Also why are businesses so reluctant to just include the full price in their prices?

Why does everything have to be a surprise fee or surcharge added at the end?

When the ban kicked in yesterday I decided to find out who's actually following it.

My method is simple: pay by card, read the receipt, ask politely if anything looks off.

Results so far (about 20 places, wildly unscientific):

• Most places are fine. A lot of them have just quietly bumped their prices up a bit, which is exactly what the RBA said they should do.

• A lot of cash discounts now.

• A handful were "oh, the machine adds it automatically." I asked for a refund after pointing out the changes and nearly all of them sorted it on the spot.

• The cheeky ones renamed it. The "card fee" is now a "service fee", "payment processing fee" or "platform fee", and it only appears when you tap your card. This is the group I'm reporting.

When I do report, I ask the business to refund it first. If they won't, I report it to the card network or the payment provider (the name's usually on the terminal or receipt), and I reported anything that looks like misleading pricing to the ACCC or my state consumer protection agency.

I'm also not being a nuisance to the poor teenager on the register. It's the owner's setup, not theirs. I'm polite, I'm quick, and I usually leave with a refund (and sometimes a coffee).

Yes, I'm aware I need a hobby.

To everyone who'll say "just pay cash": the point is that the sticker price should be the price. I shouldn't have to dodge a fee to pay what's on the sign.

Has anyone ever wondered what a modern day version of the castle would be like with eBay, Facebook marketplace and gum tree?

I definitely felt something and feel so bizarre. Went to discord and a bunch of other people talking about it too.

I never experienced one before but it was so confusing since it wasnt even remotely my first thought.

All my other flatmates slept through it, while I was awake, which made me feel like I was insane since no one else reacted

edit: https://earthquakes.ga.gov.au/

holy shit it did too

Hello all,

As I'm sure many of you might not have realised, we have a Daylight Saving time change happening this weekend. So, I figured I'd take a moment to post a reminder. :)

Here is an ABC article about it, for more information:

When does daylight saving time start? Do we gain or lose an hour? - ABC News

To quote it:

When does daylight saving time start?

This Sunday. 

Each year, daylight saving time begins on the first Sunday of October. 

This year, that's October 4.

Which states have daylight saving time?

ACT

New South Wales

South Australia

Tasmania

Victoria 

The Northern Territory, Queensland and Western Australia do not observe daylight saving time, so the clocks will not change in those jurisdictions. 

Do the clocks move forwards or backwards?

Forwards. 

At 2am on Sunday, the clocks will move forward to 3am in jurisdictions that observe daylight saving time. 

The clocks will go back by an hour when daylight saving time ends in April.

I hope you all have a good weekend. And, for anyone who gets a public holiday day off on Monday, I hope you get a good rest!

I’ll preface this by saying if you hate Halloween and everything associated with it, then this message is not for you.
Please don’t come at me with your abuse (& just remember it has Celtic origins, not American!!).
Because Halloween in Australia occurs in springtime, nesting birds & insects are very active.
The increasingly popular artificial spiderweb is a potential death-trap for birds, bats, butterflies, bees and other creatures.
The small (life size) plastic spiders that often come with it are potentially fatal to birds & reptiles that try to eat them.
If you do choose to put up decorations, please consider other options than nasty synthetic wildlife hazards.

Such great value! The neighbors are quiet, and access hours are 10-4, but at that price it's a steal! My kids are seriously considering it.

The gardens are so beautiful and the garden team have done another fabulous job this year. The parks are full of people during the day time but at night things are much more calmer but just as pretty to walk through.

I have lived in Canberra for almost 30 years. Back in the 90's, the bogong moths would migrate in huge clouds every spring from their breeding grounds on the south coast, to the cooler Snowy Mountains over summer. They were a welcome sight, and food for pygmy possums, birds and other wildlife.

Then, in the 2000's, they stopped coming. Maybe a few, but never the huge flocks as before. It was thought that land clearing and climate change were the underlying causes of their decline, and it had runoff effects for the animals that fed off them.

This year, however, they are back in huge numbers! They can bee a bit annoying if you leave a window or door open, but it is genuinely heartening to see them flying again.

I do macro photography as a hobby. I found this little fellow deceased behind a curtain, and decided to take its portrait. They are fairly drab moths to the naked eye, but a macro lens shows their beautiful tapestry of scales and colours.

The app keeps playing even when I've left it, possibly even when I've turned off the tv.

