Living in Manitoba, I’m obliged to purchase vehicle insurance from the government. I can not purchase private insurance. This used to be ok given that premiums were reasonable and service was adequate. I’m satisfied with the insurance plan for my car.
Some time ago, the government started increasing motorcycle premiums disproportionately to other vehicle types. I now pay about $1,800 per year for full coverage on my bike (factored in is a 25% discount for a good driving record). Private insurance would cost well under half that amount.
What gets me is that I used to be able to purchase insurance for the year and then cancel the policy at the end of the riding season. I could ride for 6 months at a cost of $900 and then pay another $100 for storage insurance for the winter.
A few years ago the government changed the policy on motorcycle insurance by demanding payment of 100% of the premiums during the summer season.
They tried to sell it as only needing to pay premiums for 5 months and then having free insurance for the remainder of the year. Now I have to pay $1,800 for having my bike insured for 5 months. To me this represents a 125% increase in premiums.
The following quote is straight from their website.
Pricks.
The politics of the situation works in favour of the government of the day to continue to screw the motorcycling community. The public as a whole are not opposed to motorcyclists paying more to ride especially when it means that their share of responsibility for the collective pool of premium proceeds is reduced.
When the private Driver’s Ed programs started coming into town the schools started touting their “4 hours observation time” as one thing that made their program better than the private programs.
Observation time = sitting in the back seat waiting for your turn to drive while other students damn near kill you.
Being told we had to go to direct deposit on our paychecks, to save us time and to save the company on paper. Thing is, I didn’t wan’t direct deposit, as my bank used to charge a fee on direct deposit items. When I brought this up, they told me, go direct deposit, switch banks, or don’t get paid. Oh…and it’s actually using more paper now, as they send me a pay stub, and a deposit slip every two weeks. Way to go.
When I moved to Tokyo to a sister organization of my parent company, they combined the worst of both polices and tried to sell it off as a big favor to me.
Look! You get all your money in yen! (What about the taxes?? huh? what about them?)
My parent company had a home visit every 6 months, and it was changed to a year, and my HR had the nerve to tell me “But you love Japan, why would you want to come home?”
(Because I like holidays, dammit)
My buddy thinks that in all honesty they weren’t trying to be assholes, they were just stupid and didn’t think it through. Vacation is one issue, the bonus is another issue, and in the pea brain of the HR director, never the twain shall meet. I’m not sure how the issue was resolved, I should ask.
A couple of years ago, my then-manager called me into her office to discuss my salary. Turns out that they’d reassessed me and decided to give me a 5% bump on my base. Woo hoo!
Two days later, they presented a restructured bonus plan, which cut my variable pay in half. That spontaneous raise suddenly made sense… not that the 5% extra on my paycheque came anywhere near the amount that was cut from my bonus.
They assure us that they this was a good thing, because it meant that our income would be “more predictable”. Apparently, bonuses aren’t actually real income at all, even though I’d yet to miss a bonus in the four years I’d been there till then. :rolleyes:
In my case, when they pulled this stunt they also changed my account number. Which meant I had to go back to every damn vendor I deal with on a regular basis and change the information with them.
I told the credit card company that seeing as how I’m changing account numbers anyway, I may as well change companies too. I don’t care how that affects my credit rating - FUCK THEM if they’re going to put over this kind of crap as a supposed convenience to me.
And in one case (for me anyway) an annual fee that I didn’t used to have.
Which is why I will never have another Capital One credit card as long as I live.
My response to the OP was going to be, pretty much any time two banks or airlines or other such large companies merge, they always seem to spin it as “better for the customers”. Yeah, two airlines merge, half the flights get cut, how is that better for me?
Strictly speaking not the company but still detrimental, at least in my case. The Federal Employee Union (or whatever they called themselves) decided that it wasn’t fair to the employees at my office to get numerical ratings on their job performance. So one year when they negotiated the contract they managed to include a change in the ratings system so thatr everyone would receive one of two ratings - Satisfactory or Unsatisfactory. The thing is, under the old system if you got the top rating of Excellent the managers were for all intents and purposes required to write you up for an award. Under the new rating system they had to set up an Awards panel, consisting of both managers and non-managers; anyone could nominate anyone for an award, all awards had to be reviewed, and all it took to have a nomination rejected for for a single person on the awards panel to veto it.
