Picture from Whitecliff’s walkway done at the start of this year.
Whitecliffs Walkway
Author: Default User
Lawrence Vic Pty Ltd – Dandenong Car Rental Review
Had a pretty poor experience with this particular business when they were previously operating as a Thrifty branded franchisee. While it is not likely I will ever return it is nevertheless genuinely hoped they have taken the opportunity of a rebrand to SIXT to improve their business practices.
Some of the things that disappointed me at the time include (but not limited to)…
- Charging of fees that were clearly outside of the hire agreement. Failure to properly disclose, detail and describe certain admin fees in their written legal documentation.
- Obstructive and confrontational attitude upon reaching out to ask about these charges, then trying to close the matter with “Thanks for your feedback on disclosure” while casting blame on their franchisor.
- They very promptly changed their tone and refunded the fees the next day after I advised they were in clear breach of their obligations under Australian Consumer Law and will be moving forward with lodging a case with VCAT. However they stopped short of apologizing or otherwise admitting fault.
- Vehicle while clean was in poor mechanical tune (compared to the same make/model hired from other business units operating under the same car hire brand). Anecdotes received from both customers and their own employees suggested they cut corners on servicing some of their fleet.
- Being subjected to persistent up-selling upon picking up the vehicle. Not experienced to the same degree at any other location operating under the same brand. Then going ahead and adding on a breakdown add on anyway and concealing this in the walk-through of the agreement.
- Upon coming to place my own review. Discovering senior franchise management (inclusive of the MD, CFO, and others) had written many of their own 5 star testimonials on Google and FB whilst failing to disclose their affiliation with the business. Multiple reviews were deleted in haste after advising them I had referred the matter to both the ACCC and Consumer Affairs Victoria for comment. I feel this was exceedingly poor form for a business purportedly to be operating as part of the NRMA motoring and services group.
- Upon returning home to New Zealand and writing about my experience on this blog, ended up with people identifying themselves as former employees writing in privately to affirm the issues as well as offer recriminations against management along with repeated mention of “Flaunting material possessions”.
While many of the issues that lead to my indignation have since been resolved, none of these in hindsight should have ever occurred in the first place.
It was (and remains to this day) my single most bizarre and unusual experience as a retail customer to any business either side of the Tasman.
Former Thrifty Car Rental Australia operational structure now rebranded as SIXT Australia
The NRMA’s car rental division, Kingmill Pty Ltd, formerly operating as Thrifty Car and Truck Rental Australia have since been rebranded as SIXT Car Rental Australia upon expiry of their original Master Franchise agreement with Dollar Thrifty Automotive Group (DTAG) in the United States.
This change includes some of their network of sub-franchisees throughout Australia including, Lawrence Vic Pty Ltd and Pacific Automotive Holdings Pty Ltd which have followed their franchisor to rebrand as Sixt Car Rental Australia, while some other now former franchisees have either stayed on as Thrifty, changed over to other car rental brands or are in the process of establishing their own independent car rental brand.
Whether there will be any real material operational change with SIXT Australia (from how they usually did things under the Thrifty brand) or whether it’s essentially just a brand change (in the form of “same pig different lip stick”) remains to be seen. It is sincerely hoped that certain franchisees will take this opportunity of a clean slate in which to substantially improve their conduct and move on from some of their former practices (Including charging of fees outside of the written legal documentation and deliberately trying to deceive customers such as myself through the posting of multiple false testimonials pretending to be happy customers).
The Thrifty brand in Australia under it’s new structure has now been returned back to it’s parent Dollar Thrifty Automotive Group (DTAG) / The Hertz Corporation and now appears to be largely hitched in together with the Hertz branded locations through out Australia. In a nutshell, the people running Thrifty Australia as of now is not the same people running Thrifty Australia as of a few months ago. Continue reading “Former Thrifty Car Rental Australia operational structure now rebranded as SIXT Australia”
Auckland Lockdown explore at Maketu
Short late afternoon explore
Mt William 3 Sheep Photo
TD Ameritrade Ending their business with NZ Clients
Received a generic message from TD Ameritrade advising they’re effectively ceasing business with New Zealand Clients…
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Dear Fergus,
Following an internal assessment of our international business, we have determined we will no longer open or maintain accounts in certain international jurisdictions. We are contacting you because your account is affiliated with at least one of these jurisdictions. We regret to inform you that we will no longer permit the opening or maintaining of accounts in New Zealand effective November 1, 2021. Continue reading “TD Ameritrade Ending their business with NZ Clients”
Auckland Light Rail – My own thoughts
Dropped in to the Auckland Light Rail marquee at the Balmoral Flea Market to try and get a better understanding as to what this project is all about. The current focus they have advised is that the project most certainly is going a head and we are now choosing between “Light Metro” and “Modern (street level) trams”.
