An Open Letter to Nedbank

Dear Nedbank
This is just a quick note to thank you for sending me unsolicited snail mail. I'm glad it was only snail mail and not email, because otherwise you would have been violating the ECT Act as well as the other laws and ethics you just broke.
You see, it's not only unethical to buy names and addresses of random people and then run a credit check on them without their knowledge, it's bad business. However, Nedbank is also a member of the Direct Marketing Association, and as such has publicly agreed to abide by their code of conduct. Sending me such a letter, signed by Graeme Holmes, the Head of Consumer Cards, is thus a breach of their code of conduct, and tells me that you were really sloppy and didn't check my name against their "Do Not Contact List". Either that, or you just really don't care about my privacy.
Now credit card companies are notoriously bad about "leaking" names to direct marketers, but in South Africa that's a criminal offence. By sending me this letter you have identified yourselves as a "dodgy bank" (aren't they all?) who is incapable of keeping my contact details private, as you are required by law. Alternatively, you are happy to ignore the privacy of any future clients by buying my name from a dodgy marketer, with no morals and no scruples. I guess that makes you guys a perfect fit.
So since you have identified yourselves to me as a company who keeps company with criminals (or are criminals yourselves by violating the law), I have decided, as a public service, to identify your unethical behaviour to the public at large. I'm also going to warn them, courtesy of this article, that your credit card fees are, to put it bluntly, greedy and excessive. They are double what I am paying. Small wonder you are willing to go to the expense of sending me snail mail, and paying for my name and address. Shame on you!
And before your self-satisfied smug sense of outrage kicks in, I did personally warn your organisation that I do not take kindly to unsolicited marketing campaigns. The date: 9th January 2007. I guess you didn't get or read the memo. Ag, shame!
Yours sincerely
Donn Edwards

Update Monday 5pm: Nedbank's chief twit wants me to send my ID number to them via Twitter. Funny, I supplied this information many years ago, and it is also in the DMA's Do Not Contact list. They would have to have it when the bought the marketing list in order to comply with the DMA's Code of Conduct. Clearly they haven't complied with the code of conduct, which is why are now looking stupid with egg on their faces.
Update Tuesday 12: In reading through the Nedbank Code of Ethics I find no mention of the word "privacy", even though Nedbank ascribes to the DMA's Code of Conduct, but it does mention the word "confidentiality" several times. Clearly Nedbank doesn't think my contact details are confidential enough to worry about. I guess they aren't really serious about their Code of Ethics, and write it off as public relations double-speak.
Update Thursday 14: I finally heard from Graeme Holmes, after I guessed his email address (first name, plus first letter of surname, followed by Nedbank domain name) since I wasn't getting anywhere with the HelloPeter complaint drones. Graeme is convinced that I must have been an account holder with Nedbank at some point, because they don't buy lists of names. I corrected this false assumption, and await the results of an internal investigation. Yeah, right.
Update Wednesday 20 Feb: It's a welcome change to have to eat my own words. I was pleasantly surprised to receive a personal letter of explanation from Graeme Holmes today. They used the wrong database (an old one) and didn't check it correctly against the DMA's database. I was a signatory on an account for the Body Corporate where I live, which is why I appeared on the "old" database and not on the current one. So we were both right. Thanks for the extra effort, Graeme. You are a credit to your organisation. (Bad pun not intended)

