Melbourne Weekend - Part 1 - The Hotel

I'm laying off the stories of Westpac and banking for a little foray into my weekend away. I went to Melbourne with Becci to catch up with Skye and her new baby, little Luke.

And so it begins. Becci leaves on Thursday night cos she's off to the Great Ocean Road and I've got to work until Friday. So I've booked the hotel in advance and handed over my credit card details as payment/guarantee. Becci arrives at the hotel and the guy at reception insists on payment for the full three nights up front. So Becci's turned up with some cash, but not enough to pay the whole hotel bill - and why should she?? And the guy at reception is a total arse - informing her that our last night would be cancelled if we couldn't pay for it there and then. But it's simple. I reserved it using a credit card - why not take the payment - that's what the guarantee is for - right? Becci could only pay two nights worth in the end and then I had to pay when I arrived the following night - what a farce. I only heard about this second hand from Becci and I was ready to ring them up and call them names - I mean hello? What's the point in accepting a reservation with a credit card, if the card isn't enough to pay for the room, or at least reserve it without it being cancelled.

Although in hindsight, perhaps it's a shame it wasn't cancelled because the room was RIGHT at the front of the hotel, right on the main road and right opposite a nightclub playing music until the small hours and then of course every drunk freak falls out of the club and starting yelling and shouting. Oh and did I mention our windows were single glazed and about as thick as a sheet of paper and the wooden frame were about as solid as yoghurt. We might as well have had our beds set up *IN* the bar. Seriously. It was ridiculous. But that wasn't the half of it.

I arrive on the friday night, after a two hour flight delay from Sydney and I talk to the receptionist. (A different one from the one who 'helped' Becci - it turns out.) Anyway, so I arrive, I tell him I have a booking. I tell him my name, and that my friend checked-in the night before. He looks like he knows vaguely what he's doing - there's a keyboard being tapped and he says to me, 'Oh yes, you're friend is in room 158. It's a triple room.' And I'm thinking, hmmmm, interesting, because I thought we had a twin room and that's what Becci told me the day before. So I ask him if that's correct and he replies that it is and that my friend already checked in with her boyfriend. So I ask him to check again because I didn't think Becci had bought her boyfriend with her and I didn't think it was a triple room. So he asks me to confirm my name - which I do and *THEN* he finds the correct booking. so he was happy to let me wander around the hotel knocking on strangers doors cos he couldn't be arsed to check the booking properly the first OR second time. And not only that, but they only have one room key per room and at gone midnight I've got to ring up Becci and ask her to let me into the room because (not surprisingly) she's asleep. Poor thing had been up all day since 6am and I've got to wake her because the hotel people couldn't possibly have more than one key. The fuckwits.

But then, just when you couldn't imagine anything else making my life a misery, I offer to pay this guy for the last night of our stay - because of this threat to cancel and he looks at me like I've suddenly started speaking in Klingon. No he's got no idea what I'm talking about. So I come down the next day in my PJ's and attempt to speak to someone who knows what they're talking about. It's a girl and she does know. It appears she is the *only* person who has a clue. But she's happy to take my money from me, while simultaneously telling me that the water supply to the hotel will be cut off at 9am the following morning, so if you want to have a shower on a sunday morning, the sunday morning after the clocks have gone forward, so you've lost an hours sleep anyway, yes, you're going to have to be up at the crack of dawn to fit it all in. Are you joking?

Apparently they weren't joking and nor was Melbourne water when they rocked up outisde our hotel window at 7.30am and started digging up the road.

So FYI, that was the Claremont Hotel in South Yarra - the ones who couldn't take payment off the credit card I'd made the reservation with, the ones who threatened to kick us out if we couldn't pay, the ones who tried to send me off to someone elses hotel room at gone midnight, the ones who gave us the noisiest room with the thinnest windows, the ones who were happy to let us pay full price but with no water after 9am. Would I stay there again? I'll let you figure that one out.

On my high horse

If you live in Australia and have done all your life, what I'm about to tell you about the charges levied by Australian banks will seem completely normal.

If you live in the UK, you'll think Australians must be crazy to put up with a system like this. But you have to know that elsewhere it's different before you can kick up a fuss.

In Australia, I have a bank account with Westpac. On the whole, I'm fairly happy with them. They have a system here in Australia, where you pay between $3 and $5 per month as an account 'management' fee. Frankly it's utter bollocks, but $5, I can live with that.

At home, I have a credit card with a debt on it. It's a pain in the ass transferring money to the UK, not least because I get charged a fee by Westpac to send it, and a fee by Barclays to receive it. This is daylight robbery as far as I'm concerned - so I had an idea that I could get a loan out in Australia and transfer the money back to the UK to pay off the card, in effect meaning that I have the debt here instead of back in the UK. It seems like a good idea, no?

OK, so I go online to Westpac and look up taking out a loan.

I just have a quick look around, say I need to borrow $12,000. I don't but it's a good number.
To borrow this money from the bank means I'll get charged a set-up fee. A set-up fee?? Christ, the last time I heard those words was when I was thinking about getting a mortgage. And I could understand it in that case. We're talking hundreds of thousands of pounds, serious cash, and serious risk. The banks need to do work to protect their cash, I get that. $12,000 is the equivalent of £5000. In real terms, a drop in the ocean. A small drop at that and they want to charge a set up fee of $250. Fine OK. Assuming, I could get past that I carry on reading to discover that they have a further charge of $7.50 per month as a 'monthly service fee'. Are they joking? What kind of service are they going to provide to me that could warrant a charge of $7.50 each month??

