Adventure Ausrama Blog

You can be conned on eBay.  Con artists have found a way to trick the eBay sales monitoring system.  A seller sets up an account and puts an item on sale.  He/she displays a "ticker" that says 10 are sold out of 50.  Of course, this is a lie. There are none for sale. The seller closely watches payments being made online. When he sees a transfer, the item is immediately withdrawn from sale. This item will not show up in the list of purchases on eBay. It will  be in the PayPal list. However, PayPal will not give a refund if there is no record of sale on eBay. There is another reason why eBay and PayPal do not refund your money. The seller is long gone not only withdrawing the product from sale but closing down the account and abandoning the business email address. He cannot be traced.  The ruse is repeated a few months later with the same item so it is easy to do. More and more eBay users are complaining about losing their cash.  Yes, it is u...

The quality of customer service is getting worse. Being left on the phone while the answering device takes a break is common. Being told they will fix it later when you inform the bank that the ATM is not working is also the usual way of things. Having no one on checkout duty at a supermarket is another complaint. Another "con" doing the rounds is couriers not delivering parcels. On many occasions they don't even leave a contact number on your phone. They just leave you waiting. You eventually find a contact number and they tell you they couldn't find the address, when normal mail deliveries continue with no problems. They are lying - they haven't been out. Think of the money they are pocketing by not sending someone out. It is easy for them to tell you to pick it up at the office, but what about the inconvenience and cost of taking a day off work to pick up a parcel? Putting it bluntly - they are stealing! They have already been paid to provide a service, usu...

It is so strange how support for Kevin Rudd's Emissions Trading Scheme has totally evaporated. Kevin Rudd rightly claims that his backing down from trying to pass the legislation cost him leadership of his party and the country, so great was public support for it then. Times have changed. With big rises in water charges and electricity charges across the country people just don't want a bar of it anymore. The proof of global warming is considerable. Ice is disappearing from the North and South Poles. Those who still contend that it is made up just to get money out of the public must be living on another planet - in their minds at least. No one wants to be paying higher prices for essential items than consumers in other countries, but the world is changing. China is making major changes. to reduce pollution. Finland introduced the world's first carbon tax in 1990. That is two decades ago. Sweden followed in 1991. Great Britain brought in a climate change levy in 20...