Some tips on beating the high cost of disability equipment in Australia

Originally posted to Posterous on 17 July 2011

A lot has been written lately about Australians' predilection for shopping online and buying goods overseas.  Gerry Harvey of Harvey Norman has railed against it (http://abc.com.au/news/2010-11-23/retailers-under-threat-from-online-stores-harvey/2348468) largely unsuccessfully; while others think it will be the saviour of Australia Post in a post-snail mail world (http://www.news.qut.edu.au/cgi-bin/WebObjects/News.woa/wa/goNewsPage?newsEventID=35062).  The continuing strength of the Australian dollar against the US dollar, and lower prices of desirable goods in the US, seem to mean that our love of online shopping will not abate for some time yet.

Less has been written about buying disability equipment online from overseas.  This story on the ABC's AM program yesterday calling for pricing fairness on disability equipment is a notable exception (http://www.abc.net.au/am/content/2011/s3270958.htm).  At first glance, disability equipment would not seem to be obvious candidates for online purchases.  A lot of disability equipment is custom-made and specialised. Right? Well, sometimes, but not always.  Disability equipment is big, heavy, oddly-shaped, making freight expensive. Right?  Again, sometimes, but not always.  Surely the price differences can't be so great as to make online purchasing from offshore a viable proposition? Wrong!

Here's some results of a recent trial purchase as a prelude to buying a Roho cushion (http://www.therohogroup.com) for my mother from a US retailer.  My mother started using a wheelchair last year, and has had some problems with pressure.  For those who are not wheelchair users, or don't know a wheelchair user, Roho cushions comprise air-filled fingers that help manage pressure and prevent the development of pressure sores in people who might be at risk as a result of sitting for long periods.  Getting a Roho cushion from a state government disability service provider appeared to a long and tortuous process, as getting any state government funded disability equipment usually is.

Step 1. Do your research to find a good price.

Prices online from Australian retailers for a Roho high profile cushion with a single cushion cover range from $750 to $850.  By comparison, SpinLife (http://www.SpinLife.com) has the same cushion for $US324. You can specify which size you want and add an additional cushion cover as an accessory.  The price difference is huge, even once you add postage from the US.

Step 2.  Subscribe to a mail forwarding service.

Some online retailers do not post overseas; some do post overseas, but have restrictions on which items they will post overseas.  SpinLife does post items overseas, but they do not send Roho cushions overseas.  I googled for mail forwarding services, and for a once-off payment of $US10, MyUS.com provides an address in the US (Florida) and forwards any packages sent to this address to your home address via DHL or FedEx.  This is a basic subscription - MyUS.com and other mail forwarding providers offer other services and cheaper postage rates if you pay a monthly subscription.  For me though, the basic subscription was sufficient.

Step 3.  Use a pre-paid credit card for payments.

After having had my normal credit card hacked, cancelled and reissued twice, I now only use a pre-paid credit card for online purchases. I use a Commonwealth Bank Travel Money card, which can be recharged by BPay with a number of different currencies, including US dollars.  This means that when you make purchases in US dollars, there is no cross-currency conversion fee provided you have recharged the card in US dollars.  It also allows you to effectively lock in the exchange rate prior to purchase.  Although this type of card is promoted primarily for travel, their usefulness extends beyond travel.  

Step 4.  Put in your order and wait (but not too long).

As mentioned above, I have only done a trial purchase so far, not yet committed to purchasing a Roho, as I wanted to trial the process described above with a smaller value purchase.  So I bought a basic foam cushion from SpinLife to test the delivery chain.  Here's how it went:

29 June 2011: Ordered cushion online from SpinLife
1 July 2011: Received email from SpinLife confirming shipment of my cushion on 30 June 2011
7 July 2011: Received email from MyUS.com confirming receipt of a parcel and that it would be forwarded to me automatically.  A separate email arrived later the same day with further details and a tracking number for DHL Express.  The parcel weighed 6 pounds.
13 July 2011: Received note from Australia Post to say parcel had arrived.
14 July 2011: Collected parcel from local post office.

