I happened to be in Dubai. A friend suggested I watch ‘Mission Impossible’. It’s not a movie I would normally see, except that my friend mentioned that it was partly set in Dubai. So off I went to the tallest tower in the world, and watched the movie which contained too many bad technicalities that kept snapping me out of the suspended reality. So much money was spent on this major movie, yet the most basic of directions were non-existent, at many levels. Simple things that would not have cost the producers anything to have done correctly, just kept giving the game away, and showing how pathetic the technical direction was.

Anyway, the movie was scheduled for 8:00 pm. It started at 8:21 — after the ads and then the previews (not to mention arriving 10 minutes early to find my seat). That’s 31 minutes of sitting there doing nothing. Shocking. Why can’t movies start on time? Just why? Or why can’t they tell us that it is 8:00 for 8:21? Simple. What right do they have to waste so much of our time. And to think I gulped down a delicious cup of real hot chocolate. As for the soufflé, I had one spoonful. I wanted to be punctual. Something about this movie madness is not right. It’s like the time I rushed in the rain and got hot and bothered in order to arrive on time at a Cher concert, only to be kept waiting for 90 minutes while the Village People sang hideous old songs like Y.M.C.A. What a waste of a rush that was. Why could they not say on the ticket when the show really starts, and who the supporting act really is? I had no idea. Why would someone who likes Cher, also like the Village People — and for 90 minutes. Go figure.

By the way, I happened to be in Dubai on business, and thought to visit the world’s tallest building. In Dubai, Sunday is the start of the working week (like our Monday). So when my American friend Scott McKain and I visited Burj Khalifa at 3:00 pm on Sunday, we did not think that we would miss-out on reaching the Observation Deck. Sadly, the Observation Deck was sold-out, days in advance and days ahead, which meant that we could not even purchase tickets for the next day (and we did not bother asking about any time thereafter, because our business trip was a typically short one). So I ask you, why did neither the airline nor the hotel mention to us that the Observation Deck is often booked out, so that we could have reserved a ticket well in advance? (We visited in the winter — being the off-season on a working day, during the afternoon on the equivalent of a Monday, which one would think is not the busiest of periods.) Imagine how much worse it would be during the peak season. Would one have to book weeks or months in advance? And if so, how are we to know this? An Observation Deck is not Moulin Rouge. It’s not usual to book for such things. So we live and learn… the hard way.

A hotel ought to be more than a bed. It ought to be a hub of information and support. How hard would it be for the concierge to slip a note with each check-in to say, ‘Hello, I am your concierge, and I am here to make your stay in Dubai a comfortable and enriching one. By the way, a major attraction here is Burj Khalifa, but please let me know if you are interested in it so that I can assist you to book as soon as possible, because you cannot just go there on the off-chance.’ As a traveller, I find that each city sports its peculiarities which indeed are surprising. Whatever happened to a concierge being more than a bell-hop and a person who whistles for a taxi? Why did my hotel not contact me via email so that I could have booked online, long before I reached Dubai? They did have my email address, because I had called the hotel to triple-check my confusing booking. Everyone seems to record conversations for training and nonsense purposes. However, who listens to them, with a view to finding ways to provide a better service? I would like to see a job-advertisement which reads, ‘Wanted: A phone-recording analyst to listen to all the archived recordings of conversations with clients, and then draft weekly ideas on how we can improve our service.’

Oh and another thing about American movies and Americans (notwithstanding that many of my good friends are Americans) is that they are hopeless and sometimes rude and arrogant when it comes to the pronunciation of names. They just do not bother to stop a second and ask how to pronounce things. Like calling Iraq ‘EYE-Rack’ as if Italy is EYE-talley. So in the film, Mr Tom Cruise is supposed to be fluent in Russian. Anyone who can master Russian should be able to wrap their tongue around other foreign words. Alas, Tom could not even pronounce ‘Burj’. Of the team of 200-odd people working on his film (it was a Tom Cruise Production) it seemed that he did not ask, or no-one knew, how to pronounce the name of the central feature of the movie. The cinema in Dubai was packed. Everyone wanted to see the city featured in the film. How hard would it have been for him and others to have shown a little respect and learn how to pronounce the name of the tallest building? How would he like being called Tam Cloose? Not nice. And most definitely disrespectful. He pronounced it ‘Burge’ to sound like ‘Purge’. That’s plain ignorant and insulting (but typically American, I dare say). Mind you, George W. Bush and others say things that sound like, ‘The You-knighted States’. How can the word ‘United’ be You-knighted? Why must the first letter stand-out on its own? We don’t say Tee-ex-ass? Surely it’s just Texas.

By the way, below is a photo I took of Burj Khalifa using my iPhone. After posting the article above, one of the senior managers of the Dubai World Trade Centre took it upon herself to arrange for me to go to the Armani Hotel’s fabulous bar called Atmosphere which is on the 122nd and 123rd floors of Burj Khalifa. That was a lovely gesture, typical of the hospitality of the people of Dubai. The view from Armani’s Atmosphere was superb. Mind you, the stunning city made me wonder what a Bedouin of old, would have thought of the amazing growth. Only 30 years ago, the vast majority of Dubai was just sand and more sand. To witness the development plays havoc with history. Imagine what the old tribes would make of the spectacular growth and remarkable modernisation.

