Tigy’s Blog

Goodbye Telecom, hello Vodafone!!

I hate Telecom, or at least strongly dislike them and their attitude to me over the last several years.

Arrogant is the word I would use, stupid also comes to mind.  They have lost my business over $100 they forced me to pay for moving house, actually its worse than that because I agreed to pay half of it, fair cop getting charged to change your number, but charging me to disconnect and then again to reconnect seemed criminal to me.  I mean I was never actually disconnected, they admitted it didn’t cost them anything like that to move me over and that they only did it because they could.  I think the exact words they used were: “If we had some competition we probably couldn’t get away with charging this.”

Little lesson for Telecom here (and to my new friends at Vodafone if they’re listening).

You fought hard to squeeze $50 out of me when I moved.  I told you I would leave you when I got a chance.  I moved but you got your $50 - what did it cost you?

Lets see, I’ve been with you for about 15 years, lately spending about $90 a month and intending to keep doing that.  So over 15 years that’s $16,200 dollars worth of revenue for you.  But you did get your $50 so we can offset that against your loss, and 15 years is a long time so lets call it 10.  That means you’re down $10,750 dollars - not allowing for any inflation over the next 10 years.  Throw into that the cost of all the advertising you’ll do to try and win my business back, the TV, telemarketing and so forth and it’s not looking good.  Perhaps you should have just charged me the $50 to move house like I told you, and you admitted, was fair.

Just for the record this is a concept called Customer Lifetime Value and CLV is sometimes made a much more complicated equation than this.  I’ve spent hours pouring over numbers to accurately calculate CLV but at the end of the day it really is a simple concept and should be implemented simply.

Anyway I’ve moved it all over to Vodafone now, phone, broadband and mobile.  The outgoing caller ID on our phone is finally working (which Telecom said was a problem with our phone) and my internet speeds have shot up. My previous (Slingshot) full speed plan was giving me between 25-250 kb/s download (yes they had the cheek to call this ‘broadband’) and about 100k upload. My test last night delivered 8000kb down and 650kb up, at its worst thats 320 times faster - iTunes actually works again and a 3 minute Youtube video isn’t taking 15 minutes to load!! I’m a happy guy.

Today our big girl turns 5, wow I can’t believe its 5 years already!

She’s off to school tomorrow, a whole new phase in her life. We’re immensely proud of all she’s achieved so far and are really excited about what the future holds. As a parent it’s a strange feeling this, a mix of excitement and pride at their growth, but also sadness that the time we’ve had so far as been so fleeting.

I guess the moral of the story is always make the most of now!

Dear World, I bequeath to you today one little girl in a crispy blue dress with two blue eyes, happy laugh that ripples all day long and a flash of blonde hair that bounces in the sunlight when she runs. I trust you’ll treat her well. She’s slipping out of the backyard of my heart this morning and skipping off down the street to her first day of school. Never again will she be completely mine. Prim and proper, she’ll wave a young independent hand this morning and say “bye”, and walk with little lady steps to school. She’ll learn to stand in lines and wait by the alphabet for her name to be called. She’ll learn to tune her ears for sounds of school bells and deadlines, and she’ll learn to giggle, and gossip, and look at the ceiling in a disinterested way. She’ll learn to be jealous. She’ll learn how not to cry. No longer will she have time to sit a hot summer day and watch an ant scurry across a crack in the sidewalk. Nor will she have time to pop out of bed with the dawn to kiss daisies in the morning dew. No… Now, she’ll worry about important things like grades and which dress to wear and whose best friend is whose. She’ll forget her blocks and dolls, and now she’ll find new heroes. For five full years now, I’ve been her sage and Santa Claus, playmate, Father and friend. Now she’ll learn to share her worship with her teachers. No longer will I be the smartest, greatest man in the whole world. When that school bell rings for the first time, she’ll learn what it means to be a member of the group, with all its privileges and its disadvantages. She’ll learn in time that proper ladies do not laugh out loud or kiss dogs or keep frogs in pickle jars, or even watch ants scurry across cracks in the summer sidewalk. Tomorrow, she’ll learn for the first time that all who smile at her are not her friends, and I’ll stand out the front and watch her start out on the long lonely journey to becoming a woman. So world, I bequeath to you today, one little girl in a crispy blue dress with two blue eyes and a happy laugh that ripples all day long, and a flash of blonde hair that bounces in the sunlight when she runs. I trust you will treat her well.

Beths first school visit

Well out little girl had her first morning off at school today. Just a visit mind you, she doesn’t officially start until next week. But she got all dressed up in her uniform and walked up to school with Mummy while Dad and the boys waved goodbye. She spent the morning there before coming home all excited.

Our little girl was fine, Mum was a bit upset, but I think after being the primary caregiver and educator of someone for the last 4 years, 11 months and 360 days gives you the right to be a bit distressed about allowing someone else to take the lead in your kids education; not to mention the prospect of not having the little bouncing bundle of terror running around the house all afternoon.

It’s funny but we’re now entering another phase of our life, just as our girl is too.

Yes I am still alive and still wanting to post. What with kids, new baby arriving, study, work and the fact I’m trying to get back into my running again I just haven’t had time.

Anyway, just to let you all know that I care about you here is my top 10 list of things I wish I had written about but just didn’t get time to:

1. Paul Potts - Quite wicked and I can see why he’s famous. He’s done a record that I wouldnt mind to hear but the clips they play on the radio make it sound a bit cheesy.
2. Police chases - Look I really, really feel for the family of the kid who died in a police chase the other day. But when are the press here in NZ going to stop blaming the cops for pursuing the guy and start blaming the idiots who run away from them. If we tell the cops to stop chasing what the hell would you do when they go to pull you over, run away because you know they cant chase you!
3. Awww damn it… only got to 3 and I gotta go again. I’ll be back soon… promise…

What does it take to get a 4 year old to stress out and loose it? One baby alive and 4 AA batteries.

Our little angel has earned herself a huge prize, something that turned out to be $100 worth of pure stress. We agreed on the prize early on and I tried to talk her out of it when I found out the actual cost, but gosh darn it, she was focussed on getting this damn doll.

What did she do? Without giving away all the gory details she finally started going wees on the toilet, something we have been working on for 2 years now, yes thats right 2 very long years…

In our excitement we promised her a baby alive, something she had been asking for, if she filled a "star chart" with 1 star being awarded for each tinkle. Lesson here is always check the price of something before you agree to it, never assume you know what it costs.

Well our little miss stubborn, who wouldn’t even enter the room containing the toilet a mere week before hand was up there peeing up to 6 times a day or more. When she got upset nothing would come out we told her she had to drink something first, so she would grab a glass, knock it back and run to the toilet and wait for something to happen. Explaining it too time for the body to process the drink meant she would sometimes go away only to check back on the toilet every 5 minutes to see if it was ready… God bless her she tried so hard.

So after 22 confirmed tinkles and one final attempt to talk her into something ‘better’ (i.e. cheaper) we bought her the baby alive.

What is it I hear you ask? Have you seen the Stephen King movie Carrie, and perhaps are also familiar with Chuckie? We’ll if you answered yes to both of those you have a vague idea. This thing is a little girl stress machine.

As I speak Beth is fast asleep, absolutely exhausted from the few hours of work of looking after the worlds most demanding baby! Read the rest of this entry »