Just take a look at the screaming masses who give one-star rating, saying, give me my money back! Read the frustrations of people who feel conned and scammed. They transact with the world technology leader, proud to own the best of the best, yet when it comes to the AppStore, some senior bigwigs at Apple have their head in the sand.

I purchased an App last week. It was hopeless. So let’s summarise the issues:

1) Apple must have a buyer for each category. The buyer must test (even via a committee or a team of real users) before any App is approved. Any rubbish, bad programming, silly slimy terms and catches ought to render any app disqualified.

2) Apple must state with each app if the user has any on-going costs, and if the App requires internet connection (which becomes costly, or inconvenient).

3) Any App that has on-going credit-top-ups or other sneaky misleading and deceptive post-sale nonsense ought to be clarified or dismissed.

4) All Apps that have ads, must state it.

5) Apple must have a refund policy. Customers are furious that their money is taken. That is theft. Customers take it on the chin because the sale is only two or so dollars, but in the end, developers and Apple are making billions of dollars, and that is unethical and unconscionable.

6) App star ratings must include a Zero star. Some App Developers obviously get their friends to write silly comments like, wow I love this, when 90% of the users are livid, demanding their money back.

7) Any App that switches off its user comments page, or plays tricks with versions so that comments are not apparent, ought to have a simple refund button with it, with no questions asked.

8) Any App that has a rating lower than 4 must be suspended while the Apple team reviews the issues.

9) Any Apps that have bawdy or raunchy ads must be flagged, because kids and other people might not want to see bouncing boobs on a simple application for a dictionary or navigation.

Apple does have a button called, ‘report this’ but when I tried to report the rip off, Apple said, thanks for your input, but you must contact the developer. So I did. What is the bet I will receive a response – not! Pathetic.

Dear Apple, your AppStore is a disgrace. It is a rip off. People are being conned, and you, Apple, are the vehicle that is making money while allowing developers to tarnish your brand. If those developers had ever applied for a job to work at Apple, they would never get to an interview, yet you have now not only employed them, they are driving your customers away because you have partnered with them.

Is Steve Jobs aware of this embarrassing brand destroyer?

By the way, here is my previous article about Apple and its service.

Here is a letter I received after I posted this article about donations to drought-affected and flood-affected Queensland farmers.

Dear Jonar

I would love to chat to someone about the hype that city people are told about the government assistance provided by the govt to farmers and small businesses affected by the flood.

The story is that primary producers will each receive a $5000 grant and a possible further $20000 grant to help with repairs due to flood damage and a range of other emergencies. These farmers may also apply to a $200,000 low interest loan to get their farm back up and running. It sound great doesn’t it. I wish somebody would read out the fine print on the news so city folk don’t think that every farmer automatically receives these generous grants. We lived through a ten year drought and heard a lot of stories about drought relief but we never saw so much as a bail of hay for our cows. After the flood we asked about the possibility that we can access some of the great promised funds to help replace an irrigation pump that was destroyed in this national disaster. We didn’t ask about repairing the kilometres of fences or the miles of farm tracks washed away in the floods, just the essential irrigation pump. Here’s what the generous Qld govt wanted to know. Had we earned more money away from the farm in the last financial year than we earned from farm produce – the fruit trees? The honest answer was YES we had, as nearly all farmers in the district would have to say. It doesn’t matter if you earned $100 or $1000 what matters is that you earned more money off-farm. If your farm has been in drought for the last 10 years then any self respecting person had to work off-farm to allow them to feed their family, and to buy fertilisers and pesticides to keep the farm going for another season. That apparently disqualifies us from receiving any assistance now when we have been hit by the worst flood in memory.

Very sad indeed.

Somebody is getting grants and somebody is getting assistance I’m sure, but spare a thought for the millions who struggle quietly and because they do, they are not entitled to any help.

I wonder where all those donations that kind hearted people collect go! Who qualifies for those? Maybe it is best for anyone who wishes to help, to bypass the whole silly system and give what they can directly to someone in the next street or the next town. Donate goods directly to those who need it. Give them your spare telly or your bar fridge. If you’re a plumber reconnect their plumbing, and if you are an electrician check their circuits. If you have a bakery send some bread. If you have a restaurant put some dinner vouchers in their letter boxes. There must be a better way to reach out than drop anonymous money in boxes and wonder where it all goes to.

As for the govt assistance … well it sounds good in a press release, but when they are really pressed don’t expect them to release any of it.

