Latest Posts

Absolutely Everything

Life Lesson Well Learnt

Posted on by Matthew Green

In my opinion webuyanycar.com.au should be shut down and deregistered.

Sorry readers but I’m about to go on a little rant here. Read on though, as it may just prove to be worth your while.

Mask worn by the infamous Australian bush ranger – Ned Kelly, and the sales team at webuyanycar.

You’ve all heard that annoying jingle on late night television promoting the web site webuyanycar.com.au. Well the song is NOT the most horrendous part of doing business with this company. On the 22nd June I sold my Mazda 3 to the people at their Strathfield branch and the experience has been less than satisfactory.

I am a divorced dad and I only get to have my children every second weekend. With that in mind I really did not want to sell my car privately and waste precious time with my kids by taking potential purchasers out on test drives. I had done my research online and knew what the car was worth to a private buyer and what the dealers were selling them for, so I arrived at the outlet with a figure in mind that I wanted and another figure that was the lowest price I would accept.

They offered me less than half of the minimum figure.

This should have sent the alarm bells ringing, but I figured they were salespeople and they were just indicating their starting point. Let the negotiations begin. After a bit of bartering the sales guy went out the back to talk to his boss. He came back with another sub-standard offer and tried to convince me that the car wasn’t worth my price. He showed me a search on carsguide.com.au to prove his point. Unfortunately for him, he used the wrong year model.

More haggling ensued.

After another trip to his boss’s office, which resembled a shipping container with a desk inside and could well have been a pickup truck with the engine running, our super sales rep came back and said they probably wouldn’t up their offer because of the damage on the side of the car.

WHAT DAMAGE?

Upon closer inspection there was a white scuff mark on the drivers’ side rear door. I licked my thumb and washed it off.

This was another sign that I should have driven away and never mentioned it again. But alas, I kept playing the game. Eventually his boss got involved and we agreed to a figure that neither of us was entirely impressed with. Good negotiations always leave both sides unhappy 😉 I signed the deal and was promised payment within ten business days.

DUMB, DUMB, DUMB, DUMB, DUMB!

When the money failed to appear in my account I contacted their office only to be told that I couldn’t talk to anyone in accounts payable because they were too busy, and that I had to send an email to customer support. I did that, and kept calling. Eventually I got an email back on Friday the 6th July saying that they would be in touch with me within 48 business hours. This just bought them four more days with my money, however I did manage to get the direct number of someone to speak to in Customer Relations. Progress at last!

After emailing and placing several calls to a busy land line on the 10th July, I was getting riled.

My car was gone.

I had no money.

And the company was ignoring me.

Finally I managed to get in contact with Ms. Bonnie Elizabeth Parker in Customer Relations, who informed me that their director was overseas and all transactions were waiting for approval. Apparently they were being done one at a time for some reason that made absolutely no sense.

I’ve run my own business.

I’ve done electronic payments.

These can be batch-processed guys.

Don’t give me that shit!

Enjoy the song, whilst reading on.

Bonnie Parker promised to call me back within 48 hours with either a receipt number for the payment or a date that it would go through. That’s another two days they get to keep my money. These guys must be making a killing on the short-term money market.

I called them again on the 12th July and would you believe, Bonnie Parker was off sick. I’m not surprised. Covering for the incompetence of the management must be a highly stressful job. Answering Bonnie’s phone in her absence was Clyde Chestnut Barrow, who was struggling not to stutter his words as he spouted the farcical reasoning behind their inability to pay on time. Obviously he didn’t believe the directions from ‘management’ or had had enough dealing with irate clients all day and was suffering an adrenalin rush. Clyde couldn’t do anything except get his supervisor to call me back. At 4:23pm approximately three hours after I lodged my as yet unreturned call with Clyde Barrow, I had to phone wedontpayforanycar back again. Poor fellow was incredibly apologetic and I get the feeling that he was quietly searching for a new job on seek.com.au as he spoke to me. Clyde promised wholeheartedly that his supervisor would call me back “before close of business today.”

At 4:54pm, too late for a bank transfer, supervisor John Herbert Dillinger called my mobile. The story I got told was one of woe and hard times.

They had received a glut of cars in May and were struggling to process them all. (Lucky sods.)

They’d had a glitch in their system whereby a whole slew of clients got paid twice for the same car and they had only just fixed the glitch and retrieved the funds. (Wish that was me.)

Their admin person responsible for creating payments had been removed from the system. (Hmm, that’s a telling reaction.)

Their Director responsible for approving payments was overseas. (Tax haven?)

