Cats and Credit cards…

Working in the credit card division for an Australian bank, I have heard many stories when customers have requested cards because Tommy or Jimmy or Tyson (their pets) have started to play with their card and it got eaten up.

But this one incident featuring the Bank of Queensland providing a secondary card for the pet of a customer is unheard of.

Katherine Campbell, the customer applied for an additional credit card in the name of Messiah, her pet cat. And, the bank approved the card and sent it over. She reportedly wanted to test the security of the bank.

The bank has now cancelled the card of the pet.

Victorian bushfires

This is that time of the year when Australia gets ravaged by bushfires, especially in the Southern states of Victoria, New South Wales and South Australia. This year is particularly worse for Victoria with nearly 175,000 sq kms of bushland area completely devastated by bushfires. Thankfully, there has not been any loss of life in this year, just property.

The Victorian bushfire season this year saw the smoke from the fires in Eastern Victoria along Bairnsdale and Sale in the Gippsland area drift to Melbourne over the last weekend. The smoke was so dense that important highways had to be closed down due to poor visibility. The view from my office revealed it all, the West Gate bridge was not to be seen at all, there was an acrid smell in the air when you walked out, the nose and mouth felt filthy with dust and particles, it was not the Melbourne that I had experienced in the last four years.

Last Sunday saw Melbourne hitting the hottest temperature on record for the month of December in 53 years, upto 42 C, with extreme UV levels at around 2.30 in the afternoon. And, being Melbourne, the temperature dropped to around 22 C around 4.30 in the evening because of a cooler change. This is what amazes me about Melbourne weather, you can never say it is too hot or too cold, or too rainy or too windy. It caters to everyone in the span of 24 hours.

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NASA satellite photo of the smoke, from the The Age

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Bushfire image from “The Age”

Ooshwarya Rai ?

We all know how Indian names are pronounced by foreigners, this one I heard today is the best yet – “Ooshwarya Rai” for Aishwarya Rai.  It was said so by Livinia Nixon, one of the presenters on the “Temptation” show on Channel 9.  In all fairness, I don’t expect anyone to pronounce Vangipurappu Venkat Sai Laxman or VVS Laxman perfectly, but Aishwarya, I would have thought was relatively easy to pronounce.

On the same line, we have some names in Melbourne that are quite funny enough to pronounce.  For example, Prahran, a suburb near the famous Chapel St, is pronounced Pra-ran, not Praahraahan, we just have to roll over the second ra.  Another example would be Cranbourne, pronounced as Cran-bun, not Cran-burn, again the “r” is left out.  The best one I like is a town in Queensland, “Goondiwindi”, pronounced as Gundi-windee, not Gooondeewindee.  Try these as well, Nar Nar Goon and Moorooduc in Victoria.

Southgate ban

The property management of Southgate on the banks of the Yarra in Melbourne have decided to acquiesce to popular public demand and from the PM to remove the no photography signs around the Southgate precinct. But there have been reports in the news media that the management has employed security guards to deter public from taking photographs. Mostly amateur photographers are being asked to delete the snaps, in a very determined way by the guards.

So by removing the signs, the principle is still being followed. The Southgate building has got a Food Court which is obviously for public use, a shopping mall and is a very popular strip leading to the Crown Casino. So they can make money using the public, but ban photos, all in the name of terror activities. Bah !!

In this electronic day and age, Google Earth can easily provide photos and information about streets and buildings in any part of the world, but a harmless photo of the Southgate building will provide most valuable information about the precinct (if you are prepared to believe the management). So why term the area as a public area and then don’t let the people use it ? If members of the public misuse it, then obviously the management can enforce fines for littering, spitting and drunken behaviour etc. But to term shooting photos in a class of vandalism and terrorism is pure nonsense.

Mumbai Blasts

I would have nearly titled this post as Mumbai Blasts (yet again), but I don’t want to trivialise the scores of humans who have lost their lives in this carnage.  Who engineers these ?  We may never know.  I am just watching CNN and BBC reporting that no group has claimed responsibility for the latest attack.  Should the government be waiting for some group to claim responsibility ?  I heard on the news that Shivraj Patil “had some intelligence on this issue, but not exactly relating to these blasts.”  Another interview on BBC’s Asia Business Report features an editor of AsiaNow who declares that the government of India hasn’t got a good record of bringing criminals to justice, if USA cannot nab Bin Laden, how can India catch the culprits ?  Stop interviewing the foreigners on Indian issues !!  Most of them don’t know squat between Mumbai and Delhi or the average Indian’s change in life due to such blasts.

Why does not the govt followup on these issues ?  Why doesn’t the govt have the intelligence to sift between the actual tipoffs and the hoaxes ?  Life will go on as usual, as Expertdabbler writes, with SEBI declaring a full trade day at the BSE.  This is when I hate politicians and the media who just say “its a cowardly attact, an act of terror engineered by those who are jealous of our way of life etcetera etcetera …”.

