Greedy Thieving Little People

Don't they bug you?

I have one real, true, complete and utter loathing - dishonesty.
No, not the sort of dishonesty that involves massaging the truth when someone is silly enough to ask "does my bum look big in this?".

I mean the sort of dishonesty that involves deliberately and knowingly withholding information in order to suppress the truth (and generally therefore not getting caught in something legally, morally or ethically dodgy), lying outright, taking things which they know belong to other people, taking the view that insurance companies, businesses and large corporations are there to be ripped off because [fill in any explanation excuse you like].

I'm not big on the concept of adding polls to blog posts, but if you have the time, I'd like to know if I'm living in a little world of my own on this topic.  Here's what drew this bleat out of me - see what you think and then vote.

Someone is travelling overseas on work for their company.  They are given cash in the local currency for those occasions where the Visa and Mastercards of this world are not accepted.  It is NOT an allowance - as meals can be taken in hotels, restaurants, etc where they can be happily charged to the company credit card and all other costs are covered pre-travel or by the business this individual is visiting.
Said individual has travelled overseas before and is "spotty" with returning with receipts, but generally manages to do so for most of the cash and where he has fallen short previously, it has been explained in the past that he needs to be more proactive.
(For those that need to know - we require receipts for spending to present to our IRD, should they ask us.)
This trip is to a "third world" country - but (having been there ourselves) is fairly tourist and business tourist-oriented, so there has never been any problems gaining receipts as required.
Our individual comes back and is asked for his receipts and excess cash.  Next to no receipts or cash is received.  His explanation is that he "couldn't get receipts" from certain types of vendors.  So what has happened to about NZ$500, then?

On top of this, the individual would like to claim for his lost sunglasses and duty free that he managed to leave in the taxi on the way to his final accommodation.  Work-paid-for insurance.

So, here is the poll...

[polldaddy poll=1763819]

I know it's a bit of fluff - and my views are naturally coloured by previous dealings with this individual - but I'd still like to know if I'm just a raving lunatic or have at least a bit of a right to be persisted-ed off with this sort of behaviour.

---

I promise non-bleating transmissions from the Oh Waily household will resume shortly.  I have a few drafts that require a bit more work and they will be with you shortly.

A Builder's Life

I have been struggling with my conscience and my apathy over this blog entry.
On the one hand, I know that I will feel hopeless if I don't commit something to *paper*.  On the other hand I am not sure whether writing this will do anyone any good, except perhaps by way of letting me blow off steam.  My issue is: am I right to bleat about this for my own satisfaction?

So here it is, judge for yourselves...

If you have been here for a little while you will be aware that the Oh Waily family has had substantial renovations carried out on their house.  You can read all about this if you do a search (see the sidebar) for my posts on Renovations.

Well, the saga continues.  As of writing we don't have our code compliance certificate from the council and since May have been having what amounts to a stressful and angry-making experience with our builder.
So angry, you might notice, that I have finally sat down to write about it.
Perhaps we should have seen it all coming.  Then again, I have never professed to being clairvoyant.
My first bleat was back in November, and that should have begun the alarm bells.  That bleat involved a lack of customer service skills on the part of our builder, a theme which he has managed to master in spades.
Following on from the previous aborted attempts to move back in to the house we had this bleat about customer service to move on to.  Then of course there was the curtain debacle.

I know you are all sitting reading this and thinking to yourselves - how did they ever make it to this advanced age while being patently naive?!

So, what could we possibly move on to that I haven't shared before now?

Well, the principal work on the building finished just before Christmas.  Naturally there were things that slid through and trailed along.  But, I'd say that most things were complete by mid-January.  Then it goes quiet.
Not a peep from the builder. Nothing.  No request for final payment - nada.
While we sit and think this is unusual for a businessman, we also don't have a particularly high estimate of this person's business skills.  We figure that he's probably getting the code compliance stuff sorted and will be in touch in due course with a final bill of around $20,000 - $25,000.

Now we hit the nitty and the gritty.  Mid-to-late May and we get a massive envelope in the post.  It contains the remaining invoices from the builder.  Somehow he has managed to expand, what according to his last open-listed items was work totalling what we expected, to a set of invoices in the $50,000 range.

