I really gotta stop trusting Sony to hold up their end of a bargain in a basic retail transaction. What with recent debacles like the spyware, the exploding batteries, the I-can-get-two-Wiis-for-the-price-of-one PlayStation3, and their overall blind faith that everything they do is for the public good, I still figured they were sold in the TV department...

We recently purchased a 46" Sony Bravia TV in Miami and shipped it to the Bahamas, an idea which sounds more ominous now that I type than it did when we went through with it. It shipped and problems started in week one. In the first couple of days, we noticed a ticking noise in the top right hand side but that seems to have gone away.

What hasn't gone away is a three-inch stripe along the right edge of the screen. It's colour varies depending on what's on the screen. When the screen is black, the stripe is a dark red. When the screen is green (i.e. for football/soccer games), the stripe is yellow. You can still see the picture underneath but all the same, we've taken to viewing things in normal mode rather than widescreen.

Give them credit: their voice response system is pretty good, even if it follows the recent creepy trend of having a computer pretending to talk to you. ("Hmmm....I can't seem to find your order.") I made my way to an agent relatively quickly. She was polite and friendly and ran me through a minimum of troubleshooting before deciding that I needed a technician, which I already knew. (On a side note: I think I've said this before but every home should come standard with a portable phone with speakerphone and a mute button in the handset.)

But according to Sony, the Bahamas is part of Latin America. This struck me as odd because while I always knew Bahamas spoke a different language (to take two quotes from recent political pamphlets of a federal party: "Ain't Long Now" and "We Votin' Dem Out!"), Spanish it ain't. And unfortunately, this meant having to call Sony in Mexico, just to find a licensed Sony service centre in the Bahamas. And guess what? Sony Mexico's voice response system is all Spanish. As in, there is no: Press 2 for English.

I got two levels deep in their system before chickening out and deciding to waiting for Mrs. Hillbilly who speaks Spanish. That's kind of where it stands now but I'm not holding out hope that a Sony centre exists here. There is a bit more to it but that's a post for the technical arm of the Bahamian Hillbilly which will be forthcoming.

Conversation with the young'un:

She: "Daddy, today at Tita Ann's house, I pooted."
Me: "Pleasant."
She: "Yeah, and it smelled like yours. Daddy, I think my farts are growing up!"

I put up with the banking industry because I have to. And it's that attitude that keeps them in business, at least in Canada and the Bahamas. My limited experience in the US was a lot more positive, I think because a bank can be started by anyone, including your average five-year-old looking to diversify his online lemonade stand business.

In the Bahamas, the main public banks are, if you can believe it, Royal Bank of Canada and Bank of Nova Scotia. The next competitor is First Caribbean Bank, the result of a merger 'twixt Barclay's and CIBC a couple of years ago. They are just as pretentious and underhanded down here as they are in God's country. Probably more so when augmented by the average Bahamian's idea of "customer service".

I'll focus my wrath on Royal Bank whom I'm currently forced to bank with. First stop: the hours. At some point in the last 100 years, banks got it into their heads that they were a professional service and should operate only from Monday to Friday. They took it a step further than most companies by operating only between the hours of ten and four.

But here's the thing: banks aren't professional services. All they do is store and dole out money. They take your money and give it to someone else, charging both of us in the process. In essence, they're pawn shops except that no actual goods are changing hands, just money itself. The difference is that pawn shops are open when *real* professionals aren't working, like Saturdays. Plus pawn shops have better customer service and don't pretend they're in it for your benefit. And they smell better.

I pay five dollars each month for internet banking at Royal Bank. Using software that is extremely outdated. I know because it's the same software I used when I banked at Royal Bank in Canada ten years ago. RBC in Canada has since updated their software, RBC in Nassau has not. When they say, "Import into accounting software," what they really mean is, "Download a file that can be imported into Quicken 1999 or earlier."

I pay a dollar each time I use a Royal Bank cash machine. But not if I go inside to the teller to withdraw money. At first, I thought this was backwards but then I realized that a dollar is actually pretty cheap not to have to talk to a bank employee down here.

But in principle, there is no reason I should have to pay *anything* for day-to-day banking. Deposits, withdrawals, transfers, paying bills. This should all be handed to me on a silver platter regardless of whether I do it in person or online or at a bank machine. This is the 21st century, for Jayzus sake. Make your money somewhere else. It's not like they make any significant percentage of their profits on service fees anyway. Drop 'em altogether and reap the benefits of more customers. Hell, print ads on the bank statements. It worked for Google.