The total cost of postage was $US81.76, which was the cost of DHL Express freight from my Florida address to Adelaide, as SpinLife provides free postage for items over $US50 within the US.

Had I purchased a Roho cushion, and assuming the Roho cushion weighed approximately the same as my basic foam cushion, the total cost would have been:

$US324 + $US10 + $US81.76 = $US415.76

Or approximately $392 assuming an exchange rate of $AUS1 = $US1.06.  

No wonder people are buying online.  

It does raise the very valid question as to why disability equipment is so much more expensive in Australia.  And given that so much disability equipment is state government funded, why are governments not pushing for greater price equity?  State government equipment schemes have lengthy waiting lists - surely their funds would go further, and waiting lists could be cleared more quickly if they were not paying what appear to be inflated prices.

Back in the air ... to Brisvegas!

Originally posted to Posterous on 7 June 2011

Less than two weeks after getting home from Europe, I'm back in the air again today to a work meeting at Brisbane.  It was a bit of a shock to fly on a crowded, cramped and claustrophobic Qantas flight, with a strange furry squash ball or hockey puck masquerading as 'refreshments'.  

You really know you're in an Australian airport though when ground staff go into meltdown because there's more than one crip on a plane.  Sheesh ... took easily 20 minutes before I got off the plane, and then my wheelchair wasn't at the gate, so I needed to be pushed to the luggage carousels.  This actually meant being 'parked' for a while as ground staff debated how busy it was, how many wheelchairs could be pushed at once and how under-staffed they were.  All of this could have been avoided by getting my wheelchair to the gate.  How hard is that?  

The comparison with my recent experience with Singapore Airlines and SAS could not have been more stark.  Singapore Airlines unfailingly got my wheelchair to the gate, and used their onboard wheelchair and flight staff to get me to the plane door - no reliance on ground staff and a quick exit.  Qantas could learn a few things in the disability service department.

Anyhow, after narrowly avoiding a super-crip meltdown in Brisbane airport, a taxi delivered me to a swishy hotel.  Access is excellent, even if the decor is best described as techno-bordello. It still takes me easily two hours to sort myself out, set myself up and generally rearrange the room in order that I can get myself ready in under two hours in the morning.  If I had three hours to get ready in the morning, a shower might even be possible, but alas time is not on my side, so it's basin washes for me.  The room (actually suite) has a kitchenette, but it's mostly out of my reach.  Power points are mostly out of reach too, and wireless internet costs $10 for an hour.  Given that the room is nearly $300 per night, you'd think internet could be thrown in!

Back home ...

Originally posted to Posterous on 29 May 2011

We arrived back home on Thursday, safely after direct flights between Copenhagen and Singapore, and Singapore and Adelaide, with an 18-hour stopover in Singapore in between.  The jetlag is not too bad, but both of us are suffering a bit of 'post-holiday letdown', lessened by being reunited yesterday with our beautiful boy, Haighs.  We have had a great trip though, and here's a few thoughts by way of a review:

Things we would do again

1. Fly with Singapore Airlines.  Their planes are new, service was good, and best of all, they offered direct flights from Adelaide and direct flights to/from our starting and ending cities in Europe.  In particular, on our homeward bound flights, Singapore Airlines blocked off the remaining seats immediately next to us so that we had three and four seats to ourselves respectively on our flights home.  We had lengthy waits between connecting flights in Singapore, but this actually worked to our advantage, as it minimised concerns about not making connecting flights, allowing time to have a good rest between flights.  The breaks between flights, and especially the massage on the way home, really helped us arrive less wrung out than normally occurs after long-haul flights.

2. Book into the Ambassador Transit Hotel in terminal 3 of Singapore's Changi airport.  This hotel is basic, but the rooms are large and clean, with a good bathroom and a comfy bed.  You book and pay for rooms in blocks of 6 hours, so it is perfect for freshening up and/or catching up on some sleep between flights.  