In the war-on-terror, what I fear most, is not a man with an atomic bomb, but ‘corruption’. So, too, within corporations. Corporate-corruption tops the list. It not only includes cash under the table, but also corruption of the soul, corruption of the servant, and corruption of the systems. These lead to corruption of society. My dear ANZ Bank has shown me that the bank is suffering from corruption.

For many years, I had received my credit-card statements to my PO Box address. Then one day, they stopped coming. I did not notice until it was too late, and I had missed a payment. That was six months ago. So I called the bank’s help desk, and someone assured me that it would be fixed. That was six months ago. Nothing was fixed. A month later, someone assured me that it would be fixed. That was a waste of time, because nothing was done.

Another month later, I logged into my on-line account and sent several secure emails, and was assured that it would be fixed. Nothing was fixed, and I never received the statements.

Before going to South Africa, I called the bank to make sure that the system does not presume that I owe any money. Long story. Still no statement.

I sent another email, and someone said that I should log-in and check my address on-line. I did this and made the corrections, and still, no statement.

Before travelling to China and India, I made random large-sum deposits into my account so that the computer does not flag me to be a recalcitrant client. I dreaded being cut-off while overseas.

The proof of corruption came a few days ago when a ‘Robert’ called me to say that I was $24 in arrears, and when would I be paying it? So I spent 30 minutes with him, asking him to escalate this matter. Thirty minutes down the drain. I had concluded the call by telling him that for six months, I had not seen a statement, and that I would not be making any payment until this matter is fixed. I knew that if I had paid, he would have moved-on to the next call without attending to my request.

That was on a Wednesday. Thirty minutes of futile explanation, because two days later, a Kamila (or some such sounding name) called me to say that I was $24 in arrears, and when would I be paying it? On the Wednesday I explained it all to Robert, and put it in writing via the secure on-line mail. Two days later, back to square one.

This is corruption. The system is corrupted. The bank’s staff tell me that the phone call is being recorded for some futile purpose. I am so glad that it is recorded, because management can hear my conversation with Robert and Kamila and wonder what the jolly buggery bullocks is going on. Why and how can a Robert call me and waste my time on a Wednesday, and then erase his existence so as to wash his hands of any hard work. This is corruption. The system is allowing staff to disown problems. Sure, he is JUST a call-centre guy. But I said to him, ‘Robert, you are ANZ. You have power. You need to take this matter to someone and insist that it be rectified, because after six months, it has been ignored, despite the promises.’ He did no such thing. I know this, because Kamila called me with no previous knowledge of the six-month struggle. No idea of what had transpired. Kamila had no idea that I had received a call from her colleague Robert, only two days prior.

The ANZ Bank’s website lists its ‘Code of Conduct and Ethics’. The Code stipulates, ‘No matter what your role is, or which location you work in, you are expected to: a) demonstrate the behaviours of honesty, integrity, quality and trust at all times; b) set an example for others and recognise those around you who also demonstrate these behaviours; and c) speak out when you feel that these behaviours are threatened or compromised.’

In my books, it was dishonest of Robert and every other staff member who handled my case and ignored it or did not follow it up. I asked Kamila to escalate the matter, and said, ‘I know that this call is being recorded, so I shall tell you on the record for your managers to hear that this matter has gone on for six months, so the time has come for me to blog this on my site.’ And I gave her the URL. I now wonder if she did escalate it. I doubt it, because no-one has called me.

Dear reader, this is not a complaint. This is an example of how corporations and nations fall to bits. There is a leak in the ANZ boat. Somehow it allows its staff to disown problems. A staff member can just ignore any issue that requires a modicum of hard work.

What am I asking for? Nothing. My statements used to delivered to me. They stopped. I am simply asking that they be sent to my PO Box address like they had always been. How hard is that request? The fact that the system just stopped sending me statements ought to point to some strange loophole. I am alerting the bank to an issue. Instead of getting the matter fixed, it takes six months of nonsense. This points to a rusted interior.

The secure emails are always answered by someone new. Never the same person. No-one takes ownership. This is the hideous system that the bank employs. It does not work. It wastes time, not to mention the aggravation and the interest that they expect me to pay. After a fuss a few months ago, they reversed the interest charge. And now we have another interest charge that Robert said he is not authorised to retract.

Corporations desire productivity. None shall be afforded to any organisation that can allow its staff to distance themselves from real issues. That is not the fault of the staff, but of the management team. Don’t blame Gen Y and Gen Z for this stupidity. The responsibility falls squarely on the managers who allow these loopholes to exist.

Indeed, computers can be blamed for all sorts of things. And maybe this was a software glitch. If that were the case, of the thousands of clients, was I the only one who suffered a software glitch? And despite the reason, why does it take six months of non-action despite the promises and assurances? If that does not concern the managers, then we can wonder how long it will be before the rust eats away at the whole organisation. ANZ Bank says, ‘We are committed to providing you with banking that is simple to understand and delivered in a responsible manner by our people, in accordance with the highest standards of integrity.’ Who is the ‘we’ in ‘we are committed’?

THE SOLUTION

I can already hear all the excuses under the sun. We need a solution, not an apology. So here is a free solution to ANZ Bank: when any staff member is on the phone to any client, the phone network needs to allow the client to press ‘zero’ to be connected to the supervisor. And if the client is not satisfied with the supervisor, pressing ‘zero’ would escalate the matter to the manager, and so on, until we reach the CEO. Otherwise, please erase the rubbish from the website that says things like, ‘Our brand promise is that “We Live in Your World”, and this means continuing to listen to the needs and expectations of our customers in developing new products and services, and in shaping the future direction of our business.’

