Sutori - dbarefoot's Recent Stories

Air Miles, Aeroplan and the Myth of Free Flights

Wed, 07 Mar 2007 14:21:06 -0800

We’re planning a bunch of flights in the month of April. We’re departing Canada on April 18, and making several stops before settling into Malta on or about May 1.

My wife Julie has enough Aeroplan points to fly free, round trip, to Europe. I don’t have quite enough. We booked some of our flights this morning, and there was a ridiculous rigmarole to ensure that our seats were next to each other.

She booked on Aeroplan, I simultaneously booked on Air Canada, and then we immediately called Aeroplan to get her seat moved next to mine. That’s the prescribed strategy, and it’s absurd.

But that’s not really the subject of this post. My flight on Air Canada was about CAN $750. That’s quite a good price, in my experience. Julie’s ‘free’ flight, turned out to be a little over CAN $300. That’s three hundred bucks worth of fees and, I don’t know, ‘plane oxygen usage’ surcharges. $300 is, as you know, a lot more than free. I felt more than a little screwed.

I think we can all agree. Unless you can afford the glorious first class, air travel blows.

In Praise of the iSkin

Wed, 27 Sep 2006 10:40:46 -0700

I'm very happy with the iSkin I bought for my new Nano. I don't care about whether my iPod gets scratches or dings (as this photo of my old device clearly indicates). I just wanted a belt clip to use while exercising, and this was the only Nano-compatible accessory the store had.

The iSkin is essentially a little condom for your iPod. It's a rubber sheath that you wedge your device into (heh). It comes complete with a little plastic window that covers your iPod screen.

The belt clip works very well, and the condom would certainly protect my iPod from anything short of a knife fight. However, I discovered one great side effect. One of my frustrations with my old iPod was that I was constantly turning the lock switch on and off, to stop myself from erroneously pressing buttons or the click wheel. The iSkin has the same effect, as you need to exert more pressure to operate the iPod's controls. Now the lock switch always stays in the 'unlocked' position.

The one downside of the iSkin is that my condomed iPod won't fit into its dock anymore.

VanCity, Why Do You Spite Me So?

Wed, 27 Sep 2006 10:36:15 -0700

A few months ago, we moved our business accounts over from the Royal Bank to VanCity. We had lousy customer service from the Royal, and had received several recommendations for VanCity. Also, they've got all kinds of feel-good projects on the go, and made me sign something that said I wouldn't use their business banking services to sell plutonium. What more could you ask for?

In our initial meeting with VanCity, we clearly articulated a particular requirement we had regarding international wire transfers. We receive three to five of these each month. We wanted to be notified with email or snail mail describing the particular details of each transaction. This had been one of many pain points at the Royal Bank, but the Royal eventually agreed to send us a notification in the mail each time a transfer came in.

We were very specific about this requirement, and our 'Financial Services Officer' at VanCity confirmed that they would be able to replicate this process.

The VanCity representative made an error. As it turns out, VanCity can only offer this service at a rate of $25 per transaction. That works out to about $1000 a year in fees. Nice.

They only notified us of this error after we had:

Opened an account with them
Advised our clients of our new banking details
Banked with them for a few months
Received several wire transfers

Everybody makes mistakes. This mistake, unfortunately, will force us to change banks yet again and to suffer all the pain that entails. This mistake comes in the first three months of banking with an institution that prides itself on customer service. This mistake is the reason I pay service fees. So that mistakes like this don't happen.

In short, VanCity screwed up once, but they screwed up big time. To their credit, they did apologize profusely and reverse all the service fees we incurred during our brief time with them.