March 3rd, 2025Kyle’s Rant  

Regular readers of my rhetoric will  know that I have been in a battle with Hepburn Shire Council over my subdivision that has taken around three years. (You may have read my latest rant in the last edition.)  

But it transpires that all you need is a newspaper for a soapbox and you can get a bit done around the place. With the final bits of sign-off emerging before the ink had dried on our last newspaper – the power of the press.  

Speaking of press and advertising, puffery is a legal term used when advertisers say something about their product that’s immeasurable; it can’t be about a measurable fact.  

For example, a business can say they are one of the most respected in the world or they have the best steak that money can buy – this cannot be measured due to the number of contingencies in the statement.  

However, if a business misrepresents itself by saying they serve the cheapest steak in the district (and it’s not) or an accommodation provider shows a photo of a view that is clearly not obtained from the lounge room, this becomes illegal puffery.

You are welcome.  

My tale about the wrong kind of puffery begins on last week’s post-Christmas family holiday in the sleepy New Zealand hamlet of Kaikoura, now pronounced Kaikouda, which means to eat crayfish. Which is one of the many activities this place provides, with its 2800-metre mountains only a couple of kilometres from the sea and the sea bottom plunging to below 300 metres only a mile or so offshore.

This place is spectacular and requires no puffery.  

In 2016 an earthquake struck the town, two people died and it was estimated that the seabed rose as much as three metres, forever changing the landscape.  

A lot of the houses were written off and a lot more owners were given money to repair their homes by the government. And there are some amazing residences.  

Unfortunately, the house that we picked for our small break which talked of beautiful bay views and an amazing location wasn’t one of them. It was the filled-in bottom half of a house tucked down a street with no views and when the owners moved around upstairs it felt like the ceiling was going to collapse.

And the creaking!  It was so bad that we felt that had an earthquake hit that weekend we would end up in a pile of rubble as the house collapsed on top of us.  

I asked the owner for a refund based simply on the noise, we only stayed there three of our seven nights, and she said her hands were tied, so we are now in an arm wrestle with Airbnb because apparently, we are covered by AirCover, an insurance policy they offer.  

Their first offer of support we have already refused. A refund of $100 against the $1600 we had already dropped on the place.  As we do, we’ll keep pushing for a better result. Let you know how that goes.  

Puffery rant over…