FSW WORLDWIDE

[GandiBaat]

Offtopic but do you have long hair and are dusky by any chance? When I was in Vancouver, I was visiting richmond. I was in the metro and a family of 3 got on the train on the way over. The man had slighly long hair and the wife was wearing salwar kameez and they had a young son (who looked about 3-5 years old).

Ever since you mentioned you didn't drive, I thought it might be you.

I live in Victoria, BC. I used to live in Vancouver. Besides, we are very generic family. I do have long hair however and I am growing beard. I typically grow that in fall because having a beard in winters makes it chill winds more bearable. You put a wool cap on your head, a jacket and facial hairs protects your face.

 

[Deleted member 994371]

I live in Victoria, BC. I used to live in Vancouver. Besides, we are very generic family.

Figures lol. It was a shot in the dark.

 

[cansha]

This reddit thread describes what I experienced in Brampton while I was there:

https://www.reddit.com/r/askTO/comments/yq4lmn
My favorite part is where people casaully admit they have "internalized racism" problem and there is nothing they want to do about it.

A lot of my conversations ended with "This is not India, here things happen systematically and by the book" by some of the older immigrants in Brampton. Ironically enough, they were barely there for more than 3 years lol. Worst were the Khalistani sardarjis who had been living there for two decades who hated every non-sikh Indian immigrant they came across.

Can't wait to become a "Canadian" Canadian where I will shit on fellow FOB Canadians while a housing crisis, health care crisis, and labour shortage crisis will engulf the country to turn into something worse than a third-world country, where things will actually be worse than the country they emigrated from. The moral superiority alone would give me a hard-on.

Saw the thread this morning and this is written by a Chinese immigrant, but yeah Indian folks have similar experiences. But it is not limited to Indian and Chinese. I have seen this in USA amongst other immigrant groups who are not white by skin color. The challenge is the previous generation of immigrants came at a time when these countries (India and China) were not economically sound. So, they did everything possible to be in good books of the whites and get their approval. The newer generation from India and China is lot more confident. They do come here for relatively better life but aren't as hungry for the approval from white folks. And this pisses off the older immigrants who think they "suffered" to give the new immigrants better life here.

Watch this video of Hasan Minhaj (Although he is not FOB immigrant) telling Ellen to pronounce his name correctly and he mentions how his father would disapprove of wasting his time on this in difference of how a younger immigrant feels vs older generation felt when in a new country.

Hasan Minhaj Uses Timothée Chalamet's Name at Starbucks - YouTube

 

[GandiBaat]

Sorry for replying with one more post, but I just wanted to point out how shady the telecom companies are over here. I wanted to reduce my plan to a lower-billed montly plan. On the website, instead of just letting me choose my plan, they had me talk to a customer representative. When I got on the all, she tried upselling me to a higher priced plan. I just kept mentioning my budget to her hoping that she would let me keep my original plan for less money but she just wouldn't budge lol. Ultimately, she let me switch to a plan mentioned on the website in the first place.

If they let me switch plans through the mobile app, I wouldn't try to haggle in the first place. Companies and people here want to squeeze every dime out of your pocket. That's capitalism for me, I guess.

Major telcos in BC tend to avoid upselling -- atleast thats what I felt from my wife's training material. The reason that they have most things through phone is same reason the big 5 banks here have a lot of things done via bank counter: To accommodate old folks who form the biggest demographics. The day boomer generation dies, a lot of customer service jobs will simply disappear.

The generation Y is more like RTFM, BYOD and DIY generation.

Look at us all, doing our immigration ourself. My father --bless him-- will never attempt such a thing. I can afford to get my immigration done by a pro but I thought DIY is better... gives me more control and insight into the process.

 

[cansha]

Sorry for replying with one more post, but I just wanted to point out how shady the telecom companies are over here. I wanted to reduce my plan to a lower-billed montly plan. On the website, instead of just letting me choose my plan, they had me talk to a customer representative. When I got on the all, she tried upselling me to a higher priced plan. I just kept mentioning my budget to her hoping that she would let me keep my original plan for less money but she just wouldn't budge lol. Ultimately, she let me switch to a plan mentioned on the website in the first place.

If they let me switch plans through the mobile app, I wouldn't try to haggle in the first place. Companies and people here want to squeeze every dime out of your pocket. That's capitalism for me, I guess.

Oh, it is the same with banks as well. I was trying to buy home insurance and a big bank showed me a quote on the website and applied an "online discount". I wanted to buy that plan but one of the coverage items had low value, so I edited it to a higher amount. When I went ahead to buy that insurance suddenly the website told me that I cannot buy it online and I need to talk to an "Insurance specialist". They made me wait 30 minutes on the phone and the guy on the phone said as soon as he will touch the quote the "online discount" would not apply anymore as I took his "help" in preparing the quote. I just disconnected the call, in sheer frustration at that time.

 

[Deleted member 994371]

Major telcos in BC tend to avoid upselling -- atleast thats what I felt from my wife's training material. The reason that they have most things through phone is same reason the big 5 banks here have a lot of things done via bank counter: To accommodate old folks who form the biggest demographics. The day boomer generation dies, a lot of customer service jobs will simply disappear.