Promotional brochures can be found here.
Overall, they’re a friendly and approachable bunch manning the stand and were found to be willing to at least provide their take on any questions and concerns I had about the project.
They were at pains to note that this project is not about trams alone, but a transport and urban building project initiative combined where development will be intensified along the Tram routes. Continue reading “Auckland Light Rail – My own thoughts”
Logitech UE Megaboom 3 – Don’t recommend
Ultimate Ears (UE) Megaboom 3 is completely smoked in the sound quality department by it’s older cousin, UE Boombox (classic)
Sorry, I am going to have to say “I smell a rat” given the chasm of expectation created by all the rave reviews / buzz –versus- my own actual listening experience of the UE Megaboom 3 Bluetooth Speaker.
Bought this speaker based on the swathes of glowing reviews all over the Internet including being swept up by the claims in their marketing material where they specifically mention “Way more boom” and “Thundering Bass”.
Got it back home and compared it to my old UE Boombox (from 2012/2013), and was sorely underwhelmed with the UE Megaboom 3’s sound quality, in particular, the UE Megaboom 3’s bass response compared to my old UE Boombox. Continue reading “Logitech UE Megaboom 3 – Don’t recommend”
Te Ika-a-Māui Autumnal
With the upgraded VPS, started putting up galleries from my recent trips around Waikato and Bay of Plenty…
Hidden (Undisclosed) Fees in Hire car company agreements – Not a myth unfortunately
Update 7th December 2021: NRMA’s master license for Thrifty expired earlier this year and they have now changed their branding over to be SIXT Australia which includes Lawrence Vic Pty Ltd’s network of outlets throughout Suburban Victoria.
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In short, less than upfront (“shady”) behaviour from rental car companies does exist. This is in spite of people, particularly on various online travel forums who are often quick to come to the defence of car hire companies through pointing out that the hirer raising a complaint is the one in the wrong and who simply didn’t read and understand the agreement and/or contracts. From personal experience, this is certainly not always the case.
Ending up deciding to send Lawrence Vic Pty Ltd Originally trading as Thrifty Car and Truck Rental Victoria (since changed over to be SIXT Car Rental Victoria as of 2021) a fairly stern and direct Email over the weekend firmly stating that due to their lack of disclosure, they are not entitled to retain the 3.5% Administration fee that they had applied to my account (over the top of the damage/repair charge from a small roo jumping into the side of the vehicle) back in 2018 and if they did not refund that portion of the administrative fee by the “close of business 5pm AEDT, Friday 19th March 2021”, I would be instituting further recovery proceedings under Victorian State and Australian Consumer Law in order to have the amount in question returned back to me. To recap, in 2018… Continue reading “Hidden (Undisclosed) Fees in Hire car company agreements – Not a myth unfortunately”
Leave your chainsaw in your vehicle
Ray White Open home sign in Rolleston…
A family has now moved in to the property I most recently purchased, with an Alarm system to go in very shortly.
I have noticed many houses that were for sale have since gone straight into the rental pool. Anecdotally, it appears to be happening all around the country. Consequently, should the trend continue, I would not be surprised to see that we eventually end up with a nationwide Rental glut at some point. May be the tables will then finally turn in favour of tenants and instead of Renters scrambling for properties to rent, Landlords would be scrambling for Tenants.
We don’t know how long this low interest rate environment is going to last. The government to be honest (both current and past) have been exceedingly coy as to their apparent lack of will do actually do anything concrete about the housing affordability and the accelerating inequality in this country.
