I was hunting for something on the internet… as you do. One of the potential suppliers didn’t have the exact item I was looking for, so I thought I’d contact them. One of their contact options was ‘live chat’ available ’24/7/365, no waiting’. So I clicked on the link. And got this:
If you’re going to make a statement that someone is available for ‘live chat’ 24/7/365, then honor it. If you can’t honor it, don’t make that promise!
This post is for me, in case I ever lose the notebook in which this information is jotted down! And for anyone else in Australia who has a Telstra HTC Sensation phone who is going to the US and wants to purchase a US SIM card from T-Mobile so they can use their own phone while away.
For the past two years, I have purchased a ‘pay per day’ SIM from T-Mobile for the short trips I’ve made to the US (see http://prepaid-phones.t-mobile.com/pay-by-the-day-cell-phone-plans for these plans). For just $2 or $3 per day, I get unlimited calls, texts, and internet while in the US. A 14-day US trip at $3 per day costs me less than $50, compared to potentially $1000 or more if I use my Telstra SIM and global roaming in the US. (See this horror story of a $12,000 Telstra global roaming bill for 13 days in Thailand: http://www.news.com.au/breaking-news/victorian-man-hit-with-12k-roaming-bill-after-thailand-holiday/story-e6frfkp9-1226618187589)
The biggest disadvantage is that I ‘lose’ my own phone number for the time I’m away (I get allocated a new US number each visit), and I have to find a T-Mobile store. Finding a T-Mobile store is not difficult as there are many of them. I believe you can get the ‘pay per day’ SIM activation kit from other locations, such as supermarkets, but I choose to get it direct from a T-Mobile store so that the store person can set everything up and test it all before I leave the store. A supermarket is unlikely to give you that sort of assistance.
After you’ve purchased the ‘pay per day’ kit (just ask for it — it’s not a box on the shelf), the store assistant will take out your HTC battery and Telstra SIM (DO NOT LOSE YOUR SIM!!! You’ll need it when you get back to Australia, so store it in a safe place, such as in a little zip lock bag placed near your passport or in your wallet). They will then insert the T-Mobile SIM and replace your battery and turn on the phone. They may also have to call a T-Mobile head office number and give/get a code to activate the phone.
Test that your phone can call out by calling the store’s landline number from your phone, then get the assistant to use the landline to call your new number. That’s all pretty straightforward and should work straight away. Likewise, you should get a text message or two from T-Mobile within minutes, welcoming you to their service and telling you how much balance you have on your plan. To test that you can send texts, SMS a US friend or the T-Mobile assistant who is serving you. Your phone and SMS are now working — so far, so good…
The final test is to see if you can get internet connection, so open the browser on your phone and do a search. However, if my experience is anything to go by, it’s unlikely you’ll connect as there are a couple of things you/the assistant may still have to do (see below), and because it can take a couple of hours for the internet connection to work properly (or so I’ve been told at two different T-Mobile locations in two different states in two different years; my experience has been that after the settings are entered, I can usually get internet connection within a minute or so).
If you can get a connection straight away, you’re done and don’t need to read any further. Enjoy your cheap US phone/text/internet time in the US, and don’t forget you can now use your ‘US’ HTC/Android phone as a tethered modem to avoid exorbitant hotel charges for internet access (these only seem to occur in the expensive hotels — most mid-range hotels in the US have free internet/WiFi).
If you can’t get internet connection, make sure the assistant enters the information below into your phone (or do it yourself if you’ve already left the store).
Happy travelling!
See also:
[Links last checked April 2013]
I delivered this presentation on remote working to the ASTC(NSW) 2012 annual conference on 3 November 2012. (Resources list: http://cybertext.wordpress.com/2012/11/03/resources-for-remote-working-presentation/)
This presentation focused on my experiences over the past six years that I’ve worked entirely from home, and highlighted:
The audience was technical writers and communicators — an audience whose occupation is well-suited to working from home at least a part of the time.
For those who attended my presentation on ‘Remote Working: Telecommuting from the trenches’ at the ASTC (NSW) Conference in November 2012, here is a list of some of the MANY internet resources/articles available:
This email (slightly modified to remove references to people, companies etc.) was sent to the entire team last week. I love working for these people!