Even now I still feel sick thinking about it.  I feel sick and disgusted.  I feel taken advantage of, treated abominably and generally really p*ssed off with what is clearly an individual who feels that he has every right to take charge of my bank account for his own benefit.
It is also funny to note that this set of invoices is the only one that came with a legal note that in my opinion amounted to attempted intimidation (pay up or else).  Do you think that someone else knew that they were in a morally corrupt position of attempting to extract money that they neither informed us about, nor in any way signalled the possibility of.  Sadly these costs should have been indicated to us prior to the building process starting, as they were a council requirement, but not one word passed the builder's mouth to us on the subject of cost blow-outs.  Oh, and he also didn't bother to mention that the changes also involved registering an encumbrance on our title - with the attendant ongoing costs that this means to us.

We took legal advice, as you would in these sorts of instances.  In the end we decided that despite feeling we had a better than 50/50 chance of convincing an arbitrator of our view on this matter, that it was our sanity and stress levels that were more important than prolonging the unnecessary stress.  We came to an agreement on what we would and would not pay with the builder.

I cannot stress how unpleasant this last experience has been.  In my heart I feel that perhaps we should have pushed on and taken the legal road.  But then this is countered by my experience of watching others go through mediation, arbitration and finally a court case with a builder.  It is fair to say that the law does not necessarily take the common sense view of situations and while you may feel that your case is strong, the law does not always come down on your side.  It is almost a case of gambling on a roulette wheel - will they view the situation in my favour, or not?  Or in the case of builders, avoiding responsibility for actions that are clearly theirs and theirs alone.

***

Ms Oh Waily's lessons:

1. Don't employ builders if you can possibly avoid it. (Lots of people have agreed with me on this.)


2. Make sure that you remove the option for provisional sums (it is an industry standard to have them, I believe) and or have a specific stated maximum increase that you will pay before re-quoting is needed.


3. Make sure that any changes you agree to are done in writing, with a request for quoting prior to work being carried out. (If your builder is twitchy about the time this adds to his job - drop him, he will be organisationally cr*p, just like ours was.)


4. Make sure that you have the time and inclination, if your building project is as big as ours was, to be your own project manager.  Let the builder do his thing - but you need to be watching his back like a hawk - and you need to be on his case each and every day.


5. Keep a diary of the work.  Take notes of all meetings and their outcomes or actions to be taken.  Copy them and send them to the builder. (I know, I didn't think I needed to do his job for him.  Turns out I was wrong.)

I think that covers most of it.

If you live in NZ, and are considering building anything of any size, I am happy to give a personal review and recommendation regarding builders - especially those who belong to a franchise where the franchise owner is happy to take the word of their franchisee rather than visit and investigate the complaints of their ultimate customer.  Hmm.  I don't like being vindictive - but in this instance, I can truly and honestly say that I hope our builder does not survive the economic downturn.  The pain and aggravation he has caused our family is a disgrace, simply because he could not organise and communicate the important financial information that every client (in my work experience) expects from their service supplier.  Others who do not share our fortunate situation and flexibility with regards to work and financing could be left bankrupt by this sort of behaviour.

Here ends the Bleat!

NaBloPoMo is blown

It is self-explanatory really.
I didn't manage it. I tried, really I did, but I just couldn't fight the forces of darkness. i.e. the Builders

Since my last entry I have had four different abodes, only one of which gave me easy access to the internet. One didn't even bother to offer it, for goodness sakes!

Can I have a good moan again? Please? Can I? Huh? Huh? Huh?

Okay, since the last renovation update and bleat combination things have been happening. Not happy things I must warn you. Things to do with paint. Things to do with fumes and a three month old baby. Things to do with people who are barely one step above Neanderthal with regards to using that large thing balanced precariously on top of their shoulders.

If I said to you...

Let me know when it will be okay to move in. I won't tell you when we want to move in again. I want you to tell me when it will be in a fit state for us to move in, so call me and let me know, okay?

Would your reply have been...

I'll check with the painters and get back to you.

Then later that day call and say...

Next Monday will be fine.