3. Travel by train and ferry in Europe.  Land travel is slower than flying, but the check-in times are far shorter; security checks are minimal or non-existent (no taking shoes and belts off before boarding, or unpacking bags); train stations and ferry terminals are more likely to be centrally located, allowing you to use public transport or even just walk to your final destination; the scenery is more interesting, sometimes spectacular; and you can get up and move about freely whilst travelling, and importantly, I can easily go to the loo during the journey.  I particularly like the German trains, even though they were crowded at times.  Pre-booked assistance to board and disembark from trains was very efficient.  We also enjoyed our two overnight ferry journeys very much, and had great meals on both trips.  The atmosphere on each ferry was different - the Kiel-Oslo ferry was more akin to a cruise ship, the Oslo-Frederikshavn was a more basic ferry - but both were relaxed and friendly, had good facilities and great food.  Did I mention the food?  The buffet dinner on the MS Color Fantasy (Kiel-Oslo ferry) was perhaps the best meal of our entire trip.  And there is something very romantic about travelling by ship overnight and waking up to a new country or landscape in the morning.  It feels like real travel, more so than air travel ever does.

4. Travel with one suitcase.  We travelled with one large suitcase and one overnight bag between us, so that we could walk between train stations and ferry terminals and hotels or use public transport where possible.  This worked mostly well, although the unwieldiness of the suitcase on cobblestones lead to Tova nick-naming the suitcase "Nemesis" at one point.  

5. Take an iPad for communication and entertainment.  I took an 16Gb first generation iPad with us, and it was invaluable. Together with wireless internet access in hotels (mostly free and noticeably faster than my super-dooper wired internet connection at home too), it allowed us to keep in touch via email, Facebook and blog.  I had also loaded up some episodes of our favourite TV shows via iTunes for times when we needed familiar TV to help take our mind off jetlag.  I tend to read a lot during travel, and the iPad was a great way to carry multiple books with me, and purchase more from Amazon when I ran out of reading material, without needing to fill suitcases with books.  I had setup my Mobile Me (http://www.apple.com/mobileme) iDisk with backup copies of all travel and accommodation booking documents.  Although iDisk normally requires an internet connection to access files, the iPad can be set to cache up to 500Mb of iDisk files, so the most critical files could be accessed without an internet connection.  I had also setup Mobile Me picture galleries prior to departure to allow me to publish photos and videos to family and friends, after loading these onto the iPad. (It did not appear possible to create/modify Mobile Me picture galleries via the iPad.)  I was even able to do my first video editing with ReelDirector (http://www.nexvio.com/product/ReelDirector.aspx) on the iPad. The second generation iPad is compatible with Apple's movie editing software, iMovie, but the first generation iPad is not.  ReelDirector does everything I needed it too though - chop the crappy bits out of my video and join separate video clips together - plus more.  There were a couple of things that I could not do with the iPad, but these could have been worked around had I not accidentally deleted my Citrix configuration to a work desktop.  But neither item was important enough to warrant trying to set up Citrix again.

Things we would do next time

1. Stay in more self-contained accommodation. There were no real disappointments in our accommodation - all our hotels were good, with the possible exception of the InterCity Hotel in Kiel.  The Circus Hotel in Berlin was excellent. However we really enjoyed having our own kitchen in Skagen, and being able to cook for ourselves if we wanted.  In particular, Paris seemed to have lots of possibilities for easy self-catering, with beautiful roast chickens and spuds available from rotisseries, vegetables, fruit and cheese available from local street markets, and crispy baguettes available everywhere.  We didn't stay in hotels that a lot of facilities over and above accommodation and breakfast, and even where those facilities existed, we didn't use them.  So we would not lose a great deal by going to self-contained accommodation, and would gain the ability to cater for ourselves.  Besides I love an excuse to go into foreign supermarkets!

