Going to Canada eh ?

When we knew we were leaving the UK we wrote to Vodafone in March telling them we would be leaving at the end of May. So they disconnected the phone in April and asked if they could be our service provider in our new home. What part of moving to Canada didn’t they understand ?

The phone was reinstated but then they forgot to cancel it when  we did move out.  As a result we were being charged line rental and phone calls for the new occupier. We were able to cancel the direct debit and get the payments credited back to Pete’s bank account.

Now Vodafone were totaly confused and started sending threatening letters about non payment. I in turn emailed their customer services dept who treated each email as a new issue rather than look back and see what was said on the last email.

Eventually they put the bill with a debt collection agency but the only contact method they gave the agency was my old mobile number. Luckily although I had cancelled the contract on the mobile I had kept it as pay as you go number for emergencies and saw the text message.

Finally I saw there was no alternative, I had to phone them up and hope that there was inteligent life in a call center. I did manage to get one guy who sounded like he knew what he was doing. He agreed to phone me back at work but couldnt get through. Apparently although I gave him my phone number and told him I was in Canada he didnt know that he need to put 00 in front of the number to make an overseas call ! ( You would think working for a telephone company should have known that, unless it is different in Ireland)

After a few more calls and emails they agreed to and 84 pound credit and the bill would be re issued in January. No they could not post me the bill as they werent allowed to send them out of the country and no they couldnt email it unless it was as reply to one of my emails. Why didn’t I look on the my account ? because they blocked the account when it went into arrears.

On the appointed day I sent an email to customer services to ask for the bill only to be  told the customer services email address had been discontinued and any enquiry would have to be made via the contact form on their web site.

To use this form you have to give your vodafone moble number. What if you dont have a mobile from them  ? Is this just a way of cutting down complaints  by making it more difficult for people to complain ? Why not improve  the service you give your customers ?

At the end of January I finally got another bill……….for exactly the same amount they were trying to get from me last November. After few emails and I got a bill showing the credit had been applied. I phoned up to make payment by credit card only to be asked to pay the full 136 pounds ie with out the credit. How I kept my cool I dont know especialy as the call “was being recorded for quality control and training purposes “.

All I can say is they are not recording enough as their staff seem to lack both trainig and competance, and their whole organisation seems deficient inthe quality control department.  We are not surprised they are axing over 500 jobs, why not axe all of them ?

Conclusion if you are thinking of taking out a contract with Vodafone  DONT .

For some time now I have been driving home in daylight, but during the past week it has been light on the way to work as well. I am not sure but it feels like this is sooner than it would be in England. Or it could be because I leave ½ hour later.

When one of Dave’s friends got a cut on his hand  Lin applied Germoline (having just passed her first aid course top of the class). The boy said it smells just like Root Beer. Which bears out what we have often said. How can they drink something that smells like an antiseptic cream ?

We are now faced with the task of completing our Canadian income tax forms. They are very complicated as ther are two sets of taxes,  provincial and federal.

There are companies dedicated to helping people do this and there several software packages you can buy to DIY and then file the return on line.

Things you can claim allowances for include  a physical activity for your child (cubs , ice skating lessons etc), some medical expenses and charitable donations. One thing a friend told us we ought to claim for was our moving expenses. Unfortunately when we read the guide notes we can not claim for moving from the  UK,  only if we moved more than 40 km with in Canada to change jobs.

Other differences between UK and here are that the tax year is the same as the calendar year (how bizarre), and that althought there are tax free allowances there are no tax codes so you pay tax on the full amount and then claim back the over payment next year.

I have been reading Quintin Jardine quite a lot recently. Unfortunately just as I did with Tom Clancey and Terry Pratchet I read the books in the wrong order. So one minute I am reading about the death of a person and then in the next book they are very much alive.

Jardine has two series of books on th ego one based arround a Scottish detective Bob Skinner and th eother about a privite enquiry agent turned film star called Oz Blackstone. In one book he has Bob Skinner reading an Oz Blackstone book. Then in the Blackstone series, Oz is playing a character in a series of films based on the Bob Skinner books.

I am still trying to decised if this is th eauthour being self indulagent, clever or playing with the rearder’s inteligence.

I recieved an invitation to a reunion at Bath University. They will be celebrating 30 years since we graduated. althought I still have some souvenirs of those days (including a spoof “This is your Life” that was sprung on me by the staff when I was running the Campus Radio Station) I am not worried about missing it. A part from anything else it is now a very long way to go.

David is actually making some progress at his piano lessons and can almost play “Happy Birthday”, his skating is progressing slowly. He can stay up with out hanging onto the sides but has difficulty getting back on his feet if he does go down.

We have Monday off as Statutory Holiday as it is  Family Day, not sure what we are supposed to do by way of celebration but atleast we wont be waking at 5.30 for Lin to go to work. I can tremember all the names of the Stats (= Bank Holiday) but they seem to have them well spaced out and one a monththough I dont know how they cope with Easter moving about, maybe the days are flexible as well.