I did not ask for the bank to move its buildings six centimetres to the left. I asked that my statements be delivered to me, as they had been for years. No, I never opted for them to arrive electronically, and even if I had, they never did arrive electronically. I do not care what or how. I know this much: six months of assurances, and being contacted twice within two days, proves to me that the system is corrupted because the staff can hit-and-run, leaving my case hanging in mid-air for some other poor staff member to call me afresh… it’s like sending sheep to the wolves. I was calm with Kamila, but I told her that I was microseconds away from detonating. I imagine she terminated the call and felt relived that she did not have to deal with me. ‘I’m signing off now,’ I said. ‘Is there anything else you need to tell me?’ I asked. She had nothing to say. She was too junior.

This blog is being printed and posted to the senior. I wonder if it’s any different at the other end of the seniority scale.

TOO MANY COOKS

This saga has been going on for six months. I did not keep a record of all the cooks who put their finger in my pudding. However, in just the past 30 days, here are some of the ANZ Bank staff who were on the case, assuring me that it would be fixed:

Silvia
Robert
Kamila
Antigone
Jovita
Lauren
Manjula
Shazia
Daniel
Geetha
Lilly, and
Theresa.

I imagine the list would go on and on if I had kept a record of the earlier conversations.

Talk about passing the buck!

Many criticised me and said that I was out of touch. Much like many laughed when I remove all friends from my FaceBook account. I have NO friends on Face Book. I welcome people to contact me and to stay in touch, but not via silly chit chat and brainless comments on the likes of YouTube or FaceBook.

Well, I wondered how long it would take. I knew it would happen. Allowing comments is going to be a thing of the past. Here is an example of Britain’s Got Talent’s You Tube site that has disabled the comments section. Hooray. Most comments start with, ‘Well done, nice act’, and soon end up with, ‘You ugly Arabs know nothing. Susan Boyle is ugly like you and I will smash your face in’. If you do not believe me, trawl through the hundreds of thousands of comments on the Susan Boyle pages that have attracted over 100 million views.

Take a look at the last line on the screen shot below. You will see that the comments section has been disabled. Congratulations. There are many more reforms that must be made before the Internet is of any use. At the moment it harbours idiots and scammers. Oh I know it has its good points, but so did Pol Pot. Just ask his mother.



Below we see that the spammers have to get in on the act. I am pleased to see that You Tube has removed the spam, but pray tell, why did they leave a trace of it? Why not remove it and that other ‘inappropriate’ comment altogether so that we do not have to see them at all? Oh dear, that takes another brain cell. This spamming on popular sites reminds me of a quote from Jesus. We read in Matthew 18:20 Jesus saying, ‘For where two or more are gathered in my name, there I am among them.’ That’s the doctrine of the spammers and scammers. Find what is popular, and let’s go infest them with our filth. It seems that the likes of Google, YouTube, and others who ought to know better, could not give a damn.

Take a look at this simple Google search. Type in Viagra Sydney, and what does the trusted technology leader return? Links that are completely misleading, designed by hackers who put Google to shame.



Take a close look at the links. They point to government websites. This could point to several issues, one being that hackers know how to bamboozle the technology giant, and the second being that internal staff or hackers have entered government sites and used them because they have high ranking on Google. Whatever the case, it’s egg on the faces of many people, and it proves that even now in 2011, the masterful leaders of the internet still do not have a clue!

Besides, when will Google start to take some responsibility for all the scammers it allows into its search engine. Billions of dollars are being scammed from innocent people who see high ranking links for products they want. Viagra scammers construct impressive websites and promise cheap products, which are blank pills, sold to unsuspecting clients. Some scammers do not even bother to ship out the blanks. They just keep the money, and most people are too embarrassed too exhausted to report the scam. I chase after scammers, like this one from the Institute of Hair Regrowth and Beauty (also known as IHRB). The many people who call me are way too embarrassed to let anyone know that they are seeking treatment for hair loss. How strange that something as visible as hair loss, causes embarrassment. So you can imagine how much more troubling it is for people who are conned by Viagra pedlars, promoting half-price cheap Viagra. So Google lets the likes of the Institute of Hair Regrowth & Beauty and the Viagra scammers, along with those who say that they can sell you genuine Mont Blanc pens at half price. How pathetic that our society cannot bar these thieves from cyberspace. There are sites that offer millions of songs and books and movies for you to download without paying for them. The most laughable aspect of this is that the site (usually in Russia) ask you to pay $20 to become a member. So it is ok for them to charge $20 to make a living, but it is never ok for artists to earn a single cent. How debauched.

For more about my observations about Google, you can click here.

The photo below is just as amazing. We see a door whose sign insists that the door remain closed at all times. It is a fire door in a tall building in Castlereagh Street, Sydney. These fire doors must remain closed so that the smoke suction units at the top of the building can extract the asphyxiating smoke out of the fire stairs. With this door open, the extraction fans simple cannot work. So here we have a well-equipped building, filled with people, whose lives are endangered for two reasons: 1) The Building Manager cannot read, and 2) None of the tenants are agitated enough to take action. I’d like to see Judge Judy on wheels.