Poor Dillinger could not deliver a line without his voice wavering. Clearly he too did not believe the tripe he was feeding me. Seriously, if your business is struggling to meet it financial obligations, you have computer glitches that pay double, your admin people are being removed from the payment processing system, and you have to approve payments one by one, YOU COME BACK FROM YOUR HOLIDAY AND DEAL WITH IT!!! At least that’s what a competent and ethical company Director would do.

I kept my cool though and managed to extract a promise that I would be paid within the next 72 hours, including the weekend. This meant that I should have received my money by Sunday night. Yeah, right! Thinking back on it, as I sat in the waiting room I recall a conversation that one of the sales team, had with a client who had not been paid. He told the caller that payments always arrive within ten business days unless there was a problem with the car. He suggested that the reason they had not received their money as yet was because there had been a public holiday in early June and therefore the required ten-day period had not actually lapsed. This discussion occurred in the background and hardly even registered in my mind, until now, so I went online over the weekend and found this site:

http://www.productreview.com.au/p/we-buy-any-car.html

Lots of unhappy people experiencing the wedontpayforanycar level of support.

Then, on Sunday evening as I curled up on my couch, I saw an ad on television for an upcoming exposé on A Current Affair. They were about to run a sting on a national used car dealer – tune in on Monday night. Oh no, there goes my car and my money. (Interesting point re A Current Affair, if you look up Used Car Outrage in their story archives you will see that there have been 95 comments – image below. Once you open the article, or use the link above, you will see that all the comments have been removed except for Wedontpayforanycar’s letter of explanation. Hmm….)

On Monday morning 16th July I telephoned them yet again. Bonnie Parker promised to call me back by 6:00pm. Not good enough, so I sent them a legal Letter of Demand. They had until midday to deposit the funds into my account or I would report my car as stolen and inform the Department of Fair Trading. Nothing was done – of course.

I did a search on the number plate and found that the car had been sold to Anthony Motors at Rockdale. I called the dealer in the hope that I could prevent them from selling the car until I had a chance to inform the police. Tony – the boss – told me he had bought the car at auction. Manheim Auctions I believe is the place that handled the transaction. Unfortunately he had already sold the car to a private buyer. To his credit, Tony called the auction house and relayed my story. They said they would look into it from their end. Tony called me back to let me know.

After several calls to Bonnie and Clyde, John Dillinger and Ned Kelly, I was finally given a whole new person to speak with. Ali Baba was jovial and making small talk and offered to take on my case personally. He said he would call me back in 48 hours. I told him he had ten minutes. He said he would call back whether he had an answer or not. I never heard from him again.

Anyway, I got paid eventually then the funniest thing happened. A staff member called me and asked whether I would recommend their services, HELL NO!

In my opinion do not, under any circumstances whatsoever, do business with webuyanycar.com.au!

You will regret it.

Images from Wikipedia and the ACA website. Song by Claude Hay. Only the names have been changed.

Matt’s Notes Second Anniversary

Posted on by Matthew Green

I wrote a book once. Took years to complete and its still not published – sigh. Actually, if the truth be told, Harper Collins told me it still requires a tiny bit of editing, but not much – I’m a great writer 😉

As my old school chum and critically acclaimed author Justin Sheedy can attest, getting your first book onto the shelves requires an infinite amount patience, gallons of perspiration and the perseverance of a marathon runner. Aside from that, whilst starving for your craft is a noble pursuit, the hungry whining of five children means that most of the waking day is spent in paid employment instead of stalking would be publishers.

With the prospect of becoming noticed in a sea of hopefuls being somewhat akin to that horrible old saying about needles and haystacks, I turned to my friend and Social Media expert, Heidi Allen for advice. After baffling me with blogs, flummoxing me with FaceBook, tormenting me with Twitter and stumping me with SEO, she came up with three pieces of advice to help me ‘get out there.’

1.) Use Facebook for something other than posting funny pictures and status updates of the Souths game.

2.) Twitter can convey a message, even if it is restricted to 140 characters.

3.) Weblogs are a great way to start writing and get noticed.

So, on the 10th July 2010 as I sat in the park and watched my son referee a few games of junior Rugby League, I wrote a little story about my experience. Booralee became my first foray into online publishing and although I only got four comments on the web site, many others mentioned how much they enjoyed the post to me verbally.

Family and friends had been engaged 😉

I received plenty of comments on my second post (although looking back I think some of them may have been spam), which lead me to become a little bit cocky. The next article I produced was a commentary on why people should embrace Social Media.