Earnslaw Burn + Glenorchy Lupins
Earnslaw Burn track to the water falls and a look at the Lupins around Glenorchy, click picture below to view the gallery. As pretty as the Lupins are during bloom, they’re are classed as an invasive weed.
Canterbury Road Tripping
Triple purpose, Canterbury Area Road Trip.
Reduction of LVR on Investment property questioned
In my mind, the Loan to Value ratios (LVR) for investment properties should have never been reduced by the Reserve Bank of New Zealand from 35% to 20% and I struggle to understand why it has.
Will probably now join the investing hordes in this Property pile up owing to a decade of a dearth of any real investment opportunities. There’s only one or two areas in the South Island of NZ which I feel still presents value, every other area in NZ has gone full euphoric FOMO. May be the continuous money pump will never turn off (or won’t turn off for the foreseeable future) and the pull back of global asset bubbles may not eventuate in any significant sustained scary way. No one knows.
Seems to be also a lot easier today to get pre-approved for a loan in New Zealand than it was say a few years ago, the banks appear to be willingly to lend more (In my view, a jaw dropping and gobsmackingly lot more) and going through the process earlier this week does perhaps make it easier to understand why the Housing Market bubble refuses to burst and instead continues to inflate.
Again, the only risk factors to the asset markets on the radar is food security (which appears to have receded recently) and Civil Unrest which appears to be subjectively growing around the world, but still appears to be relatively benign (not raucous enough to enact any real change). Seems with all other threats the Central banks seem to be able to just add a few zeros at the end of the Global Money supply and “she’ll be right”. But who the flip knows…?
The NRMA and NRMA Insurance are not the same company
Be aware that NRMA Insurance and NRMA Motoring and services (“The NRMA”) are NOT the same company and have been separate entities since 2000 despite the two companies sharing the same brand. Yes, indeed this is confusing as anything whereby even Australians to this day do not even realise the distinction.
I occasionally observe NRMA clients complain about an acrimonious experience on either the insurance or roadside assistance side, mentioned they’ve been members for years or decades, and then state they will now move both their insurance policies and roadside assistance to another provider as retribution.
NRMA Insurance and more recently, NRMA Motorserve (now rebranded simply to “Motorserve”) are actually owned by Insurance Australia Group (IAG).
“The NRMA” (Motoring and Services) have largely evolved in my mind to be more of a travel and tourism company. Their traditional roadside assistance services appear to be increasingly supplied by another, separate company called ClubAssist whose personnel (staff and contractors) are supplied with NRMA branded Vehicles and Uniforms while actually being employed by Club-Assist.
Cold calls from Georgeson a Computershare subsidiary
Turns out the phone calls from +61 3 9415 5000 I’ve been receiving is from Georgesons, a Computershare subsidiary who are using the same outbound number and probably utilizing the same call centre staff as Computershare. While my view may certainly be debatable, I feel personally this impacts on Computershare’s reputation of impartiality as a share registry and Administrative service.
“Georgesons” acting on behalf of APVG (wishing to take over MetLife Care) have repeatedly called me on my number stating the directors of APVG are encouraging MetLife Care shareholders like me to vote yes to the take over offer.
They also wanted me to advise right there and then on the spot which way I would be voting. I repeatedly replied saying that “I have yet to review the information and I am unable to provide you an answer right at this point in time”. I suspect that Georgeson staff are given incentives.
Have finally got around to reviewing the documentation and will personally be voting ‘No’ to the take over offer. In a high level (superficial) nutshell…
- Offer I feel is a little bit too low for the potential future gain I will be leaving on the table.
- (To be direct) Tired of losing access to an ever diminishing range of investment opportunities, given the global liquidity glut courtesy of central bank endless money pump.
NZ Shareholder’s association have also provided their views to their members with the view of voting against the take over offer.
Security Warning – Click Hijack investigation
Investigations so far suggest that there is some type of conditional redirect exploit/hijack being planted on many WordPress websites redirecting search engine referred visitors to fake award/survey sites such as “moviesuddenvalley”, “applefacetook”, “hurryexpectsugar”, “mouthtroubleask”, “ondiesmall”, “thendownmeat”, “makemodernfive”, “sayhitome”, “whateyeweight” among several others typically ending in a “.live” or “.top” address. While this Hijack, as far as I have seen appear to predominantly affect some WordPress websites, I wouldn’t be surprised to learn that this possibly affects other types of websites as well.