Then, should your painter be a simpleton and incompetent with time and work attendance, you wouldn't bother to telephone me back and say...

Actually the painter has stuffed up and won't be finished until the weekend before the day I said would be okay to move in. That means you really ought to stay out until the following week.

Meaning, of course, that we drive up from Tauranga expecting to be able to move in on the Tuesday. (We're not stupid you know. If they say Monday, they mean they'll be doing "last minute things" on Monday.)

So we drive up on Sunday intending to stay overnight in abode choice number one until Tuesday (Mr O needs to be in Auckland for work on Monday). So far, so good. Mr O arranges for assistance to move our things in on Tuesday and two friends offer assistance which is gratefully accepted. On Sunday night we take a sneak peek at the place and notice the overwhelming smell of paint fumes. Enamel, you know. For the doors and trims. Standard Operating Practice. The builder is still onsite, which is reassuring. Apparently the painter took until the Sunday (and as it turned out, the Monday) to complete the paint job. The builder says he has spoken with the painter, who tells him that the house will be fine after a couple of days airing.

Okay we say. We'll see what things are like on Tuesday and then decide what to do. In the meantime we retire to our temporary abode and reflect on the house and information provided. Tuesday rolls around, and we decide that perhaps we should check with the paint manufacturer as the scent of enamel has not really faded away to nothing in two days of airing. Mrs O phones, is put through to customer services who put her through to the Help Desk who puts her through to the company chemist. Who then says that you really want to leave it seven days "just to be safe", although it might be okay sooner. Right. Seven days. That would be next weekend, then. Options are take it day-by-day, or just up sticks and head back to Tauranga. Desperation sets in. This is our third attempt to move back into the house. There is no way we will head back to Tauranga (even if it kills us), we will play it day-by-day. Each day is more excruciating than the last. We are unable to extend our stay at the first accomodation of choice - they have no rooms. We head to second abode of choice, but they only have room for a night. Move just up the road with the real hope of moving in the next day. Hopes are dashed by the scent of paint. Give up the day-by-day fight and opt to stay in abode number 4 for the next two days and move in on the weekend - seven days after the supposed final coat of paint. (Touch-ups not included.)

Well done you've made it this far. Welcome to our past week experience.

Renovation - IV

Today we were going to move back into the body of our house.

The key word in that sentence is "were".
Upon arriving home after the two and a half hour car journey with Mr O's step-father and my father, Mr O is not amused to find that the body of the house is not in a fit state to move furniture in, let alone us and a baby.
The painting was not completed, the wardrobes had not been fitted out, the bathroom wasn't finished, one of the light fittings hadn't been moved, some of the workmanship left a bit to be desired and the place was generally a dusty great mess.

This was not the state of affairs we were expecting, and it turns out to have been a good decision not to have gone up with the baby today, but to have enlisted family assistance with furniture moving instead. Otherwise I would have been a very, very cranky client. As it was I was less than impressed with the huge waste of everyone's time today.

The builder was supposed to have everything ready for us to move in last weekend, but that turned out to be impossible due to the hardening time for the re-polished floors. Today is 6 days after the last coat was applied, with day 7 being the final curing day. We spoke with the builder about moving in today when we saw him in Auckland last Thursday and he didn't say a word about things being unlikely to be finished.

We agreed to move out for a couple of weeks, maybe three to allow the builders full and unfettered access to the interior of the house. In return for this we expected the interior part of the work to be shortened by a week or slightly more. It has now been six weeks. I want to return to my own home. I do not wish to continue to be a house guest with my parents. I think they have been extremely generous and understanding, and insist that we haven't worn out our welcome. However, six weeks is over my limit of friendly stays, and it is well past time that we were out of their hair.

For anyone out there who works in customer service please take heed of the following advice:

Don't just say "Yes" to every request the customer makes. It really p*sses us off when what you say doesn't match what you do. Only say "Yes" if you know that it is a 100% guarantee that it will be a "Yes". And, if you discover that it isn't going to be a "Yes", then for the sake of everyone's time and efforts, make a simple telephone call and say the "Yes" has turned into a "No" because of [insert reason]. Otherwise your "Yes" should remain a "Yes", even if you have to break your own back to ensure it is. That is the essence of good customer service.

