Over the past couple of weeks I’ve been getting emails from every financial institution I’ve ever dealt with, restaurants where I signed up for mailing lists, a mortgage broker I used in 2007, and just about every retailer where I’ve ever bought something online – and they all want to help me. They all say they’re here for me.
Everyone is anxious to tell me what they’re doing to help me while the world is dealing with the Covid-19 pandemic.
Mostly how everyone is “helping me” is cutting back hours or temporarily closing locations. Uh, I’m not sure how that helps me. Likewise with all the extra cleaning and disinfecting. If I don’t normally enter your place of business – how does that help me?
Mortgage and rent
In Canada some of the big banks are reviewing people with mortgages to defer payments by six months. Generally that just means they’ll consider letting you skip payments and then add another six months on to your term.
I read a post where someone’s bank said she can skip a payment and then just pay double next time.
How does that help when you’re temporarily laid off from work and have no income?
Not everyone is a homeowner. People like me are renters. The BC government says they’re going to help renters but I don’t see how. It’s not like the government plans to pay our rent. I think it’s more to do with landlords can’t evict due to non-paying tenants who are affected by Covid-19 unemployment.
It’s one thing if you rent from a corporation that owns multiple rental units.
It’s a whole other ballgame if you rent a basement suite in a privately owned residence. The homeowner looks at the rental suite income as a mortgage helper. If the tenant is unemployed and can’t pay rent, that affects the homeowner who now can’t pay their mortgage.
No matter what the government says, I see bankruptcies and foreclosures on the increase in 2020.
Almost half of all Canadians are $200 away from financial disaster.
Americans are only slightly better off financially. One third of Americans are $400 away from financial hardship.
Help me?!
Here are a few companies that want to help me. There would be more but I already deleted old emails. I seemed to get an onslaught of emails from these helpful companies last Friday.
Sorry about the yellow highlighting on the email snips! I did a search in my deleted emails for “help you” while preparing for this post.
Here’s one from Alive newsletter. I like to read their health and wellness articles. They’re actually the only company that wanted to help me! I had to enter a contest answering ways that Covid-19 has changed my life, and I might win some goodies.
And here’s Audible who want to help my fictional kids stay connected. For the life of me I have no idea how I got that email because I do zippo with Audible.
Checkout 51 is a program to help you make cash back on grocery shopping. So far I haven’t done anything with it and Checkout 51 is helping me by offering savings on a few essential grocery items. Good luck finding them in the stores!
Coast Capital Savings has sent a few emails about helping me. The first one was a premature email about branch cleaning and having hand sanitizer available. I went into the Cloverdale branch a day later and no hand sanitizers in sight! I called them on it on Twitter and they replied they’re still in the process of setting them up. Coast Capital should have waited until all the branches had been set up before sending that email!
I received more emails from Coast Capital as they thought up other ways to “help me”.
Rogers Bank isn’t supporting me at all in this challenging time! They wanted to tell me about the reduction in their working hours. And that supports me how? Last year I got one of their credit cards with good value on foreign transaction fees. You can read about how that happened in Life with Credit Cards.
Tangerine Bank is also here to help me by closing their cafes, but they’re still available for online banking. Yawn.
TD Canada Trust sent two emails to let me know they’re helping me with branch closures and reduced hours! LOL! I haven’t had an account with them in years but I do have a rarely used credit card.
Those screw ups at Telus are helping keep me “connected” in the face of Covid-19.
Well that would be a breath of fresh air since Telus is the shits when it comes to keeping me connected! Telus Opitk TV has a lousy signal and constantly goes down. Every couple of months Telus shuts down completely and we have no service for at least two days, if not longer, until a service tech can come out. The last time this happened was earlier in March, 2020. The time before was mid-December when the service was down for a few days. In the past five years Telus service techs have been out over one hundred times for service outage issues!
Telus had a major email outage in August, 2019 and Telus lied to their customers about getting a credit for our inconvenience. In fact, while I was writing this post Telus Internet stopped working for about 20 minutes! How is that keeping me connected? LOL! More lies from Telus!
Covid-19 updates
In addition to the companies who want to “help me”, other companies have sent Covid-19 updates, generally about office closures and cleaning procedures. Actually, I prefer the updates from these companies instead of the bullshit emails about “helping me”.
Let’s start with Apple Saddlery. This is a horse and equestrian supply company where I’ve purchased a few things over the years. I bought a really cute pink raincoat from Apple in 2019 that has sure gotten a lot of use in the past year!
Apple sent me an email that they’re temporarily closed due to Covid-19 concerns.
I received a couple of emails from BCAA, mostly about reduced hours and closures. The other email had to do with Husky gas stations. That’s where I fuel up to earn BCAA dollars. Generally, that email said Husky is staying open, following social distancing and sanitizing rules.
Booster Juice – my favorite smoothie place! – wanted me to know about reduced hours and straws won’t be available for customer grabbing. The staff will hand over a straw with the drink.
I also got an update from a publisher of some of my favorite cozy mysteries. It was mostly about how life is going on in California.
Sun Peaks is a ski resort near Kamloops in BC’s Interior. The last time I skiied there was in 1985 when it was still known as Tod Mountain and hadn’t seen the big hotel and condo boom. But they still want me to know they’re closing for the rest of the season.
Save On Foods has changed their hours, closing earlier, but opening one hour earlier for seniors to shop between 7am and 8am. That’s a nice gesture, but they don’t say what age they consider “senior”.
55? 60? 65? Older?
Save On Foods is also implementing higher food safety handling, deeper cleaning, and other precautions. I was in Save On a week ago. Managed to get a package of toilet paper! Woo hoo!
Skinny Ms
Even Skinny Ms is “here for me during this challenging time”.
Skinny Ms is one of the websites I used for tips and recipes while I was getting myself to a healthier lifestyle.
They sent me an email with suggestions on workouts and other things I can do at home to avoid going crazy. Give my house a good deep cleaning? Oh yeah that sounds like a barrel of laughs. Great idea! NOT!
If you really want to help me …
If any company out there really wants to help an unemployed, single, older woman, I could use the following donations:
- a bag or two of dog food – Hill’s Science Diet Light for large dogs
- free groceries for a few months (PS I’m vegetarian)
- covering my last vet bill (thanks Cajun for going lame)
- paying my rent for a few months
- free gas for the next year (I fill up at Husky for the BCAA points)
- a new iPhone
- a job!
Donations and financial assistance is what I’d like to see when I get emails from companies saying they’re here to help me. So far everyone who’s sent me an email pledging they’re here for me has fallen short of my expectations.
Reduced hours, closed locations, and implementing deep cleaning measures does not help me.
How about you retailers promising fully stocked shelves and not jacking up prices? That would help me and so many others.
This lip service about “helping me” and “being here for me” is just a boldfaced marketing pitch.
Anyone want to prove me wrong? You’ll be featured in an upcoming blog post!
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