You may have noticed that the entries are getting further apart timewise. This is because we have now settled into a routine and have become more used to the way of life over here.

We have packed David’s social life to stop him getting bored and eating too much. Tuesday he goes to a youth club, Wednesday and Sundays he has skating lessons. Thursday is Cubs and Saturday he has piano lessons. The local library is well used and last weekend Peter went to a seminar on creative fiction writing.

Twice this week Peter saw an unusual method of avoiding having to  stop at traffic lights.  It is acceptable to filter right even though the light is red and as long as there is nothing else coming. However these guys went in the right lane but instead of turning right they carried on crossing the other carriageway at right angles and then drove off in the same direction they had been travelling in. The question is how did they know there was nothing coming the other way  or did they just not care?

We went out to Sylvan lake today and got a bit of a surprise. It was competely frozen over and the ice was so thick cars were parked on it.  In fact Lin parked on it too.  Worrying, as only a few months ago, the car would have been shoulder height underwater.

Some areas had been cleared of loose snow and were being used for skating and ice hockey. Elsewhere people were riding over it on skiddoo’s and ATVs.  Further out you could see mad people ice-fishing beside there cars.  How do they do that without sinking ?

In the middle of the cleared skating area, there was even a christmas tree in a very large pot,  suitably decked out with fairy lights.  But we couldn’t see where the lights were plugged in.  We can only imagine, that maybe the wires go under the ice.

Ebay runs at a much slower pace over here. The lack of a postal delivery service means no letter box and if the package is too big for your PO box then you have to wait until the post office counter is open to collect your purchase. For most people this means Saturday morning.

On the items that Peter has been looking for there were very few sellers inside Canada so he had to open up the search to all of North America. This was when things  really dragged  because the post from the States can take up to 4 weeks. I guess in the UK we were spoilt by having everything available for next day delivery.Whereas here each province is several times the size of the British Isles.

The other irritating thing was although Pete was able to change all his addresses on Ebay, Paypal will not allow you to change which country you live in without closing your existing account and opening another.  Why not he asked ? There was no plausuble explanation, just the way it was set up.

And here after the commercal break are some comments on the programming. There are the same genre of shows as we used to have in the UK. Home grown shows reality survival, talent shows like Dance Canada and Runway Canada. The Office and Antiques Roadshow are american imports and Who Wants to be a Millionaire has web cam links for the phone a friend bit. There is also Hell’s kitchen where our very own Gordon Ramsey does a lot of shouting and swearing at American chefs and our other great ambassador Simon Cowel offers encouragement to would be show biz performers.

What is interesting are the british shows that are seen over here. Allo Allo, Are You being Served, Life on Mars  and Coronation Street. They also have Thomas The Tank Engine which David watches before he goes to school. The slight difference here is that the narrator is an American, I guess they couldn’t understand Ringo’s accent and they are not allowed to say Fat Controller, instead he is known as Sir Topham Hat.

They have also had exposure to Monty Python and Mr Bean but no one we have spoken to has heard of Blackadder. I guess they are used to Rowan Atkinson as  comic but the sight of Dr House doing comedy might be too much.

Watching some programmes you occasionally become aware that one character talks differently to all the rest. This is your stereo typed limey sometimes played by real english actors.

Well I guess we had to say something about TV sooner or later. When we first moved into Silver Drive we were spoilt for choice. There were channels with wall to wall CSI repeats and Pete had trouble working out which ones he had seen and which episodes were from the current series. Lin went for the Old Star Trek episodes (the original series no less) which were broadcast around midnight.

Curiously the 24hr clock does not seem to have been adopted by the TV schedulers or the manufacturers of video recorders so we did get confused with 12 AM and 12 PM.

Arriving in Broadway Village we found we had lost many of the channels we were used to. We checked with the cable company and found that we were only on the basic package but in Silver Drive we had been getting more than we had paid for.

Because of the intrusive nature of commercials the only channel we watch in real time is the weather channel. Vital to know if its going to be freezing tomorrow morning etc.there is a public service broadcasting channel that originates down in the states. It doesnt seem to have commercial breaks but does announce sponsorship of programmes before they start. It brings us the BBC world news at 6 oclock and lists sponsors including ” The Newmans Own Foundation”. So keep eating that salad dressing so we can see whats going on in the world.

Pete’s diet includes the CSI trio, House and NCIS that he watched in the UK plus Bones. Bones is apparently base on the Kathy Reichs character Dr Temperance Brennan(?). Well they got the name the same and the profession but everything else was changed to suit the American market.  Lin doesnt watch TV as there’s nothing worth watching apparently ?

With all the moves and changes Pete lost a lot of the continuity in the various series. Like what happen when DiNozzo got into the car with the french arms dealer and who killed him? What was all the funny business that led up to Director Shepherd being killed  ? How did Amber die? and how come we finally got to use her real name but 13 is still called 13?

What deal did Pete Townsend’s agent do with the producers of the CSI franchise to get all 3 series to use Who tracks as their intro music.