That, unfortunately, is my bleat for today.

Oh, and the builder is suggesting that all these little bits and pieces will be completed by the end of the weekend, so we will be 100% able to move in on Monday.

Hah. I'll believe that when I see it with my own two eyes.

The Spam Has Overtaken Me

Hello from Papamoa.

I was just dropping in briefly this morning to check on things and guess what I see on my statistics page?

Akismet is outdoing my visitor numbers !!
I'm in two minds about this.

• Should I be depressed about the visitor numbers

Or

• Should I be indignant about the amount of spam comment attempts.

Choices, choices.

I think I will put a foot in the anti-spam camp and say that I am pretty indignant about the amount of wasted time and bandwith these people use up. And I am also very happy to have Akismet doing all of the hard work for me. I can't imagine how much effort it must take to filter all this rubbish out if you are running your own blog and spam filtering.

Anyway, that's my bleat for the month. :)

P.S. The renovations are going full steam ahead. Walls are missing, old fireplaces exposed and then removed, framing for the new walls erected, french doors removed and in the biggest single change so far the entire kitchen, bathroom and laundry lean-to has been officially knocked down. We took some random (and probably dodgy) photographs before leaving the building last Wednesday, so once we are home and broadband happy I will see what they are like and maybe share a before, during and after series with you all.

Good Manners/Bad Manners

Oh boy, this is a doozy of a topic for me at the moment.

The manners to which I am referring relate specifically to Family History research, but could just as easily apply to many other hobbies involving lots of personal time and research.

I have recently become a victim of an ill-mannered, and thoughtless individual.
At least, I hope that is the type of individual he is. Otherwise I might have to use words like mercenary, selfish, self-centred and any other word applicable to a male that would involve me using @#!*% symbols in order to keep my blog entries family friendly.

Here's the story of this Bleat!

I belong to a pay-to-join genealogy website.
The premise of the website is that you enter your data, as does everyone else, and then they have a search function that looks for individuals with the same names and dates in other people's trees. Very efficient it is too.
On top of that, your communication with other members is through the website so your email and information is secure. This is also nice.
Once you establish with another person that you do have a common ancestor, through the site's mailing system, it is up to you to allow your correspondant to see your tree or not. So here is where the real Bleat! begins.

I've been accumulating research on my family for 20+ years now. And I am most happy to share that with family members, both close and distant.
I'm such a trusting soul. I'm also somewhat of a fool. After hearing other people's tales, it still didn't really strike me as likely to happen to me.
But now it has. **

I've had my 20+ years of research "harvested" from my online tree by someone who told me that he was "related by marriage" to a shared distant ancestor. Thinking no ill of the man, even though the correspondance was extremely basic, followed by a brief "can I see your tree?", I consented believing him to be a distant cousin. I asked for the same privilege in return, which was granted. I had a brief look and wasn't clear on how we actually related, but life got busy just about then and I didn't have the time to sit peering through this man's tree. I also didn't think that it was a big issue to leave my tree open to him.

So now, some months later, I have time to pursue things again and find that he pops up on my Matches list with an individual who might be useful in identifying a missing relative. I do a quick check, and his tree is closed to me unlike mine which is still open. So I close my tree, on the back of a bad gut feeling.
Then I send off an email to this man with a simple question - "I have someone with the same name, born in the same year, can you please tell me who your individual's parents are?" (So I can eliminate him quickly, before asking about finer detail and wasting anyone's time.)
The response received? "Can you please open your tree?"

Uh, no.

I'm now highly suspicious, but decide to give our man a few days to send the really short email that this sort of question normally elicits from members of this site..." X Smith and Y Jones".

About a week has passed, and I'm thinking nothing of it. So he's not the usual friendly type that you meet when doing genealogy, I can live with that. Each to their own.
Then a couple of days ago the site's regular "Matches" email arrives and who should pop up with another 5 matches with my tree? You guessed it. Mr Unfriendly.

What has disturbed me, and continues to do so as I work my way through this, is that the 5 names on the list are: Me, my mother, my father and two of my grandparents.
Once I pulled my jaw back up off the floor I took a look at our full matches list and find that we now have 71 matches in common, where a few months ago we had maybe 2.

