Thanks to the financial crisis created by our hopefully soon to be ex-real-estate agent, the planned Mac purchase hasn’t happened yet.

There was though one rather strange development.

I admit to belonging to the group that feels that Apple products are generally overpriced. I’ve heard all of the arguments but still think that Steve Jobs could shave a few dollars off of his prices.

I assumed though, and this was based on experience, that those belonging to the Church of Mac didn’t agree.

Two days before our house sale was to close I visited the website for our local Mac dealer, Light Computer Centre. Like most Mac dealers they have a rather chi-chi store in a boutiquey neighbourhood. Their website though seemed almost abandoned, with little useful information.

Still, I had decided that when the cheque for the house sale was in my hands – about noon on the closing date – my first stop would be to purchase new Powerbook.

I figure that a Mac is a Mac, and would prefer to keep my business local, so I emailed them to ask a simple question: what did they have in stock in either a 15″ or 12″ Powerbook with a Superdrive.

Late Friday morning they phoned me. The advice from an honest to God Apple Macintosh dealer?

Don’t buy a Powerbook with a Superdrive (DVD-RW) because they are really overpriced. Instead buy one with the Combo drive (CD-RW) which is cheaper.

OK, I have done my research. I know that the DVD-RW drives that Apple sells are off the shelf items – Pioneer I think – that would retail for about $50 instead of the $195 that Apple charges for the upgrade. Yes it’s a rip off.

Still, I want a DVD burner, not a CD burner, and even though people do it, and I am sure that I could do it, I don’t want to open up a brand new lap top and start installing new hardware.

So what am I supposed to think when even the people who sell Macs are telling me that they are overpriced?

I look at this experience, and at the prices that Apple charges for an Extended Warranty – $539 on a $2500 laptop! – and I really wonder if I’m about to make a mistake.

It just never ends…… Only today someone tipped me off to the fact that although Liz, the second level phone drone at Bell, did manage to reconnect my phone, they had also nuked my voicemail without telling me.

I swear, my dog is smarter than these people….

Is there any trade more fraught with shysters and fools than Real Estate? Because these guys all know at least a few lawyers I won’t name names, but today I am once again reminded that I truly dislike everything to do with the real estate business.

At this very moment I should be divvying up the proceeds from the sale of our house. Not a month ago we listed it for sale and immediately had three offers at the asking price. We accepted an unconditional offer by a guy who said that he was “buying it for his daughter.”

For the uninitiated, “unconditional” means that he buys it as is, without making any demands or placing any conditions on the sale. Sales may be conditional on obtaining financing, or on a house inspection, or on settling any boundary or property line disputes. A sale may even be conditional on the light fixtures remaining, or draperies, or carpets.

In this case though the buyer placed no conditions on the sale. In other words, if he had second thoughts he was out of luck.

Last week problems started popping up. He asked that we buy a bunch of wiring for him that he could use to replace what he said was knob and tube wiring in one part of the house. We said “no”.

Next he demanded that we have our neighbours sign a letter promising that they would never make a claim of ownership on one corner of our property where we occasionally allow them to park. They talked to their lawyer and said “no”, there was no reason to do so.

Since they are about the nicest and most honourable people that I know, I can’t see a problem.

As it happened, our agent also wound up representing the buyer as well. In retrospect that was pretty stupid and we should not have agreed to that, but the agent in question is very nice guy and we trusted him.

Do not ever trust real estate agents!

So he wound up pushing us to close the deal, asking us to do things which we were not obliged to do. Like harass our neighbours into signing away their rights to someone that doesn’t seem particularly trustworthy.

The day of the sale we received a phone call from the agent telling us that “our neighbours were sticking it to us” by refusing to meet this guy’s demands.

We immediately told him that our neighbours were close friends and very good people, and that the problem lay with the buyer, not them. Without thinking I told him that the buyer’s agent should have explained to him what “unconditional” means. I had forgotten that our agent was playing both ends of the deal, and that he was also the agent for the buyer.

At this point the assumption is that the deal is off. The only question now is what we will need to do to get our hands on the deposit that the buyer had put down. I expect some kind of battle or other nonsense from the agent.

As for the buyer, we have since heard that he is part of a group of people who share an occupation, and who pool their resources to buy properties with an eye to flipping them for a fast profit. Allegedly their tactic is to make an unconditional offer, and just before the closing date start making demands on the seller.

The plan is that on the day of the closing, when the seller is probably in a complete panic, they will demand a lower price as a condition of sale. To someone who has already closed a deal to buy a new house, and who has a moving van parked at their front door, there is usually no option but to accept the reduced price.

What may be most disappointing is that no-one seems to think that this kind of behaviour is unusual or even distasteful. This kind of thing is normal in the real estate world!

