Not as old, or in many ways sad as the jokes at the Tivoli, but I’m still looking a little old. She who must be obeyed however is aging like a fine wine.
A couple of years ago, when we (she who must be obeyed and I) decided that running a business through our personal taxes wasn’t a particularly effective way of dealing with tax and GST, we signed up with the local RSM Bird Cameron, or to be precise RSM Bird Cameron Bunbury (which is also the same RSM Bird Cameron for RSM Bird Cameron Busselton and RSM Bird Cameron Manjimup). She who must be obeyed knew one of the accountants from years before, so we signed up. The first 6 months was great, and then Kingsley tells us that he’s moving on to another business. He tells us that he’ll line us up with someone else at RSM Bird Cameron Bunbury who will take care of us. And that’s when the problems started.
Even at that first meeting, things were promised to be followed up but never were. In the coming months, phone calls were never returned, let alone made (noting that we are still relative company newbies so if things needed to be done, we appreciated a call or letter, and that’s the service we use to get). I knew that I wasn’t happy with the complete lack of service we were getting, but as RSM Bird Cameron Bunbury had set up the company structure, and had all our information on hand, we thought we’d stick with them, mostly because of a tax event that needed to be settled this year. I might add we’d spent hours with the previous guy working through how we’d approach that tax issue as well, and I wasn’t keen on starting afresh.
So we sent off our tax in around March, late, but accountants get extensions here in Australia. Weeks later I finally get a call asking questions about the return. Despite having spent hours in the office, they have NO record of my previous conversations, and the tax event that needed to be dealt with. I’m then told that the tax bill is going to be at least $10k more than the last guy told me, but the figure was made with no apparent zest for ways of reducing it….ways that had been discussed with the guy before.
Eventually it’s done, and I’m told that I have to sign and return the docs, there were so many pages it wasn’t practical to fax them (Aust Post charges $3/ page STD) so I sent them Express. I’m called 2 days later, told that all I had to do was ok the tax return, they needed the signatures but I should have ok’d it anyway. Fine, tell him to send it off.
Then we get the tax assessment back with a GIC (General Interest Charge) for my tax return of $3500 because it was “overdue” and it was backdated to November 21 (general cut off date for tax is Oct 31, then they give 21 days grace). Ring RSM Bird Cameron Bunbury, told that it’s the ATOs (Australian Taxation Offices) fault and that there is nothing RSM Bird Cameron Bunbury would do about it. Despite them being MY accountant and sending me a decent sized bill for their services, they refused to chase up why I had a GIC charge. So we ring the ATO.
RSM Bird Cameron Bunbury never included us on their list of clients so we weren’t granted an extension. Yes, we were so important to RSM Bird Cameron Bunbury, a company we spent thousands with setting up a corporate structure and trusting our business with, that they couldn’t be bothered lodging us on the extension list with ALL THEIR OTHER CLIENTS.
When she who must be obeyed rung me to relate the ATO conversation I was so gobsmacked that I said nothing….for minutes, and I’m not usually the sort of person who remains silent on anything.
We are lodging an appeal with the ATO (we’ve paid the bill anyway, because the interest was accruing daily) and we are confident we’ll get the money back, but we’ll still have to wait and see.
In the past I’ve spoken highly of RSM Bird Cameron, RSM Bird Cameron Bunbury and RSM Bird Cameron Bussleton to others, suggesting that they are a firm people should do business with. If you are dealing with RSM Bird Cameron today based on my recommendation I am sincerely sorry. My advice to anyone who reads this: do not do business with RSM Bird Cameron, and I certainly won’t be ever again in the future. From today my business goes elsewhere. I’m not sure whether negligent is the right word legally to describe their actions here, but sloppy, careless, rude, disgusting, appaling all apply in part.
And if anyone can suggest a reasonably priced and competent accountant in Melbourne let me know.
Massive panic attack today, my peak usage hit 30gb for the month to June 28. Anyone reading this inside the United States will have no idea what I’m talking about but it works this way: you buy broadband on a plan in Australia, even though they claim it’s unlimited (well some companies do,they lie…by unlimited the don’t charge you extra to use), you get X number of GB per month to download. Depending on the ISP and plan your uploads might also count to your quota (mine counts them 🙁 ). When you go over your quota you are “shaped” meaning that I was facing 3 days on an ADSL 2+ connection with a 64k limited speed. This is my phone pipe as well because we only have VOIP, so my phone calls would be screwed until the 28th.
Cheaper plans at around the $30/ mth mark might come with as low on 200mb a month. Until 5 minutes ago I was paying $89.95/ month for 30GB peak (defined as midday-2am) and 60GB offpeak (the rest of the time). I’m now paying an insane $119.95 for 65GB peak/ 65GB off peak. Usage last month was 30GB peak, 20GB off, but probably my bad because I haven’t been scheduling downloads to watch the usage…well actually I have, we did 5GB peak in 3 days, and it turns out it was my wife AND son. The wife was downloading work related clips, doing online conversions of large files, and the boy has been spending hours on YouTube. Still, this is what the internet if for, we are not the ones in the wrong here, it’s the ISP’s who impose these restrictions in the first place.