Me, the little upstart who had only just graduated from YouTube kindergarten, writing a blog about the importance of social media?!? What an ego! Hey, it was incredibly well-researched and all my conclusions could be verified. It even got re-tweeted six times! It was a great piece of journalism, but I wasn’t a journalist, and the old adage of writing what you know came crashing down upon me.

In August 2010 I invented iDad and for almost two years now his calamitous and cringe-worthy lessons in life have entertained a growing audience of followers. In November 2010, our hero was actually picked up and published in Bare Essentials magazine. Notoriety at last 🙂

Currently my website is interspersed with the misadventures of iDad,

teasers from my book – Pine Gap,

comedic interludes,

poignant thoughts,

personal opinions

and drawings from my son the budding artist.

Today is the second anniversary of the birth of my blog and I can proudly say that in the last two years I have had almost 300,000 visitors from all over the globe. Check out the map below and the list on the side to see where all these wonderful people are coming from. I even made the top 1000 list on ClustrMaps, a site that tracks your daily visitors.

I have been criticized, lauded, tweeted, insulted and re-blogged countless times so far (that’s me under the nine-ways of hangman and above the exploding whale). And even though there have been plenty of peaks and troughs as I went through phases in my life where I just could not find the mental or emotional capacity to right I have, by and large, enjoyed my hobby.

So, in the words of the great Indian mystic Apu Nahasapeemapetilon,

“Thank-you. Come again.”

COSMOS Magazine – Science on the iPad.

Posted on by Matthew Green

I haven’t written an app review since leaving my last job, but after downloading COSMOS Magazine on my iPad the other day, I felt compelled share my thoughts with you.

For several years now I have enjoyed reading the print copy as often as I could. I’m a lazy subscriber (which means I never actually got around to to signing up – sorry guys); but when the iPad was released in 2010 I knew it would only be a matter of time before I let the moths out of my wallet. Today I did and frankly, the result is awesome.

The meticulously researched and well-written articles from the print edition are still there and have been enhanced with audio and video content that was previously available only online. Surprises exist on almost every page no matter which way you rotate the tablet device, beginning with a rather disconcerting wink from the half man, half ape on the cover.

COSMOS Magazine provides a visual feast for their readers with hotspots on many of the pictures and illustrations, as well as slideshows to further stimulate your optic nerve. Although much of the photography has been sourced from image libraries, the selection is excellent and the photos themselves are incredibly detailed. The growling grass frog’s antimicrobial slime practically dribbles from the corner of the iPad as the South American hummingbird pauses mid-flight to take a sip of nectar. The skin of the Rancophorus nigropalmatus is bound to give you warts and I’m not quite sure I want to touch the venomous spines on the puss caterpillar’s fluff as I swipe my fingers across the screen to turn the page 😉

The ‘Events’ page features a monthly roundup of scientific exhibitions from the Royal Institution of Australia. Tap on the link and the event is automatically added to your calendar. There is also an interactive ‘Trivia’ page for the true geek. Do you know what the gap between people’s front teeth is called, or what shape the carbon molecule buckminsterfullerene resembles?

The live newsfeed from the COSMOS website allows the reader to access the latest stories, comment on the content and subscribe to the eNewsletter. You can share practically every page on FaceBook, Twitter and email; and bookmark articles for future reference.

Volcanoes erupt in the background as future humans evolve right before your very eyes. Even the advertising has been enhanced for the iPad, yet they haven’t gone overboard with the animations.

From the exceptional illustrations by Lucy Glover to the neat little features such as the ability to follow Editor-in-Chief Wilson da Silva’s twitter stream from the Forward on page 3, COSMOS is a marvelous mobile magazine and a fantastic read for all ages.

Please note: Although I am friends with two of the founders of COSMOS Media, this is not an advertisement for their magazine and I am not affiliated with the company in any way.  I am a subscriber of the iPad version of COSMOS Magazine and the views expressed here are my own.

Marathon Dad

Posted on by Matthew Green

Hills are just an excuse to run faster!

I’m talking uphill, not downhill of course because that would be crazy. I did it once. Tearing like a startled jackrabbit down the embankment at Moore Park where people used to grass ski, I hit the pavement at the speed of sound. My knee went backwards, my face went forwards and my head held a groundbreaking ceremony sans the ceremonial shovel.

Don’t worry dear reader I was fine, if just a little dirty. A mouthful of sod has many nutrients that the body requires as well as a uniquely crunch texture. Like peanut butter if it were made out of the shells instead of the kernel within.

But I digress.

