My Open Complaint To Telstra

The following is my rant to Telstra:



This is the plan I'm on:

Your current plan is BigPond ADSL Liberty* 8000/384 $89.95 monthly

This is the speedtest for my connection on a Telstra mirror this evening:

Your line speed is 71 kbps (0.07 Mbps).
Your download speed is 9 KB/s (0.01 MB/s).

This connection speed has never been any good. I have continually been told by your techs that I'll never get the speeds I pay for - but this is now ridiculous.

It is NOT the computer. I am all updated, and have rebooted it twice daily. I have rebooted the modem and so on. It is not the software and it is NOT the browser.

This time I would like an explanation why my service is so crap.

Just to re-iterate the point here's a second speed test done 5 minutes later:

Your line speed is 236 kbps (0.24 Mbps).
Your download speed is 30 KB/s (0.03 MB/s).

Better...but my line speed is only 4 times faster than a shitty dial-up modem!!!!!!!

Chenae: Carbon Images

Chenae: Carbon Images
Originally uploaded by Carbon Images

Kind of 1960s hippy throwback vibe I get off this the more I look at it. Could have done with some shagpile carpet. Taken today by me, we did about 200 photos and by the looks of them, could get easily a dozen or so hot ones out of it...check the rest of the set out on the Carbon Images Flickr site...

New Audi A3 Advert

When you put this against, say, the new advert for the Holden Ute (which itself was ripped off from a cutting-edge Heineken advert) you can't help but acknowledge the massive step the German car manufacturer is in front of other competition with this fun and innovative advert for the new Audi A3.

There's nothing that ground-breaking about the advert, but the fact that there's no space for crappy road-hugging shots of the car passing through forests or blokey blokes preparing to take on a challenging winding road gives it 5 out of 5 in my book...

VB: Poor Brand Management

VB are rolling out their VB Mid on tap over the next few months, no doubt faced with the old problem of where to put the tap - hmmm - yep, remove one of our own brands to put our own brand on. Makes sense.


Scotty Cam: Building Stuff We Don't Want

Anyhow, they're rolling out a big promo with Scotty Cam, the DIY guru who could fix anything from your plumbing to the Middle East crisis were he to be given half a chance. The basic premise is that YOU, the lucky punter, can get to have a beer with Scotty at a designated location for about an hour or so. You can sense the excitement through the masses.

This is almost as good a promo as the chance to win a poker night with Shannon Noll. I mean, poker: target audience 25-35 male. Shannon Noll: target audience 12-16 female.

I digress. Suffice to say they are really pushing the product in order to gain distribution and trial. And they're having a lot of success. Unfortunately, the trial and success is at the expense of their own brands - Carlton Mid, VB itself and so on.

But their biggest mistake has been their inability to acturately name the brand. There is no real reference on the packaging to 'Mid' and this has lead to some customers labelling the product VB Gold, or more amusingly VB Mould. The consumers don't know what to ask for - which is a fatal brand mistake.

What makes this even worse is that current advertising campaigns for the brand have run alongside venue adverts, promoting that they have the product on tap. These adverts running on national radio have DIFFERENT names for the product - the official company one calling it VB Mid, the venue advert labelling it VB Gold.

What does this do for the consumer? Well, obviously it confuses the hell out of them. What do they ask for when they get to the bar?

One can only guess the reason behind Fosters inability to name the brand properly. I suspect they wanted the general public to suruptiously name the product 'Gold' for them, to attack their main rival, XXXX Gold. Or maybe they just didn't like the term 'Mid' and were hoping the public would find a better name for it.

Either way, the expression is 'a dog's dinner'.

Most Powerful and Unforgettable Images from around the World

Not much to say about this...as the original poster says, its a shame that most of these images involve war and suffering...

read more | digg story

Protesting Bush

Protesting Bush
Originally uploaded by Cammy2005

This was found on Digg...an anti-Bush sign that might actually work!!

