One of our shops has a phone line with AAPT – just history, that’s the company the premises were connected with when we took over. Been paying $30 a month line rental. Got letter in mail today from AAPT saying our old plan no longer available, and we’re being moved onto a plan called AAPT At Work – NTC. The small print in the attached brochure says line rental is $39.95 a month. That’s a 30% increase!

So I check the APPT web site. There are only 2 business plans listed, the one mentioned above and a second called AAPT At Work. It’s $29.95 a month, with a 12 month contract. I rang AAPT, on hold for 15 minutes, the guy tells me I can’t have the $29.95 a month for a reason I don’t really understand.

He confirmed the $39.95 a month is the only plan available to us.

How do these companies get away with this? Do they presume that we won’t read the small print, or be too apathetic to take action?

How can a company increase its rates by more than 30%? I’m sure I’ve read somewhere AAPT is in financial difficulty. They deserve to fail.

I’m starting to get pretty cheesed off by the organizers of our kids
actvities who continually take parents for granted.

Largest daughter has her end of year cheerleading ‘display’ (read:
showing where all those fees went this year).

Programmed for 5pm-7pm. Give up work early, organize with better half
she’ll pick up son from his after school drama class, and she’s happy
to concurrently with that happy also to mind the 2 year old and figure
out dinner.

Get to Wesley. Told daughter will be ‘on’ at maybe 6.30pm if we’re
lucky, later if they are behind.

So now have to sit around for at least 1.5 hours.

Spend 10mins doing the few emails that can be dealt with from my
phone. Kick myself for not bringing the specs and plans for our new
cafe for review. So forces to watch dozens of other peoples’ children
doing poorly organized gym routines.

How much better if they broke it into 4 half hour blocks and scheduled
all the various groups into the blocks so we could plan when we needed
to be there.

But biggest daughter did look pretty cool when they finally hit the
floor. And it was 6.15pm so quite remarkably they were ahead of time.

I just really get annoyed when there’s a presumption parents will sit
around endlessly waiting for their poppets’ moments of fame.

Don't know if it's true, but according to this blog eedle-doddle means:

"Scottish slang: Someone described as an eedle-doddle is a rather carefree and nonchalant person, or a day-dreamer."

Just got home from the St Kilda v Hawthorn game.

Connex Melbourne's web site says:

*Please note the network improvements for Saturday 20 September
will be altered to enable two footy specials to operate through to Sandringham
(commencing at 9.36pm).  All normal services will terminate at Elsternick as
advised.

It's hard to conceive of a more idiotic notion than scheduling bus replacements for the Sandringham trains on the night of a preliminary footy final. Along with hundreds of other people we've just been forced off the train at Elsternick and we're now trundling home on a bus. If Connex Melbourne management was wondering why passengers think they are complete prats – this is why.

Just saw a TV ad for Sorbent toilet tissue, where the key pitch – I swear this is true – is that because the roll is longer you’ll spend less time changing toilet rolls and more quality time with your family. And delivered with a straight face. It’s so easy to despair when this is as good as professional marketing can manage.

I’m starting to think Virgin Blue has now morphed into what it used to hate – Qantas. Flew into Sydney this morning, and we all had to wait around on the plane because noone noticed us arriving, and there were no ground staff waiting at the airbridge.

Now I’m sitting at Sydney airport delayed 35mins so far because of late arrival of the inbound plane.

We used to make a point of not flying Qantas because there always seemed to be something amiss, broken or late. Now it seems that choice is harder to justify.