For our part, we can once again say that every time we have dealt with a real estate agent we have been misled, or have felt cheated, or have wound up making significantly less money than we had hoped.

At the end of the day I’m reminded of something said by a lawyer friend many years ago:

“Oh yeah – getting into selling Real Estate is really tough…. you have to pass an intensive six week course to get your real estate licence.”

The saga continues! It appears that my instructions were not clear enough for the pinheaded idiots at Bell Canada:

2) The closing on our house sale has been moved to September 15th, so I want the 905-308-xxxx service disconnected on that date. Can you confirm that that number will redirect people to 905-522-yyyy?

Yes, they have disconnected the phone at my new place, the phone that has been in operation for three months! And then the front line phone drone tried to say I had ordered that!

When I first talked to her she told me that my “new” number would be connected by 5PM today.

When I told her that the number had been in service for three months and wasn’t supposed to be cut off she backtracked and said that it would be two days before it would be fixed.

So, which one of those was a lie?

And now Liz, second level phone drone, also claims that it will take two days to reconnect it.

Finally she told me, in all seriousiness, that even if the Prime Minister’s phone was disconnected it would take at least 24 hours to have it reconnected.

That’s when I told her that she was telling me a lie.

UPDATE: Wonder of wonders, an hour later I have dial tone. Gee does that mean that I get better service than the Prime Minister of Canada!!!

Today I take a break from complaining about the utterly horrid service that has become the standard today (and no, I won’t comment on spending four hours with a friend suffering from severe abdominal pain and the kind of bleeding that ain’t normal, in the St Joseph Hospital emergency room, and this brand new redesigned and decorated emergency room has NO PUBLIC RESTROOM, and after fourteen days of convalescence from a very serious infection my friend opens her mail and finds a FUNDRAISING APPEAL from the hospital, full of obviously fictional testimonials about how loving and caring everyone was at the hospital, and how excellent the service was, and how she just about took that letter down to St Joes, tracked down their donations department, and showed them exactly what they could do with the postage return envelope.) and instead will talk about the many things that can be learned from children.

Time management is not one of those things, but management of situations certainly is.

I am told that it is a sign of trust that the children around me will do everything in their power to cajole or manipulate me into allowing them to break the household rules. Or, on their better days, just lie through their teeth.

I have learned that a food that is a favorite on Thursday, of which one cannot get enough, can become a hated putrid thing when it appears in a lunch bag twelve hours later.

I have learned how a six year old can wear the same pair of blue nylon pants every day for four months, complaining bitterly when they are stripped off long enough to wash them.

I have learned to answer any number of serious questions like:

Do you believe in fairies?

ANSWER: I knew woman in Vancouver, a gypsy, whose backyard had grass three feet tall. When her son Attilla would try to convince her to cut it she would look him in the eye and say “But Attilla! If you cut the grass where will the fairies dance?!”

Do you believe in Santa Claus?

ANSWER: Yes. But I say that to adults too.

Who made God the boss of everything?

ANSWER: Ask your mother. She was raised Catholic.

Where do stars come from?

ANSWER: Hmmm… teaching the Big Bang theory to a ten year old? Tricky!

I’ve learned a lot that Best Friends are very important, that losing one is a terrible thing, and that you can find a new one pretty fast, even at a new school. I’ve learned the subtleties of “sleepovers” and how late two six year olds can stay awake, and how you figure out whether to sleep on the floor or together in the bed. I’ve learned that some six year olds can last until 10 PM, then need to be rescued by their parents.

I’ve learned that it is possible to have someone trust you absolutely and without doubt, and that that is about the scariest thing that I have ever experienced.

I’ve learned that it takes considerable skill to make jokes that work for both ten and six year olds, and that knock-knock jokes still are the best thing ever. Where is that book of elephant jokes?

I’ve learned that when things go bad for kids this age, the go extremely bad, and that there is no point in trying to reason or even argue your way out of the situation. The best that you can do some times is to close the door, admit defeat, and come back later.

I’ve learned that pure rapturous joy can be found in the simple, the beautiful, or the incredibly foolish.

I’ve learned that the kids that you think never listen to what you say are actually memorizing all of your most embarrassing comments and will throw them in your face at an opportune moment.

I’ve learned that children are not a hobby, they are work. Sadly I have also learned that there are people who have managed to breed, but who will never ever be parents. I have seen that selfishness can overpower the bonds that we assume exist between a parent and their children.

More than anything though I have had the chance to look at my own childhood and try to ensure that the kids don’t have to live through the mistakes that marred my life. I try to give them self esteem, praise, love, and unstinting encouragement to follow whatever dream they wish.

Then again I try to give that to everyone around me.

Sometimes you just can’t make these things up.

