Desks out in the open

It can be such a distraction when there are desks out in the open. One of such desks is actually sitting in the customer area of a dealership. The desk I think is where you can talk to a staff member about trading in your vehicle, but I am really not sure. I think the desk is really just a spot where the staff come and hangs out and make lots of noise.

I understand that part of the dealership isn’t large enough, but then there are the times when you see that maybe if they can put this desk closer to the cars instead of in the waiting area from the service department it might be better. Where it is, it seems that the staff thinks it is a great spot to just hang out and laugh and all of that. I understand that they need to have a person to talk to about trade-ins but considering all the noise that they made it doesn’t sound like it is a great place to talk about trade-ins. We were in one time, and they were talking to a person about doing a trade in, and we could hear all the conversation, so things that should have been private were not private because we knew everything about the vehicle that was being traded in as well as how much the payments would be and everything else.

If a dealership wants to have an area where they can discuss trade-ins, it should be able to be enclosed or at least in an area that isn’t right in the middle of where customers sit while waiting for their vehicle to be serviced. I am thinking that just moving this area to a different location would be better for the business. Seeing where the desk makes it a location that I wouldn’t want to discuss any business because right beside a four-foot wall is a table where customers are sitting waiting for their vehicle to be serviced.

The desk also makes it difficult to sit and enjoy the time while waiting for service because the noise is something that is a lot louder than even a bunch of customers sitting and having conversations. Staff need to understand what it looks like when they are back and forth to this desk, and it is basically just having personal conversations and not business. The move times someone comes back to this location, the more it shows that they aren’t busy enough, and that doesn’t help.

A trade-in desk at a dealership should be in a location where business can be discussed and not in the middle of customers. We have mentioned the situation to the staff, and they understand the frustration, but there isn’t anything that can currently be done to deal with the situation. I think the biggest thing that they need to do is make sure that the conversations are kept at a lower volume, and that might help.

A couple of scams to be aware of

New scam to me: Received a call this morning from "Visa" asking if I authorized a purchase at 4 am this morning to eBay. Of course, I immediately asked which card and the person on the other end said the one starting with "45" which is the standard visa starting numbers. I then asked what the last four digits were on the card, and the person hung up.

 

In a lot of ways, I was having some fun because the last name they asked for isn't the last name on my credit cards and I would have thought the bank would be calling, not VISA. They were probably hoping that I would say no I didn't authorize the transaction, and then I would give them my credit card number so that they could "reverse" the transaction. If a company is calling me and telling them there is a problem, they already have all the information that they need other than me saying yes or no if I authorized the transaction. Scams are getting very interesting, and you have to always be so careful when you get these calls. Never give out any information to callers if they should have the information and in a lot of ways even if you think it might be a real call say you will call back with the information and call the real company, not the number the caller provides.

Revenue Canada scam: You receive a text message showing that your refund is ready, and you just need to click on a link to download your refund. Well, Revenue Canada doesn’t send text messages with your refund attached. Revenue Canada doesn’t call you to tell you that the police are on the way to your home to arrest you because you did something wrong. These are just a couple of the Revenue Canada scams that I have seen happening in the last little while.

Service Canada scam: there is another scam where you get a text from Service Canada letting you know that to deposit the funds you need to go to this link. Why would the link have gomdesign.com as part of the link if it was really from Service Canada?

There are so many scams going on now that you have to be so careful to protect yourself. I know that there are going to be individuals that give out credit card or personal information over the phone, but my biggest caution is only given the information to someone if you have made the call yourself, and you know that you have checked the number you are calling and not calling a number someone provided you when they called you.

Saturday morning

For a lot of us here in Canada, we woke up on Saturday morning to hear some news which was upsetting. There had been an accident between a junior “a” hockey team bus and a transport truck in rural Saskatchewan. The worst news was that 14 people had been killed, and all of those were passengers on the bus. Yes, the hockey team on its way to a Junior “A” playoff game had been killed, and the other 15 people had been taken to the hospital with various injuries. Humboldt, Saskatchewan has lost lots of people and the town, province and even the country has been impacted by this tragic accident.

The number of killed on Saturday changed to 15 people killed and that included 9 players between 16 and 21 years of age and 6 other people on the bus including the team’s head coach. It is something to think about all these families that have lost someone that was part of their family. What some people didn’t realize that was a number of the players from the team were not from Humboldt but from other towns and cities from Manitoba, Alberta and British Columbia along with other towns in Saskatchewan. So yes, a number of families lost their sons, but there are the billet families that have also lost part of their families as well.

The media has been very respectful given the situation this time and that is good because it is hard to figure out what happened and all those details. It has been something to listen to some of the NHL players and coaches talk about the different bus trips that they took as junior players, and some of these same people knew either the players/coaches or family members of the team. The impact of this accident impacts the country as a whole, as hockey is so much part of what kids grow up playing here in Canada.

It is hard to accept that one accident during the day can have such a large impact on a country, but I have to admit that this accident did. Hockey is part of Canada and when something like this happens the entire country feels it. I know that I have never played hockey, and I am not a parent, but I am feeling the hurt knowing that there are lots of families now dealing with a loss. There are also lots of families trying to help their injured family member deal with their own injuries as well as the lost of their teammates, who in so many ways are their extended family.

Hockey is so much part of Canada and next time you see a team bus on a highway or anywhere remember there are hundreds of those buses that travel the roads each week and sometimes things happen, and the hurt will start all over again.

My blog - thoughts and moving forward

I have had this blog for almost 7 years now, and I love being able to hide and do some of my writing here because it gives me a way to express things the way I see them.

What I decided to try and do is to go back through the blog entries to see what I can combine and make into either different blog posts or even small e-books, as I have several articles based on similar topics. I haven’t really started this process yet, but as I am sitting and just looking at the number of posts, I am realizing that I have done quite a bit of writing over the last 7 years on this blog. I have lots of different ideas and findings written through this blog that I decided to try and see if combining some of the actual entries would either give me some new ideas or help me expand on some of the ideas that I have been writing about. The review of the blog may also show me some of the similar entries that I have done in the past. They are going to remain on the blog because they have been posted, but may help me figure out a better tracking method of the topics that I am written about.

I spend some time over the last little while collecting all the posts into one document, and have to admit that it was a big surprise when I finally looked at it as one document. Sure, there are going to be some revision of the blogs, but when you look at a 1.5” binder full of pages, you know that there are lots of pages. As I write this blog the book is currently sitting at 607 pages and line spacing of 1.5, and I am not sure if it will go down during the review or if it will increase, but at least I know that I have everything in one document saved in two different spots. No, I don’t want to lose this document after spending the time trying to collect all the blog entries.

The review is going to be a lot of fun, as I can see by just quickly looking at some of the titles that I will be looking at things and remembering either where I wrote the blog post or where the idea came from. I will slowly go through the book, and maybe I will learn about things as I go, and maybe new posts will be written as I start thinking of new ideas.

I love my blog, and it has given me the chance to write and express my views. Not everything has been happy with my blog, but then it is my blog and if someone doesn’t like reading my views that’s fine because there are lots of other blogs out there to be found.