FNB's Evil Banking System

I'm unhappy with my bank right now. Given that it's the end of January, this is hardly surprising. What makes it worse is that there are some people at FNB who are trying really hard to paper over the cracks, but underneath their system sucks. Like most banks, it is greedy, manipulative, and criminally irresponsible. So I'm singling out FNB because it is my bank, not because its the worst, or the best. It's just evil.
The "platinum" credit card springs to mind: it's plastic, not metal, but then marketing and lies are always good bedfellows. When I tried to "upgrade" my existing card to the "platinum" card they "approved in principle" a credit limit of 300% of my monthly salary. Yes folks, 3 times what I earn! Are they insane? I asked the FNB CEO.
He didn't deny it, and went on to say they think a monthly debt repayment amount should not be more that 30% of a person's salary. So, notwithstanding the amount I pay on my bond every month is already 20% of my salary before tax, they were happy to burden me with a massive debt every month amounting to 30% of my income. They call this "prudent"; I call it criminal.
The minimum monthly repayment on credit card debt is 10% of the amount owing, plus interest of 21%. Both of these are fixed by law. So the maths is then quite simple: if you repay 30% of your income and that represents 10% of your debt, it seems reasonable to lend you 300% of your salary. What the evil little bankers don't explain is that at 21% interest, your debt doubles every 20 months, so it's going to take a lot longer than 10 months to pay off the debt you incurred in the first place.
They also seem to think they are doing you a favour by lending you so much money. Actually, they are setting you up for a nice little interest repayment and profit. Anyone stupid enough to run up their credit card debt (notice how it's called "credit", not "debt", because "credit" sounds less evil) to 300% their salary is going to spend years getting out of that mess, if they ever do. That's another reason why the bank is criminally irresponsible.
The next "gotcha" is for people like me who keep their credit card limit low. As it turned out, the R800 limit was a little too low, and I inadvertently exceeded it. Twice. At R220 per time. What galls me even more is that if you make a payment on a Sunday, they only process it on the Monday. But they are happy to process debits on a Sunday, and charge the overlimit fee of R220, without even blinking, knowing full well that your payment will only be processed on the Monday.
When I questioned this practice, they tried to lie to me and tell me they processed the debits on the Saturday, when I have both email and SMS proof that it was done on Sunday. (See update below)
The next monumental "gotcha" happened when they "upgraded" my card. I arranged for a more practical limit of R1500, and the R61.25 card fee would be paid monthly, not annually. So they went ahead and changed the card number, issued the new cards to my wife and myself, and promptly charged me the R735** annual card fee. If I had maintained my previous card limit they would have also hit me with a third R220 overlimit fee. Needless to say I was not impressed.
The card division could easily explain to me that this was because, in spite of the fact that they opened the new account this month, my longstanding credit card arrangement still fell under the Usuary Act, not the National Credit Act, and as such they weren't allowed to charge me monthly. (Really??) This led to the most glaringly obvious question: "Why didn't you tell me in advance that the monthly option was not available?" They, of course, shrugged their shoulders and denied any responsibility. (Criminally irresponsible?)
"It's the system" was their only defence. "Well, then, fix the system!" I demanded. Silence.
Silence. Exactly. That's the evil part. The system will extract as many fees as possible in the process, and no, they will not entertain the possibility of improving it, unless that "improvement" means they can extract further bank fees or interest from the public. They are not prepared to modify their system to warn their customers in advance. Why should they? The worst the customer will do is rant and rave at a call centre operator, which is what they are paid for.
The easy part was telling me the reason for the R735** deduction. It has taken longer to fix the problem. This involved creating another new credit card account and going through another credit approval process, this time under the National Credit Act. For this privilege they are now going to charge me a further R135*, but of course they didn't tell me about that when they explained how to fix the other problem. Of course not, because I would have told them where to shove it. Why the need for a card fee at all? Aren't the greedy bastards satisfied with the 5% or more they get from merchants on each transaction, or from the 21% interest they charge when payments are late? Clearly not. And it's not like they have to find the money to lend to their credit card clients: they can "invent" most of it. But that's another story.
One further screw up: when they created the new card account they ignored the credit limit amount of R1500 that I confirmed on the phone, and changed it to R1350 instead. Why? Because they could. So it took another phone call to fix it, plus another phone call to get the new card account to show on my online banking profile. Clearly their system could do with a few improvements. For consumers.


Now you know why I believe that the collective noun for bankers is very appropriate: it's a "wunch" of bankers.
Update Tue 29 January: FNB Card Division has agreed to reverse the second overlimit fee. They claim the deduction was made on the Saturday, but the SMS notification messages were only sent on the Sunday, and (conveniently) blame this on "external service providers", while making no mention of the failure of their own internal email system. My guess is that the deductions are not synchronized with the notifications, and the notifications were only sent the following day.
Basically, the InContact "security" system is not reliable, and therefore offers no "security" whatsoever. It's a good marketing gimmick when it works, and a major pain when it doesn't. Basically, whenever you buy anything and don't receive the SMS immediately, you need to keep the slip separately, and check it off when the transaction eventually appears. In the meantime, the "available credit" figure they provide is misleading and wrong.
**Had I borrowed R735 as a short term loan from FNB, the repayment amount (within 1 month) would have been R824.90, which includes an "initiation" fee of R74.90. Since FNB took the money from me, they charged me an initiation fee of R135*, and didn't even pay interest when they reversed the transaction. I'm sure they don't think anything is wrong either.
Update Wed 30 January: *Card Division has quietly reversed the R135 card initiation fee. I had requested this because I didn't see why I should pay it when it wasn't my fault that I had to apply for a new card in the first place.
So now all the objectionable charges have been manually reversed, but there is no indication from anyone at FNB that the systems that caused them have been fixed. One can only hope, although I'm not holding my breath.

