Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: rhys giles jones, the day the media died
Was surfing a new site this morning by Giles Rhys Jones and found this little musical ditty. All sensationalism aside this is a great little toe tapper. Enjoy.
Filed under: Advertising | Tags: pocket bar, pocket optimism, surry hills
Has anyone been to Pocket bar in Surry Hills Sydney? I haven’t but was surfing the net having a nosy about when I came across this cute little promotion they’re doing for pocket optimists. I wonder whether they’re relying on the fact that many people don’t respond to things like this [the averade direct mail response rate used to be about 3% I think] or whether they’ve been inundated with parking offenders. I did recently receive a parking fine the other day and considered taking it down to Pocket Bar for just a moment but then . . it felt kind of rude to just rock up to a bar that I had no relationship with and present my parking fine. I wonder if anyone has taken them up on their offer? Either way, it’s certainly an usual promo idea…
I’ve been trying to make a claim (or in fact about 40 claims) with HBA my health insurer today. It has become so difficult to even make the claim that it’s becoming laughable. I pay an extraordinary amount for health insurance a month, I mean a lot. I looked up on the net today to see whether I could make a claim online to start sorting out my receipts, you can claim online but not for medical, dental and some other category. Right.
I then rang them to see if I could visit an HBA centre (how very old school I know) but guess what? they’ve closed every single HBA centre in Sydney apart from Chatswood which might as well be in Canberra given the proxiomity to Surry Hills and the CBD. They said I could claim over the telephone which I thought sounded labour intensive but at least it provided me with an option. But wait, you can’t claim amounts over $500, or anything to do with medical, sport and some other restriction.
Okay so I’m just a little peeved so far so I ask the nice lady on the phone what my options are to which she replies – Snail Mail. She says she can send me out some claim forms by post and I can return them in the post and get them to process the claims remotely, all of which will obviously take a significant amount of time. I check the website to see if I can circumvent even one step in this arduous process and download a claim form online but the link is broken. Of course it is. So I ring back another nice lady and ask if she can send me a soft copy of the claim form (it didn’t sound like HBA even made soft copies of the online forms available for their operators) but the lady was very helpful, however I suspect I shall have to wait to receive some claims forms in the post.
Admittedly I’ve been a little fluey off late and my tolerance is low but oh my lord HBA in the days of digital communication and electronic efficiency, you guys absolutely suck. Further to this, the fact that I pay such a ridiculously huge amount each month in health insurance (a preventative style anxiety I probably inherited from my mother), and you can’t provide me with a branch or an online service that works.
Health insurance has always been difficult to understand, impossible to negotiate and now, they’re making it near impossible to even make a claim. I don’t know about any of you but the health insurance industry is one space which is crying out for a new competitor to cut through the crap and offer real value, easy access and efficient effective service.