P.S. During the flood we lost our boat. It was down by the river near the pump. In this district there is an irrigation pump and a small fishing boat dotted every few metres all along the river bank. Our boat must be somewhere down stream but how come we didn’t end up with someone else’s boat from up stream? Where do all the boats go? Is there one spot way down at the end of the river which is now full of boats? Will someone down there have a huge garage sale this weekend selling dinghies?

Are we not sick and tired of hearing about the millions raised that never make their way to those who need it? So here is a better idea that I am sure will be the new wave for reputable charities.

Australians appear to be generous, but in fact, they are (and can be) much more generous than they appear. In times of trouble, like the bush fires or the great floods, they donate money. But I can assure you that they would donate MUCH MORE. They are holding back out of helplessness. They just do not know how they can give generously, DIRECTLY. They do not want to bolster the coffers of charities. Even the biggest eventually come under attack. And the best do not ever tell us how the money was used.

So here is the solution:

Our big charities ought to set up a website. They can join forces or compete. They need to connect with the big banks and the large retailers. Here is now it would work. The charity organisation collects the data and the ‘need’. So the website will say that Mrs Jane Smith of Rockhampton needs a new clothes dryer model XYZ shown here by Harvey Norman at $990. The charity would have assured us, the public accessing the website, that this is a genuine need. We search by fund amount and we can contribute $20 via direct transfer or PayPal or Visa etc. Or we can pay the lot. When the $990 is reached, we are assured that Harvey Normal will make that delivery.

In this way, we know who we are supporting, what we are buying, how much we are paying, and when it will be delivered.

Super simple. Do this as a transparent charitable system, and Aussies and others around the world will know exactly what contribution they are making.

The charity will receive a 10% commission ($99 in this case) from the retailer which goes towards the administration of the site. Over time, the retailers will know that they are on show, and will sharpen their pencils.

This is the way forward. Mark my words.

I NEVER watch television. So I never knew what the media was covering about the floods. I have my own sources on the ground. Alas, I was struck down with an illness that required hospitalisation. Every patient in my hospital had a television. Some watched Judge Judy (give me strength) and others watched the floods. So I started to study the journalistic tactics and the low standards of reporting, and the unbelievable speeches by politicians and the Prime Minister. No wonder I never watch television.

What was obvious to me, a bed-ridden patient, was that the same news was cycling, and the same photos and images were shown relentlessly, to the point of frustration.

In this age of a million cameras, of web cams and cheap live relays, how can the large stations not provide fresh coverage? It was boring. This is not like a car crash whose peak of drama takes place within two seconds. This is an unfolding flood that has ten million fronts and 20 million stories.

Shame on the networks whose networks are nothing of the sort. A few images and a lazy control desk that can’t even match the suburbs to the photos.

And let’s not forget this point: Queensland is a huge State. Not everyone knows the geography of the land. Most people would have no idea about the locations about which the reporters were speaking. How hard could it have been for the TV networks to have presented proper graphics that illustrated what goes where? I did see one or two clever, albeit useless, computer animations that pretended to have done this, but they scored zero out of ten. How unthinking can these people be, when they own millions of dollars worth of assets? And then they try to impress us with their self-promotions about the coverage, as if they are doing us a favour. How embarrassing!

P.S. The photo above was taken by M Mastro. Used here with permission.

Corporations and governments are worried that Wikileaks might make them look stupid. Why go that far? For 22 years we have been screaming at corporations, urging them to wake up to computer crime. I had a shouting match with Optus before. Their head of security could not understand what I was talking about. For this reason, I shall not call Optus and waste my life. Instead, I shall leak the stupidity right here.

Only if you know how computer fraud works, would you find this article amazing. Today I received the usual monthly email from Optus, asking me to pay my bill. As you can see below, the email had a link.



Never train your customer to deal with you via hyperlinks. All genuine corporations must immediately stop this practice. It is telling customers that when we send you an email, just click on the links and follow the instructions. No, No, No! This is 100% wrong, and plays into the hands of the scammers and phishers. Why? Because a scammer can send out millions of emails, as they have been, saying, ‘Dear Optus Customer, please click here to review your bill’. The customers would not find this odd or unusual, so they would click, and be directed to a lovely page that looks like an Optus page, when it is not!

What is worse, and what makes Optus doubly stupid in this regard, is that the page to which we are directed asks for some pretty bad stuff, without any security. See below:



Optus is training is customers to answer serious questions about a credit card. My goodness! Scammers can design a page like this in two-minutes, and send it out to 15 million people in 5 minutes, and in no time, several hundred innocent customers will click the links, and now the scammers know everything they need to know to go shopping with your credit card.

