I’ve been a loyal Standard Bank Customer for 30 years and twice they have responded with the worst home loan rate, forcing me to choose another bank for my home loan!

I’ve been told numerous times by the Standard Bank call center and my bond originator that I have a very good credit profile and I’m a Titanium customer (meaning I am one of their “valued professionals”).

Why does Standard Bank offer the the lowest rate discount and essentially tell me they don’t care to give me a home loan and make money off me?

Standard Bank have made it very clear that they don’t value 30 years of loyalty to them and would rather I take my business elsewhere.

That’s exactly what I’m going to do!

Axxess Express Uncapped Speed Test	MWEB Uncapped Speed Test

As you can see, the speed differences are astounding.

Axxess was one such company who I signed up with.  For 2 months now I’ve decided to stay put and wait for the dust to settle and any teething problems with the SEACOM cable to be sorted out.

I have a 4MB line. While with Telkom, my speed test was 3.4 MB/s  That’s practically full line speed.

With Axxess Express Uncapped (the R496 deal), my 4MB line has been throttled to useless speeds.  My upload rate is better than my download rate. See the speed test taken this morning.

I contacted them and they said that the uncapped offering is not meant for heavy downloading.  If “heavy downloading” means not being able to download emails while browsing the a webpage then you must be the most idiotic ISP in the country.  It used to be Telkom that were ripping the country off.  They still are, but now we have the smaller companies piggy backing on the IS backbone who have found a way to do the same.  I would rather go back to Telkom and pay more, and get my full line speed back so that I can watch a YouTube video without it buffering.

Whatever you do, DO NOT SIGN UP WITH AXXESS’s UNCAPPED ADSL OFFERING!!!

Its quite common that you’ve worked with somebody before.  You’d be stupid to leave on bad terms or create a reputation for yourself that could damage your chances of employment down the line.

Two incidences are worthy of mention:

Pitch for work on your first day

One high-profile candidate accepted an offer in one of the previous companies I worked for, signed on the dotted line but simply failed to pitch on the starting date.  That same CV is back on my desk this week.

Don’t sue, unless you REALLY have a strong case

The other incidence doesn’t involve me but it certainly could later.  A software developer is suing a very high profile company for discrimination and unfair termination of employment.  He goes into great detail (much of it petty detail)  and wants payment of something like R70 000 000 for compensation of dignity and loss of earnings.

When this CV makes the rounds a few years later, what are the chances of somebody employing him for trying to “topple” a large company on flaky grounds.  (I used the word “topple” because that’s what he says he’ll do on his website.)

If he wins the case I guess he’ll never have to work again.  If he doesn’t win the case, he might never be able to pay the counter lawsuit.

Facebook is a wonderful tool and has helped me get 2nd opinions on potential candidates many times. I have many friends on Facebook, especially in the IT business. So simply typing in the candidates name, tells me which friends we have in common.

Turns out this person only has 24 friends on facebook.   Not many by any standard. Doesn’t say much about how many people want to be his friend.

I’m dying to mention this person’s name but because this is a high profile case, I probably shouldn’t and don’t want to damage the poor soul’s reputation even more.  He could well try to sue the pants of me!

There is a website with full detail of how he was discriminated and even publishes the legal document.  I’ve tried googling the site but it isn’t listed. Maybe he wants it that way.

MTN offers uncapped internet

(article from newstoday.co.za)

The stupidity about their offering is that you get “capped” at 3GB then throttled to 128Kb/s thereafter.  128kb/s is hardly broadband.  We say these speeds 10 years ago when pre-ADSL on ISDN.  You’re still subject to “Fair Usage”.  If this is MTN’s answer to uncapped broadband, its an EPIC FAIL!

MTN launches free Facebook mobile site

(article from newstoday.co.za)

As an MTN customer and regular mobile facebook user, I excitedly goto 0.facebook.com, only to get the following message

“Sorry, 0.facebook.com is only supported by select mobile carriers and is not available from your mobile carrier.”

I’m a contract customer with MTN.  I couldn’t be more part of MTN’s carrier if i tried. 

This and other reasons (expensive competitions that lure the public, mysterious line items on my billing)  is why I can’t wait to end 15 year’s worth of contracting with MTN.  They’re full of lies.

Its a real treat having a newspaper to read when I come home. I’m actually going to miss it, if and when my free newspaper stops being delivered.

The only reasonable explanation is that its a gift from some anonymous person.

Who knows.

The irony is that the weekend that Julius Malema was in Zimbabwe singing the “Kill the Boer” song and getting a massive crowd fired up about reclaiming white owned farm land

Oops.

The ruling party (ANC, backed by Julius Malema) now wants South Africa to remain “calm”. It’s not South Africa you should be worried about. Its the right-wing followers of Eugene Terre-blanche that you should fear. They’ve got an itch that’ needs scratching and you’ve given them enough reason to start a civil war.

