1  2  Next

Came home from renewing car insurance, this year under our "socialist" insurance plan it went down to $77 a month.
Opened my e-mail, there's my Telus home service bill - up $50 from last month.
$90 ($108 a month after tax) for 15 Mb coverage.
FIFTEEN megabits - i can reduce it to ONLY $75 if I give up unlimited and swallow a cap on the service.
I have a couple options for faster Internet, but I dont really want to pay $100+ a month.
So I'm probably switching to a reseller offering the same thing, thru Telus lines, on Telus backbone, MOF they told me they'd been taken over by Telus last January for $45 a month, first 3 months at $25.
Back when I ran the local ISP they were charging more wholesale than to retail customers AND giving away free computers until they drove us out of business.

They also bought up the local cable company and jacked up their Internet rates to within $2 of DSL. You can get faster though - for EVEN MORE

FUCK THEM. FUCK THEM ALL and all who believe in the system.

   

I don’t think any of us really believe in any of the systems these days.

   

Nope. And your insurance went down?

The UPC here in Capitalism land removed the cap on insurance the NDP put in, and mine went up because some reason involving my credit score.

   

Yes, insurance on my Saturn Vue dropped from $110 month to $77 for exactly the same coverage. The Wrangler will drop too, don't have the letter to quote from. PLUS I've already received over $250 refund for last year's Covid rebate.

   

My 2011 F-150 is more than my 2018 Focus, both went up, and I got $20 credit for COVID.

"Free" market.

   

I just got 50 as a covid payment. Insurance also went down as son finally did the last test to be a full driver. Of course everything else is going up. Though my youngest moved out which will reduce other things too but not much.

   

My insurance company jacked up my rates even though I haven't had a claim in 15 years and also decided to start charging a monthly fee if you want to pay monthly, which works out to almost $200/year! I had to shell out almost $3000 all at once instead of paying $250/month.

Needless to say, I'm currently looking for a different insurance company after being with this one for almost 20 years.

   

That sounds exactly like AMA and my relationship with them.

Fee for monthly payments. *ptooie* I used to pay semi annual, and they don't offer that anymore either.

   

Sometimes I think I'm going to do something about my internet package, then realise I move over a terabyte of data each month and figure I'm paying for my share.

   

Does your water company charge you a different rate for using an arbitrarily set amount? Does your electricity company? Does it cost them more?

Monopolies.

   

Well I mean I pay per usage for electricity and water. So the more I use the more I pay.

And I don't think I'm getting gouged (compared to other companies prices in the area).

Canada as a whole gets gouged but I'm paying just over 100 for 500/500 unlimited fiber.

   

For wate & power you're actually getting something.
Gig charges are like issuing you a mortgage and then telling you can only open the doors twice a day. $5 per "overage"

If you're a reseller you don't have limits, that's the 'gravy'. Or you charge a little more for no caps and offer a little less service. That's the 'incentive'.
TIP: when you get to their main menu you shout "LOYALTY PROGRAM" into the phone. Teh you get a whole other Dept of ass-kissers who answer instantly and do almost anything to keep you as a customer.
Back to the same slow rate for the old fee. Not going to pay double or more for 'just a little faster'.

   

I don't pay bank fees because I keep at least "X" amount in my account and don't go over "Y" transactions in a month. Realized a long time ago that a lot of people have to pay because they don't have "X" dollars to their name.

   

Insurance company just sent me an other cheque this time for 105. It says it is an other covid payment. It’s not like I’m going to say no!

   

Technically none of this is the free market. It's crony capitalism to the core. The internet providers doing everything they could to block American competitors like Verizon from setting up shop in Canada. And, even more insulting, the federal government, from both major parties, saying it has to be this way in order to "preserve our Canadian uniqueness". Or the UCP in Alberta crowing about low taxes when in exchange we pay the highest fees and basic set prices in the entire country for utilities, insurance, vehicle registration, administrative traffic penalties (like parking tickets or driving with lapsed registration), new park admittance charges, and dozens of other fees and surcharges that completely wipe out whatever benefits we supposedly get from not having a provincial sales tax.

Know what the actual free market would look like? Dozens more insurance providers flooding backwaters like Alberta and driving the basic costs down in an unending price war. Ditto too with the internet & cable & streaming industry being wide fucking open and not a single government in this country interfering in the supply & demand part of the equation at all, and certainly not doing a single thing to shelter the Canadian providers. And none of that protection is for jobs either, not when Shaw/Bell/Telus/Rogers do what they can each and every year to cut staffing levels in order to boost profits.

This ain't the free market. What we have is corporate-only socialism, the exact worst type of socialism that does nothing but gouge the customer base. And it'll never go away either because it's rooted in too deep and there's too many wealthy executives & shareholders who are doing very well off of having things operate this way. And, like I said, the real insult comes when some politician with nothing but diarrhea for words starts babbling that it's for the good of the country. Fuck that, and fuck them all too.

   

1  2  Next