The lady on the call kept pushing me for the higher priced plan. So I turned my haggling mode on. She finally caved in when I just kept repeating my budget which was exactly the amount of the lower priced plan. It was pretty annoying. This was of course in Ontario though.

I have heard similar stories about broadband internet. Of coure mobile telecom companies and broadband companies are one and the same here.

 

[cansha]

Major telcos in BC tend to avoid upselling -- atleast thats what I felt from my wife's training material. The reason that they have most things through phone is same reason the big 5 banks here have a lot of things done via bank counter: To accommodate old folks who form the biggest demographics. The day boomer generation dies, a lot of customer service jobs will simply disappear.

I had never stepped foot in a bank branch in USA. May be once when I opened my first account. After that I opened all accounts online and did everything online. Not possible for a number of things in Canada.

 

[cansha]

The lady on the call kept pushing me for the higher priced plan. So I turned my haggling mode on. She finally caved in when I just kept repeating my budget which was exactly the amount of the lower priced plan. It was pretty annoying. This was of course in Ontario though.

I have heard similar stories about broadband internet. Of coure mobile telecom companies and broadband companies are one of the same here.

So, in a way I do understand their reasoning behind it. There are only 37M people in Canada and even if a telco had 100% market share to increase revenue, they would have to sell everyone a higher priced plan. Now for sure they can't have 100% market share and investing in infrastructure like 5G costs money. So, they can't possibly be spending that kind of money when user base is so small.

Only other country which is equivalent of Canada in terms of vast geographical area and limited user base is Australia. So, I looked at Australian prices to see if Canadian telcos are "reasonable". Well, they are not. The data in Aus is much cheaper than here and buying a phone plan is much easier.

 

[GandiBaat]

I had never stepped foot in a bank branch in USA. May be once when I opened my first account. After that I opened all accounts online and did everything online. Not possible for a number of things in Canada.

Very similar to UK. The demographics is older folks so businesses try to accommodate them. I designed a Kiosk for a major UK bank. One guideline was, make on-screen buttons large enough so that a 65 year old brit can press them... I asked my boss's father to try it out on his ipad.

The lady on the call kept pushing me for the higher priced plan. So I turned my haggling mode on. She finally caved in when I just kept repeating my budget which was exactly the amount of the lower priced plan. It was pretty annoying. This was of course in Ontario though.

I have heard similar stories about broadband internet. Of coure mobile telecom companies and broadband companies are one and the same here.

Hmm... weird! My wife's commission was not based on how much value of plan she sold. May be different companies have different policies.

 

[Deleted member 994371]

So, in a way I do understand their reasoning behind it. There are only 37M people in Canada and even if a telco had 100% market share to increase revenue, they would have to sell everyone a higher priced plan. Now for sure they can't have 100% market share and investing in infrastructure like 5G costs money. So, they can't possibly be spending that kind of money when user base is so small.

Only other country which is equivalent of Canada in terms of vast geographical area and limited user base is Australia. So, I looked at Australian prices to see if Canadian telcos are "reasonable". Well, they are not. The data in Aus is much cheaper than here and buying a phone plan is much easier.

I swear, everytime Canada is compared to other developed countries, it fares worse. The only thing Canada got right is weed.

What are the things Canada does better than US, Europe (I know different countries in Europe but lets just say Europe is Western Europe here) and Aus/NZ? Of course, I am talking about facilities here (like broadband, mobile plans etc.).

 

[Deleted member 994371]

Hmm... weird! My wife's commission was not based on how much value of plan she sold. May be different companies have different policies.

This was, ironically enough, Freedom.

 

[GandiBaat]

This was, ironically enough, Freedom.

LOL! The irony of name!

Freedom was once free as in it was not owned by the big two. It had its own ways of doing things. Then after some mess it got acquired by shaw. I wonder some workforce still follows old freedom's way of working.

 

[Deleted member 994371]

LOL! The irony of name!

Freedom was once free as in it was not owned by the big two. It had its own ways of doing things. Then after some mess it got acquired by shaw. I wonder some workforce still follows old freedom's way of working.

And Shaw just got acquired by Rogers so now we have come full circle.

In India we currently have Vi, Jio, and Airtel. I wonder 20 years down the line we will see same things happening in India.

Luckily there are many more players in broadband.

 

[Deleted member 994371]

I had never stepped foot in a bank branch in USA. May be once when I opened my first account. After that I opened all accounts online and did everything online. Not possible for a number of things in Canada.

Same in India. Most "private" (we have government-owned banks as well) banks operate this way. Everything can be managed through their app.

 

[cansha]

And Shaw just got acquired by Rogers so now we have come full circle.

In India we currently have Vi, Jio, and Airtel. I wonder 20 years down the line we will see same things happening in India.

Luckily there are many more players in broadband.

Yeah the issue is not number of players. India has shown that in the end only 3-4 big players remain in market. India had a lot of telecom providers but left with only 3. But India has the advantage of the vast user base. The price may still go up in future but nowhere close to what we have in Canada.