In my experience, for sites that are affected, to replicate…
(These most certainly could differ depending on the site affected)
- Prerequisites…
- Needs to be done from an IP address that has yet to access the site in question. (e.g Mobile Data Connection, activate and deactivate airplane mode to get a new IP address)
- Chrome or Firefox browser (Win 10 or Android) in Incognito Mode (No plugins). Reportedly in other variations of the exploit, it only occurs on Safari under iOS
- Search for the site in Google search
- Click on the search result that points to the website. Instead of loading up the website as expected, you get redirected to a hijack site.
The hijack will not fire If you access the site directly (via bookmarks or typing the address directly in the address bar of your browser). This appears to be some conditional exploit based on visitors coming from Search Engines. (e.g by typing the site URL directly into the Address bar, you won’t get redirected) and it looks like it will only fire once per IP Address each week (resets at the start of each week).
I probably should add that many so called WordPress vulnerability scanners online I’ve discovered aren’t even set up to detected this sort of hijack. The scanners based on “Securi” certainly will not detect this exploit, I’ve found.
Other resources…
- WordFence – Removing Malicious redirects
- CoreRecon – Identifying a conditional redirect hack (Beware, annoying pop up)
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Original Post (Old):
Noticing some apparent weird intermittent redirect hijack on the general web where some sites are allegedly redirecting to some dodgy website with names such as “mouthtroubleask”
Update – 2020-09-11T06:55:00+12:00: Added steps to replicate (from my own experience)
Update – 2020-09-12T18:20:00+12:00: Added note to mention that all of the online WordPress malware scanners I’ve tried won’t detect this sort of hijack.
Visit to Bridal Veil Falls Waikato
A little short walk, about 15 minutes from the car park down the base of the viewing platform. Now very quiet… only two families (at different times) were present during my visit.
Pi-Hole on a Raspberry Pi 4
Experimented with running Pi-hole on the Raspberry Pi 4 that I have.
The Set up at least for the more tech inclined is very easy, all you had to do was launch a command line prompt and type this command…
curl -sSL https://install.pi-hole.net | bash
After running it for an evening. Thoughts and findings so far…
- Predominantly Does a DNS level block with a blocklist of known advertisement serving IP addresses.
- YouTube is a moving target whereby ads are served from youtube.com itself and therefore very difficult to (completely) block with Pi-Hole.
- Mobile devices with Ad laden apps will perhaps see the greatest reduction in ads.
- The default configuration doesn’t block nearly as many ads as say uBlock Origin installed on Desktop Firefox. This is not a replacement to having Client side ad blocking.
Curiously noticed these appearing in the query-log…
- www.collab.apps.mil
- www.gov.teams.microsoft.us
- www.dod.teams.microsoft.us
Why would Teams try and poll for these addresses is beyond me. It does raise a sufficient level of curiosity that I will be checking this out.
This picture can not be explained
Update: 1st August 2020 – The Agent rang thanking me and mentioned it was given to someone in Ngāruawāhia intended to be distributed by local children for a local letterbox drop (possibly as part of a fundraiser I believe). Still strange where it ended up though.
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Box of about 1,500 Real Estate flyers left under a tree in a ditch at the Waterworks Dam on Hakarimata Trail. I really don’t understand why anyone would go to the trouble of hiking in a box load of glossy flyers, then leave it under a tree all alone. Very weird and odd…
Initially though it was gear or supplies for track maintenance and/or weed control, but seemed really weird to keep it in a cardboard box, so peered through the opening.
Took the box out of the reserve and dropped it off to Lugtons (Hamilton based Real Estate agency). While I was initially hesitant to touch it, It didn’t appear to be used to transport/hide drugs or any other nefarious activity, and I did not think the colourful flyers made for healthy fertilizer hence the reason to remove it.
In hindsight… Could be as innocuous as someone wanting extra weight to hill train with but simply aborted the idea halfway with the intention of picking the box back up upon coming back down (but never did or otherwise forgot).