Mailbag, incl: Do we have a free market? October 4, 2026

LiSTNR (0:04)

Welcome to Motley Fool Money.

Scott (0:06)

Yes, it's Sunday. Yes, it's special. Yes, it's Strawman. It's spectacular. It's Stupendous. It's Scott. And that's how Wester's in. Andrew, Ram, Page's name. He doesn't need them. Such is the man's grandeur and splendor. There's an S word for you. Mr. Page, happy Sunday.

Andrew Page (0:22)

Splendor. That's a great word. Yes, happy Sunday, my friend.

Scott (0:27)

What do you know?

Andrew Page (0:28)

What's up?

Scott (0:29)

You know what I do know? You asked, and I looked at the window.

I have a beehive in my backyard.

Andrew Page (0:34)

Oh, very cool. Yeah.

Scott (0:35)

Well, they died because of the Varroa thing. About six months ago, I thought, I really should get more bees.

And I kind of went, oh, it's expensive. And anyway, so I'll just leave it for another season. I'll get some soon. I walked out after we finished our Friday recording. There's bees in my beehive. New bees have found the hive.

Andrew Page (0:54)

Just organically.

Scott (0:55)

Just moved in.

Andrew Page (0:56)

You know, Jeff Goblin was right. Like, you know, nature finds a way.

SPEAKER_1 (1:00)

It just does. It just does.

Scott (1:02)

Oh, man. I say not that, but things just want to grow.

SPEAKER_1 (1:06)

Yeah.

Scott (1:06)

Is that my version of that? It's just amazing.

SPEAKER_1 (1:08)

Yeah.

Scott (1:08)

The bad news is, for those who are beekeepers and feel free to give me some tips, I don't think there's any frames inside there. So I think the bees are going to like randomly fill up a box of space, which is going to make it unharvestable honey wise. But we'll see. So there you go. We'll see what they come up with.

SPEAKER_1 (1:21)

There's a little bit of a way.

Scott (1:23)

We'll find out. Anyway, that's what's used with me. What's used with you?

Andrew Page (1:28)

Not much, man.

SPEAKER_1 (1:29)

Just...

Andrew Page (1:33)

I can give up the pretense that we haven't spoken for a few days.

Scott (1:38)

That's been a long day and a half since we last chatted, right?

SPEAKER_5 (1:40)

Okay.

SPEAKER_1 (1:41)

I'll give you something.

SPEAKER_5 (1:42)

Here you go.

Andrew Page (1:43)

Very quick anecdote. I made a mistake with paying my super guarantee to myself. So I just came off the very long and painful phone call with our good friends at Australian Super. Very, very, very quickly accepted my money and now require a long form, an email process to return the serenity now, serenity now.

It's a thing.

Scott (2:13)

Do you know what's funny? So on that same theme, Service New South Wales is the Australian, New South Wales government's online portal. And actually, I found it really, really good. Your driver's license, boat license.

SPEAKER_5 (2:24)

Oh, I've got a story there for you too.

Scott (2:27)

Rego and like I said, I found it really, really, really good.

SPEAKER_6 (2:30)

Oh, well, that's one person.

Scott (2:32)

No, seriously, I've been genuinely impressed. Anyway, so I needed to, I had the suspension of the car changed for off road driving. Not that it needed a bit more weight to carry because I had to carry it. Doesn't matter why.

I can renew my Rego online. I can get a pink slip from the local mechanic and that will go through online. I can do my CTP insurance online. Oh, just the six up is all perfect. Because I had the new suspension and new paperwork, I had to go into the registry at Renewal Time, put down my registration paper. This piece of paper had been emailed to me by the engineer who certified the suspension change and paid some money and waited in line for an hour. And I'm like, he had mailed it to me.

I printed it out, gave it to you.

We could have sorted this entire process with, hey, send us the email with the thing on it, and we'll go from there. And it went absolutely no difference. It was just one of those things where you go, you guys got so close. It's good most of the time. You've just really screwed it up. What's your story?

Andrew Page (3:33)

When I set up my Gov ID, I used one address and I set something up, and I didn't use it for a million years.

Scott (3:39)

And then I forgot that I had it.

Andrew Page (3:40)

So I set it up and I just happened to randomly select a different email address.

And so it was really simple, really, really straightforward. So what happened is the same person set up to my Gov IDs, driver's license was linked to one, passport on the other. I just want to consolidate it. Must happen 100 times a day. Hey guys, 14 hours after battling through a call center nightmare, the automated, hi, your call's important to us. Please tell us every single important thing about you ever so we can ignore it and then ask you again once we get you through to a person. So I went through that insanity. And then, anyway, the TLDR, the long story short is it took, like, it was an hour on the phone and then waited two weeks. And then they said, yes, we've canceled one of your accounts. I was like, oh, thank God. And then went to attach the ID that was with the canceled account to the new account and said, we can't use that. It's already connected to it.