Bad IT Systems; Stupid Customer Service

=: Late Fees And Charges Still Apply :=

My Aunt died in January. CitiBank billed her for February and March
for their monthly service charge on her credit card, and then added
late fees and interest on the monthly charge... the balance had been
$0.00 and now is $60.00.

I placed the following phone call to CitiBank:

Me: "I am calling to tell you that my aunt died in January."

CitiBank: "The account was never closed and the late fees and charges
still apply."

Me: "Maybe, you should turn it over to collections ..."

CitiBank: "Since it is two months past due, it already has been."

Me: "So, what will they do when they find out she is dead?"

CitiBank: "Either report her account to the frauds division, or
report her to the credit bureau... maybe both!"

Me: "Do you think God will be mad at her?"

CitiBank:" ... excuse me....?"

Me: "Did you just get what I was telling you... the part about her
being dead?"

CitiBank: "Sir, you'll have to speak to my supervisor!"

(Supervisor gets on the phone)

Me: ''I'm calling to tell you, my Aunt died in January."

CitiBank: "The account was never closed and the late fees and charges
still apply."

Me: "You mean you want to collect from her estate?"

CitiBank: "[stammer] Are you her lawyer?"

Me: "No, I'm her great nephew." (Lawyer info given... )

CitiBank: "Could you fax us a certificate of death?"

Me: "Sure." [Fax number is given]

(After they get the fax.)

CitiBank: "Our system just isn't set up to deal with a death."

Me: "Oh..."

CitiBank: "I don't know what more I can do to help..."

Me: "Well... if you figure it out, great! If not, you could just keep
billing her ... I suppose ... don't really think she will care ...."

CitiBank: "Well... the late fees and charges do still apply."

Me: "'Would you like her new billing address?"

CitiBank: "That might help."

Me: "Odessa Memorial Cemetery, Hwy 129 [plot number given]."

CitiBank: "Sir, that's a cemetery!"

Me: "What do you do with dead people on your planet?!!"

-- Lifted from a mailing list email

Looks like CitiBank needs a new CTO. As for the customer service reps, what were they thinking? How can they let an IT system (and a bad one at that) constrain their actions? If they can't deal with unusual situations like this, then they are not adding value on top of the system, and the company is better off firing these guys and let customers talk directly to the computer.

Technology should support our work, not the other way round.

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Facebook Friends Search

Today I was doing some research on Facebook as part of my work, when I hit upon an interesting feature. Actually it's just the friends search function. The interesting part comes from Facebook trying to show you people you are more likely to know, and it does that by looking at the number of mutual friends between the two of you. What's really cool is Facebook will show you these mutual friends.

Still, why is it interesting? Because it lets you discover connections you never thought existed. Most of time the mutual friends are from the same "group", for example my primary school friends, so it is not surprising they are all friends with that person. Occassionally, I find a person knows two of my friends but from different groups. As far as I know these two friends aren't related to each other, but they know the same person!

I wonder if this feature can be used for some kind of datamining application, such as finding out if two of your friends from different groups knows each other. I am sure more malicious applications exists. It is also remarkable that I can find these connections given I have only added about 60 friends. Imagine what you can come up with if you have hit the friends cap of 5000?

From Introvert To Extrovert

Before my Costa Rican volunteering trip, I was rather nervous. Not because I was going to a foreign place whose people speak in a language I didn't understand, nor was I worried about the security of the country. ISV assigned to me a community project, meaning I would be working closely with the locals. Being an introvert there was some concern that I would find it hard to fit into the culture. Throughout my life I was always the person no one really cared about. My friends don't totally ignore me, but I'm definitely not the most important friend, the first one that comes to mind. I am never great at creating conversations -- in fact I question the need to converse just to break the silence -- which doesn't help with attracting my friends' attention. All these experiences lead me to conclude that I will be left out in the project: the person who works in the background, and when he leave the project no one would remember him, or even notice he has departed.

