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Mark Newton Total Landscaping Supplies

23 Dec, 11 tweets, 3 min read

@Telstra

It's incredibly hard to become a customer of @Telstra so you can give them money. They absolutely despise money, and do everything in their power to erect as many obstacles as possible in the way of a normal person establishing a billing relationship with them.

First: "I'd like to buy a 4G WiFi hotspot please."
"Umm, we don't have any. Maybe try K-Mart."

Are you serious? You can't sell me a mobile broadband service, and you'd prefer me to go to a department store. Okay...

So I go to the department store, and they have the same Telstra product $20 cheaper than Telstra does.

Go to activate it. Error message, SIM serial number has already been activated. Well goddamn.

@Telstra

So, back to the @Telstra shop. "Yes, I know I can return the whole thing, but all I want is a $2 SIM to get started. Can you just sell me one of those?"

No. They don't have any. Zero SIMs in the store.

ARE YOU KIDDING ME? WHAT OTHER PURPOSE DOES A TELSTRA SHOP HAVE?

@AusPost

Their first suggestion was to buy one from @AusPost, but they take 24 hours to activate their prepaid SIMs. Maybe try Woolies?

So I do that, and get my SIM, and go through trying to activate it. And ... now the identity check fails, so I can't.

Fuck. What?

@Telstra

Get @Telstra online support involved. "We'll send you an update in 30 minutes." 70 minutes later, I ping them for an update.

After much to-and-fro, it turns out that my identity check failed because someone at Telstra 8 years ago entered "Mark Newtown" instead of "Mark Newton" next to my drivers license number, so now I can't prove any ID at all to Telstra for any product.

Online support has fixed that.

So now the SIM ostensibly works.

It has taken 11.5 hours from first visit to the Telstra shop to having a working SIM in a WiFi hotspot.

I could have given up at any time. I don't know why I didn't.

@Telstra

How can they be so fucking bad at this? Every interaction I've ever had with @Telstra has been horrible, and they just don't learn anything, ever. All I wanted was a simple retail service, the thing their network of stores exists to sell, and they can't not screw it up.

Goddamn. So glad that's over.

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More from @NewtonMark

Mark Newton Total Landscaping Supplies

@NewtonMark

12 Sep

So here are things that are 100% true in Australia right now, which you can use to adjust your understanding of the Prime Minister's behavior. /1

1. Whether or not a State border is open is the exclusive constitutional purview of the State in question. If Queensland or Tasmania or WA want to keep closed, that's their prerogative, and the Feds don't get a look-in. /2

2. States with closed borders have all given justifications for them, based on a combination of medical advice and local State politics. The Feds don't get a look-in there either. /3

Read 12 tweets

Mark Newton Total Landscaping Supplies

@NewtonMark

17 Jul

There's been a lot of verbiage about whether the COVIDsafe app works. There's one aspect that's been missed, though. /1

To date, COVIDsafe data has been accessed more than 300 times, and it has not yielded any contact information that hadn't already been yielded by manual contact tracers. /2

So that gets into an incredibly boring discussion about whether it "works" -- It's producing the same contacts that humans do, so there's an aspect of "works" right there; But it's no better or more efficient than humans, so perhaps it's not doing what it says on the tin. /3

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Mark Newton Total Landscaping Supplies

@NewtonMark

28 Dec 19

Avgeek story time.

Three and a half years ago, I was in the USA, and a mate who lives there, whose day job is flying the big orange firefighting AirCranes everyone calls “Elvis,” invites me for a Saturday of flying in his RV-8.

So Rob flew down from his house in Oregon to pick me up at Palo Alto, California, and we nipped off to his friend’s house, on an airpark near Fresno.

His friend is ex USAF. Also owns an RV-8. Callsign is “Slick,” and you might remember him as formation lead in the Mythbusters episode about whether birds use less energy when they’re in formation than they do when they’re alone.

Read 24 tweets

Mark Newton Total Landscaping Supplies

@NewtonMark

30 Nov 19

@murpharoo

This is absolutely not @murpharoo’s best work. Right out of the first paragraph she’s presenting #robodebt as a “mistake” rather than a deliberate strategy. Also exemplifies a press gallery fetish of prioritizing voices of authority figures over facts. theguardian.com/australia-news…

@murpharoo

@murpharoo It’s funny because @murpharoo often says the facts are important, but she spent four years missing that basic year 7 maths says #robodebt averaging could not POSSIBLY be right, but maintained a “deep respect” for institutions doing it regardless.

@murpharoo

@murpharoo It has always been 100% obvious that #robodebt has been about extorting poor people in the service of ideology. It’s about causing the same effect as a welfare cut without having to “own” it by making welfare unsafe to claim. Absolutely fraudulent, run by frauds.

Read 8 tweets

Mark Newton Total Landscaping Supplies

@NewtonMark

28 Nov 19

@AmyRemeikis

There’s something that troubles me about the likes of @AmyRemeikis (and occasionally @murpharoo and others) reacting to parliamentary politics as if it’s “batshit insane.” It isn’t, and it lets some genuine bad actors off the hook to pretend it is.

@AmyRemeikis

@AmyRemeikis @murpharoo I know it’s a kind of syntactic shorthand, but it’s still wrong. The people involved, and the politics they’re pushing, are completely sane and not at all batshit.

@AmyRemeikis

@AmyRemeikis @murpharoo The tumor in the heart of Australian politics isn’t that it’s insane, it’s that it’s fundamentally immature. It’s prosecuted by unserious people who are deeply childish, treating the whole thing like a game.

Read 7 tweets

Mark Newton Total Landscaping Supplies

@NewtonMark

22 Nov 19

@NBN_Australia

When I first switched to the #NBN, I was sceptical. HFC doesn't exactly have the best reputation, after all; Who wouldn't be? There was also the fact that @NBN_Australia delayed my rollout for a year over HFC quality issues. Hmm...

Installation appointment day rolled around and ... nope. Nobody turned up. No phone call, no SMS, no nothing; I had cleared by calendar of meetings and stayed home for a day on the expectation that I might not have internet access, and NBNco was a no-show. Not a great start.

@NBN_Australia

The rescheduled appointment @NBN_Australia offered was in the gap between Anzac Day and Easter. If they'd already offered the excuse that they were "resource constrained" for the first no-show, why on earth would they reschedule for a week when everyone's on leave? Fool me once?

Read 25 tweets

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