What next? If I look at my online consumption is has grown month after month and continues to grow. HD video online: bonzer, streaming video, you beauty, Podcasts via Apple TV…I never have enough time to watch them all. Australia risks slipping even further behind the rest of the civilized world, and most of the third world as well if it doesn’t start recognizing that true unlimited broadband is a key feature in keeping us competitive.
A bit of a bleg: I’ve been looking at hiring a virtual assistant. It’s Sunday as I write this and there are over 200 unread emails in my inbox, and that’s with over 50 rules putting most emails into other folders, of which there is thousands of unread emails.What I’m looking at is someone to process my inbox, follow up on Friend requests mostly (74 FriendFeed follows in the last 2 days for example), delete the junk and tag the stuff that is urgent/ needs immediate attention. I figure maybe 2 hours a day, and the cost works: I’d be looking at around $3-5/ hr according to a couple of the outsourcing sites I’ve looked at as I won’t require a highly skilled top level VA, really just someone who can follow a set of instructions, process that list daily, and give me an extra hour or sometimes more every day.
What’s holding me back: what’s the best way to get a VA to process their work? I use a GTD program that isn’t web compatible so that’s out, I download my email so Gmail won’t completely work, although it could be tweaked to do so I guess. I’m just wondering how other people do the management side of a VA, perhaps there might be some dedicated software or web package to make it easier/ facilitate the process?
Any thoughts you’d care to share are welcome.
Steve is back, and being the good community minded citizen that I am I’m going to try and translate his latest TechCrunch post.
Consider this a rough translation, because after reading the entire post maybe a dozen times I’m still not 100% sure how the Seque’s are all related or even what Steve is trying to say, but here’s a shot. I’ve bolded the Seques as best as I can spot them. Italics indicate my commentary.
Surviving The Net
TinyURL and social darwanism are at risk from friends and family. Familes have children. Children must be fed first, with bread. Sharing bread is like a business deal. Business is discussed. People who talk must breathe. Breathing is a pedestrian exercise of necessity. If we were computers, our necessities would be “the mechanism would be the interrupt, some input device that triggers a disruption that moves resources to process the incoming data,” (sorry, not idea what this means), computers have calculated rules, and we need rules. Attention requires rules, as do kids, particulrly kids who like makeup. “The Younger Daughter” is better at resource allocation, focusing her needs. Today’s information systems emulate “The Younger Daughter.” A town crier was an early form of RSS. RSS offers new rules, but those rules are breaking down. Who to follow? This breakdown is like prehistoric hunters and gatherers. Sun is addressing this breakdown. Something about open source and a speech no one reading this post would have heard. Sun creates real time maps, which are like central nervous systems. Our bodies are a central feedback loop that needs to process priority signals, like Twitterly. Twitter is the center of the universe, with tinyurl as its underpinning. “TinyURL in the center of that system is the payload that most directly connects to our core instincts for preservation.”
O.M.G. 🙂
I simply ask this: could I walk into a branch of the National Australia Bank and openly promote my business to those in attendance? I’d encourage EVERY Australian blogger who has an account to the National to close it.
From today’s Crikey (not quite reprinted in full, but as it’s subscription only, reprinted enough so you get the core idea):
Last week, the National Australia Bank ?¢‚Ǩ?ìspammed?¢‚Ǩ¬ù the comments sections of private blogs in an attempt to secure free promotion for the launch of its new SMS banking service. NAB is standing behind this decision.
Last Thursday, an anonymous message was posted to the comments section of an article about the recent controversies surrounding Sam Newman on the AFL Player Spectator blog…the message was out of context and irrelevant, promoting an event at Melbourne?¢‚Ǩ‚Ñ¢s Federation Square and a ticket give-away:
“Hi guys, NAB is giving away free tickets to the Collingwood v Carlton game on Saturday afternoon @ the MCG. Hop on down to Fed Square tomorrow?¢‚Ǩ¬¶ this is all to launch the new NAB SMS Banking! Thank you”….
NAB media relations spokesperson Felicity Glennie-Holmes confirmed that the message was indeed from the bank. The idea to spam the comments sections of private blogs was a recommendation of PR agency Cox+Inall, part of the BWM group, and had been undertaken by Cox+Inall with the bank?¢‚Ǩ‚Ñ¢s full knowledge and approval.
Cox+Inall had searched for blogs that included AFL coverage and were ?¢‚Ǩ?ìwell-enough read to attract readers who might be interested in our offer,?¢‚Ǩ¬ù said Ms Glennie-Holmes. No-one at NAB or at Cox+Inall had considered approaching blog owners first for permission before posting their promotional messages, she said.
