Corporate Bollocks
May. 18th, 2007 11:34 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
peterbirksFrom Paypal:
Now, the reason that I closed it was that it was in US dollars, because when I opened it, that was the only thing on offer. I hadn't used it since before PayPal's records began (so the date stated was January 2004, whereas in fact it goes back to when PayPal stopped processing online poker transfers).
Anyhoo, I really want to start tidying up my life and turning some of my unwanted stuff into cash, so I looked up the "How To Sell On EBay" instructions, and, right at the top, was "Open a PayPal account". Unsurprising, really, since EBay owns PayPal. But what they mean is "Open a PayPal account in GBP". To do that I needed to close my PayPal account in US$.
But taking the survey and telling them this would be boring. Much more fun would be to put forward the following reasons: I closed my account because...
1) You are run by a religious fanatic who stopped me transferring funds in an out of poker accounts for no reason other than pique.
2) The CEO of EBay opposes abortion. I cannot countenance dealing with a company with such views (this is my own campaign to show that it isn't just the religious right that has lobbying power).
3) Your CEO supports George W Bush, a war criminal who should be tried at the Hague.
(a cunning response to this might be that the UK's Hague is a war criminal who should be tried at the Bush...)
4) Your CEO is a Republican.
5) Your CEO supported the invasion of Iraq, indicating either a small brain or a desire to pander to the lowest common denominator in the US. Either way, I couldn't give such a company my business.
In fact, of course, I am happy to give them my business. But it would be nice to make them think that it isn't just the loud lobbyists who affect their bottom line.
Anyway, I won't answer the survey. it's a bit like the "leaving interview" with Human Resources, which HR seem to think of as some kind of divorce counselling.
"So, tell me, what made you decide to leave us?"
"Er, we aren't married. We aren't in a relationship. It's an economic transaction. I come into work. You pay me. Someone else is offering to pay me more. Stop trying to imbue the whole thing with an emotional commitment".
"So, you aren't happy here?"
"Have you listened to a single word that I've said?"
+++++++++++
Corporate bollocks 2:
From British Gas this morning:
GOOD NEWS -- our rates have gone down again
Ah yes, these would be the high rates that you invited me to lock into (for a mere 3.5% extra) just in case they went even higher, wouldn't they?
Cunningly, this corporate crap continues with an amount that this means customers "could" save.
Yes, but only if said customers had ignored your earlier marketing crap.
I believe that there are people out there insane enough to have that system where you pay British Gas a large sum of money every month in return for a vague promise that if something gas-related breaks down,BG might, if the mood takes it, eventually send someone round to fix it. And if they don't? Er, well, we've got your money anyway. Any economic transaction which involves you paying people up front, and then entails no penalty for them if they fail to deliver on their promises, is insanity for the consumer (as anyone who has played Grade One Diplomacy will testify).
It seems that British Gas took fifty quid a month for the past three months. Not that I noticed. I thought that I was paying something like £38 a month. Then I saw at the bottom that the amount that they will be taking for the next three months will be £38 a month. Oh, that's alright then.
How do people cope who are close to their overdraft limit cope with direct debits that seem to go up and down depending on the cashflow requirements of the utility companies supplying you?
+++++++++
There are bonuses all over the place in the poker world, which makes things logistically entertaining. I don't think that I've ever been trying to knock of four time-related bonuses at the same time before. Fortunately only one of them (Party) is a real short-term bonus that requires some effort. The others either appear in units of $10, meaning that, even if they aren't cleared toally, you still get a large proportion of the cash; or they are long-term bonuses.
I've had to give Ultimate a miss, which I think might be a minor mistake, because the change in the UB points system there and the appearance of bonuses everywhere else must have led to those games becoming softer. It's all a question of whether the increased softness is of a degree to more than compensate for the money earned through the deposit bonuses elsewhere. And the answer to that is always an imponderable.
++++++++
A moment of sheer surrealism when reading one of the free London papers yesterday, London Lite. There were complaints among the older trendy inhabitants of Shoreditch and Hoxton that rents had now gone through the roof and they could no longer afford to live there. Apparently The Bricklayers Arms, which I remember from 1983, before the trendies arrived at all and when Hoxton was the haunt of British National Party fervour, has had to close because the new residents have moaned about the noise of the outside drinkers.
Ayway, London Lite printed a list of the new trendy hangouts. Haggerston is likely to become the new Hoxton, which doesn't surprise me. Broadway Market in next-door London Fields has already got the most Tapas Bars per square kilometre in north London, I think.
But among the list of trendy bars was, yes, The Dolphin. Yes, that same Dolphin mentioned here just a few days ago. Apparently it now does "never-ending Karaoke". Next thing you know, Ye Olde Axe on Hackney Road will become hip. Now, there's a pub about which I have some entertaining tales...
"According to our records, you recently closed your PayPal account. Your business is very important to us and we would like to ask you a few questions around the main reasons why you chose to close your account. The survey should only take 2-3 minutes...."