Things You Find In Toothpaste

Watered down copy of an article in the latest 'Wired':

Sodium Mono-Fluorophosphate - Fluoride
Hydrated Silica - you know those packs of silica gel you find in packaging that say 'do not eat'? Yep. Them.
Propylene Glycol - thickener. A variant of this is used as anti-freeze.
Tetrasodium Pyrophosphate - prevents tartar
Sodium Bicarbonate - baking soda
Sodium Saccharin - artificial sweetener
Pentasodium Triphosphate - Stain preventer
Sodium Lauryl Sulfate - Detergent; stops you tasting sweet drinks after brushing
Carrageenan - seaweed gum
Flavour - mint and roasted malt
Sodium hydroxide - Lye - a common drain cleaner
Calcium Peroxide - whitener

Carbon Emissions: Update

This is just a quick note to update my previous comments about NRMA's insurance offer to off-set one tonne of your cars carbon emissions when you switch to their insurance plan.

Apparently the average American (and Australian's can't be that different) produce 24 tonnes of carbon emissions each year, which makes NRMA's offer...a little bit shoddy - especially as their campaign is so environmentally focused.

You'd be much better off NOT swapping insurance...and just selling the car. THAT would be the most effective thing to do...

Bananas

Bananas have their own advertising campaign. Bizarre as that may sound, 97.3FM today was running an advert for bananas.

Now I'm sure they deserve their own advertising campaign, after all they've put a lot of hard work in, in the world of fruit. They've frequently led from the front when other fruit failed to step up to the mark, but now it seems that bananas are in need of some moral support.


Bananas: Well Hung

The advert today was 30 seconds of a smack-in-your-face reminder that bananas were in shops, they were a great price, they were healthy and that you should go and buy some bananas today.

I'm convinced. I rushed out straight away and bought a car full of bananas.

Well, obviously I didn't really, but this radio campaign was a prime example of pouring money down the drain when it could have been used a hell of a lot more effectively. How about spending some money on effective point of purchase? When people walking into the supermarket, how about some sort of ingenious signage around the fruit counter reminding us of how great bananas are? Even a man in a giant banana costume walking up and down the aisles of your local Coles would have more impact than throwing cash away on pointless and very banal radio ads...

Sure its another rant about pointless radio campaigns, but its painful to see money spent on - and I don't use this word lightly - shit advertising. Funnel a 1/4 of that money into the creative process and the remaining 3/4 would have worked ten times harder for you...

Bodyrox: Jon Pearn

Bodyrox: Jon Pearn
Originally uploaded by Carbon Images

Jon Pearn is one half of Bodyrox, and Full Intention. I hadn't seen him or spoken to him for about ten years before I found him on Facebook and found out he was DJing at God's Kitchen at the Met, in my home town. Caught up for a chat and took some photos, of which this was one...

Inner Circle Model Comp

Inner Circle Model Comp
Originally uploaded by Carbon Images

This is one of those moments where a picture can tell 1000 stories. Except this time, only one is needed. The guy down the front was pretty drunk, even at the start of the night, and this being the final round of the model comp - the bikini round - he decided to make himself known to all the girls as they paraded up and down the catwalk.

Even from the back you can see the reaction of the final model in that set, and you don't need to be a genius to work out what he was suggesting.

Ten minutes later the comp was over, and Mr Check Shirt was being escorted off the premises by the security staff.

Ray Ban

Ray Ban
Originally uploaded by goodpix

I'm writing nothing else than how I like this picture. Ahh okay I will. Composition, minimalist reflections, funky sunnies and the faded colours.

Call me vain but....

....I like being delivered a magazine with my name on the front. It gives me that wonderful feeling of self-importance that helps be sleep better at night.

So hats off (or glasses off) to Sunglass Hut, for sending me a brochure this week in the form of a small fashion magazine. Only 10 pages to the slightly-bigger-than-A6 size brochure, but it contained some cool shots of their range, some vouchers and the chance to win a trip to NYC.


Swimming in sunnies can lead to increased risk of shark attack.

But best of all, on the back my name and address had been mail-merged onto the brochure to allow them ease of posting out to people. Nothing strange there, but the front of the brochure, which was designed like a fashion magazine cover, had the words 'Simon spotted in "my suburb"'. Neat. It's like...I'm famous, man.

Sure it's a bit cheesy by fun none-the-less and tickled me enough to read the brochure before shoving it in the must-look-at-later pile.