So suddenly, instead of automatically getting an award every year (because I had always gotten an Excellent rating) I stopped getting them unless I was lucky enough that no one on the panel didn’t like me - and I was not exactly Mr Congeniality, since my tolerance level for stupidity and bullshit was extremely low.
A while back my uni invested in some grand project which failed. HARD. In hindsight it was obvious why it failed, as it always is, but I can’t imagine why it wasn’t obvious beforehand.
Shortly after this, they announce a rearrangement to the timetabling. Instead of having two sessions of 14 weeks per year, they decided to give us three sessions of 12 weeks per year, the third being over the summer break. They said this was to get us “in sync” with the other universities. Er, thanks, but:
It didn’t put us “in sync” with other unis, no matter whether you define that as same amount of coursework, breaks at the same time, etc
A lot of people came to this uni because of its 14 week session - this is more than competing universities, and even one extra week can give you an edge in understanding a course. Hell, you could cover a whole new topic in one week, thoroughly in two weeks.
The new summer session was bullshit. It added a huge amount to your fees, the on campus accommodation shoots up in price and only a few courses were available. Considering that a lot of students work over summer to pay their fees.
All of this was pointed out to the university’s bigwigs. The student body opposed it. The staff opposed it. There were protests and strikes and demonstrations. And this was before it was widely known that the exam period would be cut as well, meaning you have less time in class, and now less time to revise before exams. The move was almost universally unpopular, but they went ahead with it. All the while saying how great its going to be being in sync with the other unis. :rolleyes:
Right now the timetabling is in flux, and I have no idea where it will come to rest, but for now it seems like the sessions are getting longer again. Not as long as they were, but getting there.
I deliver magazines every 2 weeks. Prior to this year, I got monthly direct deposits every last Thursday of the month. I set some of my bills up for 1st of the month payment out of the account these deposits went to.In fact, this account goes within $50 of dry each 1st.
With 10 days’ notice back in December, the company started paying every 4 weeks, touting the fact that we get an extra payday every year.
All well and good, but we were started at the point in the cycle where our Feb and March checks come on the 3rd.
Thus, I’ve had to do a lot of money shuffling to make sure that there’s money in that account on the 1st of those two months to cover auto-withdrawal commitments.
If I’m still doing this job by next Feb-March, I’ll have money in the accounts by the firsts without having to scramble, but this year’s a bitch.
Yup. Things are better because you’re forced to accept PayPal. As a seller, feedback is made entirely a positive experience by removing the possibility of leaving neutrals or negatives.
Similac baby formula recently changed their packaging so that there’s an easy place to grip the canister and a spot to place the scoop so that it doesn’t get lost.
They also cut the number of ounces that came in each container while keeping the price the same. Woohoo…I’m sure so many parents are thrilled about the new package. I know my sister (the mother of the world’s cutest little six month old girl) loves paying the same amount for less food.
I was working part-time for a university a few years ago and the pay was crappy. The director called me into her office in December and told me they were having some budget struggles - she’d like to offer me full (full time) benefits in exchange for a cut in my (already) laughable salary. I laughed and said thanks, but no thanks. A month later, I received full benefits without a salary cut as the result of employee union salary negotiations that I know she was fully aware of when she made that offer.:rolleyes: How slimy is that?
We don’t get sick leave at our company, so if you’re sick, you have to take it out of vacation, which is the industry standard 15 days a year until you get some seniority. Once, a guy asked whether the company would consider providing sick leave.
The VP pretended to be taken aback, saying “Why would you want to limit how you can use your leave? Isn’t it better that you can use it for any reason, not just when you’re sick?”
Obviously, and the VP surely must have realized this, the suggestion was to provide sick leave in addition to vacation. I can almost picture him sitting on his fat ass back in his office congratulating himself on how well he finessed the question, when in reality we were all standing around talking about what a toolbag he was.