Upon complaining to the supervisor, we were told to send a fax, detailing the missing items. After repeated calls and letters over many weeks, they replied saying that they cannot look up 40 numbers because they do not have the time (seven minutes) for such things. Yet it seems that they had the time to take my money for a thousand 3-kilo bags at approximately $8 per bag, each carrying half a kilo; so I paid for 2.5 kilos that I never used (no doubt landing them a huge profit). On top of that, I purchased the additional ‘Registered’ service with insurance (which is nothing more than a sticker in terms of cost for Australia Post). In all, they made a packet. That added another $2000 or so to the expense, not counting the contents (books and videos) worth hundreds per parcel.

When it came time to query why they lost my important parcels, whose disappearance caused me to lose opportunities, they did not care. I escalated the matter to their managers (plural) and legal officers, who snubbed my company and our request. It took over one year of effort, because we started to fight the issue on principle.

Being a government instrumentality, they were under the assumption that I could not sue them. In truth, many lawyers with whom I spoke were also under this impression. Legal experts advised me that there was nothing I could do. I persisted and pursued legal avenues, and won, because it was essentially unethical and wrong. Australia Post made my case easier because they had sent a defence lawyer who did not know what he was talking about. I had previously given them every argument in the hope that they would see the error of their ways. No-one paid attention. It was arrogance in full flight. How sad.

During the hearing, the Australia Post lawyer had the gall to say that I was cheating the system because I had purchased a national 3 kg red bag, and used it to send parcels from Sydney to Perth. He estimated that if I were to send the parcels via regular post, I would have had to pay $9 instead of the $8 I paid per bag (plus $1.50 or so in registration). You can see why I was fighting on principle. A national bag, is a national bag. The fact that 10 out of the 1000 I purchased had gone from Sydney to Perth, was turned against me as if I am abusing the system. My reply reminded my friend that I would be happy to pay him the ten dollars difference if he, in turn, would pay me for 2.5 kg that I never used as part of the 1000 bags that I purchased. The bally cheek! Besides, he was comparing what it would have cost if I had used regular post from Sydney to Perth. The silly man should have known, had he read his brief, that 700 or so bags went to Sydney CBD and Metro areas. Using his logic, and using regular post, that would have cost me $5.70 for 20 kg. Yet I paid him $9.50 for half a kilo. How’s that for a lopsided argument. Who’s abusing who now?

Australia Post’s second argument was that they had lost the parcels, and they admitted to this, but they denied responsibility. Apparently, I was not supposed to have placed the ‘registration’ stickers onto the red bags. The Member hearing our case asked, ‘And how is a customer supposed to know that the registration stickers are not to be used in conjunction with the red bags, considering that the registration stickers are promoted as a service that can be used on any parcel?’ In response, and with contempt, the lawyer pulled out a massive legal binder and pointed to some gobbledygook like Statute 7s Subsection 5 of Clause b5a.2.3.6 of the Act of 1972 as amended 1987 with Parliamentary blah blah blah.

‘And are these legal binders available at point of sale, to warn customers of this rule?’ asked the Member. The lawyer replied, ‘No, but the statute is available on the Internet.’ To which the Member asked if an Internet connection and computer are made available at point of sale. The lawyer retreated and sat down.

All along, during the many months of correspondence, Australia Post kept insisting that the registration stickers cannot be used on the red bags. I would not be telling you this story if it were not for the recent innovation at Australia Post, which not only promotes the use of the stickers on the red bags, but has the impertinence to print this fact on the bag itself, and provides a rectangular area within which to place the sticker! Yet, all along, they made out that I was doing the wrong thing, despite taking my money and saying nothing about it! If the registration of 1000 red bags was null and void, perhaps I should have sued for a refund, due to their admitting that registration was not acknowledged, which means that I had paid for a service that they did not deliver. The bally cheek.

What can we learn from this? Don’t take money, promise a service, provide a phone number, keep people waiting ten minutes, and then say that you can’t help them. When a client escalates the matter to a supervisor, it would be a good idea to wonder why someone feels that the matter needs extra attention. When the client escalates the matter to the regional management team, it’s time to engage some brain cells. When a client enters into correspondence with your legal officers, and furnishes a thirty-page report, it’s time to sit up and pay attention. When the client sends you a summons to appear at a hearing, it’s time that someone reads the brief and nibs the jolly thing in the bud because the facts are plain for all to see. Pomposity and snobbery towards a client who is one of the largest clients in the district, does not augur well in front of an impartial judge who will only wonder how an organisation the size of Australia Post can treat customers so poorly, and wonder how the many layers of management could not make a decision to rectify an obvious failing. No-one begrudges Australia Post for losing some items (that’s if they were not stolen by unethical staff), but when the company mistreats its clients, who keep it in business, then it had better reconsider its statement of ethics, which says, ‘Australia Post is committed to conducting its business with integrity, honesty, fairness and in compliance with all relevant laws, regulations, codes, corporate policies and procedures.’

Click here for another article about Australia Post.