Hmmm. Manners? What manners?
Permission? What permission?
Privacy? What privacy?
A specific clause on this site indicates that all living relatives must have given you permission to list them (which I have received for my use). This guy wouldn't know me or my family to fall over on the street. He has even listed John, and half of my paternal family tree which has no bearing on the supposed shared ancestor, who is on my maternal side!

[Parental advisory notice: expletives unsuitable, though probably used regularly by your children, follow.]

Can you say "outraged"? Can you say "seriously pissed off"?
Can you say "needs a bloody good slap up side of the head"?
Can you say "bloody bastard stole my information and has reproduced it in a manner which would lead others to believe that it is his hard work and time that generated it"?
Can you say "no reply to my 'why am I listed on your tree along with other close members of my family? email' "?
Can you say "tosser" ?

Can you say...."ouch, Lynn is seriously angry, back slowly away towards the door without losing eye contact and no one will get hurt"?

Yup. Not a happy camper sitting writing this. Not at all.
He's getting one more day to give me some sort of answer and then I'm calling in the abuse cops (site admin).

Just for the record, I've met a number of distant relatives here and a couple of closer ones. Not one of them, although they have had completely open access to my tree for months, has reproduced my information on their online trees.
The manners involved here are not just copyright ones, ie giving credit where credit is due, and not giving the impression that information displayed is your own, but also of common courtesy like politely asking if it is okay to reproduce the information before doing so. And verifying what the supplier of information is happy for you to use it for, and where it will be used.
All information that I have collected from cousins over the years are clearly documented in my notes, and sources are listed in all the reports my software generates. If I find new family members, I introduce them to my other distant cousins too. See my sidebar for two such groups.

But apparently for some individuals in our societies, the "common courtesies" are not "common" to them.

But you know what? I'm a great believer in karma, and it's slightly less "multi-lifed" version of "what goes around, comes around."
Mr Unfriendly will no doubt get his comeuppance in due course.

Here ends the Bleat!

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
**(See my previous work-based Bleat! about the "It won't happen to me" attitude. They do say pride comes before a fall, after all.)

Good In-Flight Manners

Hello from Hong Kong.

Okay, so I am going to start my travelogue blogging with a bit of a bleat. 
You head to the airport all full of vim and vigour, and happily wait through the three hours before departure that international flights now seem to require for security purposes.  You even happily wait for your row number to be called before crowding into the boarding queue.  It's a nice steady walk down the aisle of the aircraft to your seat, which if you can count up to 50-something and read A through J, is quickly and easily spotted.

So far, so good. 

If you have been a good little camper and followed the whole, simple process then there is a good chance that your flight will start off really well.  What comes next is totally out of your control.  Just like the old saying

You can choose your friends, but you can't choose your family.

Only now it's not YOUR family that you need to look out for.  Unless you are travelling en masse with every extended family member you have, you will be surrounded by strangers.  Eww yuck.  Okay, I'm not a socio-phobe (is that a real word?).  What I am is a manners freak, especially in confined spaces.  You know.  Like aircraft.

What I don't want to suffer from on an aircraft that will be my home for the best part of twelve hours is a small, annoying, but old enough to have better manners child kicking the back of my seat.  Even in a rhythmic, get used to it, it'll be soothing you to sleep soon kind of way.  Neither do I want someone who thinks that their seat needs to be as horizontal as possible as soon as possible and intends to keep it that way, food service included.  In the same vein are people who recline their seat without checking if you are writing or still have a glass of drink on your tray table.

Crying babies on the other hand - not a problem. Who can blame them?  After all they have no idea why it feels like their brain is going to explode on takeoff. 

So, those are my pet peeves.  

Just for the record, on the flight to Singapore I had a kicker for the first fifteen or so minutes until I peered through the gap with a specially selected scowl after which the kicking ceased.  And in the last food service of the flight was treated to the delights of a bouncy teenager having a hilarious giggle-fest with her twin sister.  The hilarity not being my problem so much as my mobile glass of water.  But like they say, you learn your behaviour from your parents.  At one point in the flight I saw her father repeatedly push back upright the seat directly in front of him as it's occupant tried to move to a sleeping position.  Apparently it was okay for him to lean his seat back into my next-door neighbour, but not for the person in front of him to have the same privilege.  He was long of leg, I'll give you that. But he had the option of sitting on an aisle seat instead of his wife - and he chose not too.  That was a piece of the most blatant in-flight bad manners I have ever seen.