Maybe this is a time when the media and the government shuts up and does something for a change rather than taking sides with politicians to blame or to apologise or to sit back and watch the proceedings.  Sitting in Melbourne, what can I do, rather than praying that something should be done to deter people from carrying out such blasts.

A Threatening call

I got a call from a guy from Three mobile customer care on my landline and this is how the conversation went …

Me : Hello ?

Guy on the phone : Hello, my name is Rajeev from Three customer care and I need to talk to Karthik. (In a gruff and threatening voice)

Me : Karthik is not available, does not live here anymore.

Rajeev: I need him to call me back ! So, can you can take down a message ?

Me : You are calling from Three ?

Rajeev : Yes.

Me : Why dont you call Karthik on his mobile, then ?

Rajeev : Can you take a message for him ?

Me : No, I cannot.

Rajeev : So you cannot take a message for him ?

Me : If you are calling in regards to his mobile connection, why dont you call him on his mobile ?

Rajeev : Hangs up the phone.

After reading the above conversation, if any of you thought that Rajeev (or whoever he might be) is from the Collections dept of Three mobiles, then you are wrong. I too thought of the same thing after the phone call ended. I called up my ex roomie and asked what the issue was regards to the mobile. He has had a very good record with Three and he also works in Collections for a major company. (Collections is the term for the department that chases up people who are late in paying bills or dont pay their bills at all).

He then called Three and asked to speak to Rajeev, and he was apparently put through to this guy and ulitmately turns out that it was all about another promotional offer from Three. Needless to say, my friend had some choice words for him to hear. During his conversation with Rajeev, it was suddenly pointed out to Karthik that he had not paid his last month mobile bill and again some more choice words followed, and then the anamoly was corrected and Rajeev admitted that they have received the payment four days back.
Boy !! For a second I thought that sales people are real smooth talkers but not like this. He could have easily doubled as P S Veerappa for olden days.

How private are our private details ?

Continuing on the theme of the previous post – how does the marketing division of a telco or an utility company get our details ? Obviously, we dont call every telco in the country and give them our details. Once you register for getting a basic landline connection the information goes into the Whitepages or the local telephone directory, unless you dont want them to be published. In Australia, there is a charge not to display our details in the phone book. Everyone is aware of this, most of us dont want our details to be published, even though if it is only our name and address. Sometimes that itself is more dangerous than it seems.

Anyway, if we have not displayed our details, how else can anyone get our name and address ? My view, it all depends on our spending patterns. For example, I can call up my local pizza place, and after placing the order, he confirms the address by himself, without me revealing it. Well, in the most primitive form of storing data, he might have an order book that he looks up with extraordinary speed and confirms the address. If the data is stored on a Excel spreadsheet, it makes the process easier for him to get the address. That is the most simplest form of Customer Loyalty. From Loyalty comes Customer Profiling. The pizza guy might want to determine how I will behave when he introduces a new veg gourmet pizza priced $2.50 more than the avg gourmet pizza ? Will I respond to the new offer ? He simply looks up my previous X orders and he will get a fair idea of whether I will buy it or not ?

What if the pizza guy were to get some extra money from revealing the information that I like Veg gourmet pizzas to a company that does a survey on the pizza eating habits of the public in Glen Huntly ? So, my details are sent on to the marketing company for the survey on pizzas and they might collect more information to do another survey on use of mobile phones and the type of calls that we make.

When do we get affected by all this ? Only when, it becomes acute and somebody changes our providers by pretending to be us. Otherwise, we are not even aware that this sort of data exchange goes on behind our backs. And to what to say of some people who see a lovely BMW up as a prize in a $2 raffle ? Dont they give out their details then ? Do they know what that raffles company is doing with the details ? Recently, when I went to the Australian Open 2006, I was asked to provide my full name with my address and my telephone number, all in the name of security by Ticketek. What if, someone from Ticketek where to think that they can somewhat improve their balance sheet bottomline to share details with other credit card providers ?

Do we get affected by spam mails in our Inbox, yes we do, but is there anything that can be done effectively to counter the spam mails. Even if, we use the best spamguard, one or two of them still filters through to the Inbox. We delete them and keep hoping that we dont miss any important mails by deleting them. Marketing material, through calls and mailouts, are a nuisance, that is true, but how long is it going to take us to throw them into the bin ? Turns out that some people dont have the patience to do that.

Anyone feeling compelled or pushed to living in caves without a telephone or a computer after seeing all this ?

A Current Affair

I saw this program about fraud in telcos in Australia on the Current Affair where some members of the public were not aware that their phone company has changed from telco X to telco Y without their authorisation. After reading Chakra’s personal experience on this issue, I believe this problem is rampant within Australia. The most damaging issue is that the fraud episode that I watched on TV was committed by an Indian from an call centre operating apparently from India. My immediate problem was that the next day six out of ten callers the next day to my office were asking me where I was based, and quite frankly, I am aware that most of them do not beleive when I tell them I work in Australia.