Hi guys,
Just a quick reminder to not alter the formatting of the [ABC] document. This includes things like inserting new headers and footers (including for landscape pages), altering text styles and altering page numbers, etc. We have Rhonda as a great resource to make these changes and assist us with other formatting and authoring-based IT issues, not just the tech writing reviews she also does.
It’s not the best use of time as it takes us much longer to fiddle around in the formatting and styles than it will take Rhonda. Also often our best efforts to solve something in the document can cause more work for Rhonda to fix than the original issue.
Another way to think of it is, we have been hired for our technical expertise in environmental assessment, and Rhonda has been hired for her expertise in technical writing, document formatting and styles, etc.
Nice!
I am NOT happy with MYOB.
As a small (one-person) business who charges by the time I spend on client work, I need accounting software that can deal with hourly rate time billing and calculate the GST, can accurately calculate my BAS at the end of each quarter, and that can load the updated tax tables from the Australian Government after July 1 each year.
MYOB seems to be the only software in the Australian marketplace that can do all this automatically. And as it’s also used by my accountant, I’m pretty much locked in to the MYOB world. While it’s never been the prettiest software or the most intuitive to work with, it has worked, and I haven’t begrudged paying the annual ‘Cover’ fee (i.e. subscription) on top of the initial amount I paid for the software (the ‘Cover’ subscription gets me [annual] software updates and those all-important updates to the Australian Tax Office’s tax tables).
But now MYOB have really upset their user base. Firstly, they put out new release of their software in late in 2011, which didn’t work in a timely manner (slow as a wet week would be polite), and have released THREE service packs since then. And still the MYOB forums are full of bookkeepers, accountants, and small business users howling at the slowness of the software, and advising anyone who can to go back to V19.6. Needless to say, after my fruitless experience over Christmas trying to install and activate the new version and reading hundreds of forum posts berating MYOB for a really crappy software version and for losing those small business people hundreds — if not thousands — of dollars in revenue and enormous amounts of lost time, I’ve stuck with v19.6. The forums haven’t died down in the past few months either — MYOB is taking a HUGE hit to its reputation from its user base on this release. Even the CEO has come on to the forums to try to calm things down, but that hasn’t worked either — the software is still buggy and slow, according to the most recent forum posts.
And now to add insult to injury, I got my ‘Cover’ (annual subscription) renewal in the mail the other day, and the annual subs have jumped from around $400–$500 a year (see below for my past invoices) to $714.00!!
From 2008 to 2009, there was a $20 increase (less than 5% increase) on the previous year’s subs. From 2009 to 2010, there was also a $20 increase (also less than 5% increase). From 2010 to 2011, there was a $34.05 increase on the previous year’s subs (about a 7% increase), and from 2011 to 2012, there’s a $220.95 increase to $714.00! That’s a 31% increase on last year’s subs! That’s out and out highway robbery.
The CPI in Australia from Dec 2010 to Dec 2011 was averaging around 3% (http://www.abs.gov.au/ausstats/abs@.nsf/mf/6401.0) so the less than 5% increase, and even perhaps the 7% increase are not too far off that mark. But more than 30%??? That’s just taking advantage of the fact that their Australian small business customers have very little alternative software available to them for managing their business finances and taxes.
A crappy product and a price increase of 30%? How to lose your customer base really quickly. I’m sick of them and their dodgy business practices (who releases a major software version without testing it first? and then ups the subscription amount by some 30% for a crappy product that no-one wants to use?).
If anyone has any suggestions of software alternatives to MYOB, I’d be happy to hear them. However, the alternatives MUST be able to do hourly time billing, calculate the GST and BAS, provide annual tax tables from the Australian Tax Office, and be at a price point suitable for a one-person business. So anything designed for the US, UK etc. is out. Oh, and the alternative has to be able to import my existing MYOB files (accounts, card files, etc.) and let me customise my invoices. And my accountant needs to be able to work with the files come tax time.
Update April 2013: Just got my renewal from MYOB for this coming year: $780!! A $66 increase from last year’s subs, which is another 8.5% increase. The 2012 CPI for Australia was 2.2%…
I helped someone out on this blog a while ago. Because I couldn’t easily diagnose her Word 2003 problem based on the comments on the post, I asked her to email the document to me so I could see what was going on (I rarely do this, but it was very hard to diagnose based on what she said). I was able to quickly determine the issue — she was trying to create an automatic Table of Contents and despite my instructions on that blog post to the contrary, she hadn’t used ANY styles other than ‘Normal’ in her document.
Anyhow, I took each of her seven Chapter titles and made them into Heading 1s, and generated the TOC. This took me about five minutes. I sent her back the document, with a very brief explanatory email in which I had included this:
If you wanted this [document] properly formatted and edited, then I could do this, but I’d charge you for that work.
I got an email back from her within hours. I won’t try to paraphrase it — you can read it yourself (my highlighting):
Now, I like being appreciated as much as the next person, so I was glad I could help her, and she did thank me profusely at the beginning and end of her email.
But am I being overly sensitive? On reading and re-reading this email, I just felt angry and demeaned. This is my job. This is how I earn a living and pay my bills. I share tips and hints on this blog for free, but I won’t do jobs such as this for free. I thought I’d made that clear in my email to her. It’s taken me 20 years of working with — and fighting — Word to gain the knowledge and reputation that I have, so my immediate reaction to ‘just email me the steps to properly format my book’ was ‘You’ve GOT to be kidding!’, followed by anger and disappointment…
I was angry and disappointed that someone could even assume that a person who has gained a lot of knowledge in a field would give that knowledge away for free to someone they didn’t know (or even someone they did know). You wouldn’t ask a dentist, medical practitioner, engineer, plumber or any other professional or tradesperson to do a job for free (‘I can’t pay you. Would you just email me the steps for building a bridge across my river?’, ‘I can’t pay you. Would you just email me the steps for extracting my rotten tooth?’, ‘I can’t pay you. Would you just email me the steps for giving myself a shot of antibiotics?’, ‘I can’t pay you. Would you just email me the steps to unblock the toilet?’). So why ask me to do the same?
If I *choose* to provide hints and tips via this blog and if I *choose* to do that for free, that’s my choice. But that’s a lot different to taking on a job of editing and formatting a stranger’s (or a friend’s) book for free.
So many people think that this writing and editing stuff is easy just because they learned to write at school — and that includes those employers who think that everyone can write so why would they need a writer/editor on staff.
A good practitioner and someone who has honed their profession or craft by working at it every day for years, can make that profession or craft look easy — but it’s not. It comes from many years of hard work, frustration, testing, trial and error, and thousands of hours of going down different paths to find the answer, then applying that knowledge to each job that they do, and building on their previous knowledge. It also comes from attending conferences, workshops, training courses, seminars, and buying and reading books, etc. often on their own dime and in their own time.
When you pay me to do a job for you, you’re not just paying me for the number of hours I put in to do the work — you’re also paying me for my 20 years of accumulated knowledge in this field, and the shortcuts and workarounds I’ve discovered along the way to make the process of writing or editing your document as efficient and as quick and accurate as possible. My rate reflects that. You might think that I make it look easy, but that’s because I’ve learned a lot and I apply that knowledge to every job that I do.
But to ask me to give you that for free is just insulting. And demeaning. And it makes me angry.
What do you think? Am I being over-sensitive about this?
(BTW, I replied by sending her a link to the Microsoft Word training website.)
Related:
[Links last checked January 2012]
There’s an old adage I use at times: You can have good (accurate, readable, usable, etc.), cheap, or fast—pick two.
The essence of this adage is that someone who is fast and accurate is rarely cheap; someone who is cheap is rarely fast and may not be accurate; and someone who is accurate typically isn’t fast or cheap.
Take this scenario:
Person A charges 100 jellybeans (JB) an hour (or whatever your currency of choice is), while Person B charges 50 JB an hour. You think you’re getting a better deal with Person B, right? Not necessarily…
Let’s say the job is editing a 20,000-word document to a fine level of detail.
Person A (the more expensive one) does it in 8 hours and is very accurate in picking up all sorts of error — that’s 800 JB you owe them.
Person B (the cheaper one) takes 15 hours to do the same job as they don’t have the same experience or critical eye as Person A; in fact, they don’t pick up many of the errors that Person A identified and have to re-read the document several more times to catch most of them. This takes them another 5 hours. So Person B ends up spending 20 hours on the job, costing you 1000 JB, which is more than Person A charges. And they’ve taken 12 hours more to do the work than Person A too, which may be critical if you have an immovable deadline.
So, bearing that in mind, do you think you’d touch this job?