?¢‚Ǩ?ìBlogs are a public forum?¢‚Ǩ¬ù, said Ms Glennie-Holmes. NAB and Cox+Inall felt this meant commercial interests could feel free to contribute unsolicited and irrelevant commercial material as comments, placing the onus on blog moderators to reject or delete unwanted comments.
?¢‚Ǩ?ìWe identified five or six blogs where we felt we?¢‚Ǩ‚Ñ¢d give it a try,?¢‚Ǩ¬ù explained Ms Glennie-Holmes. ?¢‚Ǩ?ìWe chose blogs where we thought the moderators would review and decide whether or not to carry our message?¢‚Ǩ¬¶it was up to the blogger to decide whether they would leave the comment there or delete it.?¢‚Ǩ¬ù
The fact that the message posted to the blogs was ?¢‚Ǩ?ìvery openly promotional?¢‚Ǩ¬ù and not deceptive also justified the bank?¢‚Ǩ‚Ñ¢s conduct, Ms Glennie-Holmes said.
Despite this openly promotional objective and targeting blogs based on their readership and web traffic, NAB ?¢‚Ǩ‚Äú which reported a net profit of $4.6 billion last year ?¢‚Ǩ‚Äú at no time considered remunerating bloggers, who typically blog in their own spare time and without sponsorship.
On its website, under the heading ?¢‚Ǩ?ìKey points to help protect yourself online?¢‚Ǩ¬ù, NAB advises its customers to ?¢‚Ǩ?ìDelete spam emails and do not open email attachments from strangers. Consider using a SPAM filter.?¢‚Ǩ¬ù
However, Ms Glennie-Holmes said she didn?¢‚Ǩ‚Ñ¢t see anything contradictory in the bank stressing online safety and security and warning customers about spam when it was itself adopting a communications strategy based on spamming private blogs.
Absolute scum bags and a disgrace to the Australian corporate community. Boycott the NAB now.
So the good new is that The Inquisitr got accepted into Google News, least the tech stream did anyway. This is going to be a healthy boost in site traffic, although until we start appearing I don’t know by how much yet. I could be hundreds of page views a day, it could be thousands or even more. Its been years since I had a site in Google News, but I do recall The Blog Herald getting reasonable sort of traffic from it.
Now the bad news: I had to change the URL structure to be accepted. Google News will only index pages where those pages have a min 3 number unique identifier. The Inquisitr didn’t, with me having taken the SEO and simple URL route of inquisitr.com/postname. So I had to change the permalink structure of every post (it’s now inquisitr.com/postnumber/postname), easy, but that means a redirect of the old posts…easy, but because the posts didn’t have anything between the URL and name originally the site is now trying to redirect everything with that structure, including archive pages and static pages. The plugin I used for the redirect has an exception box, but how do you define the exception when there is no unique identifier in the first place other than the name of the page itself (and I tried that…didn’t work, it looks for a broader field). So for now the pages for QMeme, About and Content are now redirecting to posts with the same content until I can find a way of excepting these pages from the catchall 302 redirect. Did I mention that it caused me one hour of sheer panic as well? 🙂
Update: before I even hit publish my Google News vanity search email pops up with a hit
Steve Gilmor is a smart guy, but his inability to focus on more than one thing at a time (or more precisely to constantly seque in a post) is worthy of cult status.
This post translated as best as I can make it out.
Our Home Town
I stumbled across Summize. I did a vanity search. Tim Russert died. There was nothing on TV. Russert covered the Presidential election. Barrack Obama causes Twitter to crash. Steve Jobs’ keynote put stress on Twitter. There was video taken of Steve Jobs. “a bootstrapped symphony of virtualized Steve Reality Distortion Field funneled through the MacBook AIR” (no idea what this means…acid trip maybe). Fanaticism and early adopters. Services like Twitter and Qik are magical. You will be in control. You’ll see dead people.
I’m reminded of Chaser segments like this (Steve’s Seque’s are a lot longer though)
I haven’t used Last.fm since I wrote this post in June noting that Last.fm were not joining the industry wide National Day of Silence. I still think, as a CBS owned company, they are not community players and really not worthy of being lauded by many in the space.
However, everyone has kept using them. A bit like Twitter I guess. You know they suck but they offer the best package…well in Twitter’s case until perhaps recently.
So I’m back on Last.fm and I feel like I need a shower to clean off the dirt. Ultimately I hate missing out on things and Pandora’s still georetarded so Last.fm it is. Not for the on-demand stuff (Grooveshark + Seeqpod does a better job of that) but for the customized radio side. That, and Last.fm is supported in FriendFeed 🙂
Congrats to Loren on this deal. He’s one of the smartest, most engaging and interesting guys I’ve ever spent time with, and a pure gentleman as well. I just hope it doesn’t result in too many more fluff pieces like these 🙂
