This Geek

I have my car serviced by Lindsay Saker East Rand Mall. What a bunch of sharks. I’m fuming.

First let me give a bit of history:

About two services ago (45,000km), I took my car in for a standard service. During the day, they phoned me and told me that I absolutely had to change the brake pads on the car at a cost of (I forget now, but it was approximately) R1600.00, because there was no way that they would last until the next service. Fortunately, not being too stupid, I had checked the brake pads myself before I took the car in, and they were just peachy. Puhlenty of pad left. I told them to get knotted. The pads lasted quite well until the next service, even a few months after before I had both front and back replaced, with new disks besides, for a little over 2k.

Anyway, this time they call me and tell me that I should get the chips on the wind screen fixed. So I fall for that - at a cost of R350-odd. A little while later, they call again, and tell me that I absolutely have to have my windscreen wiper blades replaced at a cost of R450, a fuel filter at R350, a rib belt at around R650, have the radiator flushed for around R350 and serviced for around another R400 or something. I flipped. I know for a fact that I can get new wiper blades for around R200 - which is still quite expensive as these things go, but then they aren’t normal blades, and it takes all of 5 seconds per blade to switch them out.

I told them to do the rib belt and the fuel filter and to leave the rest. I’m stupid, but not that stupid - and I’m definitely not made of money.

I think next time I’ll take my car to a different dealership - these guys are pissing me off. Not to say that somewhere else will be any better though.

Where have you ever heard about an INCREASE in bandwidth prices lately?

In South Africa, Internet users are feeling the boot of the monopolistic telephone company on their necks. I’m referring to ADSL specifically now.

Here, we have to pay an excessive ADSL “line rental” fee, on top of the normal telephone line rental.

The ADSL rentals are as follows, US $ conversions in brackets:

• 1024 = R680ZAR per month ($103.29)
• 512 = R477ZAR per month ($72.52)
• 384 = R359ZAR per month ($54.53)
• 192 = R270ZAR per month ($41)

Yes, they think 384 & 192 are broad band.

Add on to that price an additional R92.28ZAR ($14) if you’re a residential user, or R122.60ZAR ($18.61) if you’re a business for the telephone line rental, regardless of whether you have a telephone attached. (Note that this is the same copper pair!)

And THEN you have to get your ISP account so that you can actually use your ADSL line.

Prices vary from ISP to ISP, but it’s not by much. (In this case, I’ll use the same telco’s ISP prices)

• 3Gb R269ZAR ($40.87)
• 2Gb R199ZAR ($30.20)
• 4Gb Unshaped R699ZAR ($106)

Note that each package is the amount of bandwidth that you can use. For the most part (currently), once you reach the 3Gb limit, you get CAPPED. This means that they route your traffic through a very slow international link (so slow that it is unuseable), but allow you unlimited “local” (same network) traffic.

(3Gb is enough?? I used that in the first 3 days after getting my ADSL line installed! - And that’s just normal browsing / email and a couple of downloads on 384! Can’t afford faster!)

Some ISPs have been using a loophole with their bandwidth resale agreements, and have been offering up to a maximum of 30Gb accounts for R299ZAR ($45).

In order to counter this, the telco is now restructuring their bandwidth pricing as from 1 November 2005.

Now, the bandwidth costs are insane!

That same 30Gb package that could be had for R299 is now going to cost you in the region of R2000ZAR ($303) !!!! If you don’t like the preset packages, by all means, you may purchase bandwidth on a per Gb basis - at a cost of R75 ($11.39) per Gb.

Also - there’s going to be a hard cap. If you reach your bandwidth limit, you get disconnected, and that’s that. No Internet until next month.

Now that’s just insane!

If you’re a foreign company looking to invest in South Africa, fuhgeddaboudit! Or make sure you bring a large jar of KY jelly, cuz you’re gonna get screwed.

I just love Telkom.

In my latest phone bill is a flyer for new call charges.

To dial the USA, standard time charge is R1,70 per minute, and off-peak is R1,50 per minute.

To dial a “Mobile Service” (local), Standard time is R1,89 first minute, R0.94 every 30 secs there after. Off-peak is R1,17 and R0.59 respectively. In reality, this market speak means: Standard time is R1,89 for the first minute then R1,88 per minute thereafter (???) and off-peak is R1,17 for first minute, and then R1,18 per minute thereafter.

What a freaking rip off!

To prove this:

On my bill, I have a 12 minute 34 second call to my brother in the USA, charge: R18,74. Not bad. This call was at 17h49pm (peak time).

I also have a call to my mom’s cell phone (vodacom) for 13 minutes 19 seconds at 18h40pm (peak time), charge: R22,32

It is CHEAPER to phone the USA than it is to phone a local freaking cell phone!!!

So I check out how cool Flickr is. I decide I want to expand from a free account, and purchase a subscription, because the advantages are, well, cool. So I enter the order function. They take credit cards (and well they should), but it’s handled by PayPal — not so cool. The reason why it’s not so cool? I can’t pay with my credit card. Because I’m in South Africa. It’s not one of the ‘45 Countries’ that can use PayPal. Fuckin’ great. Get with it you fuckholes (PayPal). How many damn years has it been?

– update: I should note that I searched the Flickr forums, and I’m heartened to learn that they will offer real payment options when they’re out of beta.

Another thing I posted to the forum:

I would like to know since when is the word ‘’sh*t” an acceptable thing to hear on the so-called ”family” sound track?

I watch movies on DSTV with the family sound track enabled, not because I find swearing offensive, it doesn’t bug me at all, but because I don’t want my 2 year old and 4 year old to learn offensive words until they’re at least 6. So much for that idea.

Obviously the people who edit the soundtracks for ”family” viewing don’t have kids of their own, otherwise I’m quite sure that the soundtracks would be far cleaner than they are now.

EDIT: I find it really amusing that the forum censored my post with the disputed word. Perhaps the soundtrack editors should take note?

I posted the following on our local DSTV (Digital Satellite provider) forum:

I find that the reason for replacing ‘Bruce Almighty’ on Sunday night was ridiculous. ‘Possible tsunami references’? Eh? Come on, give me a break.

If multichoice is going to use stupid reasons like that for not showing a movie, they might as well shutdown the entire service and refund our money.

For goodness sakes, a person could find something offensive about ANYTHING that is shown on MNet or DSTV. Don’t be so damned ridiculous!

Dear Google,

I just wanted to tell you that I hate you. Just because I live and surf the web from South Africa does not mean that when I type www.google.com I want to be redirected to www.google.co.za. I don’t care that it may search the same content as the main google site. It’s just the principle of the thing. If I wanted www.google.co.za, I would type www.google.co.za.

You suck.

Sent to: comments@google.com