Oh dear, oh dear, oh I just cannot believe the stupidity of these corporations!

My jaw dropped when I visited the NSW Government’s ‘Gambling Help’ website. Right there, on the home page, was an offer to ‘Win an iPad!’ It says, ‘Enter here’. If you have anything to do with problem gamblers, you might find this unbelievable. So much so, that you might want to go to that site to check if I am pulling your leg.

If you have not been affected by the disasters of gambling, you might be thinking, ‘What does it matter?’ In my old age, I have realised that in this world are two types of people. We have those who understand, and those who can’t fathom what the fuss is about. Hence, if you belong to the latter, I will not badger you with my explanations. If the absurdity of this ‘Video Competition’ is not self-evident, I shall not disturb your peace (or is it ignorance).

Here are some links to files for those researching the Institute of Hair Regrowth & Beauty operated by Sam Cohen (Samuel Faraj Cohen).

First, keep an eye on IHRB-Story.com. One of the hottest stories is the Today Tonight TV segment that exposed Sam Cohen on National Television via Channel 7. Here is the link to this investigative report.

Here are many articles that expose Sam Cohen of IHRB in Sydney.

P.S. IHRB is the name of the Institute of Hair Regrowth and Beauty run by Sam Cohen (Samuel Faraj Cohen) of 105 Pitt Street Sydney. It is also written as Institute of Hair Regrowth & Beauty or Institute of Hair Re-growth & Beauty and the company purports offers hairloss (hair loss) and hair growth treatments.

Culture and advertising go hand in hand. The wrong word, to the wrong target market, could spell disaster. No more is this maxim more relevant than at an airport where every race, creed, and psychographic is represented in the form of international passengers who might all be able to read English, but might not all be able to understand a quirky billboard. And what is worse, are those who read and thereby misunderstand.

This billboard at Auckland’s international Airport failed to realise that for many people, and in some cultures, the expression ‘To get your wings’ means to die! In the airforce, it means to graduate and become a pilot. In Christian circles, it means to become an angel (which also requires a person to initially die).

And so we ask, what were they thinking?

Oh, as for the average traveller who falls into the ‘Jonar’ category, the illogicality jars. We see ski slopes and a skier. At no time do we think that skiing is about flying. That would be a different sport altogether. Hence, yet again, what were they thinking?

Amex is not one of my favourite companies. It ranks way low. So now I have to reconcile a nice serene image with ill feelings towards a brand I disrespect. Funnily enough, I received a letter from my ANZ Bank Visa people offering me a second card, which would become my ANZ Amex card. No thanks! I wrote back to the general manager who had signed the letter, telling him that he should choose his associates more carefully. I doubt that he’ll ever receive my message. And that’s another story.

If you are a senior manager or director, here is a single question you can ask to assess if your organisation is utterly stupid: Does your organisation send emails to clients from an email address called DoNotReply@CompanyName.com? If you do, then your company is a hideous example of modern stupidity. How can organisations speak about the internet and FaceBook and social media and ‘being connected’ and communicating and listening, when it sends one-way emails. If a client cannot press ‘reply’ to respond, then you have failed big time.

I jolly well know what the defence will be, and I have heard it all, and I know all about the reasons. Yet, having assessed all the possible reasons, I still say that it is pathetic. There can be no reason. There are no reasons. They are merely excuses. If your organisation cannot monitor its emails, it ought to get out of cyberspace.

As you know, most of my articles are long. This one is short because no matter what you say, there can be no argument. It is a lame pathetic stupid practice. Just stop it!

In view of the much-publicised hold-ups of money vans, I wonder why ACM Currency Management needs its logo on vans such as this. I was walking in Auckland and noticed these vans and thought that the logo draws too much attention to the van.

Would it not be safer for all concerned if such vans were a bit more inconspicuous? What’s wrong with plain white vans? Or why not disguise the vans by painting something mundane on them like, ‘Joe’s Meats’?

ACM is a subsidiary of Armaguard. I guess one could argue that the logo helps to promote the company. How many people in the street are likely to see the logo and feel compelled to become a client? Money management is not a mainstream product. The decision-makers who might form part of the target-market would not be so unfamiliar with the players in the market as to not know of the existence of Armaguard.

Could it be that the logo is a legal requirement used to pre-warn would-be robbers that the guards are armed, so that if anything happens, it could be argued that the robbers knew to expect a bullet in the worst case scenario. It might be like the warnings in stores that say that video cameras are operating.