My letter to the president of Saskt*l

I have been prompted to email you because of a situation that I have been dealing with. I have been a Sasktel customer for almost 2 years and have never been late on my account. I feel customer loyalty is something that should be valued by any company, and I do not feel that has been in my situation. I have a Blackberry Pearl Flip that up until the last 2 weeks I have been very happy with. Within the last 2 weeks I have had many problems with the phone and called Customer Care to find out what I could do. Initially I spoke with a representative who escalated the call by saying "there is nothing *I* can do for you" when I explained my situation (my phone was not working and very unreliable, as I live in a northern community and rely on this when I am travelling on the highway, so I wanted to replace the device). Of course, when she said that it prompts any customer to say " I would like to speak to someone who can help me". I spoke with a supervisor named Chris who advised me to speak with the technical department to see if there was any programming within the phone that could be fixed, and if not to call him on his direct number to discuss replacing the phone. I called him today because although I did go through the troubleshooting steps with the technical department the phone is still freezing up, displaying error messages and not receiving calls. I left him a message today but did not hear back from him, which prompted me to call back tonight to customer care to start this all over. I was advised that Chris had left for the day and would not be back until Monday (I'm sorry, that is horrible customer service not to return phone messages before leaving). The representative tonight, although she was very nice told me the only option would be to either buy out the Blackberry Contract (210.00) and switch to a basic phone (Samsung 79.00) or to play 320.00 which is the difference between the 3 year and the 2 year contract price of the Blackberry Pearl I currently own, then I would be eligible to buy another phone and extend my contract. As I am sure you can appreciate, neither of these options appeal to me. Here is why I am so upset. I am told that I am not eligible to upgrade my phone until July 2011, which is 8 months from now. I pay on average 70.00 per month on my cellular service, and I am a very light user. So, what you customer service and manager on duty tonight are saying is that if I pay to the company $560.00 in service, (70.00 a month for the next 8 months), I will be eligible to upgrade my phone at that time without it costing hundreds of dollars, unless I want to buy the exact same phone for $125.00. Phones are being practically given away to new customers. I am aware that the price of the phone is recovered by the monthly service paid by the new customers, but it really feels like unless you are a new customer, your business doesn't matter. That is the impression I am getting from customer care. I calculated that it would cost me $610.00 to cancel my service right now, which without having a reliable device I may as well do and then purchase a prepaid phone with another company to use when I am travelling, which is really the only time I use the phone.

I am not even sure that anything can be done at this point, according to your customer service department I have been given all the options. I am just really not happy with any of these options. I am not looking for one of the new fancy phones, that really doesn't appeal to me. What I need is a device that works and that is reliable, which is something I do not have right now, and I get the impression of your company via your customer service department that unless I want to pay hundreds of dollars, I'm out of luck. Unless of course I want to find a used one somewhere like kijiji, which is the advice the first representative gave me.

Our trip to Saskatoon.. in pictures of course

Colby has been saving his money for this Nerf gun. Just what I need, a Nerf gun that shoots 60 darts.

Rob enjoying his Red Bull, a little too much.

Saskatchewan is so proud of the Roughriders Tim Hortons actually has a Roughriders donut.

Look what we bought at Wal-Mart!

Colby being silly.

Cart racing.

Playing tic tac toe while waiting for supper at Montana's.

Pebbles.

My boys love to wrestle.

I feel I need to post SOMETHING

My life has been super stupid crazy lately and sometimes I feel like I'm spinning out of control. I'm at the point now that I make "honey do" lists for myself to keep on top of things. I will admit, I was really scared the end of last year when I almost lost my job to a certified teacher. Although everything did work out the in the end, I am really "turning up the volume" so to speak on my planning for this year, to make the best year that I can for the kids that I have. This is also the biggest group of kids that I have ever taught (14 in the morning and 16 in the afternoon) and I'm taking on more projects with them (we've started a penpal program with each group, the morning writing letters to my friend's class in England and the afternoon writing letters to another preschool site in Arviat, Nunavut). Coincidently, my friend in England who is undertaking this project with us is MY penpal from when we were kids. I have the first packages ready to be mailed and they will go out Monday morning. I'm hoping my preschoolers will learn to love this as much as I do. I have also learned from my last 2 years teaching there of exactly what it is that they need to be prepared for kindergarten (for the most part). We are starting with the basics (I'm teaching them to recognize the letters of the alphabet, not just to "sing their ABC's). At this point we are already up to the letter "J" and there are times that I am just so proud of them that I could cry. I'm becoming too attached already, but seriously now do you not?

I was also really busy the last couple weeks with pictures, so much that I started stressing that I was not getting pictures edited. I have decided that I am going to take a little break from pictures until the end of November (I have already committed to a wedding then and I will be more than up to date at that point). There are other people here in town and people from out of town that travel into town that promote their photography so I'm just gonna step back for a while. People that really want me to take their pics will still call me, otherwise I'm just going to stop for a while. Guess that means you'll be seeing more and more pictures of my kids here.

I will also try to blog more. I feel really guilty that the blog gets pushed to the side because I spend so much time on the computer doing other things. So you'll be seeing a lot more of me and my kids around here. :)

Yep, we did it

Megan over at Snow Covered Hills is running her annual "Being David Hossellhoff" contest. And of course, we had to enter. :)

"Are you sure you didn't have a child with Adam?"

Yes, this is a question my husband asked me tonight after I told him this story. If you know Adam, you'll understand this.

I went to the elementary school today and was stopped by Colby's teacher. It seems that Colby has been arguing with his teacher to the point of almost being rude. He argues about almost everything, because he thinks he's right and she's wrong. YEP, according to my almost 9 year old he is smarter than his teacher. I know what you're thinking. Sweet little Colby argue? Well, here's why. (Adam, I can see you smiling already. Piss off.) During one of these initial arguments, he was in IN FACT right and she was wrong. (Shut UP Adam, stop laughing). So, now he feels it is his duty to argue EVERY time because she was wrong before, she's MUST be wrong now. (Don't nod Adam, it's NOT right!) I had a long talk with Colby tonight about respect. The thing about all of this is that Colby is a VERY literal kid, he always has been. There is no "subject to intrepretation" with him. If she explains something and this is the way HE understood it, well according to him HIS WAY is right and he will argue that it's right to the point of being rude. Now, if you know Adam, you're laughing right now. Probably really hard to the point you have tears. I know Gramma Jeannine is. :)

So, now that you're all laughing, and some are just down right confused, I'll distract you with pictures, because that's what I do.