If the quality of the 30,000 words he’s written is anything like the writing quality in his email, AND he wants it cheap, then you’ve got to think that this would take an horrendous amount of time for little return.
He wants cheap and accurate? He wants an editor and a publisher all in one? He’s dreaming!
See also:
[Link last checked August 2011]
If you’ve been given the task of setting up a Project Charter document (also known as a ‘Terms of Reference’ document), you might not know where to start.
Here’s a broad outline of the major headings you are likely to need, from the people at Mentoric:
For an expanded list — with subheadings — see this article: http://www.mentoric.com/resource_project_tor.html
[Link last checked June 2011]
Years ago, I worked for a software company, the first company I worked for after leaving teaching. My job lasted from 1992 to 1998, when the company imploded (a long story best told over a bottle of wine!). It was a small company (five or six when I started and 21 staff at the maximum). The boss, Allan, was the initial developer of the software and also the owner of the company.
Allan was not a good people or business manager. He was terrific at the visionary and computer and technology stuff, but he failed miserably in his interactions with staff and his knowledge of the day-to-day running of a business. Fortunately, he had employed some great people who looked after much of that for him, often without his knowledge.
Anyhow, that’s all a preamble to one ‘management’ technique of his that I never understood. When the company was doing well (as we did for several years), Allan rewarded staff with monetary bonuses at the end of the financial year (June 30 in Australia), believing that extra money was a great motivator and a suitable reward for our hard work, which had contributed to the company’s success.
I’ve never been in the ‘money as a reward’ camp — unless you’re very disciplined, cash is too easily frittered away on paying the bills or on day-to-day living expenses, or perhaps on an expensive meal at a restaurant you wouldn’t normally go to. It’s gone all too quickly, and is not remembered by the recipient. In fact, I can recall at least two substantial bonuses (in the thousands of dollars) in the time I worked there, but don’t ask me how much they were for as I’ve long forgotten. And don’t ask me what I used the money for, as I’ve forgotten that too — I know I didn’t purchase something I’d remember (like a holiday, or a large screen TV, or a computer, or a car). It probably went on paying a bit more off the mortgage.
I recall discussing this ‘money as a reward’ thing with Allan several times, but he was adamant that a bonus check or cash was the way to go. My argument was that we were all working so incredibly hard (60-100 hour weeks weren’t uncommon prior to a major release), that we didn’t have time to spend the money! I argued that it would be better to get a sense of each individual and tailor a bonus to suit them and their interests. Remember, we were a small company and very much like family — it wasn’t hard to find out what motivated individuals.
For me, it was travel, so a paid holiday to anywhere for a week — or even a weekend — would’ve been very welcomed. For one of my colleagues, getting her gym membership paid for the year would’ve been great motivation. For another, a gift voucher to a clothing or shoe store of her choice would’ve put a big smile on her face. Yet another was putting his three elementary school children through the private school system, so paying a term’s fees for one child would’ve helped him a lot.
Let’s assume that Allan gave us bonuses that ranged from $1000 to $5000, and he did this for all 20 staff — that’s a $20,000 to $100,000 outlay. If he’d just asked what we would’ve liked, he could’ve spent much less on each of us, and we’d have remembered the bonus for much longer than a couple of weeks. For example, to pay for me to have a weekend in a luxury hotel with meals covered as well, would have cost him less than $1000 (it was the early 1990s!); my colleague’s gym membership was probably about $500 for the year; the clothing/shoe voucher could have been for $500 or $1000; and the private school fees for one term for one child might have come in around $1000. So just on four people he’s outlaid a maximum of $3500, whereas to give us cash bonuses, he would’ve have laid out between $4000 and $20000.
Sure, there may have been tax reasons why he gave us cash bonuses, but knowing him as I did, I expect much of it was laziness and an unwillingness to really find out what excited people outside their work.
If you’re looking for ideas on how to reward staff with something other than cash bonuses, take a look at this list of Low Cost / No Cost Recognition for Teams and Individuals from Mentoric: http://www.mentoric.com/resource_low_cost_recognition.html
While bonuses and rewards may have their place, I get the most job satisfaction from sincere, unsolicited words of thanks and praise from colleagues and bosses for a job well done. Respect for what I do also goes an awfully long way.
[Links last checked June 2011; image from http://morguefile.com/archive/display/648479]
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