The Faceless Bureau

CategoryConsumer

Cut out the middleman

By Involuntary Administrator
A Consumer
3 Min read
C

I am a local business owner in a small town. A typhoon recently hit the island where my business is and left massive flooding in our area. My home and parts of my business have been submerged in water for days, and I expect to spend a lot of money on repairs to get my business back in operation after the flood subsides. My employees, all 20 of them, live in homes affected by the flood and they need help from the government to recover. The way that works here is through social security system calamity loans. The government provides a temporary loan to help people in a crisis and those people...

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Unrequitable requirement

By attentive reader
A Consumer
3 Min read
U

We wanted to add a second director to the ASIC Registry for our company.  Having just one director means no backup in an emergency, so adding a second would reduce our company’s risk profile. The company has a bank loan secured by a mortgage on our office, and has been making the required payments for over a year.  The loan documents say that the bank must approve in writing any change to the directors of the company. So I rang the bank to find out the process. Sam at the call centre agrees that an additional director will reduce the loan’s risk.  She says I will need to go to local branch to...

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three car shuffle

By Gridlocked
A Consumer
2 Min read
t

How annoying are overland easements! And neighbours! And local planning politics! My house shares a driveway with another house.  My house is at the back, and theirs is at the front, so I have to drive past their house to park on my property. The driveway was built after  the subdivision of our two blocks by the previous owners of the other house, who were lovely people and excellent neighbours, but who sold their home late last year. To make things extra complicated, the land the driveway was built on was not originally privately owned. It was public land, which I guess belongs to the local...

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dishonest brokering

By Broker Rage
A Consumer
3 Min read
d

My wife and I just bought a new apartment and sold our old one. We sold our old home just one month after buying the new one. We used a mortgage broker who was supposed to organise everything. As I understand it, the main purpose of mortgage brokers is to help people navigate complicated processes and multiple providers to: find the best loan to meet their client’s needs make getting a loan easier and more painless by helping with paperwork and liaising with the lender provide good service, especially since all of their business comes from referrals! We had our loans set up, but when we...

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rubbish policy

By rubbish protester
A Consumer
2 Min read
r

Get a load of this garbage: I own and run a company – a small business with about 20 staff – and we work out of a huge office building in a big city. We’ve been based here for a few years now, and we’ve always used the cleaning and rubbish collection service run by building management. My part-time Office Manager forwarded me an email from building management on Thursday, which had arrived the previous day when the Office Manager was out of the office. The email said they’d be cutting off the rubbish collection service the following week. So our final collection would be the following day...

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doctor doctor

By Patient Patient
A Consumer
3 Min read
d

I’m a Medicare user with no private health insurance, and was referred to a specialist by my doctor. The specialist sent me for a series of scans and tests. The results were not good, and this specialist referred me another specialist. The second specialist scheduled immediate surgery. At this point my total out of pocket expenses were less than $1000, between specialist consultations and scans. I considered myself lucky to live in a country with a good public health system. The surgery went well. As part of managing my recovery, the second specialist prepared a schedule of regular medical...

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three strikes and you’re out

By responsible student
A Consumer
3 Min read
t

Once I was asked to do a 25-slide presentation for a uni project. All us students were advised to follow a generic assessment policy and submit our presentations onto a plagiarism detection website. I was aiming to get this assignment done early to allow myself some time to deal with any potential issues. Excited, I came up with a creative high-quality presentation ready to be submitted before the deadline. I attempted to upload my work to the system to get it checked for plagiarism as per instructions provided by the university. The website showed the remaining time for the file to be...

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please hold

By the laptop breaker
A Consumer
3 Min read
p

A few months ago, my laptop speakers stopped working when I needed them for a uni assignment that required using audio and video resources. Hoping to get it fixed quickly, I called my closest customer support store. After 15 minutes on hold I was redirected to a technical support team in another part of the country to schedule an appointment with the technician in the store I called. Surprisingly, I was only offered an appointment in 3 weeks’ time from the date when I called, and it was at a computer repair shop on the other side of the city. I couldn’t wait that long because the assignment...

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The best alien for the job

By A hardworking foreign national
A Consumer
3 Min read
T

I am a national of an Asian country who’s worked for public and not-for-profit organisations in a few different countries, including Australia and US. As an immigrant (affectionately known as an ‘alien’ in the US), I know how many hoops one must jump through to be able to live and work in another country. One of the worst ones is having to re-apply for your own job. Australian and US laws (and presumably many, if not most, other countries) require that organisations wishing to sponsor a foreign resident to work and live permanently in that country prove that there is no current citizen who...

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(not) welcome to my country!

By unwanted foreign traveller
A Consumer
4 Min read
(

A few years ago, a close friend planned to get married in South-East Asia. Several of our friends decided to make the trip over for the festivities. My partner and I even planned a longer trip around it. At the time, I was living and working in Australia, but was a national of a country notorious for always being close to/at the top of the list of countries with the worst passport. The list is based on how few countries you can gain entry to without applying for a visa in advance of travel. Needless to say, I had to apply for a visa. I completed my visa application and got my paperwork ready...

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