And keep in mind, that it's not just the $12,000 you're paying, there's the interest as well. Here in Australia, borrowing $12,000 will cost you an interest rate of 12.88%. The base rate is 6.5%. That's a profit of 6.38% on interest alone.

In the UK, borrowing £5000 will cost you an interest rate of 8.7% compared to a base rate of 5.75%, a profit of 2.95%.

So if you break down the cost of a loan in the UK compared to a loan in Australia, £5000 compared to $12,000 which is roughly the same amount of money:

UK - Borrowing from Westpac - Australia's Fourth Largest Bank

Amount you want to borrow: £5000
Amount you'll pay back: £5,526.82
Cost of borrowing overall: £526.82 (roughly equal to $1264.37)

Australia - Borrowing from Bank of Scotland - part of HBOS group, UK's Fourth Largest Bank
Amount you want to borrow: $12,000
Amount you'll pay back: $14,140.80
Cost of borrowing: $2,140.80 (roughly equal to £892.00)

So borrowing this relatively small amount of money in Australia is nearly twice as expensive than borrowing in the UK - for no apaprent reason I can see other than blatent profiteering. Bear in mind you can't borrow unless you're got a current account anyway and add on the extra $5 per month fee and so it goes on and on.

Westpac's profits in 2006 were $3,071 million. Nice work if you can get it.

And if you don't believe me - see for yourself.....

http://www.westpac.com.au/internet/publish.nsf/Content/PBPLCR+Unsecured+personal+loans

http://www.bankofscotlandhalifax.co.uk/loans/smallerloan.asp

Call an Ambulance!

OK before I get started, it wasn't me that needed the Ambulance.....

So earlier this year, my friend Mac and I went to Bondi beach, I can't remember why - it might have been for lunch or to go shopping or something like that. Anyway, it's the afternoon and so we're on our way back to the city and we need to get a bus. We're waiting at the bus stop and there's a few buses come along, but they all go past us. There are some other people at the bus stop, but the next stop is only a little way down the road, so we walk down there to get the bus instead.

So we get there and get on the bus and there are people on the bus from the stop we've just walked from, typical we think. And what's more because it's really busy they got on at the stop before us and managed to get seats so it looks like we'll have to stand for the journey back to the city.

Anyway, we can only have got two stops ahead when all of a sudden, there's this woman who's started shrieking about her mother being ill and someone needs to call an ambulance. Literally everyone on the bus would have had a mobile phone - but it was one of those incidents where it's pointless for everyone to get out their phone and start dialling so for the mostpart people just sit there looking around at the next person to see who's getting their phone out. Anyway this one girl gets her phone out - but she doesn't speak english and doesn't know what number to dial. So she passes the phone to my friend Mac. So Mac has this phone in his hand and it's all a bit slow motion as I remember it - but I could see him considering what to do - and it turns out he doesn't know what number to dial either - he's American - for him, it's 911 but what about Australia? So he passes the phone to me and says he doesn't know the number, so I'm standing there with some girls phone in my hand and I realise *I* don't know which number to call either. Meanwhile this old woman has collapsed and the other woman is freaking out.

Oh god, looking back it was the funniest situation. I just had to pass the phone back - I guess I could have carried on passing it around - but it was already getting ridiculous! And then as quickly as it had all happened this woman suddenly recovered. It wasn't like she was running around or anything but they got off the bus and waited there for the Ambulance to arrive. Luckily there was someone on the bus who knew more about the numbers to call than we did.

So in case you need to call the emergency services in Australia - the number is 000. Although how as a new person you're meant to know this is anyone's guess.

London here I come.... via New Zealand.....

So a few weeks ago, I went home for a couple of weeks. Home in this case being London. Going home was fun, getting there was like some kind of evil joke involving aircraft, turbulence and jet lag of the worst kind.

I left Sydney on a Friday and flew to Auckland. Now I knew about these new rules about liquids on planes, you know everything has to be under 100ml and in a clear bag blah blah. But you can buy stuff after airport security - so you it's not too much of a big deal. So I fly to Auckland. It's three hours from Sydney so I buy a bottle of coke and a bottle of water. I get to Auckland and have to be scanned again - you know x-ray and metal detector. So they find this bottle of water in my luggage and all of a sudden there's like a huge deal.

NO WHERE did it say what they were scanning for.... it turns out that they're scanning for liquids again..... So there's the drama about the water - they offer to let me go back and empty the bottle and then I can keep it - the freaking plastic bottle, WTF! So I say to the guy, why don't you put up a sign and make a bin available to allow people to prepare for the scanning?? The guy just repeats over and over about the liquids and so on. So I keep asking them why they couldn't put up a sign. And their reply is that they should have told me in Australia. OMG, these people seriously wind me up. Just put up the freaking sign. I mean how hard can it be?? As it turns out EVERY other airport where I transit (and there were a few) puts up the signs..... Duh.

So after the liquids fiasco we end up in the airport. I've got six hours to kill and I swear the aiport is TINY. There are maybe a dozen shops total. There's a Burger King and a coffee store for food, that's it. This has got to be one of New Zealands largest airports and it's seriously unimpressive.

So six hours....

I buy j-pod by Douglas Coupland in the bookstore. Probably the best thing about Auckland Airport. I should've bought a Burger King to top it off.