Despite all the globalisation and internationalisation, a traveller cannot make a phone call because a global phone company was so insular that it presumed that the whole world had zip codes that were similar to the US standard. How can programmers and executives be so myopic to presume that zip codes are the same, the world over? How can computers send a rover to Mars, yet can’t acknowledge that I am a bona fide customer? For that reason, I had to have an American card from the USA, using the US system. And so I ended up with a Platinum Card well before the Platinum Card was launched in Australia. The annual membership at the time was around $900, I think. I never did see the benefit in it. Despite the grand promises of great assistance and contacts, I was disappointed. For example, I was in New York and noticed a show called, ‘A funny thing happened on the way to the forum.’ I had once seen the old movie by that name. It was such a wonderful movie, that I arranged for people to call every video retailer and ask for it. There were so many calls being made about this movie, that it was later released in Australia, perhaps on the thrust of the perceived demand! The show in New York City seemed like the perfect one for me to see. The show was sponsored by American Express. How about that! The Platinum Concierge service boasted a world-class facility to obtain tickets to all the grand events of the world. Sadly, Amex could not secure a ticket for me. So what’s the point of being a member, if Amex can’t obtain tickets to an Amex-sponsored show? Useless. I walked up to the theatre and purchased a ticket as easy as pie.

Another time I needed to be in Minneapolis or thereabouts for a television interview. I simply could not find anyone who could book a hotel room for me. Not a five-star. Not a four-star. No star at all. Every hotel room was taken due to a convention boasting 80,000 delegates. No rooms at all. So I called Amex. No luck. I called Hilton Honours. No luck. I called Qantas Travel. No Luck. I called Internet Travel. No Luck. I called Starwood Club. No luck. I called Hyatt Gold Passport or whatever it was called in those days. No Luck. What’s the point of all that metallic membership when no-one could help me? So, after all that VIP nonsense, I consulted the Yellow Pages and telephoned the first hotel that caught my eye. It was the Hilton. I dialled the number directly. And within two minutes my room was booked and confirmed. It makes you wonder how I managed to secure a room after one phone call, while no other VIP centre was able to assist. After a while, I cancelled my Platinum. I never knew how to extract value from it. One of the benefits was a stunning leather diary. A perk of membership. The diary would arrive on my desk in May of each year. How can that be useful? Sure, it takes a long time in the post, and such are the disadvantages of living so far away. But the sad fact was that the diary was post-marked March, each year. Another feature of the Platinum card was the promise of two business-class tickets for the price of one. I could not see the big deal, given that the prices were inflated. I just ignored it, and switched to Gold. Some years later, a cheque arrived from the USA, along with a legal letter, saying that a Class Action had taken place in the USA and all members were being refunded their fees, by court order, due to a judge finding that the two-for-one scheme had been deceptive or misleading, or something like that.

Anyway, that is all history now, because after twenty years as a member, I cut my cards in half and sent them to the home of the CEO. To read about the straw that broke a twenty-year relationship, click here.

My letter to the CEO read:

When I transact with a company for twenty years, and I write to its CEO, I expect a response from the CEO. I have found Amex insulting in this way, even when I was trying to assist it for its own good.

You personally ignored me when I wrote to you on 12 October 2009 saying, ‘This letter is the final straw’. I meant it, and here are the cards.

I do not expect organisations to be perfect. However, I do not appreciate seeing dozens of Amex ads, touting slogans that I know are false. As a member since 1989, I see the ads as rhetoric.

One of your ads takes the cake. It says, ‘Daniel: We see you as a person, not a number’. I doubt that very much.

During the past several months, I have been using a Visa card, and spending more than ever. So anyone who had seen my declined Amex usage and assumed that it was all due to the financial crisis, would have been mistaken. There is more than meets the eye.

Wishing you well for the new year.

Jonar Nader

That letter was sent by courier. It was received and signed-for on the 14th of December 2009. Sadly, until now, I have received no response. Perhaps the CEO was away, or super busy. Or maybe that is the culture through and through. Fearing that American Express had still not registered my request to cancel the card, I phoned and spoke with one person, who transferred me to another who was keen to retain my business. He offered all sorts of financial incentives, which I declined. ‘What do we have to do to keep you as a member?’ he asked. I explained that I was calling to close the account, and was not interested in bargaining. However, one of my issues was that no-one at Amex knew how to engage their brain when talking to me. I had a specific concern about one of its merchants who, in my assessment, was running a scam. He replied, ‘Would you please give us one more chance and allow me to arrange for a senior person to contact you to discuss your concerns?’

I agreed, and waited. No calls came. I chased this up and was told that two attempts were made. Alas, no messages and no clues and their calls show up as ‘Withheld’ in my caller ID. I receive dozens of missed calls daily. If messages aren’t left, I would never know who called. Anyway, despite my reminder, still no calls. So today, I called this Amex agent for the third time. Finally, a senior person phoned me, and I might as well have been talking to a brick wall. Completely unwilling and unable and uninterested in anything outside the norm. I was trying to point out a merchant who was running a scam. I was told that merchants, like card members, are valued customers.

Why bother arranging for a senior person to call me, after all this nonsense, when the person was not only powerless to act, but also incapable of understanding my concerns?

After twenty years with Amex, I had reached the end of my tether. And to think that a letter to the CEO receives no response, makes me wonder why anyone would bother with Amex these days. I must say that it was always a challenge to use the Amex card. Most retailers shunned the idea. Many would lie about their terminal not working, just so that they could discourage me from using it. Most retail establishments blatantly asked me to use Visa or MasterCard. Even if the CEO did not want to communicate with me, he should have forwarded my letter to the cancellation department for administrative purposes. Anyway, today, while really really cancelling my card and falling silent on the phone, just listening to the diatribe and saying, ‘I have nothing to say’ whenever the senior person paused for a response, he told me that my Gold annual membership had been charged, and that he will reverse that charge (as well he should). I also told him that I was happy to forfeit any remaining reward points.