On behalf of all reasonable air travellers, I humbly request that you take your best manners with you as carry-on when you board your aircraft, don't check them into the hold with your other baggage!

Bleat !

No, make that rant !
Umm, no. Make that a "public service announcement", since I did say that I wouldn't rant in this blog.

Okay. For those of you who don't know - my business is Marine Safety. For those non-NZers, or those away from home, we have had yet another tragic loss of life at sea. The NZ Herald has many articles on this latest event, but the first paragraph of this one is the key for me.

For the past three years John and I have been paying good money to display our products at boat shows around New Zealand. These products include lifejackets and liferafts. I could do you a good sales pitch for why you should buy our products, but that isn't the point I want to make here.

In the first year we attended boat shows we turned up to all of them. By the end of the long and weary-making first one we discovered some very disturbing facts about the NZ boating public. These "quirks" that we discovered have since reappeared at all of the subsequent shows and have been rehashed in many variations. Here are the core issues:

1. They know NOTHING about their safety gear !


2. They THINK they know EVERYTHING about their safety gear !


3. They don't think they will ever need to use it ("It won't happen to me; my boat is unsinkable, etc.") !


4. They had no idea what they were buying when they bought it, but it must be good because they bought it and the salesman was friendly and told them it was perfect for all forms of boating !


5. They think ALL products give them the same result !


6. They would rather spend that huge amount of money for a real lifejacket for their kids on some new fishing kit for themselves ! (Sarcasm is all mine)

So. You can tell that these little foibles really tick me off. Those poor folk on this most recent vessel were apparently not wearing any lifesaving gear, despite the rough conditions. One of the most common reasons given to us for not wearing lifejackets on board is the discomfort. One of the things we are constantly telling people is that in an emergency the ONLY lifejacket that is any good is the one you are wearing ! So you need to spend maybe NZ$50 to NZ$100 more on a lifejacket that you can do this with, so what ?! What is your life actually worth to you?
Here's that paragraph again:

" Two big waves struck so suddenly and violently that no one caught in the Foveaux Strait trawler tragedy had a chance to react."

Apparently Kiwis are just not getting the idea. Accidents and emergencies are not patient, wait for you to get yourself organised, events. They are often nasty, violent and unnecessarily tragic. And they certainly don't wait for you to "catch up" with the situation.

Please, please, please.

If you own a boat, know someone who does, get them to invest in good safety gear - not the cheap and nasty stuff that they won't use or wear ALL of the time. The ONLY time you want to use these things is when your life depends on it. That's not the time when you can take your $20 Warehouse foam jackets back and get a refund ! Don't skimp - good quality equipment, taken care of, will last you nearly your entire life on the water. And will possibly save your life on the water one day.

Don't buy from the "quick-sale" merchant. If they are offering you a cheap deal you do want to be asking yourself why. There are very few industries where "you get what you pay for", and this is one of them. Read up, research, ask awkward questions of the person selling the product. If they don't know an answer, or can't get you an answer, then don't buy from them. They don't know enough for you to give your life into their hands. Unfortunately in this country (NZ) there are some very big names with questionable ethics, so don't always think that 'big name' equals 'your best interests at heart'. There is a fair chance that the best interest for them is their bottom line.

Buy from someone who wants to teach you everything they know about their equipment, from using it to how to care for it. If they send you away to try other people's products like we do, it means they are serious about you finding the absolutely right product for you to wear. That means you will have probably found someone who actually gives a damn about your life and not only about their bottom line.

Be proactive. Be cautious. Ask questions. Don't hold desperately to "it won't happen to me". Don't fall for slick sales pitches. Buy for your use, need and comfort, not for the "boat show special" savings. And don't give away your power to the sales person. You are the only person who knows what you do on the water.

 

So. In the end, I ranted. :(