Marketing Lies told by Banks

"Congratulations, you could qualify for a limit increase ..." Does the bank really think I'm that stupid? They want to lend me money, to increase my debt, and to increase their profit, and I should be congratulated? This is one of the many lies told every day by banks and other financial institutions. And then you wonder why the world economy is in such a mess.

Standard Bank's surprise Cheque Deposit Fee annoys customers

I hate it when companies introduce unpopular charges and then weasel their way out of explaining it to their customers. Did they think that no one would notice? Or that they'd be happy about it? Or that their business customers would shrug it off?
I searched their web site press release page, and found nothing. How surprising. It's in their 2011 Bank Fees document, but that's about as far as it goes. It has a section on deposit fees, but deliberately avoids mentioning the cheque deposit fee, although it mentions that cash deposits at an ATM are free. Evasiveness is not that different to dishonesty.
A complaint on HelloPeter is answered equally evasively, with no one owning up to the new fee structure or admitting anything. How nice. I'm sure "agrityre" at HelloPeter must be delighted. "Emile" on Facebook was thrilled. He wrote

GOOD GOD!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! IS THERE NO LIMITS TO THE WAYS IN WHICH YOU WILL RIP US OFF???????????????

Now my biggest customer is having to charge R12.49 for any cheque payments under R1000, even if the cheque is from another bank. That's because R12.50 without VAT is R10.964, so rounding it off to the nearest cent and then adding VAT gives either R12.49 or R12.51. What a nightmare.
Update 27 Jan: My customer received the following notification via email from Gary Larsson, Account Executive, Standard Bank Business Banking - Sandton:

On 1 January 2011 Business Bank introduced a cheque deposit fee of R12.50 for each cheque deposited. Following further feedback received on this matter, we have decided to suspend the cheque deposit fee with immediate effect and reverse all cheque deposit fees that have been incurred by yourselves from 1 January 2011 to date.
Please note that this is a fee suspension and not a fee withdrawal. The intention remains for the Bank to promote alternative forms of making and receiving payments that are more affordable, more secure and faster to use.
Where it becomes necessary to review our position on this matter, we will do so and advise you accordingly.

That's the closest we'll get to the bank admitting that it screwed up. I guess they can always blame it on "the man with the melon hat". That's why I no longer bank with the (sub)Standard Bank.

MTN's Marketing Incompetence Again

MTN is my cell phone company, and it probably has the worst marketing division on the planet. They also break the law on a regular basis. Today I got a call from a rude man on 083-212-4311 who was promoting MTN Banking. All I can say is if that's the kind of service you get from MTN Banking, rather deal with a real bank.
I understand that MTN and Standard Bank are large organisations, but surely they have a method in place whereby they can comply with the law? I have tried on numerous occasions to tell both Standard Bank and MTN not to call me. Today I tracked down the Company Secretary for MTN, and asked for her help. You can call MTN Head Office on 011 912 3000, which is an exercise in communications itself. I have also contacted the marketing department of Standard Bank, and the help line for MTN Banking. Perhaps a combination of these will help. Until they call again. I wonder if it would help if I took them to court? Mmm ...

MTN's Marketing Incompetence |MTNSP: Marketing Gone Mad | MTN sends SMS spam and breaks the law | HelloPeter complaint | MTN's Marketing Incompetence Again

Finally! Barclaycard Apologises

It took them long enough, but I eventually got an apology from Barclaycard for their illegal marketing activities and invasion of privacy.
The original offending letter is dated 26th July 2007, and arrived in the mail the following Monday. I complained to Barclaycard enquiries on 30th July 2007, i.e. 14 weeks ago.
This is the letter of apology I received today from Chris Sweeney, Managing Executive of Absa Card. His letter refers to a complaint of 22 October: clearly someone at ABSA has misled him to avoid being fired, since my complaint was not made 4 weeks ago, but 14 weeks ago. Even my complaint to the DMA was lodged in mid September.
I guess I should be thankful for an apology at all, even though no apology is made for buying my data from Experian/P-Cubed/Effective Intelligence, or for failing to check this data against the DMA "Do Not Call" list.