The lesson in all of this?

1) Corporations need not saturate the market with advertising until they first work out the reasons behind the issues that plague them. To have to emphasise that Amex treats people as a person, not a number, raises more questions than it answers. Why did they think that the public thought that Amex treats people as numbers? Why must this point be made? Why tell us about it? Just go and treat people well. No need to advertise it. Just do it. Why would a corporation spend millions to advertise something that should never be uttered. What’s next? Ads to say that Amex cares about staff and the Pututu Beetle of the Trundrjanian Forest? Or 600 billboards across the city to say that Amex pays all its taxes? Or a $2 million campaign to say that Amex staff never sexually abuse young employees? Do you see how it would raise more questions that it would answer!

2) If you are going to make a promise, you had better be able to deliver on it. If a 20-year member cannot ever get a CEO to respond to a query, then either the CEO is way too busy, or the CEO does not care. Or the mail filtration system keeps the CEO in the dark a la ‘Yes Minister’. Perhaps I should wake up to the fact that a customer like me is not important enough. Modesty prevents me from telling you how much I might have spent with Amex over that period, but I dare say that it was considerable. Irrespective of the amount, and whether it’s one thousand or one million dollars, weak is the person who treats clients differently, based on their spending capacity. If a company cannot deliver the same level of service to all its clients, then it is a ‘using-abusing’ kind of sycophantic company that scatters fake smiles and manipulated courtesies.

3) If your staff can only regurgitate policy hogwash without really understanding the question, you would be better-off running a recorded message and getting rid of the humans. At least customers would not blame a machine for being unable to listen or to think or to communicate.

4) If you are going to record calls ‘for quality and assurance purposes’, you had better run a live feed to all the senior managers’ desktop computer so that managers can hear what’s going on, in real time. By the way, some time ago, an Amex staff member was so bad, I felt it necessary to complain about him, so I asked him, ‘What is the name of your manager?’ He gave me a name. It turned out that it was his own name. He lied to me so that if I were to write the letter to complain, it would have gone to him, and not his real manager. How sneaky. I twigged after I hung up. Oh, the many frustrations I have had with that company.

5) The funniest of all my interactions with Amex in the past two weeks (as well as during the past three years) were the endless queries about my date of birth and my password and my address and phone number and postal address etc. I kept telling them, dozens of times, every time, not to call me and other clients and ask for such private information. It is insane to call people and say, ‘Hi we are from American Express and we first need to verify you for security purposes and we will not budge and we will not help you until you break the very rule that we have made you swear and sign never to break — namely to tell a stranger over the phone your vital password which you must never divulge but please divulge it to me!’ And I could never get through to them.

Insatiable insanity!

P.S. For more about my Platinum Amexperiences, click here.

And before you cheer on, ask yourself if you are a shareholder in any way, via any means. If you are, and you have never taken this level of interest, then sell your shares and stop being a mug!

I called Citibank, asking if I could open a US checking (cheque) account. They could not help me. ‘Try the US branch,’ they advised. So I went on-line and filled in their form. It’s simple. I am from Sydney, Australia, and I need a US account. What do I need to do? So a reply came back that might as well have been written by fifty monkeys in a room whose walls are padded with computer keyboards. Just give the monkeys some tennis balls, and see which keys hit, and which keys register. Then, every thirty seconds, some software program can just press send. And there you have your answer. How stupid can organisations get? I explained that I am from Sydney, Australia, etc, but they advised me that I need to have a US Social Security Number and live in the US. And if I do not have appropriate US ID, I can go to a branch and present myself in person. From where do these people rent their brain cells? That might well be the requirements. However, I was asking a different question, and their response proves that they did not read my questions. They saw the words ‘US’ and ‘account’ and sent me the standard template. This is not called communications. Why ask so many questions when in the end, all I should have done was send them a three-word e-mail. ‘Hello, US account.’

By the way, in case anyone from Citibank is reading this, and you wish to look into this so that you can either sue me or serve me, here is the reference number you generated for me:

&392556B78E4060263C09082576A9000C7C593888ZSUNZDJUJ0NZDJUJECT&

The person writing to me was ‘Sincerely, MyCiti Online Customer Service’. Fancy that. That’s what I get in response to their questions, such as, ‘What is your name and your mother’s maiden name and your shoe size?’ They want to know everything about me, but when it comes to contacting me, they are nameless, while I remain:

&392556B78E4060263C09082576A9000C7C593888ZSUNZDJUJ0NZDJUJECT&

So I wrote back by pressing reply, which went to: autoreply.iewa@citicorp.com. It did not say NoReply, so I thought that there was some hope. Alas not. Within seconds, they wrote back saying: ‘Thank you for contacting us. For security reasons, this email address is not accepting mail. Please return to the Web page where you entered your original request or refer to the contact information listed on the original message that you received for any follow-up communication. Thank you!’

What security reasons? What a spasm. What an excuse. What a disgrace. Hey, I know all about software and automatic ticketing and call logging. I don’t care about that. If they have the cheek to have an email system, they should have the decency to catch up with the modern era and communicate via email. Oh, and why must everything go via their system? For logging? For archival? For training, monitoring, and quality assurance purposes? How stupid can anyone get?

Here is the lesson for the day!