Now, the reason that I closed it was that it was in US dollars, because when I opened it, that was the only thing on offer. I hadn't used it since before PayPal's records began (so the date stated was January 2004, whereas in fact it goes back to when PayPal stopped processing online poker transfers).
Anyhoo, I really want to start tidying up my life and turning some of my unwanted stuff into cash, so I looked up the "How To Sell On EBay" instructions, and, right at the top, was "Open a PayPal account". Unsurprising, really, since EBay owns PayPal. But what they mean is "Open a PayPal account in GBP". To do that I needed to close my PayPal account in US$.
But taking the survey and telling them this would be boring. Much more fun would be to put forward the following reasons: I closed my account because...
1) You are run by a religious fanatic who stopped me transferring funds in an out of poker accounts for no reason other than pique.
2) The CEO of EBay opposes abortion. I cannot countenance dealing with a company with such views (this is my own campaign to show that it isn't just the religious right that has lobbying power).
3) Your CEO supports George W Bush, a war criminal who should be tried at the Hague.
(a cunning response to this might be that the UK's Hague is a war criminal who should be tried at the Bush...)
4) Your CEO is a Republican.
5) Your CEO supported the invasion of Iraq, indicating either a small brain or a desire to pander to the lowest common denominator in the US. Either way, I couldn't give such a company my business.
In fact, of course, I am happy to give them my business. But it would be nice to make them think that it isn't just the loud lobbyists who affect their bottom line.
Anyway, I won't answer the survey. it's a bit like the "leaving interview" with Human Resources, which HR seem to think of as some kind of divorce counselling.
"So, tell me, what made you decide to leave us?"
"Er, we aren't married. We aren't in a relationship. It's an economic transaction. I come into work. You pay me. Someone else is offering to pay me more. Stop trying to imbue the whole thing with an emotional commitment".
"So, you aren't happy here?"
"Have you listened to a single word that I've said?"
+++++++++++
Corporate bollocks 2:
From British Gas this morning:
GOOD NEWS -- our rates have gone down again
Ah yes, these would be the high rates that you invited me to lock into (for a mere 3.5% extra) just in case they went even higher, wouldn't they?
Cunningly, this corporate crap continues with an amount that this means customers "could" save.
Yes, but only if said customers had ignored your earlier marketing crap.
I believe that there are people out there insane enough to have that system where you pay British Gas a large sum of money every month in return for a vague promise that if something gas-related breaks down,BG might, if the mood takes it, eventually send someone round to fix it. And if they don't? Er, well, we've got your money anyway. Any economic transaction which involves you paying people up front, and then entails no penalty for them if they fail to deliver on their promises, is insanity for the consumer (as anyone who has played Grade One Diplomacy will testify).
It seems that British Gas took fifty quid a month for the past three months. Not that I noticed. I thought that I was paying something like £38 a month. Then I saw at the bottom that the amount that they will be taking for the next three months will be £38 a month. Oh, that's alright then.
How do people cope who are close to their overdraft limit cope with direct debits that seem to go up and down depending on the cashflow requirements of the utility companies supplying you?
+++++++++
There are bonuses all over the place in the poker world, which makes things logistically entertaining. I don't think that I've ever been trying to knock of four time-related bonuses at the same time before. Fortunately only one of them (Party) is a real short-term bonus that requires some effort. The others either appear in units of $10, meaning that, even if they aren't cleared toally, you still get a large proportion of the cash; or they are long-term bonuses.
I've had to give Ultimate a miss, which I think might be a minor mistake, because the change in the UB points system there and the appearance of bonuses everywhere else must have led to those games becoming softer. It's all a question of whether the increased softness is of a degree to more than compensate for the money earned through the deposit bonuses elsewhere. And the answer to that is always an imponderable.
++++++++
A moment of sheer surrealism when reading one of the free London papers yesterday, London Lite. There were complaints among the older trendy inhabitants of Shoreditch and Hoxton that rents had now gone through the roof and they could no longer afford to live there. Apparently The Bricklayers Arms, which I remember from 1983, before the trendies arrived at all and when Hoxton was the haunt of British National Party fervour, has had to close because the new residents have moaned about the noise of the outside drinkers.
Ayway, London Lite printed a list of the new trendy hangouts. Haggerston is likely to become the new Hoxton, which doesn't surprise me. Broadway Market in next-door London Fields has already got the most Tapas Bars per square kilometre in north London, I think.
But among the list of trendy bars was, yes, The Dolphin. Yes, that same Dolphin mentioned here just a few days ago. Apparently it now does "never-ending Karaoke". Next thing you know, Ye Olde Axe on Hackney Road will become hip. Now, there's a pub about which I have some entertaining tales...
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Ricardo and Comparative Advantage
Date: 2007-05-18 11:14 pm (UTC)It's a mystery to me why British Gas and the like believe that we have the slightest confidence in what they say. It's also fascinating that, given the modern wonder of Direct Debit, they seem to be able to extract whatever they feel like from a customer's bank account.
