KELA
I haven’t use Kela services at all in many years but my employer used sickness allowance recently. I hurt my knee on icehockey practice and get surgery in the end of last year. After the excess period the employer has the opportunity to apply for sickness allowance from the Kela on behalf of the employee. In this situation, sickness allowance is paid directly to the employee.
OMAKANTA
Like Kela services I haven’t use Omakanta services very often. Usually I use Omakanta services to check my prescriptions or X-ray results. Logging in to Omakanta in done through strong identification and I usually use banking codes. Logging mechanism is very common like in any other Finnish health services.
KEVA
I have looked my pension age few years ago and I think it has raised couple years since last time. Now it should be 67 years and 1 month. That sound pretty bad when you say it loud. My older colleagues have pension age of 58 and that what it should be also for me…at least on my mind.
MOBILE.DE
Mobile.de in German digital shop that collect prices and different vendors in one site. Mecanism is pretty same as Vertaa.fi. If you already know what you want to buy and you just want to make sure that you find the best price mobile.de is your best friend. Especially various power tools are about 30-50% cheaper than in similar Finnish online stores.
HOTELS.COM
Hotels.com is online booking site for hotel reservations. Site collect prices in one site and there is variety of selections hotels from small guesthouses to big international brands. Hotels.com is not best option for customer in Finland if you want to stay in big brand hotels like Scandic or Sokos hotels. Major hotel brands in Finland are connected to S-Group which is why hotel room prices are more expensive if you book through hotels.com. The price variation can be up to tens of euros per night if you book a room through the s group’s own website. For international tourist it is difficult to find these better prices because often you have to have user account to S-Group.
DIGITAL GAP
Today, it is almost impossible to do anything without some kind of digital service. Or if you necessarily want to manage things without digital services, it will probably cost significantly more. For example, ordering a taxi without digital services is a complete puzzle these days if you want to know how much the service costs. I ordered a taxi myself a few days ago via the phone app. Ordered through the app, the ride cost about 10 euros, and if I had just called the taxi center, the price would have been about 50 euros.
The taxi driver told how especially the elderly are cheated in taxi rides, because the elderly do not use phone apps. Although people get used to using various virtual services, there is a large group of people who do not want or are not able to use them.
SELF-EVALUATION
The topics in this section were somewhat familiar to me, but I hadn’t used services related to the social sector very much before. Especially the KEVA site and the formation of the pension sum were interesting to read. Even though the pension accumulation increases considerably during the last couple of years of work, it sounds wild that you should still be working full time at the age of 70. The Digital Competence Test is a useful test in many ways and I believe that I will possibly use it in my work tasks to some extent.
THE DIGITAL COMPETENCE TEST:
Here is my results:
The Blog´s I commented: