Are you Iain’s brother?

I’m an old buddy of iains and might have something your missing.

random comment I know, sorry.

If you remember me hit me up with a quick email.

Peace

SR

Phil Renouf

There is a restaurant called Aux Halles de l’Ile which is very close to the west to the Place de l’Ile, which is nothing special in my opinion (but the view can be nice in the winter. In the summer, any terrasse around that area would beat it). Or is there some other place around there I haven’t discoreved yet?

For restaurant ideas, http://www.resto-rang.ch is pretty good (if you speak some French).

And there is an amazing ressource for finding stuff in Switzerland: http://map.search.ch/ . They had the live scrolling maps thing before google maps and their data layers for shops, restaurants, banks, etc. are excellent.

I’d personaly advise against the taxis (expensive, can’t really just fllag one down one on the street, excellent public transit network).

One side trip that is usually appreciated is to go up the Salève. That small mountain with the steep cliff behind Geneva (get your passport, its actually in France).

You can get there by car or bus very easily (get in a bus #8 that says “Veyrier douane” and ride it until it stops, and then walk 3 minutes to the botton of the cable car…). Nice view on Geneva, the lake and the Jura. And a great view of the Mont Blanc from the other side if you walk a little bit to get a glipse from the other side.

If its a foggy week (shit happens…), that quick ride up may very well get you above the clouds. If you want to impress someone and waste money, you can change the color of the spot (the étoile du Salève) at the top of the cable car through a phone call.

Another nice view is from the top of the Cathedral in the old town (no cable car there, only stairs). I also recommend the archological site below the Cathedral which is extremely well presented.

The International Comitee of the Red Cross has a good museum also. Walking distance from the Lift venue.

One last word: if you have a guide book saying that the horloge fleurie (flowery clock?!) is worth seeing, just ignore it.

How sad that we fail to show our absolute supreme regard and respect for all past defenders of our current freedoms.

Best REgards,
San

The following summarizes a bait and switch scam we recently experienced at Downtown Acura in Toronto, with a salesman named Ronald Yip, with the assistance of his finance manager, Monica Colonna.

Ronald called us (in response to a query we had made a week earlier), and upon hearing that we were en route to another Acura dealership to purchase a car, offered to beat the price the other dealer was offering by $29 ($600, instead of $629) if we would come in. This shocked us, as we had been told by every other Acura dealer that $600/month was below the cost of the car. We offered to give him a deposit over the phone if he could truly offer us that price, but were told that we needed to come into the dealership to sign and give the deposit.

Upon arriving at the dealership, Mr. Yip went so far as to fill out a bill of sale (which I signed) indicating a 1.8% financing rate (where every other Acura dealership was offering 4.8). This seemed clear enough to us, and explained the discount. He then went to get “final sign-off” from the manager (although he had informed us that she had already approved the price during three separate phone conversations). He returned within 1 minute to tell us that his manager had not approved this price, and offered us the same or higher rate as the one we had been quoted by a number of other Acura dealers. Ms. Colonna then came out to attempt to assist him in this deception by implying that they had been offering 1.8% financing until the day before we came in, but could no longer offer it. We asked for documentation indicating that there had been a 1.8% rate, and were told this information was “confidential”. We then asked for a copy of the bill of sale I had just signed, which Mr. Yip then ripped up. The bill of sale clearly indicated a 1.8% financing rate.

This was an obvious scam, and the reason I’m writing about it is that, on a consumer with less revulsion for this type of business practice, the trick might just have worked. Mr. Yip had nothing to lose by misrepresenting the price to us in this manner – at best, he stood to gain a sale by having us come in without even taking up any of his time on a test drive or other sales pitch. In the process, Mr. Yip’s tactics would have deprived a hardworking, ethical salesperson at the other Acura dealership we ended up buying our car from, of a sale that was well deserved. We ended up buying from Erin Mills Acura, and were absolutely thrilled with the service.

Darlene Gilliland