Part I: BarclayCard Breaks the Law | Part II: BarclayCard Bungles Again | Part III: BarclayCard and P:Cubed - more ducking and diving | Part IV: Finally! BarclayCard Apologises

BarclayCard and P:Cubed - more ducking and diving

A sure sign of trouble is when everyone blames everyone else, but no-one is prepared to take responsibility. I don't think its deliberate deception necessarily; see Napoleon's quote above.
I wrote to Raoul Miller at P:Cubed and asked:

I am led to believe that your company supplied my name and address and/or sent out a letter on their behalf to me in July 2007, promoting BarclayCard. Is this the case?

I also mentioned the ECT Act.
Raoul Miller replied as follows:

Dear Donn,
Many thanks for your note below.
To ensure absolute clarity: P:Cubed is a Direct Marketing Services Business. We do not own consumer identification data but instead enrich consumer behavioural and contact data, available to our clients under various access licenses and perform an analytical, data processing, modelling and advisory services function; better described at www.p-cubed.co.za
We are not in a position to comment or provide opinion on the ECT Act but would suggest the following website for details as to the objectives and application of such act.
To specifically answer your questions below and to provide transparency of the process:

• Your identity details would have been sourced by ABSA (who operate the Barclaycard brand) from a registered marketing list provider who would be a member of the Direct Marketing Association (DMA)
• Your address details would have been then obtained and enriched from one of the two national credit bureaus
• Regarding the ‘Do not Contact’ list, commonly referred to as Opt-out list in the Direct Marketing Industry:

Opt-out services are in place to provide consumer protection from the receipt of unsolicited direct marketing offers – the next draft of the Consumer Data Protection Bill (DTI) will in fact provide for a national Optout register which will in all likelihood be branded by the Direct Marketing Association (DMA).
Given that the Consumer Data Protection Bill has not yet been promulgated into law (it is still in the process of being drafted); there is no one central database against which a consumer can register their identification details to ensure that they do not form part of a direct marketing campaign.
Once legislation is in place and the central Opt-out infrastructure has been built, this additional level of consumer protection will be in place.
There are a number of Opt-out databases being maintained nationally with no one primary database at this point in time.
To try and ensure the most comprehensive service and coverage, P:Cubed host our own service as well as acquire copies of the relevant databases on a regular basis to add to its growing pool of Opt-out data. Please feel free to visit www.optout.co.za to register.
The currency of these databases is though limited to the regularity of update (as opposed to registration by consumers on such list) and the access to which any one organisation (including P:Cubed) is given to such databases – there is no current legislation in this regard and timing of consumer registration and data acquisition by any party impacts the ability to completely cover all registrations effectively.
I do hope this assists; please drop me a line if you require further information.

So much for clarity. I added the bold bits because they are particularly unclear and sound like Pentagon-speak. I tried contacting him on 082-379-9994 but just got voice mail.
I have had to read this several times to figure out what he actually said. Does this mean that my name is not on his opt-out list which is why I should register? Does it mean that because they are not compelled by law to use the DMA's list that therefore they do not? Is he trying to say that the bank, being a member of the DMA, should have screened their data before passing it on to them to "enrich" it from the Experian database?
BarclayCard has on different occasions said that they got my details from both ETL Solutions and/or Effective Intelligence. Both have assured me that this is not the case and they are fully aware of my "do not contact" status, and have been for some time.
Now we come to the "two national credit bureaus". I assume he means Experian and TransUnion ITC. I have contacted both of them some time ago (2004), when I was writing my Privacy blog, and asked them to make a note that I do not wish their data to be used for marketing purposes. They both refused or ignored my request.
According to Brian Mdluli of the DMA, the ECT Act doesn't apply to snail mail because it isn't electronic communication, which is a nice loophole. When I phoned him on 083-401-5900 (They changed premises last month and are still waiting for land lines) he said the DMA had taken up the matter with ABSA and that remedial action would be taken. I suggested that BarclayCard should be forced to send a letter of apology to all the people it sent the original letter to, but he said I was being unreasonable. Maybe they could reduce it to the people on the DNC list who were sent the letter and who should not have been. BarclayCard promised to send me a letter of apology in early August. I guess snail mail is to blame, but it hasn't arrived after 4 weeks.

Part I: BarclayCard Breaks the Law | Part II: BarclayCard Bungles Again | Part III: BarclayCard and P:Cubed - more ducking and diving | Part IV: Finally! BarclayCard Apologises | Sick of junk mail in your postbox?