2. Pack more lightly.  We did really well to pare down our packed clothes to one main suitcase plus an overnight bag that we took as carry-on luggage, but even so, I sent home clothes from Oslo that were really superfluous, and could easily have been left at home.  I'm conscious that Tova needs to tote bags for both of us, so light packing is critical.  The one-bag strategy leads to one very big bag though, and these are not easily stored overhead on trains.  An alternative approach in future might be two medium-sized bags.

3. See more of Norway and its fjords.  We had thought about taking a trip on the Hurtigruten ferries (http://www.hurtigruten.com.au/norway2) that cruise the west coast of Norway, but decided not to, as I could not make our itinerary work with this.  The beauty of Bergen and the train between this city and Oslo convinced us that we need to see more of Norway and its fjords next time.

4. Cross the Øresund Bridge to Sweden.  The journey to Malmö in Sweden from Copenhagen takes a mere 35 minutes, trains run every 20 minutes, with some Swedes commuting to Copenhagen daily for work, and Danes taking advantage of cheaper housing in Malmö.  (One of the staff on the front desk at our hotel in Copenhagen is, in fact, a Swede, who commutes daily to Copenhagen for work.)  Some suggest that that Copenhagen and Malmö now effectively form a single metropolitan area, despite having different languages and currencies.  This makes Denmark's recent reintroduction of border controls (http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-13366047) mostly cosmetic - once the genie of free movement across borders is let out of the bottle, and people arrange their lives accordingly, it cannot be put back into the bottle.  The bridge itself is a huge feat of engineering, but the idea of a single metropolitan area that crosses a national border is too intriguing to miss next time.

5. See more of France and get more practice at speaking French.  I really enjoyed refreshing my high school French before leaving, but did not get enough practice during our stay in Paris, as many people spoke English and it takes a while to get enough confidence to try speaking in another language.

Surprises/highlights

1. Paris was surprisingly friendly and accessible.  What can I say that hasn't been said before about Paris?  We both loved Paris.  Food was great, weather was sunny and warm, art was fantastic, buses were cheap, accessible and frequent, and the bus drivers were the friendliest we encountered in the whole trip.

2. The train trip to Bergen from Oslo was incredibly scenic - not a surprise, but a definite highlight.

3. Food and drink in Denmark was surprisingly addictive - beer, frikadeller, rullepølse and bakery goods - we are missing these already.

I knew that I loved Denmark, and would more than likely love France.  I think Tova was less certain about going to Europe and not being able to speak the local languages.  However, even she is now a convert and we are already thinking about our next trip.  Time to start saving up!

And now it is time to go home

Originally posted to Posterous on 24 May 2011

All too soon our time in Copenhagen has come to an end.  We have had some beautiful spring days, with sunshine and warmth, allowing plenty of exploring on foot.  We have visited the Queen (or at least, her palace) at Amalienborg, saw the guards, and been scared by the guards as they warned people not to get too close to the palace windows by banging their rifles onto the ground.  We visited the Little Mermaid, back from her visit to China last year, and been duly underwhelmed.  We had lunch at Nyhavn.  We went to Tivoli at night and enjoyed the lights and atmosphere.  We took the train up to Humlebæk and saw a Picasso exhibition at Louisiana, plus a really cool David Hockney exhibition of art created on iPads and iPhones.  I have eaten more Danish pastry than I care to think about, and Tova has had her fair share of Carlsberg and Tuborg.  We have both had open sandwiches, rullepølse (spiced ham, rolled up - it's hard to describe) and frikadeller (Danish meatballs).  

So it has been a pretty typical Danish holiday experience.  We admired the swarms of bikes and trikes that the young, younger and old use to get around, and which crowd the streets and footpaths.  These are mostly old-fashioned bicycles, with comfortable-looking seats, that people ride sitting up straight.  Definitely not bikes for the lycra-wearing crowd.  Tova wanted to buy one, but we figured that a bike might not fit easily in our suitcase.  There are also trikes with special compartments upfront for shopping, freight or kids (actually, mostly kids) that look like terrific fun.  

