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.

Music is Life!

Redi Tlhabi is one of South Africa's best talk show hosts. She gets to the heart of many issues, without imposing her opinions on others, by letting them speak freely and openly. She is well known and liked on 702 radio in Joburg. Her new show is on Aljazeera English called South 2 North. It just aired its first show, and is well worth watching. I just wish more people could see it. She has also published her first book, "Endings and Beginnings"

The Last Word on the 2012 US Presidential Election

Some of the few honest moments of the US Presidential Election farce came from the Gregory Brothers on YouTube.

Allan Lichtman Gets It Right

I found this video after reading the NPR story "October Surmise: Predicting The Next President" written in October, when all the TV news channels were getting breathless about the presidential "horse race" that was "too close to call". His "13 Keys to the Presidency" focuses on the fundamentals of the political and economic space, not the rhetoric of the campaign. It seems he got it right.
See "What Earthquakes Can Teach Us About Elections" on NPR.

The Business of Politics

Whenever I look at American politics I have to cry, because America's leaders are so corrupt it makes Zimbabwe look like a cake sale. I couldn't ignore the irony of the Huffington Post video about Mitt Romney and Bain Capital, the company that helped make him rich.
What is ironic is that whan Bain Capital (or the mafia) did to those companies is exactly what the politicians, lobbyists and "special interests" (i.e. the banks) did to the political system. Most congressmen are millionaires, yet they are elected by poor people. They add trillions to the national debt, cut taxes to wealthy people and big companies, and their backers (i.e. the banks) make even more money in the interest on all the debt being racked up.
Sooner or later someone is going to have to repay those loans, at $50,000 per person in the USA. You don't need to be a rocket scientist to know who will foot the bill. Hint: it won't be the rich bastards who caused the mess in the first place.

A Fascinating Insight Into Independent Game Development

I recommend this movie for two reasons: the first is that you can buy it for only $10, and the second is that it offers a fascinating insight into the trials and tribulations of game developers.
Not all video games are produced by multi-million dollar teams of programmers. Some are produced by small, independently funded developers in teams of 1 to 3. This movie tracks the stories of several games through their development.

New Adobe Fonts for Programmers

Thanks to the Security Now podcast, I have discovered Adobe's two new open source free fonts, Source Sans Pro (above) and Source Code Pro (top). The are free for download at SourceForge: the links are below.
The Source Sans Pro font is designed for GUI applications, and Source Code Pro is for code editors like Visual Studio or EditPad Pro. I have changed my browser's default monospaced font to Source Code Pro as well, and it is much more legible that Courier New, especially when it comes to similar characters like I, i, 1, L and l; or O, o and 0. Hopefully I'll spot a few bugs this way. I plan to use them for a while, until they either annoy me completely or I stop noticing them, and miss them when I'm working on someone else's computer.
They are also available as web fonts using Google Fonts or TypeKit.com, so they can easily be incorporated into web sites.
Update Friday 5 Oct: After a week of fiddling with various font settings, I have decided that Source Code Pro 10pt is too small, and 11pt is too big, but not by much. So for my 50-year-old eyesight I'm sticking with 11pt for now.