My fears turned out to be unfounded. During the project I felt I was being recognised by the locals as well as my group members. You can say this was my first taste of being an extrovert. As a result I now feel more comfortable working with people. I am still a long way from becoming an outspoken person, the centre of attention. That's fine. I don't aim to be a celebrity in my life. All I need is enough courage to actively look for people I can help, rather than wait for them to seek my assistance.

Reverse Gotcha Calls

A Gotcha Call is the name adopted by radio station FOX for a prank call. Usually a prank call is initiated by the prankster, however if an annoying person calls you up an opportunity exists to play a little prank on them. I term this a reverse gotcha call.

It is not difficult to guess which type of callers are most likely to fall prey to a reverse gotcha call -- the telemarketing people, of course. Lately a lot of calls are marketing for mobile phone plans. Here are some ideas to extract entertainment value out of an otherwise disruptive call:

• After the initial greeting, immediately start a stopwatch and stop talking to the phone even if the salesman asks a question. See how long they keep talking before realising no one cares and hangs up.
• A variation of the first one. See how long you can keep them engaged before they realise you are just wasting their time. Only do this if you are very free.
  
• If they offer a new phone with the plan, insist they give you an Apple iPhone or you don't want it. Applicable to countries where the iPhone is not available, which at the moment is everywhere except the U.S. (I did this once already but the caller didn't seem to know what an iPhone is.)
• Insist they give you better or more freebies, like a free trip or petrol voucher. Tell them the last marketing call you got offered those items. Then start demanding more and more unrealistic things like a Barbie doll house, a brand new BMW, an Airbus A380, and finally (if you get this far) a pollution-spewing nuclear power plant in Springfield.
  
• If the caller is from India, which is quite likely these days, put on Indian Thriller or some other Indian music. Then hold the phone up to the speakers or just crank up the volume. Look for a reaction on the other end.

A last option, conceived out of frustration at the salesperson hanging up as soon as they found out they won't get a sale, is to return in kind: replace your phone onto its cradle (or charging dock) as soon as you have identified the caller as a telemarketer. See how quickly you can do this without hanging up on the wrong person such as your parents or boyfriend/girlfriend.

Free countires...?

There was a time when I considered countries like the U.S. and the U.K. as "free" countries. Countries such as China used to scare me because the government was so powerful that the slightest hint of dissent will result in your imprisonment. Back then I was lucky enough to believe in a black and white world, where the Western countries were the good guys whereas dictatorships such as the Chinese government were inherently evil.

As I learned more about the world, I discovered things are never truly black and white, only in various shades of grey. Nonetheless, it was not difficult to convince myself that the Western countries come in much light greys than my own Motherland.

I can no longer say that.

I have read news reports stating London has over a million surveillance cameras in operation. I have heard complaints that the British government is becoming Big Brother. My impression of the country is that ever since 9/11 and especially the London bombing, it had enacted laws that substantially empowered law enforcement. I can't say whether the police is abusing their newly acquired power, but it nonetheless scares me, the way the Chinese government scares me.

The situation in the U.S. is a little different but just as worrying. I have read many articles about students getting suspended for doing the most trivial thing -- doodling a gun for example -- as well as people getting arrested for the most ridiculous reasons, such as standing around on the street. My impression of America now is that the slightest nonconformity will set off alarms that can get you into trouble. Since I generally hate conformity and might even unconsciously strive to be different, this makes me feel uncomfortable if not down right afraid.

I think "free" countries are a lot less free now, and most of the erosion of freedom occurred after the 9/11 terrorist attack, usually under the guise of security measures against further terrorist attacks. If you think about it, these security measures would have come in force regardless of the Coalition's achievements in Iraq, the so called "War on Terror". If this war really is about getting back our freedom, then we have lost miserably, even before the first soldier set foot in Afghanistan or Iraq.

We were defeated the minute we began to trade freedom for security.