In contrast to this are private banks, which the Hillbilly uses for his mortgage. Now THESE people deserve to be called professionals. It's an odd sensation to receive a personal e-mail from your account manager to confirm a deposit made not half an hour earlier. And in one of our initial meetings when it became clear our condo sale wouldn't be ready by the date on our mortgage papers, he said, "These things aren't set in stone, Mr. Baley, it'll start whenever you want it to start."

Now THAT took some getting used to.

Miami are we. A day in and our shopping velocity has been great, let me tell you.

The trip started badly thanks to the Bahamian bureaucratic machine. Our paper ticket...oh wait, I see I've lost you already. You see, a paper ticket is something that was often used in the airline industry in the early to mid-20th century to prove that passengers had purchased passage on planes, alliteratively speaking. With the advent of the internet, the practice was all but abandoned and is used now only in small-minded corners of the world that like to cling to archaic mechanisms of screwing customers. Like the Bahamas and its national air "carrier", BahamasAir.

 In order for us to get to Miami at the time we wanted (or as close as was possible), we were forced to fly with BahamasAir something Expedia tried to disguise from us by claiming it was US Airways. In any case, I purchased the ticket last Saturday (i.e. one week ago), noticed it was to be "delivered" to me within 1-4 business days, and promptly called Expedia's customer service to mock them in their blind devotion to the Bahamian postal service. They assured me the ticket would arrive by Thursday and the nice lady said to call back if it hadn't arrived by then, probably because she knew she wouldn't be working on Thursday.

So I called them Thursday because everyone outside of Expedia knows it's not possible to have anything other than tourists delivered to the Bahamas in a timely manner. The Estrogen Defensive will attest to that ever since her Xmas package to Sydney arrived, after having been sent one crisp November morn, the following August. Most people assume "snail mail" is a figure of speech. The Bahamas postal service figures it's as literal as The Pony Express.

Anyway, I had a nice, long conversation with someone at Expedia who tried to track down where my tickets were. It seems the tracking number I was given didn't actually track anything on the USPS website (which is how the tickets were sent, a source of some confusion because the link I was given pointed to UPS's website). I probably should have told her I went through all this aggravation myself but I like to put my CSRs in my shoes so we both have a common frame of reference. I probably should have known better since her first advice to me was to wait one more day, even after I assured her that if the tickets weren't going to be delivered to me on a regular workday, they sure weren't coming on Good Friday.

Alas, after two hours, I got a little tired of listening to the elevator version of Pachelbel's Canon in D (I'm not making this up, it was the ONLY song played the entire time) and hung up, deciding instead to "play it by ear", a strategy that has served me well in the past (at best) and/or hasn't screwed me up too badly (at worst).

Fast forward to Saturday morning at 5:00am at the BahamasAir ticket counter:

She: I'm sorry, Mr. Bailey
Me: That's buh-LAY
She: Yes, Mr. Bailey. I'm sorry but we need a paper ticket
Me: Does your computer show that we've purchased the tickets?
She: Yes
Me: And does it show that the seats are reserved for us?
She: Yes
Me: And does it show that they have been paid for in full?
She: Yes
Me: And the ticket number matches the one on my printed itinerary here in my hand?
She: Yes
Me: So I can get on the plane then, right?
She: No
Me: I don't understand
She: We need a paper ticket
Me: Right then. Hold on, I'll get you one. Syd, let me borrow your crayons. I need a medium this lady understands...

Eventually, they were gracious enough to allow us on the plane and all we needed to do was purchase three more tickets. When I got to my seat, I discovered someone in it, a lady whose ticket had the same seat number as her husband beside her. For whatever reason, I was the one that had to be accommodated and inexplicably, they had trouble finding a seat for me because the plane was full, despite my assurance that there should be at least three open seats.

To wrap up this saga, I did call Expedia on arrival and they were pretty quick to assure me that the money for my new ticket will be refunded. Angie at their help desk was very sincere in her apologies and I'm convinced it had to do with my policy on calling help desks.

Full disclosure: The actual flight on BahamasAir, my first, was counter to all the horror stories I've heard. On time departure and arrival, friendly staff, exTREMEly smooth takeoff and landing, and unlike American Eagle, we were taken to an actual gate, not dumped on the tarmac with empty promises of a bus "coming along shortly". Having said that, we travelled with carry-ons only.

Next up: just what exactly *is* La Quinta Spanish for?