I went through a similar process, via an entirely different commercial sector, a couple of years ago.
"I'd like to cancel this charge to AOL in the US, please."
The cashier asked me whether I was using AOL, what the (street) address was, and so on and so on, and I repeated:
"I'd like to cancel this charge to AOL in the US, please."
Basically, it was my ex's account, and I couldn't afford (and had no reason to afford) paying for it.
The solution was simple, according to the cashier:
"You'll have to cancel the old debit card and start a new one."
Well, this is definitely sophisticated financial planning. With the benefit of hugely powerful hardware and database software. Or then again, it could just be Lloyds, a bank from which I will withdraw my business just as soon as I possibly can, even if it requires taking it off-shore. (Not to the Bahamas -- just to somewhere sane like the USA.)
British utility companies strike me as being eerily similar, in all so many ways. Basically, banks and utilities both keep your money for as long as possible in order to maintain a float to which they are not, really, entitled. They know, and you know, that you ain't going to go elsewhere. (Well, in my case, the USA, but I'd be a pitifully small proportion of their custom.) They know, and you know, that they can make money off the 1-2% of their annual intake that they withhold for three "business" days.
This is free money. Even an idiot, educated at Eton, Harrow, Dulwich College, or Our Lady of Perpetual Third Wayism can see this. We do, however, have OFRegulators, and what a wonderful job they do in this respect.
... None of which is anything to do with the title. I understand Ricardo's theory of Comparative Advantage when it's to do with swapping goods between two people. As usual when I try to follow economic theory, I don't really grasp the point when it's used outside the abstraction. I mean, what about six billion people? What about three people? Is it possible to argue from induction, or are these people merely mathematical charlatans?
It doesn't affect me directly, but I would like to know.
entertaining tales from Ye Olde Axe
Date: 2007-05-19 12:09 pm (UTC)1. warm-up at White Horse
2. go to cash-machine at the gas station across
3. give the beggar with the dog X amount of money, X depending on how drunk you are
4. go to SportsBar and hope it isn´t full of romanian birds this time
5. go to cash-machine
6. go to Browns, allthough you already know it´s gonna be shit
7. get bored because of the uninspired performances of the ladies allthough they do look beautiful
8. go to Ye Olde Axe and hope it´s not full of money-grabbing brazilians this time and if it is, get really drunk and blow away all the money you have with you as you will get probably robbed anyway on your way back to Liverpool Station.
It´s so amazing that the good and the bad of the eastern european countries is only 100 yards away. and the formula goes, the worse looking, the harder they work for the money. london is indeed a melting pot.
Re: entertaining tales from Ye Olde Axe
Date: 2007-05-19 11:55 pm (UTC)It was quite a shock to return there a decade or so later, to silently nurse a bottle of pils, only for a strip show to start about four feet away from me.
But, like I say, all of those tales can await another day.
PJ
Re: Ricardo and Comparative Advantage
Date: 2007-05-20 12:01 am (UTC)Now, is it possible to argue the correctness of Ricardo's Law from induction? Well, yes and no. Take an emerging nation and a developed nation. While the politicians and businessmen in the developed nation might argue, correctly, that all parties are better off as a result of the exchange of goods in the free market, what they failed to observe (although did not fail to notice, I'll wager) was that the developed world took 95% of the gain, and emerging nations got just 5%.
When said emerging nations try to equalize this mutual gain through various non-free-market moves such as, er, subsidizing a home industry, the overseas guys shout "protectionism!!!"
Needless to say, said developed nation is no slouch when it comes to protectionism itself when the goods or services (or tax revenues) of their own countries are under threat. Steel, for example, or even online gaming....
PJ
Re: entertaining tales from Ye Olde Axe
Date: 2007-05-20 04:06 pm (UTC)Aksu
Re: Ricardo and Comparative Advantage
Date: 2007-05-20 05:07 pm (UTC)I was thinking more in terms of the Three Body problem in gravitational physics; which doesn't proceed from induction.
Of course, as usual, economists present the theory in a one dimensional, ie monetary, way. I don't necessarily care that I'm crap at keeping wicket; I enjoy it. (So do spectators with an appropriately infantile sense of humour.) Even in the 2x2 case, therefore, the question of measurement imposes itself.
I do take your (slightly bitter) point on th 95/5, though. What I find galling is the naked disconnect between "fundamental principle that is America's gift to the Free World" and "bugger me, there's 5 million votes in Ohio." I prefer the French way, which is for Sarkozy to appear hard-line by insisting on "no public subsidy" for EADS and, in the same breath, allow that his government is planning to inject "new capital" into the company, but only so that they can sell their shares later, at a profit. They even have a phrase to describe their philosophy: "Fuck you, we're French."
What's rather sad is that the people of emerging nations have been driven, through desperation, to believe this crap. The Observer today quoted a Kossovan Albanian (surely the very definition of an emerging nation) as saying "When we get independence, the World Bank will give us subsidies, and then everything will be fine." I foresee a massive influx of Albanian strippers into a bar near you, very soon now.