While traveling home from work this evening at the back end of peak hour, I thought I was going to be a collateral damage in another car accident, caused by a reckless driver.

I was driving north along the Gold Coast Highway, just before the Gold Coast Aquatic Centre in Southport. The traffic is zoned at 60kph through that section I think but the traffic was probably flowing at a little under 70kph. At that section of the Gold Coast Highway, there are two lanes in each direction and paralell parking against the gutter.

Out of a side street, some reckless young driver pulled out and instead of merging into the traffic like someone with common sense, decided he’d race up the shoulder of the road (between the parked cars & the left lane) at break neck pace. Remembering, we’re in peak hour traffic, traveling at around 70kph and he was passing us easily – I suspect he’d have been approaching 85-90kph.

Unfortately for the driver, the road narrows a little and the shoulder gets thinner. He decided to continue to charge forward and try and get into a very small gap in the traffic about 5 cars in front of him, but not before shattering his left hand side rear view mirror against the right rear view mirror of a parked car. I couldn’t believe what I’d just witnessed.

As it turned out, I had my passenger window down and he heard me talking to myself in disgust, while referring to him as a wanker. He of course said something to me but when I called him on the fact that he very very nearly smashed into the rear end of a parked car in peak hour at 80-90kph – he denied it completely as if it didn’t happen and his feet on the dashboard girlfriend began hurling all manner of obscenities at me.

He represents the very kind of idiot driver that we don’t need on the roads.

Over the weekend at around 6PM, I received a call from a private number. Claire refuses to answer private numbers but I’ll at least pick them up to see who it might be.

In this particular instance, it was Telstra calling to let me know that I’d be receiving a discount on my future bills because we’d been paying our bills on or ahead of the due date. The phone call went along the same lines as you’d expect, they asked for me directly and proceeded to check out basic personal information.

Everything was going swimmingly, up until they required me to provide some sort of additional identification – it didn’t matter what it was, drivers license, Medicare, pension number or other. I was reluctant to provide any of that information to them, as it isn’t Telstra’s normal practice over the phone but went with the flow and provided them part of my Medicare number.

At that stage, the young bloke I was talking to transferred me to his senior something-or-rather to refresh me on what the change was and fill in any blanks. The next person was also quite slick and moved through things quickly and was happy to flash by the fact that the service was provided by Complete Telecom and not Telstra. Not to worry though, they use Telstra hardware to deliver the phone services so it’ll all be okay!

As soon as those words came out of his mount, I promptly told him that I didn’t want anything that he was selling, not to make any changes to what I considered to be the best home phone plan available in June last year.

The conduct from Complete Telecom was nothing short of deceptive and misleading. First off they introduce themselves and misrepresent themselves as being from Telstra, have the balls to ask me for some of my personal information, gloss over the fact that they are in fact not Telstra but placate me by telling me that the phone services are delivered over Telstra hardware.

Sorry Complete Telecom, that doesn’t make you Telstra at any level – it makes you a shoddy filthy lying scam ridden company that I will never, ever do business with – regardless of how good your deal is. I’ll be lodging a complaint with the Telecommunications Industry Ombudsman, you can take it up with them.