If I may recount a current experience.

At my place of employment over the last 6 yrs, both I and them have agreed to part company The catalyst for this decision was me bringing my car in to have it's timing belt replaced. During this repair/service they left a bolt loose. This bolt sheared off destroying the engine in my car. No warranty on their workmanship was offered or conceded.

Subsequently a discussion was had involving my happiness as one of their employees after I remonstrated regarding the state of my car. During that discussion it was agreed that I find a new job and that I would be looked after on the cost of repairing my car.

To cut a long story short, the restoration of my car was nearly $3000 and they charged me towing from my breakdown, all the new parts + their margin, including the parts destroyed by their original incompetence ( new timing belt and pullys etc) labour at $60 dollars an hour, all the other components destroyed as a result of their original shoddy workmanship (bent valves etc), they did charge me for. They did not charge for 1 part that was replaced for no reason at all, and another they destroyed accidentally whilst restoring my car to its former condition.

Luckily I found another job. I also thanked my lucky stars that I wasn't one of their retail customers because they don't get looked after like I did.

If I were to seek compensation for my treatment as an employee or a consumer in this situation, what hope would I have of succeeding?. Truth is none at all, unless I was prepared to take expensive action upon myself at great personal risk.

Such is the state of the Trade Practices Act in this country. Such is the state of protection/job security for employee's as well. No one in Govt since the Howard Govt did this, has done a single thing to change it. There is magic bullet it is called regulation.

cont...

Dear Thinker 2

You are free to name and air your grievance at the following website:

http://www.notgoodenough.org/

It is Australian, legitimate and offers freedom of speech as well as alerting others to unfair and bullying practices.

As a person who was forced to resign from my job due to bullying I am in complete sympathy with your situation. I wish you all the best for the future.

I know the feeling.
My fathers estate solicitor recently sent a letter and sent me an email advising me so ($30 email + $45 letter).
I was concerned that the letter would be sent to the wrong address so I sent them a reply with the correct address ( $35 to read email ).
They sent sent it to the wrong address (another solicitor) any way.
Other solicitor calls to advise letter sent to wrong address ($35) our solicitor talks to them ($35). Solicitor sends letter to correct address ($45). You may like this one to, we asked for a cost assessment of there charges and they charged us $900 to argue with the assessor. You cant win

You should not give up on this thinker2
If you complain even to the motor traders , write to local and city press use things like the consumer advocate in Sydney Tele you will win.
Just did so with our once only phone carrier, near fraud on their part,
I took on a boss I would not feed rude controlling and just wrong.
But while it cost me 14 months pay I won.
He never got to control me or hurt my members ,and time will see him looking for a job, about three years.
PS workplaces are not all good, mate of mine told me about another mate, of his and me.
16 years in one job, best hard working bloke you could ask for ,not been paid holidays or sick leave all that time, permanent not casual, anti union, will not let me get help, sad.

To update the situation since then,they,(my ex employer) has found more costs associated with the same repair and instead of paying me my final pay have kept it to recover this additional bill. Their sending a bill for the other 160 odd dollars.

Ironically because I'm a quality person I allowed them to rectify the situation/car on trust removing all evidence of the original shoddy workmanship that caused the problem in the first place in return for a favourable billing outcome. Doh !.

The point of my post was not to single out one business, but to point out the inherent imbalance in the system these days. This is allowing for the lower type of person to successfully operate a business, often with flagrant disregard to any toothless regulations that exist, because no one has the backbone in Govt to provide adequate means and/or enforcement anyway. A legal minefield for the victim ensues that is often no win anyway.

The battered consumer can look forward to a continuance of business collusion and prices rising without rhyme or reason.
Most employee's can look forward to continuing deterioration in wages and conditions. Because the attitude of business operators has changed because of the environment created by deregulation and no one in Govt will have the bottle to do anything about it.

With exception of the sectors where their are shortages of skills and employees the rest of can look forward to reducing opportunity and living standards.

And J.Parker Belly and Troposa for your links and understanding. It still shocks me to think that the values my father so wilfully fought for,
no longer exist by Govt decree so to speak.