1) Never send out an email where the recipient cannot press reply! Whatever is going through your mind about the trillions of reasons why this does not suit you, just stop. Dump it all out. Forget it. Not good enough.

2) Never send out an email where the sender is not identified by name and position.

3) When a customer responds to that specific name and position, never allocate the note to a ticketing system. Oh, the dozens of people I have had to deal with over one simple matter. Your help desk should remember that the word HELP is part of its name. It does not help the customer when agents receive a ticket, while they sit at home or with their feet up at a beach at Byron Bay, responding to tickets by shooting back questions and delaying the response to the poor customer. Help desk idiots, mostly ‘idiotified’ by their superiors and the Board, are paid to respond to tickets. What they say and how they say it, never seems to enter the equation. So they never answer a simple question. They just shoot back another question. In this way, they can say that they responded to a hundred tickets today. What a giggle-factory those help-desks are turning out to be. And the CEO is to blame, and the Board is responsible. And the shareholders ought to hang their head in shame. Where is all this quality assurance they keep telling me about every time they record my calls?

4) Never publicise a 24 hour help desk if the person taking the call is simply going to say, ‘Oh, please call back during business hours.’ Go to sleep and save me the bother. It’s like those doctors on radio who take calls, and anyone who phones in with a medical question is advised to consult their GP. Get off the air, people!

5) Never send out a letter where the person writing it, has no name, and whose signature is a scribble. Whoever sends out the letter must be identified, and their DIRECT phone number shown, and that number must not go to voice mail unless that person is dead.

6) If you are on a salary above $40,000, and if any of the above made you wince with discomfort, then get out of the service lark.

P.S. After posting this article, I sent a note to HSBC via an online form. I received a response within two hours. The sender provided her full name, street address, phone and fax numbers, and an email address, along with the links on how to fill in the forms, plus advice on what to do and how to do it, and which buttons to press and why. If HSBC can do it, why can’t other large organisations? It has nothing to do with technology. It’s all about soul and civility.

P.P.S. I called the lady from HSBC and she was delightful, happy, friendly, knowledgeable, and gave me great advice, send additional material within minutes, and offered to try a few ways to assist me, with a money back guarantee. Now, what could be fairer than that.

How sad it is when the technical brilliance of Steven Jobs and his crew meets a brick wall when customer service goes down the drain.

Apple has got a lot to teach the world. Unfortunately, the very basics of customer service are overlooked, and in the end, customers will soon forget the miraculous miniaturisation and remember the hideous frustrations.

My first dictionary of computing was written on the first Apple Mac; the one that did not even have a hard drive. It worked well, and my fond memories of Apple’s product quality never faded, even after being forced to switch operating systems to conform to the corporate jungle. So, recently, I purchased a new MacBook Pro. It is not perfect, but it is a million times better than my old Windows rubbish.

I was at the George Street Apple Store one rainy afternoon, and I placed an order for the MacBook Pro, a large monitor, and a range of accessories, plus I paid for three years of service and one year of help/training. The product was wheeled out, but at that moment, their cashier system broke down, and they could not process my order. I asked if they could take my card details and process it the next day as a phone order and then have the products delivered to me. They said that it was impossible. And they said that they do not take phone orders. Oh well, their loss. When I got home, I conducted some research and noticed that an even larger Dell monitor was $800 cheaper. So they missed out on that sale and I went with the Dell monitor. I finally purchased the MacBook Pro with the service and training.

Alas, I was led to believe that any issues with my product can be dealt with via courier or post. Again, a lie, it seems, because my Mighty Mouse has been faulty, and now it does not work. It set me back three days in my work. After waiting for Apple to come back from holidays, and waiting fifteen minutes to speak with someone, they said that I would have to take the mouse in for assessment or repair etc. I explained that it was not feasible to travel such great distances, and hassle with parking etc, for something that can be dealt with, as I was misled to believe, by mail. The phone operator escalated the call to a Josh, who informed me that he was the most senior person on the help desk. I told him that I will be protesting most strongly and most vigourously, and he was not phased. A brick wall.

If a company wants to take my money, my perfect money, and dish out products that do not work, and take more money for support and warranty, then it had better not waste my time. I paid $122.55 for One on One training and $521.10 for extended warranty. Isn’t it absurd that one purchases a quality product from a quality company, and then pays $521.10 as insurance in case the product fails? Yes it is silly of me, but you see, I would do anything for peace of mind and to save time. My time is worth more than any headache of running around trying to fix a vital business tool. This money that Apple pocketed is the cream. It provides them with millions of percent profit. It is free money for nothing at all. Just money for nothing in return. And they know it. Any product fault would surface quick-smart, and beyond that, the product is stable. And who keeps a product for three years anyway? Nonetheless, I just wanted peace of mind, and now that my Apple Mighty Mouse ($94.05) is faulty (8 months in), I can see that I have been ripped off, big time.

Also, the One to One training has not been used, and can never be used, because silly me did not ask the right questions. When people of decency deal with a company of reputation, we somehow take people at face value and accept what they say to be plain English. Now I realise that I should have asked more questions. If I had been told more about the One to One training, I would not have taken it up. I was not told what I should have known, and I did not think to ask something that did not occur to me. I was misled on that score as well.