Its no surprise there has a been a R2 million bounty on to assisinate Julius Malema.

If Fifa gets the jitters about South Africa’s stability, you can bet they’ll take the hosting of the world cup soccer from South Africa.

I used to be the former and now I’m of the latter.

My wife always wins competitions because she’s always entering them.  So I decided to do the same and start entering competitions, especially the easy “SMS your answer to … “

My luck turned.

I won the exact same game in 3 different competitions in 3 months.    Below is evidence:

The source of the competitions:

1. Facebook (click here for the competition link)
2. Digital Life Magazine
3. Essentials (my wife subscribes to this magazine, honest)

As you may have noticed, the only dodgy detail is that Essentials are giving away games that are 8 years old (the PC game on the far right of the picture).

Makes one think why publishers are flogging Tiger Woods games

Unfortunately, as with most events of this nature, you’ll know who won before watching it.  That’s because you will get bombarded with announcments who the winners are from a number of channels:

• On the radio: That clever radio DJ that you listen to on the way to work who googled it so that he would be able to have some worthy to share on the radio
• On your favorite news website. They usually have it in bold letters somewhere on the home page
• Via the newspaper that you casually browse through while waiting for an appointment.

Yes, okay so there’s a minority of people that arent’ fortunate enought ot have M-NET or have access to the internet, so if the radio DJ doesn’t tell them how are they going to know.  They also don’t have a job that gives them the luxury of a PC to browse the internet.   Lets spoil it for the rest so that the minority get to know the winners.    But think about it, if a minority can’t afford M-NET, a TV, the newspaper or internet they probably don’t give a flying contitnental who the winner is because their needs are different.  (well, so the socio-economic research companies say).

Rant off.

I’ll let you know via comment if I manage to dodge the media and get to watch the oscars without knowing who the winner is on Tuesday.

This weekend I made use of their “Trade-in and Upgrade” special whereby you bring in old hardware (no matter how old or whether its in working condition) and you get a discount on the something similar on promotion.  Its actually a genius idea:  They get to sell old stock, and using the trade-in hardware, give it to charity.  (or so they tell us).

So we took my wife’s old, but trusty Nokia 5300 phone to Incredible Connection (call it Store A for now) , as the trade in for a BlackBerry Curve, getting R900 discount.  The geeky-but-wanna-be-cool salesperson at Store A said there were non left in stock.  Clearly the offer was a very popular.  I asked if he could check which branches had in stock, preferably Store B,, the next most convenient store.  They had 4 in stock. Fantastic!  While he was on the phone to Store B I asked him if he could tell them to keep one, as I would be there in 30 minutes.

• “No!”
• “What? “
• “No sir, they say they can’t keep stock on promotional items”

So we rush to Store B  anyway, because what are the chances that 4 would be sold in the next half hour? So we go to the pretty girl at the cell phone counter. Herewith the dialogue that ensued:

Pretty girl: Um…. no sir, I have none in stock.

Me: But we’ve just come over from Store A telling us you have 4 in stock, 2 black ones and 2 white ones to be exact.

Pretty girl: (Moment of pause) Actually I do have one, but I’m keeping it for a lady that’s coming in tomorrow.

Me: (Immediately irritated). No no no no.  When we phoned this store a moment ago, we were told that you don’t keep units for customers.

Pretty girl: Okay, let me go and check the stock room.

(She’s gone for 5 minutes and then comes back and logs on the computer to check stock).

Pretty girl: So we have a returned unit that’s been opened, but its white.

Me: (Irritated)  I think you’re lying.

Pretty girl: No sir, I’m not

Me: Okay, we might as well take it.

(Pretty girl goes off to get the white BlackBerry)

(Enter shy salesperson boy, who sees I’m standing around)

Shy boy: Hi,  you been helped yet?

Me: Yes, we’re just waiting for the lady to bring a previously returned BlackBerry.  We’re going to trade in this Nokia 5800.

Shy boy: (His eyes light up):  That’s a nice phone.  I tell you what, I have a sealed black one in stock that I’ve been holding for a gentleman that said he forgot his credit card and I’ve been waiting 3 hours for him.  I have  this old Siemens C35 phone, I’ll give you R100 for yours and then you can trade in this one as a trade in.

Me: (Grinning from ear to ear I say to my wife).  I’m not sure what happened now, but we’ll take it.

(Shy boy, goes off and quickly returns with a sealed, black Blackberry)

(Pretty girls returns with the white black berry)

Pretty girl: Here’s the phone sir.

Me: It’s fine we have a sealed one. (Thinking to myself. You lying cow)

That my friends, is more evidence that behind the facade of a seemingly very slick store, are sly staff that don’t have the general public’s interest at heart.  Clearly at Store B, there are no ethics among some of their staff.