Back in the day we watched a TV show called WKRP.  It featured an unlikely group of characters working together to produce a radio program.  Our family thought it was hilarious. One character by the name of Johnny Fever was a cocaine addict. (In those days cocaine addicts were rare so it was ok to laugh at them) Johnny was paranoid at times.  At one point someone accosted him about his drug-induced symptom.

“When everyone is after you,” Johnny explained,”Paranoia
just makes good sense.”

Well paranoia certainly makes good sense nowadays.

Ordering almost anything on the Internet has become a game of dodgeball where the trick is to not be taken in by corporate chicanery. Last summer I ended up paying a fortune for tickets to see Bob Dylan’s show in Prince George. I put my money on a link that appeared to be Ticketmaster but it turned out to be a scammer from the States. Think I paid twice or more of the advertised cost. The scammer’s explanation was that US dollars were a third more in value than ours  and there was a cost for the service. I felt pretty stupid on being “had” but recently learned smarter people than me had almost fallen into the same phoney Ticketmaster scheme.

Another blood, sweat and almost-tears event occured last night when I attempted to cash in some of my RBC Rewards points collected from Visa. I wanted it to cover a Westjet trip to Vancover. The flight was close to Christmas and the price was pretty high for my budget.The hardest part was finding the exact link where I could begin the process. Firstly, I had to set up an online bank account. But that was not enough.I then had to try and find another link, one that didn’t bombard me with advertisments for this and that all of which cost money.

I finally gave up and discovered Air Canada had one ticket that cost less than 200 dollars on a flight to Vancouver two days before Christmas.

I paid for it with my Visa. I will go back to using the old-fasioned telephone to cash in my RBC Rewards.