You see, the One to One training, I now find out, can only happen for a one-hour session at any one time in any one day! Having spoken with a few people at Apple George Street, and the help desk, there is no way that I can book two sessions. I live 30 km away from the store. They want me to drive 90 minutes in, pay $20 in tolls, not to count the petrol and my time, and park my car at around $35 to $50, just to have one hour. Then 90 minutes back plus petrol and time and car expenses! I wanted to go in and have training on a range of applications so that I could become a power-user and leave the Windows environment. It would not make sense to drive in just for one hour. They said that they could not provide more than one hour. It was tough luck. Well my dear Apple, if you knew this, why don’t you make it clear when making the sale? How can you stand there and take money from people, knowing that the customer has not asked you the right questions? It was sold to me in terms of ‘all the training you like’. Never a mention of the limitations.

I once upgraded an old phone, to a new space-age phone. When I got it home, I found that it did not have a countdown timer or stopwatch, which I need while on stage. Who would have thought to ask about such a basic feature, when my previous seven phones all had this feature. I just assumed that it did. Much like you would now assume that any phone you will purchase tomorrow will contain a clock. Silly to ask the question. So you see, I did not ask about the One on One training, because it was put to me in such a grand way to make me feel that I could have as many sessions as I had wanted. That was a lie. It was deceit. It was unfair. It was unethical. To this day, I have not been able to take up this offer, so that is another million percent profit for Apple.

Today, I was let down yet again, and today, this minute, I searched the Apple website, and this is what they say, which is what I was led to believe, which is not what they delivered:



So today, while they were lying to me, and ripping me off, and making out that I had to drive in to get the Mighty Mouse fixed (or go to Rhodes), I was admonishing myself for being so docile. But hang on, this image from their website today proves what I was saying. I was told that life would be easy. I would just send it in the mail. It says so above. And so I thought to delve deeper and read the terms and conditions, and here is where the link goes:



Brand consistency is vital in any organisation. There are certain divisions within Apple who are leading the world. Unfortunately, they are being let down by their colleagues. In this case, Apple is to blame, even though the entire help desk function is outsourced to IBM. The sales person at the time was impressing me with the fact that all of Apple’s help desks are local. What he did not tell me was that they were outsourced.

Anyway, silly me for trusting anyone. They lied to me. They misled me. And now I have their faulty product, and they have my perfect money. That seems like a fair exchange.

P.S. For those who might assume that the mail-in service was for the MacBook unit, and not the peripherals, here are two points. One: it would be ludicrous to send out a MacBook Pro in the mail. It would be damaged! So any such repairs need to be hand-picked and hand-delivered, and not posted in the mail or be chucked into the courier bags. And two: their policy is for peripherals. I know this for certain, because my remote cordless keyboard was faulty within two months, and they replaced it via the courier/mail system. So now what’s the deal? They changed their mind after they had taken my money. They broke the contract. How convenient. It will not do!

UPDATE: I wrote a letter to the CEO of Apple. The next day, I received a phone call from one of the Apple Executives who was most concerned that a customer should have had negative experiences. The executive gathered information and contacted me the following day, apologising for this situation. He admitted that the help-desk supervisor was in error. An Apple genius has since contacted me about my training requirements. Also, a third Apple Executive contacted me several days later to check that everything was now satisfactory. At all times, I emphasised that I was not seeking any special treatment. I just wanted to know what my contract afforded me.

The speed and attention that I have received in the past few days is the kind that I would expect from a company like Apple. It sure is difficult to keep all staff members trained about all the aspects of the business. In the end, Apple was grateful that I raised this matter. It is not a situation that the company wants repeated. Full marks for the speed of response. Full marks for the professionalism displayed by the executives.

If consumers, along with internal staff members, do not speak-up when we see incongruence surrounding the brand-promise, we would be guilty of harbouring a phantom that gets too big for its boots. There are some companies to whom I would not bothers complaining. They are simply best left to rot. Others, like Apple, are excellent on so many fronts, that when we spot the seeds of negativity, it is in all our interest to speak up. The smallest shards of incompetence can grow to become invisible, mighty black holes wherein corporate cancer is incubated. Once a company is gripped by stupidity, there is nothing it can do to shake it off. For this reason, resolute action, at high speed, might seem an over-kill, but negativity in a company like Apple must be arrested with urgency and rigour. I am pleased to see that Apple executives know this. The attention that I received in the past few days has nothing to do with me personally, but with a corporate culture that understands the dangers of corporate cancer. We all fear it tremendously.

My, and Apple’s, abhorrence to ‘bad attitude’, stems from an understanding that it takes years to grow a fine corporate reputation, and only days to destroy it. It takes ages to nurture a healthy work-ethic, and only a few moments to smother it. In ‘How to Lose Friends and Infuriate People’, I wrote, ‘…atmosphere and attitude, if rotten, cannot improve. Their movement on the scale (from bad to good) cannot be gradual because they would never reach the midpoint because of the forces acting against them… Evil will triumph over good. A negative system can never evolve into a positive one. A putrid atmosphere cannot blossom. An obstructive attitude cannot gradually swing towards the constructive. If your organisation is spreading an epidemic through atmosphere and attitude, you need to destroy the carriers. Bringing in new blood, fresh ideas, new people (no matter how exceptional) will not generate a competitive advantage because they will become affected and/or infected faster than they care to realise. You need to destroy the silent, intangible, and merciless enemy.’

The swift response by Apple shows that the company fears bad customer-service. Not because they know that they could lose customers, but because they know that they could lose their heart and soul.