middle of responding to “What is wrong with the phone?”. Hahaha!

Dropping off the phone went well. The girl said their turn around is usually a few days, and empathised with me noting her Nokia 6280 had some of the same problems! Hehe!

Now the Nokia Service Centres policy is that customers need to ring up to check on their phone, they don’t bother to ring you when its fixed. So I called after 3 days to see how things were going. I was told after a check of the computer that…

‘The phone is sitting on a Technicians. They must be working on it, ring back tomorrow.’

So I rang back the following day with high exceptions! But this is were my frustration and loathing of Nokia’s “Service” Centres began. Again I was told after a check of the computer that…

‘The phone is sitting on a Technicians. They must be working on it, ring back tomorrow.’

Before the person could hang up on me, I queried why this was the case, considering I’d be told the same story yesterday. The person put me on hold while they check with someone more competent, and apparently better informed. Upon return I was told…

‘Sorry that’s just what the computer says, apparently its waiting for a part.’

So my next obviously question what, was wrong with it and when should this part arrive?

‘There was a part missing from it off the production line, there is actually 7 other phone sitting there waiting for the same thing. It’s hard to say when we’ll receive the part we’re only a small store. The bigger store always get priority…’

By this point I was a fairly frustrated because:

1. If unquestioned.. How many times was I going to be told that is was being worked on? Rather than were waiting for a part!
2. The phone was brand new and MISSING a component.
3. My phone wasn’t a unique case.
4. Because I went to a outer suburb store I was expected to wait longer for parts!

Remaining polite (perhaps mildly sardonic) as always, I asked whether I should continue ringing on a daily basis or weekly? To my surprise I was told…

“Definitely weekly, we only get deliveries weekly, Tuesdays or Wednesdays, and we’ve had our this week.”

I rang the next week after their delivery and was told it hadn’t come in yet.

I rang the following week and was told the same story…

Now I don’t know about you but I use my phone more frequently than I do my car. When I need a part for my car the repairer finds it somewhere in the country and has it the next day. Now I should also mention I own a grey import vehicle, which was never even sold in this country, and isn’t particularly common. Now maybe its just me, but I can’t seem to justify the time required to find a part for a phone sold in every phone shop in the country!?

This aside I rang the following week (earlier this week) and was to my rejoice told…

‘The part has arrived it should be ready by 2:00 pm tomorrow, but ring just in case.’

So I rang to double check, having made plans to leave earlier to pick it up. But instead was told…

‘I’ve just checked with technician it should be ready by tomorrow at 12:00 pm.’

Which brings us TODAY… I rang to see if it was going to be ready!

‘That phones waiting on a part that hasn’t come in yet’

Calmly I asked her to double check before she hung up, informing her I was told it had arrived. She return a moment later…

‘Sorry its definitely still waiting on a part.’

So my obviously question was.. the same part or is something else broken?

‘Yes the same part. Ring back tomorrow or on Monday.’

Too frustrated to take in her comments I said my goodbyes! However in retrospective… They aren’t open SATURDAY! (tomorrow) and they also won’t have any new parts delivered over the weekend or on Monday!

I made the mistake years ago of continuing to buy Nokia’s after the troublesome 8210 model. This model was notorious for screen fade (slowly you couldn’t see the screen / sporadically it would completely fade)! To paint a picture of how notorious, 4 close friends and I all went to a Nokia Care Centre on the same day all owning the same phone, all wanting this same problem fixed.

Come to think of it, I’ve just realised none of them bought a Nokia again…

I only wish I’d learn my lesson back then as well…

After recently having used my phone a lot more than usually, I thought it was a great to see how much more before I got my bill. So I could stop using the phone as much if I was reaching my plan’s ‘Cap’. Apparently this is only a service offered to Prepaid users… Because, well, if they know how much they’ve used, they’ll buy more credit! If planned users knew mid billing cycle however, well they might cut down their usage, or change to a more economical plan.. Not good for business you see…

So I received my bill… it was $540… this is over and above call cap!! So a total of $800 or there about…

Hence the inspiration for the letter below sent to a number of Government and Regulatory bodies.

Suggestion for increased consumer confidence, in mobile phone plans

There is an ever increasing problem amongst consumers of mobile telecommunication services. More and more frequently I hear of consumers running in to significant financial difficulty to because of mobile phone bills. Although this is not through any direct action of mobile telecommunications providers, it could arguably be considered a result of their inactions.

Within the period of month it is extremely easy for a consumer to spend thousands upon thousands of dollars on mobile phone services. Despite the relative ease of accruing such a large debit in such a short period of time, there are no requirements for service providers to warn or inform consumers within a billing period.

As a consumer I would like to suggest that it be legislated that mobile services providers be required to offer their clients access to an up-to-date report of account use, within a billing period. Or alternatively at a bare minimum a warning mechanism to alert clients of accounts exceeding nominated/specific dollar amounts.

This information and similar warnings are already offered but ONLY to clients with prepaid accounts in both the form or a warning (close to depletion), and access to the information at any point in time. Presumable with the intention of increasing prepaid sales.

Providers of Internet access services already provide services along these line, with both email warnings and online access to usage information. At any point in time an internet access subscriber can check to see how much of their plans ‘included usage’ has been used.

‘Premium’ priced phone services are dominating television advertisement slots, with products such as Ringtones, Wallpapers, Dating services, Competitions, Voting polls etc. Some charging as much as $6 per SMS! With the ability to check a Mobile phone account mid billing cycle, consumers can not clearly see the affect in their ‘pocket’.

Considering how easily consumers can accumulate a quite significant debt, it is irresponsible for service providers not to provide access to this information. Consumers would be shocked if a Credit Cards transaction history and balance was only available at the end of a billing period! Although Credit Cards are significantly different, both can quite easily cause serious financial hardship!

I urge you to assist mobile service consumers around the country!