Canadian Personal Finance Blog

I was supposed to leave Ottawa on Saturday to London, but thanks to a tremendous snowstorm, it didn’t really happen until mid-Sunday (and even then it caused a domino effect of problems and troubles due to tight scheduling and such). I was doing this for work and our corporate travel is actually dealt with through a large credit card company’s travel service (we’ll call them TinCan Travel).

TinCan actually offers an emergency travel number to call when things go wrong or you need to make changes while you travel (and in the past I have used this service and it has worked very well). Last weekend was a “perfect storm” for this system to fail miserably.

1. Two snowstorms in a row had transpired in successive days
2. It was the start of March Break in Ontario, and thus one of the busiest travel days
3. It was the weekend, and most likely they have a lower staffing at that time

These points and others meant we never were able to connect into the emergency response number. We stayed on the phone for over 4 hours one time and almost 3 hours the Sunday morning, we were put on hold and given the repeating message about how important our call is to them.

Am I unhappy with this? Yes, but I also realized why this was happening. We eventually had to clean up the  travel mess ourselves and at the end of it we only had to pay one penalty, so we did ok. We never tried to call TinCan’s emergency help line the rest of the week.

This morning I got an e-mail asking for my opinion on how well TinCan’s travel service worked. Pardon? I was going to let sleeping dogs lie, I would tell the story of our travel debacle as a joke at parties were everyone would laugh and that was where it was going to stay, however, if someone asks my opinion, I feel obliged to give it (especially when I am really miffed).

My main complaint was, “Don’t tell me you are going to answer my call when you neither have the resources or the time to do it”, change your message to say, “We are incredibly busy due to the storm (which they did), please make your own arrangements if possible (which they didn’t)”, and for the sake of all involved don’t ask me what my opinion is.

I filled in the questionnaire in an honest, but hopefully not rude manner, and maybe TinCan will learn from this, but what would they learn? Don’t ask me my opinion? When snowstorms strike put more people on your Emerg Call In Line? Who knows?

Another really good example of making sure you have an emergency financial plan.

I am very tight for time unfortunately, and my guess is that I will have a much longer post about this, but I am glad I am traveling in London on someone else’s money, because this place is bloody expensive. The hotel rooms are very expensive, but my pet peeve on this trip is that in hotel rooms the internet access is typically 15 pounds per 24 hour stint? Yes, I am using that access to write this post, so it is at least ironic in that area too.

How does anyone afford to live here is the question that keeps popping up in my head. Maybe it is cheaper to live somewhere, but I suspect that is not the case for downtown London.

I apologize for the shortness of this post, but my job awaits me.

Well in 2002 as a contribution to the GDP, yes Tourism was just as big a contributor to the GDP in Canada as Agriculture was (according to Stats Canada).

Mining was 2.5 times more important than both of them, so keep that in mind as well. This is an interesting number to keep in mind, now that the Canadian dollar is above our American neighbours money, what will that do to this sector of Canada’s economy (tourism that is)? More interesting that the Motor Vehicle manufacture is less than both Tourism and Agriculture? Interesting facts to keep in mind.

Funny, but strange

On the personal finance front, Best Buys has changed who does their credit card, so I went in to re-apply for their card. No, I shouldn’t have, but I wanted one, so let’s get past that part of the story (feel free to flagellate me in the comments section). I got a card for myself and my wife and asked for a relatively small credit limit, or at least I thought so, but the “Instant” credit application was DENIED. What the hey? The young lady then phoned up, and the application was approved (with a higher credit rating).

Yesterday two letters arrived, from HSBC credit (I guess they are now running the Best Buys Credit system), and the first said, we are sorry we cannot give you a card at this time. The second and third envelope included two credit cards with the higher credit limit. Funny? Strange? Worrying? Yes, all of those. I guess I had better do another credit rating check.

I always find Vacations very confusing in terms of never getting completely relaxed and then returning to a fire storm of activity at work, but vacations are important I think.

I have been ignoring Stats Canada for a while so here are some interesting points from our amigos in the land of statistics:

• Commercial Computers price index dropped again in June by 0.6% from May, which is great to see, and it still astounds me that computers continue to decrease in price, but I think I need to investigate this index more as to how they are doing their comparison. Given Apple’s drop in price of the iPhone, when is the best time to buy a computer or new piece of technology?
• There is a growing business for the government in the area of Tourism? Odd topic, but evidently the income that the government attributes to Tourism (taxes on travelers and paid by tourists) has been increasing from 2000 to 2006, which is interesting.
  

  The study found that tourism accounted for 3.9% of government revenue in 2006. This reflected the relatively high taxes on many goods and services bought by tourists, such as fuel, alcohol, and entertainment in casinos. At the same time, tourism accounted for 3.8% of all jobs in the economy and 2.0% of Canada’s gross domestic product (GDP).

  Interesting to know that the government makes direct income from Tourism.

• Unemployment continues to be at historically low levels, which again is a nice thing to see. Construction is the big employment boom these days, but more older folks are getting jobs as well.
  

  In August, almost all of the employment growth for adult men and women came from those aged 55 and over. An estimated 34,000 older workers found employment in August. Since the beginning of this year, employment among the 55 and over age group has increased by 4.6%, the fastest pace of all age groups, with stronger growth for women (+5.5%) than men (+3.9%). The August employment rate for older men was its highest since 1985; the rate for older women was near the all-time high set in April of this year.

  We are working later in life? I think we have talked about that before.

Is the Canadian Economy overheating? Hard to tell, but we are living in previously unseen times, so that might be a hint that things might be too good to be true?