My wife thinks that individual fundamental human rights have never existed, it's just more obvious now. I'm starting to think she's right.

But just reading the posts of all of the fine people on OLO/Forum, whether or not I agree with someone is refreshing and somehow allows me to remember that I am indeed and still a child of the revolution at heart. (it's a generational thing) lol.

Sorry that happened to you thinker. It makes it worse that not only were you an employee but a diddled consumer as well.

A similar thing happened to us a few years ago when we left our car for a service with a large 'reputable' car dealership service centre in Canberra, and returned to find a dent in the RH side front. We were naturally cross and were told by the dealership management that it must have been there when we dropped the car off. We said it seemed odd that we would not have noticed a dent in our car before now. They offered to pay half the cost and had a mate in the industry fix if for a cheaper price than usual.

Having had a baby very recently and living on one income we could not afford to take it through the legal system. I think our share was $230 which was a lot for us in those days (1991 approx) on top of 17% interest rate on our home loan.

That is the sad reality - you have to be rich to be able to afford legal representation or really poor and get legal aid. Even legal aid may not help out in these sorts of cases. We were really cross about it and could not believe the complete lack of integrity and honesty and the only solace is we have bad mouthed that business all over the place through friends and work colleagues. It was a good way to vent but probably only served to make us feel better rather than actually affecting their business bottom line.

Congratulations on finding another job so quickly. Have a happy Christmas.

I’m on some Telstra plan, I downloaded too much and got slowed down.

But it doesn’t just slow you down, some sites will not load at all. I get the plan upgraded and they say it will take effect in a few hours. I wait several hours, never happens.

You ring Telstra people and complain about being completely disabled not just slowed down and that it hasn’t been fixed yet. They put you onto tech support because you need to reconfigure something on your web browser to make sites load at the lower speed in the meantime – nup wrong says tech support go to billing.

I tell billing the story and that some sites that cannot be accessed are sites I pay to be on and that keeping me away could cost me all the money I have paid in the last year to access them. Hey, it’s very true.

Okay says Billing in two minutes you will have your speed back to normal. And yes - one minute later it is.

Merry Xmas Telstra.

Very interesting Jewely and it illustrates the danger of commercial control of the internet.

Billing is the place you go if you want the internet product that your paying for, have no fear you will be billed for it even if your not getting it. And at the flick of a switch at their end you can have it. Amazing isn't it?.

Billing without the need to justify it, is the post Howard way we do things in consumer relationships today and I repeat no one in Govt has the bottle to re-regulate.

For business, the key to success is how much of a commodity do you control?, particularly if it is an essential service.

In the case of Telstra, the ridiculous and questionable sale of profitable public infrastructure has now made the NBN much more expensive to implement, because we have to buy our own property back from it's owners or at the very least get them to co-operate. Negotiating with the owners of the goose that laid the golden egg is now like being Jack without a beanstalk for any future or existing Govt.

If your looking for a reason why fuel pricing seems berserk, why Gas electricity water etc prices are going ballistic look to the Trade Practices Act. It's because they can without any monitoring instrument or justification required.

I think this will get to the point where people will lose their homes because they cant pay their utility, communication and fuel bills. Conversely, wages remain static , job security non-existent, and the consumer /employee will eventually have about as much control over his future as a lemming on rampage.

Your instance and mine Jewely, is just a spit in the ocean.

Hey Thinker, I watched Michael Moore's "Capitalism: A Love Story" last night, it nearly had me in tears.

This world is a disaster.

And yeah if Telstra billing can make sites not accessible then all we need to control the internet is make it available only to the wealthy which I guess is the direction everything is heading. Oh and then last night around midnight internet slowed down again, back on the phone… they’d only done a patch of one gig or something (no idea how I used that so quickly) so a few more switches flicked and the new plan got put through straight away.

What I don’t understand about the internet is that it seems like selling property on the moon. Physically am I using more of some service?

Now I am going to go wrap presents I suspect I paid too much for and made rich people a little richer.