After this latest episode on TV, I cannot blame them. In the episode an elderly gentleman was shown playing a phone recording that he obtained from the telco Y, his details repeated to a recording and then agreeing to the terms and conditions of the new service. It did not take a rocket scientist to figure out whether the voice was Indian or that of an elderly Australian gent. The report also said that the employee was subsequently fired from the organisation.

In another part of the same episode, a lady is shown not agreeing to the marketing offer on the phone, again the voice is from overseas, apparently India. The lady then gets a message on her answering machine, swearing at her with the most abusive words possible.

After all this, who would want to believe an Indian voice on the phone ? Of course, there are always two sides to the story, but, in any country with such episodes shown on primetime TV, who would want to believe ? Makes me wonder.

Credit card economics

I was triggered by Expertdabbler’s comment to write on the topic that he has so elegantly covered in the last couple of days. The question is how to be better off on a monthly basis and how to lead a comfortable life with what we earn ? A disclaimar point is that I am not a economics graduate or anything to do with economics apart from the fact that I work in a bank in Australia. I have spoken to a lot of customers in Australia regarding their finances – this alone has prompted me to write on this issue.

I have one question that I wish everyone reading this post to answer. Many of us have credit cards in our wallets – we all know about the term “interest free days”. The question is what exactly is the meaning of Interest free days ? Is it -

a. All the purchases on your credit card are interest free X number of days ? or

b. The maximum number of days that a purchase can be interest free is X number of days ?

If you have answered option b, then you have no problem, then you might have an understanding on how to use your credit cards effectively. When I first started working in credit cards, I did not know the intricacies behind the term “interest free days”, all that I knew was that the credit card bill was to paid in full on or before the due date. The point to be noted in credit card brochures is when the advt says “upto X days interest free”. As simple a word that is “upto” it carries a lot of hidden meaning, it means that the interest free day period starts from the day the statement starts and upto to the day the bill is due.

For example, in an upto 55 day interest free card, starts from Jan 1 and the statement is issued on Jan 30, because of the monthly cycle, and the statement is due to be paid after 25 days from this date, due date being Feb 24. So any purchases that have been made on the card on Jan 1 will have 55 interest free days, purchases on Jan 2 will have 54 interest free days and so on. So the purchases have to be done as early in the statement period as possible to get the max out of the credit card.

There is a rider to the above statement though, if you have had interest charges in your Dec 05 statement, then mostly you would not be in the interest free period for the transactions in Jan 06. Another rule is that, if you have interest charges in any statment, then don’t wait for the next statement due date, pay it as soon as possible. The trick is to get back into interest free period.
At a get together in Jul 05, I told these aspects to my friends, and to be frank, none of them were aware of these facts, and some of them had three credit cards.

Another important feature is that the banks have to provide the customer with the Annualized Percentage Rate (APR) with every credit card application, something that was not implemented in India before the 21 Nov 2005. As Prabu Karthik points out that the interest rate is on avg 2% per month, making it 24% per year. That is much dearer than what we have here in Australia, mostly around 19% per annum. The cheaper cards are available at 10.75 % per annum.

Is it the general public ignorance about credit cards or is it the banks marketing strategy that hides such facts from the customer ? One more thing to do for my son or daughter – I feel that as responsible parents who have had exposure to credit cards (our parents and grand parents would have limited exposure) is to teach our children about how to manage their money as we would to teach them about respect, culture and what not.

As long as the money exists in savings accounts, it is your money, but, once if its a credit card or a loan, it is no longer your money, everything is the bank’s money.

Racist attacks in Sydney

There have been some attacks in the Sydney beach of Cronulla between Australian gangs and Lebanese gangs. In fact, the problem started couple of weeks back when the Cronulla Life saver club members where beaten up by apparently Lebanese youth. Then started the vigilante mood of the people there, sending text messages and phone calls and emails to converge on the Cronulla beach last Sunday to protest against the attack. Whether it was Lebanese people who made the first attack, it is only hinted at. The result of the attack was that it prompted some of the talkback radio jockeys to start the debate on who is responsible and does Australia need such people ? Remember, the Lebanese people in question where also born in Australia to parents from the Middle East. So, technically, they are also Australians.

Most of the general public feel that the radio jockeys where very instrumental in stirring up the inner feelings of the public – in particular one Alan Jones in the talkback show on radio 2GB. The text message that was sent to everyone goes -

“Come to Cronulla this weekend to take revenge. This Sunday every Aussie in the Shire get down to North Cronulla to support the Leb and wog bashing day …”

The talkback host was even egging on the public to do the job that the police cannot do. At Cronulla, on Sunday, the police were unable to handle 5000 people with a force of 150 policemen. Even the policemen were pelted with stones and beer bottles. The normally placid crowd became very rowdy because of alcohol, questions are being asked why the bottle shops or the pubs around the beach were not closed in view of the approaching disturbance.

The chants of the crowd were very derogatory : save Nulla (Cronulla), f*** Allah. I used my mobile to shoot some snaps off the TV when the news program was on air.
The photos from my mobile are available here and here.