It's been too short a visit though - there's still a lot we could do.  But these will need to wait for our next visit.  Pictures of Copenhagen can be found at  http://gallery.me.com/honningbi67/100366.

Så nu vi er i Danmark (Now we are in Denmark)

Originally posted to Posterous on 19 May 2011

A week ago we sailed overnight by ferry from Oslo to Frederikshavn in northern Jylland (the bit of Denmark that is attached to Germany).  This was a more basic ferry, but still very comfortable, with heaps of duty free shopping (cheap booze, cigarettes and ginormous Toblerones that could be used in a pinch as a serious weapon), plus another great buffet dinner.  We shared dinner with a very excited group of Norwegians with intellectual disabilities, a group of school kids returning to Denmark, plus assorted truck drivers, travellers and tourists like us.  Once in Frederikshavn, we caught the train north to Skagen and wandered through the still very quiet main street to our holiday rental apartment.

The holiday rental company was closed, but a man inside opened up and gave us our keys.  The holiday rental apartment was small, but very nice inside, with a lounge, dining table, bathroom, small kitchen with stove top and oven, and an outside patio area.  Even though the lounge area doubled as a bedroom and faced right onto the street, it was very quiet and peaceful - a really good break from staying in cities.  It was absolutely delightful to have our own kitchen too and be able to shop in the supermarket and cook like normal people again.  But the absolute best part was that we had a bakery a few doors down in both directions outside our front door.  This meant that each morning, we could venture out to buy fresh rolls for breakfast as the bakeries opened at 6:30am.  

Unfortunately, the holiday rental apartment had a couple of downsides - the sofa bed turned out to be incredibly uncomfortable, we had no in-house internet and TV was somewhat limited.  Skagen is very pretty, but the weather was a little bit cold and wet, and without a car or public transport, TV took on increased importance.  We had four Danish channels, three Norwegian, two or three Swedish, two French and several German channels.  The German and French dub everything into their own languages, so even a nice, respectable episode of "Law and Order" is not terribly watchable.  However, German TV did allow us to come to the conclusion that Arnold Schwarzenegger is only slightly less intelligible in German than he is in his fractured English.  This left the Scandinavian channels - and it was Eurovision song contest time.  East European drag queens singing simultaneously on three channels.  

The Scandinavians have also not escaped the scourge of reality TV either, and not unsurprisingly, some of the formats are so well-worn and hackneyed, that even without speaking the relevant language, we could understand what was happening.  "Who Wants to Be a Millionaire?" in Norwegian is still people selecting answers to questions, with inordinately long pauses and a host trying to draw out the tension.  "Four Weddings" in Swedish is still four women being bitchy about each others' tastes and style.  "Wife Swap" in Swedish - "Mamma Byter Bo" - follows the same format as its UK and American namesakes, i.e. it's an incomprehensibly strange exercise in voyeurism without any clear motivation for participants, but the episode we saw lacked the element of class difference, which normally provides the sting in English speaking versions.  So maybe reality TV is not the same in every language.

But it's the ads that really get me.  OK ... there's one ad for god-knows-what that has a naked woman sitting at a desk playing pick up sticks.  I think it's a mobile phone ad.  The same company has an ad with a middle-aged naked man and woman cooking in a caravan.  The man flambés something in a frying pan, prompting another (naked) man to cover everything and everyone in foam from a fire extinguisher.  The ad ends with the woman bemoaning the fact that her laptop has been ruined by the foam.  I think it's an ad for mobile broadband plans.  It is hard to determine the connection between realistic, middle-aged (but nevertheless perky) naked breasts and telecommunications products, but presumably a better command of Danish would make this clearer.

In the end, we decided that the best options were the Swedish TV test pattern for its soothing music, and the Danish kids channel, which shows people sleeping after 9pm (in the manner of "The Truman Show"), with a countdown until it's time to wake up.