IF one needed any evidence that the energetic, service-focused days of Canberra’s own telco TransACT are well and truly over, then look no further than the antics of its WA-based owner iiNet the past couple of weeks.

The passion for customer service that former CEO Ivan Slavich seared on to his organisation is long gone with a “courtesy email” to “CityNews” CEO Greg Jones – and many, many others – that we had reached iiNet’s “excess spend limit of $200”.

Hello? What limit? Well, that’s apparently to be explained in our next account, meantime we’re a busy newspaper, we makes calls all day long and we always pay the consequent bill. We’ve been a Transact customer for years and suddenly, without warning, as a business, we’re on a $200 limit!

It gets worse. “To prevent further charges, your phone service has been temporarily limited to making local and emergency calls only until the account is settled,” writes chummy Mat Conn, customer service GM, which means he arbitrarily and outrageously cut off mobile and interstate calls.

Greg, who clearly thought it was a mistake, was also harassed by a menacing string of texts before he called and they magnanimously raised the limit to $300 and later to $500.

A Kingston accountant who has also been through this hoopla bludgeoned a $1000 limit from them for each of six lines, which gives her time to shop around, but Mr Jones is open to calls from competitors – 6262 9100.

Tosolini’s is back

AS CC still suffers daily denial at the jarring closure at Easter of our coffee-shop-of-choice, Tosolini’s, at Bailey’s Corner, comes the news the family name is back in business.

Younger brother Danny Tosolini has popped up branding the imperilled Italo Australia Club’s tired, old bistro the “Tosolini’s Pop Up”, which has brought the First Family of Italian fare back together with mama, Valentina, contributing to the simple range of home-style Italian food. Danny’s also convinced brother Carlo to assist in front of house. Just like old times, but the test is if they’ll honour CC’s handful of Tosolini’s coffee-loyalty cards!
Wet and wild?

CC admires the normally sensible member for Canberra, Gai Brodtmann. But we broke into unbecoming sniggering at her recent wet-day, road-safety tweet where bravely she faced the rain in Tuggeranong and tweeted the resultant picture of a damp pollie with raised arms, Canute-like fruitlessly imploring Huwie to spare her constituents. Looks like God’s a Liberal, Gai.

And can’t Visit Canberra get any more excitable than this:

Worse still, the luvvies at the AWM retweeted it! Oh, the power of social media.

Wall flowers

AT CC, we’d ban everything including bans, so we were tickled by cheeky Liberal Andrew Wall’s wedgie on the ACT government that’s planning to ban smoking in the prison, yet still pushes to have a needle-and-syringe program. “The contradiction is ridiculous,” says the opposition spokesman for corrections, accusing Minister Shane Rattenbury of having it all wrong.

“On the one hand, the government is saying: ‘Let’s give prisoners needles to inject an illegal drug’. Yet on the other, they’re saying: ‘Put a ban on smoking cigarettes’. It simply doesn’t make sense.”

The place to be

BURIED in Simon Corbell’s call for nominations to join Capital Metro’s community and business reference groups is mention of the “recently announced” place managers program, which will see Capital Metro staff located in localities along the light rail alignment, to wit Gungahlin, Dickson and Civic.

What are place managers? They are essentially moles assigned from the propaganda unit of Capital Metro and, when they’re not spinning for them, they’ll be working “closely with and support each of the community and business reference groups”, which a cynic might suggest will keep the, albeit handpicked, group members under a rein.

Corbell’s office is a lot more complimentary in describing the PMs as being “highly skilled in conducting effective community consultation processes, establishing relationships with partnering organisations and demonstrate a good understanding of the economic, social and environmental issues associated with the project”.

They are senior officers (SOG B) with salaries ranging from $111,478 to $125,497. There are three of them, so that just leaves 3497 new jobs from the billion-dollar tram to go.

Dear lads…

THE member for Fraser’s direct mail campaign appears to be having relationship issues. In one Palmerston household the parents got a pro-forma letter from Labor’s Andrew Leigh bemoaning Tony Abbott’s lack of action on the “gender gap”. Their voting-age sons were also sent a letter (about young Australians being locked out of home ownership), but the odd thing is the boys were grouped together and addressed as one might a same-sex couple.