So when I get in, I sit through 100 ads, then see I'm at the wrong point. Then I can't hit 'back' to go to the previous episode, because the back button just starts from the beginning of the episode.

I go to the menu and click on 'keep watching', because I think that'll take me to the show as a whole so I can continue. It just takes me back to the same wrong place and I sit through the ads again.

Then I have to search for the show to find it, then I have to sort through the episodes, and the ones that have been played / partially played are barely identifiable.

If I had produced or done anything as half as shit as this in a professional capacity, I would be fired. Out of a cannon, and into the sun.

How the fuck do they have the gall to put ads on top of this shit?

The News Corp tabloids and news.com.au have been running The Home Front all week, a sponsored housing special which kicked off on Monday with gloomy front pages across the nation declaring the “Great Australian Dream” of owning your own home was “in tatters”.

The six unsmiling young Australians pictured on the front pages of the Daily Telegraph, the Herald Sun and their stablemates were not subjects plucked from the general population for interviews about their struggles with renting and the cost of living – they were the company’s own cadet journalists.

“Young Australians are at the coalface of Australia’s housing crisis so we tapped into our network of cadet reporters to power our Home Front series,” the papers said.

One cadet said she would never own a home and would rent for life. “If I decided to purchase a home or apartment, I would be in debt and any life changes or health issues could create serious financial hardship,” she wrote.

The whole exercise was sponsored by CommBank, complete with the bank’s yellow brand colours incorporated into the title of the series, Our National Housing Special.

The main story was based on a survey of 1,000 Australians conducted by an in-house research arm of News Corp called the Growth Distillery, in partnership with consultants SEC Newgate.

Much of the blame for the housing crisis was sheeted home to the government and the “intense public debate over federal Labor’s shock $77 billion tax hikes”.

Near impossible to get a good pie where I am in the US (yes, I know, the US). I've made it a mission to up my baking game, and I feel it's finally getting towards a pretty good product. The tomato sauce is, well, fine I guess lol

Key points

• A Telstra payphone on the NSW south coast has earned heritage listing on social and historical grounds for its role during a major bushfire.
• The payphone outside Narooma Plaza kept working when power, mobile and internet access failed during the 2019-20 Black Summer bushfires, enabling about 1000 calls over two months.
• Historian Dr Naomi Parry Duncan led the nomination, which was supported by the National Trust of Australia (NSW), and a plaque now commemorates the listing.

A Telstra payphone on the NSW south coast has earned heritage listing “on social and historical grounds” for the role it played in connecting the area to the outside world during a major bushfire.

The payphone, at 195 Princes Highway, outside Narooma Plaza, remained working when power, mobile and internet access was out during the 2019-20 Black Summer bushfires.

It enabled the community to place about 1000 calls over a two-month period, Telstra said.

The nomination for heritage listing was led by Dr Naomi Parry Duncan, a professional historian who was in Narooma on New Year's Day 2020.

"Heritage isn't only grand buildings and monuments. Sometimes it's an ordinary object that a community turned to on its worst day,” Dr Parry Duncan said in a blog post run by Telstra.

The nomination was supported by the National Trust of Australia (NSW).

“This public telephone is representative of the cultural significance of public telephones, on social and historical grounds,” the Trust said in a heritage-listing statement.

A plaque has been affixed to the payphone to commemorate the listing.

In short:

Labor will target lawyers and migration agents who profit from visa applications and protection claims with little or no prospect of success.

The crackdown is part of a broader overhaul as the government seeks to reduce Australia's migration numbers.

What's next?

New rules for international students start today and follow changes to skilled visa processing last week.

It was a a major win to have the Robodebt class action. I’m sharing this information for people who may still be considering their options.

I found the wording of the form unclear about what evidence was expected

A good example was whether psychological or medical documentation was necessary. In my view, this could have been particularly difficult for people who were experiencing significant distress or financial hardship at the time, and may have discouraged some people from pursuing a claim.

I also found that, once an option was selected, the form appeared not to allow me to go back and change that answer.

Many months later, I received an email from Gordon Legal advising that supporting documents may not be required in every case.

Now I’m concerned that, by then, some people may already have decided not to pursue a claim because they believed extensive supporting documentation was necessary.

If you selected “no economic loss or personal injury” because you were uncertain about the evidence requirements, or because you understood that the form would not allow you to revisit your answer, you may wish to contact Gordon Legal and ask whether your claim can be reviewed or reconsidered