Monthly Archives: May 2011

Gas Supply Charge

Dear Sir/Madam,

I am writing to you over the concern that I have over the gas supply charge each bill that we receive.

We only use gas for hot water and stove top cooking, so our usage averages about $30.00 for a quarter. Our gas supply charge is an additional $40.00 for this period, which I find to be completely disproportionate to our actual gas usage.

Is there anything that can be done about this charge? I can’t help but feel that a fairer system would be for the supply charge be perhaps calculated at a percentage of the usage, rather than the flat rate.

Yours sincerely,

J.Cuthbert

Continue reading Gas Supply Charge

On AGL’s Door to Door Salesman…

Dear Sir/Madam,

Please choose your door-to-door salesmen more carefully.

A fellow came to my house this afternoon, and I was generally under the impression was that he was trying to trick or confuse me into getting electricity with you.

He did this by firstly telling me that electricity had been privatised and that I could now have 10% off my bill, and that GST would now be removed. Wrong AND confusing!

He then asked if I had sent in the application from my last bill to get 10% off my bill. I explained that I paid via direct debit, so didn´t actually have a last bill.

He then tried to tell me that even though AGL would be giving me the discount, I would stay with Energy Australia. He continued to say that AGL had taken over the distribution of electricity in the area, and that this is how it would be possible for me to get 10% off even if I stayed with my current retailer.

After a while, I managed to get him to admit that he was simply trying to get me to swap over to AGL from my current energy provider, and that I would get a 10% discount off my first bill if I did.

I have a gas account with you already, but will consider moving it to another company if you send someone like this to pester me at home again.

Yours etcetera,

J. Cuthbert

Unending spam from LastMinute

LastMinute does not care for their customers on spam matters. Make sure you don’t give them your email address unless you are willing to receive their “communications” ad vitam eternam

To: "lastminute.com" <[email protected]>, [email protected]
Subject: Re: 50% off restaurants | 50% off theatre | 50% off spa | More

Hello,

Please stop spamming me.

I have received half a dozen of messages similar to the ones below recently, for all of which
I’ve followed the unsubscribe link and was enventually greeted by a
message of the “You have been successfully unsubscribed” type. Or not.

Not to mention that, whenever I gave you this email address, I carefully
opted *out* of any promotional communication from you, as I always do.

Please unsubscribe *immediately* my address <XXX>
from *all* your databases, as I don’t trust you to use it “reasonnably.”

Also, let me remind you that the standard for electronic mail is *not* HTML, but plain text. You are therefore cutting yourself from a portion of your possible customers by not providing the content appropriately. I doubt they’d bother following that single link anyway, so it may prove to be a time saver for them…

On Fri, May 06, 2011 at 11:20:06AM -0000, lastminute.com wrote:
> This is an HTML email which could not be displayed by your email client. To display it in a web browser, please click here:
> [url=http://XXX]http://XXX[/url]

Nobody replied nor acted on this complaint. Same for the next two or three others I sent. I eventually got something looking like a satisfactory answer by writing to their infrastructure provider.

Continue reading Unending spam from LastMinute

Easy Flowers from easyflowers.com.au – Not quite

Dear Sir/Madam,

RE: Sale #: XXXXXX

I am writing to complain about your service.

I simply ordered some flowers (The Jospehine bunch) to be delivered to my mother on Mothers Day on Wednesday 4th May.

Thursday: I received a call from your customer service people to say that the florists were not able to deliver on Sunday, and that the flowers would have to be delivered on Friday or Saturday. Though annoyed that the flowers would not be delivered to my mother on Sunday, I agreed for Saturday on the proviso that the delivery fee be refunded, as I had paid extra to have the flowers delivered on Sunday. The fellow that I spoke to seemed a bit cavalier about the refund, but nonetheless assured me that the delivery fee would be refunded.

Later that day, I received a call from my mother, thanking me profusely for the flowers! The florist had rung her and asked her if she could deliver the flowers on the Friday – thus spoiling the surprise and moving the delivery day forward to Friday.

Friday: My mother rang me again to thank me for the nice white flowers. White. The flowers that I ordered were yellow and pink.

Please do something about this – my order has been completely stuffed up.

Yours etcetera,

J.Cuthbert

Continue reading Easy Flowers from easyflowers.com.au – Not quite