The good thing about running uphill is the way your body reacts. Your heart gets a workout pumping oxygenated blood to your muscles, your lungs heave and expel the old stale air, your body sweats out all the toxins that accumulate from eating and drinking the wrong things, and your mind clears. I’ve not always been able to do this though. Eighteen months ago I weighed over 104 kilograms, and no, that was not muscle. A year or so before that I had had a little ‘scare’. Chest pains at forty are more frightening than a good zombie movie and a night in Prince of Wales Hospital with electrodes stuck all over your person is THE wakeup call to take notice of. Thankfully it was a false alarm but I decided to see a specialist anyway and see what sort of condition I was in.

The first test was to jog on a treadmill for fifteen minutes to see how my heart would react. After two minutes I was drenched with perspiration. Five minutes later I could no longer talk to the nurse. Within seven minutes my nipples were chafed and my lungs were screaming. By the eleven-minute mark I was hallucinating and had to stop. Not good at all. My heart recovered well – for a sixty year old man.

The second test was a blood sample and an x-ray of my neck. Thickened arteries – bloody hell.

The verdict: I was overweight, that was a given. My fitness level was a dismal failure though and that worried me, especially with five children, so I made a decision to get well.

I won’t bore you by repeating my initial escapades. If you would like to read about my first foray into jogging and the subsequent attack on my person by Tolkien’s Ents and Shelob the spider, click the image of the arachnid. Go on, I’ll wait for you 🙂

Suffice to say I had to do something and running for my life sounded like the best course of action. As I got fitter and the weight began to fall off, I found that I could push myself to longer distances. I did the Blackmores Bridge Run last September, a nine kilometre trip across the harbour and around the Domain to finish in Hyde Park. Beautiful!

Ten kilometres became fifteen. Fifteen became twenty. I began to run the coastal route from north Bondi to south Coogee and back. The stairs at Gordon’s Bay seem to go on forever and the hills around Clovelly and Tamarama are just plain vicious. My body responded well though and the fat cells continued to depart in droves.

Then I got cocky and decided to have a go at the half marathon.

This would be a test of endurance for a forty something year old that hadn’t exercised properly since his twenties and with daylight saving time now over it was becoming increasingly more difficult to find an opportunity to run the distances required to maintain my stamina. The outside track at Centennial Park was the nearest and best option however, although running the park in the dark is creepily cool, it is also a little unnerving. It is also very difficult to see the humongous piles of equine excrement at the Lang road exit. I don’t care if they are vegetarians, horse poo stinks!

As the distances shortened and the big day approached I started to worry, then I did something really stupid. After returning from work one evening I decided to test my mettle. The concept was simple, run from Erskineville train station to Centennial Park, two and a half times around the outside track and back again. The distance would have been between twenty three and twenty four kilometres and my stupid male pride would have been satisfied.

I made it there.

I made it around.

I didn’t make it back.

Somewhere in the dark, silent streets of Redfern my legs gave up on me. The cramping in my hamstrings was excruciating and my calf muscles felt as though they were about to liquefy. I could not walk more than a few steps before having to lie down on the footpath and I was getting cold. Foolishly I had left the house without a mobile phone or any money to catch a bus and so I ended up practically crawling home, my entire body shivering uncontrollably and frozen to the core. It took my physical being several days to recover, but the damage to my emotional and mental state was a lot worse. Running was no longer fun. It had become a painful chore and I was making up excuses to avoid it. With the half marathon only two weeks away, my campaign had ground to a halt.

Feeling more than just a little down in the dumps about my predicament, I headed over to my parents house for a few beers and a home cooked meal. As I passed by Booralee I saw an old friend whose name I never knew. The brunette with a bob haircut was still plodding her way round the park, looking fitter and faster than I remember. She had that smile on her face that a runner gets when they have conquered their demons and she looked like she was exercising for fun, and not because she had too.

Watching her I began to recall those feelings too. The sunrise over Wedding Cake Island. The silence of Waverly cemetery. Flocks of huge Puddle Ducks crankily quacking at me in Sir Joseph Banks Park. Rabbits, kookaburras, magpies, peace, solitude, tranquility.

I got my groove back.

I managed one more run before the big day. Thirteen kilometres. My legs were fine and my smile had returned.

I completed the half marathon a little slower than I would have liked. Twenty one thousand five hundred metres in two hours, one minute and one second. I felt fantastic.

A week later I headed out from Erskineville train station again.

I made it there.

I made it around.

I MADE IT BACK.

I’m still getting passed by blond hotties and bald dynamos, but I’ve beaten my demons and achieved something I never thought I could.

iDad did it and so can you.