Monday, July 02, 2007

DAMN BUREAUCRACY

First gripe not strictly bureaucracy but crappy taxi driver who told me if he'd known I was only going 3kms, he wouldn't have picked me up. He was also furious that I had a taxi directorate card. My regular drivers know I always tip well because of the shortness of the trip and I hate myself for tipping this pile of merde. On the good side my allowance has started again so I'm not chewing my fingers every time the fare comes up.

What really got me going today was AustraliaPost. They've decided to stop their BillManager payment system because not enough people were using it. How many people are not enough? I couldn't ask them because they sent out the letter with the wrong phone number for enquiries.

My squeal is that our council, in the only intelligent thing it's done in years, arranged for the rates to be paid fortnightly by the BillManager system. It's been a weight off my mind and almost the only way I've been able to keep the house. Complaint to the Rate department was heard politely but the council haven't put anything in place to carry on this arrangement. It's back to full payment or four equal amounts. He did tell me that the four equal amounts can be paid off weekly but after a bit of arithmeticking, that's going to leave me more than broke.

Tomorrow, more phone calls to my council rep and she had better earn her money. My mother and I can't be the only people using this system. The guy told me they can't do Direct Debit from the bank either because people don't leave enough money in their accounts. How dumb is that, DD's mean you leave the money in the bank and use what's left which is what I do with all the other bills. I tell you this is going to end in swearing, a lot of swearing.

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

I can feel your pain. Obviously I need taxis equipped to take wheelchairs, and whenever I call to get one from the outer suburbs to go either across town to work or into the city to Uni or the pub or whatever I'm pretty much guaranteed of getting a cab. However, if I need one for a short distance you can bet 9 times out of 10 that you won't get one.

A fellow cripple friend of mine who I met in rehab recently called a taxi to go from somewhere on St Kilda Road to Telstra Dome and was told after 1 1/2 hours that they still could not find a taxi. So this mate of mine got one of their friends to call the same taxi company and order a maxi cab to go from St Kilda Road to the airport and a cab arrived within 10 minutes.

If I go long distances drives don't usually get too annoyed at my taxi directorate card, but at the beginning of the year I was lucky enough to get some taxi vouchers and started paying with them and my regular driver stopped taking my jobs because the money took too long to come in according to him.

The taxi situation for people with extra needs is absolutely freaking terrible here in Victoria, I'm not sure what it's like in other states but I would be interested to know.

JahTeh said...

That's really bad Rach, like you don't have enough to annoy you as it is. I'm lucky to have regulars who drive around the area and always turn up for me and never tell me I look too healthy for a directorate card. They tell me that short jobs and lots of them are their bread and butter. Actually you should ask Adrian,the cabbie in Sydney what the situation is. I must say the last driver who had to take me and the ancient cat to the vet was marvellous.
I hope you're starting to feel a little better.

Anonymous said...

I have been known to tip generously on occasion, but a whinge like that from a cab driver would ensure no tip at all.

JahTeh said...

Andrew is back from orange country, I'll go over and visit.