The folks at www.somethingawful.com launched a fundraising effort for the folks affected by Hurricane Katrina. Using PayPal they raised more than $20,000 in a short period of time.

Then PayPal shut them down alleging that they were a scam.

Convicted with no investigation, no trial, no court, the Something Awful folks now have to prove their own innocence.

I told them the only reason, and I repeat ONLY REASON I was using their service was to raise relief funds, and the representative made a comment along the lines of “well you can see how it’s counter-productive to get this resolved when you’re writing ‘Paypal sucks’ on your website.” Gee lady, maybe the whole issue could’ve been resolved beforehand if your company actually gave a crap about their customers and made even the tiniest bit of effort to resolve things without immediately hitting the “off” switch like that one jerk from “Ghostbusters?” The representative herself was nice, and I don’t have a problem with the people working there; I do, however, have a problem with their automated systems making arbitrary decisions without providing customers ANY time to rectify the situation without risking downtime / account closure. You don’t run a business treating all your customers like criminals and making them prove they aren’t.

Further to yesterday’s installment, I am leaving town for a few days so gave up and called Bell. I battled my way past Emily to real live person.

I talked to Sophia ( remember the days when every person that you talked to at Bell was identified as “Mrs” something? Now all that you can get is a first name.)

I ran down my list of requests. I was told that I couldn’t switch the phone line back to Bell long distance because we had ordered a disconnect. I suggested that maybe they could change the Long Distance first, then enter the disconnect. I was told that the voice line was scheduled for a September 15 disconnect, and the fax line for a September 1 disconnect. Hmm… I had never got around to ordering a disconnect on the fax line. We never got to my new mailing address before she put me on hold.

Lo and behold another rep named Denise was able to do the impossible: change the long distance, get the two disconnect dates right, and correct my mailing address, which despite three attempts they still had wrong.

As for Chris, maybe he was just a figment of my imagination? Or just related to HAL?

UPDATE! 8:30 PM Thursday we hear from Chris’ helper Corina!

Hello Barry

Thank you for your e-mail regarding your request. My name is Corina and
I am happy to assist you on Chris’s behalf.

This is to confirm that the FirstRate 24 hour plan has been added to
your account. Ident-A-Call has been removed as of today.

I also see that a disconnection order for September 15th has already
been processed through our Call Centre.

Should you wish to make any modifications to this initial request,
please do so at the following link:

http://www.bell.ca/emovemod

Click on the “modification form” link.

If I may be of assistance on any other matter, please send another
e-mail. Your business is appreciated and I look forward to serving you
again.

Regards

Corina
Bell Internet Centre

Ok, now I believe them. Really.

Our tale continues.

About a year and a half ago we decided to replace our furnace and add air conditioning to our house. A nice fellow from Union Energy surveyed our house, took lots of measurements, and calculated exactly which system would give us the best balance of heating, cooling, and energy efficiency.

We signed for a long term rental agreement with an option to buy out the system at some unspecified date in the future.

Two more guys came through prior to the installation, each of them carefully checking the house and ductwork to see what would be needed. They were very professional!

A few months later when things became hot we found out that in fact only one floor of the house was cool. The upstairs was still really warm. We called Union Energy and were told the fault was with our ductwork, and that it was not their problem.

We are unimpressed, and have since found out that dozens of people have similar stories to tell about this company. We have written off the experience as a bad mistake and have managed to convince at least ten or twelve people to not do business with this company.

Fast forward: we are now selling the house. When the money from the house sale comes through we need to pay off the furnace and have Union energy discharge the lien against our house – did I mention that they applied a lien against our house for a lousy $10,000 debt? Without telling us?

I called Union Energy and spoke to a phone drone who was unable to tell me anything. She left me on hold for a relatively short period while she looked for someone else to talk to. No-one could be found so she forwarded me to the voice mail of one Jaclyn Reid.

Her voice mail greeting told me that she was on vacation and that I should call back and try to find some else, offering a couple more extensions.

I refused to waste more time, and left a lengthy and detailed message listing exactly what information we needed from Union Energy, and making specific reference to how unhappy we were with their product. I asked that she reply by e-mail so that I could avoid their phone system.

Here’s what arrived in my in-box several days later:

If the green text gives you difficulty here’s the unedited text:

Good Morning Mr. Rueger¦

I was advised upon my return from a weeks holidays that you have
called, I did not personal listen to your message as my message were
pick up for me during my week away from the office.

I understand that you are not happy with the rental equipment and
preferred to communicate by email as apposed to the phone.

If you could please get back to me with some more details so I may
help resolve any concurs you have. Thank you, and have a nice day!

I’ll keep you posted as the saga continues.

FOLLOW UP! True to her word Jaclyn did follow up today with everything that I needed in a lengthy non-HTML message!