Enough!

Image by Getty Images via Daylife

I have a bank account with a certain large bank's Jersey branch. The reason that people usually bank in Jersey is to somehow avoid the taxman, and I am no different. Because of my tax status, I am allowed (supposedly) to keep a very small percentage of my taxes back from the UK tax man. In order to take advantage of that privelege, however, my money needs to not be repatriated to the UK, which means that it needs to be payed directly into an offshore account. I turns out that, even with this mechanism in place, I had trouble with making my refund claim this year, but generally it is worth doing.

My bank, like many banks, seems to have a really arrogant feeling towards it's customers: They started to charge me £20 per month about two years ago, simply for the privelege of having an account, and their charges for certain transactions are silly. However, because my choice of offshore banks that do business in pounds sterling, that are part of the UK banking system, and therefore can be used for direct debits and whose debit card can easily be used is limited, and once you have 16 direct debits set up, it takes something reasonably major to push you toward change.

It has been building up for a while, but yesterday was the last straw, and this camel's not having any more of it. I am so hacked off with them that I was literally speechless yesterday.

My discontent is not a new thing. Firstly, they sent me a premier account card a couple of years ago, which had some additional benefits advertised, like a premier credit card with a better rate of interest, a better rate on a morgtage, access to lounges (which I actually used in Istanbul), and free transfers between accounts in different countries. All sounds great, right? Well, last year I needed to deposit some money in the account in order to cover some direct debits that were coming up. I asked them how I could quickly do that, and they said, 'mail us the cheque, and we will credit it to your account in 5 working days.' The problem was that the debits were coming up.
'So,' I asked, 'do you have a facilitiy for an overdraft?'
'No, sir, I am sorry, but that is only available to premier accounts.'
'Well,' says I,' I have one of them. '
'I'm sorry sir, but your account is not a premier account.'
'Then why does my debit card say 'premier' on it?' ask I.
'I don't know sir, but your account is not a premier account.'
'Well it *was* a premier account, and if it is no longer one, why wasn't I told?'
'I'm sorry, but all I know is that it isn't a premier account, and so your query about an overdraft will not be possible. Can I help you with anything else today?'
'Yeah, you can help me by giving the phone to your manager. I am not happy with your inability to answer my simple question: WHY IS MY ACCOUNT NO LONGER A PREMIER ACCOUNT?'
'I'm sorry sire, but my manager is not available. Would you like someone to call you back?'
'Yes. When?'
'Within 4 working days.'
'Four working days!?'
'Yes sir.'
'Are you taking the mickey?'
'No, sir. That is the SLA (he actually said that) for our response.'
'Right. So, I can expect someone to call me after I actually have a problem? Here I am calling you to try to figure out a way to either get money in the account or get an overdraft arranged, and you will have someone call me in four days...not bloody good enough.'
'I will mention your displeasure sir. Have a nice day.' (I don't remember if he actually said that, but his generally chirpy demeanour would be consistent with that).

No one ever called me back.

Fast forward to a week ago when I was in Costco buying some stuff. I tried my debit card, and it didn't work. I thought this might happen, as they had sent me a new card, and the old one was meant to expire at the end of the month. Never mind that it was only the 29th. I had the new one ready, and tried that one. I was told that 'the pin number is incorrect.' See, this was actually after I had tried the new one and gotten the same message. After I had called the bank and been assured that was just because they hadn't switched over to my new card yet, and when my old one expired my new one should work with the same PIN number. So, here I am at Costco, with five people in line behind me, and I had to run over to the ATM and use my Amex card to get some cash, with lots of unhappy people glaring at me. When I got home I called the bank and had a conversation along the lines of this:
'Yes, I received a new debit card, and when I put in the PIN number it doesn't work.'
'But it should work, sir.'
'Yes, but it doesn't.'
'Well, sir, would you like us to send a new PIN number?'
'How long will that take?'
'Five to seven working days.'
'Well, I think you can do better than that. I don't want to wait 5-7 working days to have access to my own money.'
'We can send it by DHL, but there is a charge for that.'
'I don't think so. I know my PIN, and it is not working with this card. That is a problem with your systems, and there is no reason why I should pay anything extra for you to sort this problem as quickly as possible.'
'Well, sir, we can open an investigation, and if it turns out that it was our fault, we will refund the money.'
'And how long does the investigation take?'
'Two to three working days.'
'Right, so here is what you will do: You will start the investigation, and at the same time send the PIN by DHL.'
'Yes, we will do that, but please realise that there will be a charge for the DHL until the investigation is finished.'
'Fine. Since I am absolutely sure that you will find that you screwed up.'
'I screwed up sir?' he asked indignantly.
'Not you personally, your bank.' Plonker. What other meaning could there be, and is he not aware that he represents his employer?
'Can I help you with anything else today, sir?'
'No.'

Fast forward to Thursday. I received a call from a very apologetic woman from the bank who assured me that they were doing everything possible to rectify the situation, and as a token they would credit £25 to my account for telephone charges. I said that all I wanted was access to my money, and she assured me that I would be receiving the new PIN by the next day.

I did indeed receive the PIN by Friday, but was in London all day, so I didn't have a chance to check it, and preferably change the PIN to a preferred PIN. I tried that yesterday at Tesco. Can you guess what happened? It didn't work!

I called when I got home, and was told that there was a general problem with PINs not correctly matching to newly issued cards, and to please destroy my card, because a new card and PIN number would be sent out immediately. How soon, I asked, is immediately? Five to seven working days. No, you will send it by DHL and you will refund me the cost. Ok, right, can you tell me the reason why we should pay the cost? Because it is the result of your mistake, and it has caused me to not have access to my funds for a week now. Right, ok, I will put that down. Big of you. You might also add that I will seriously be considering moving my account to another bank. Well, sir, that is your right. Yep. And since I am not insane, which I would have to be to continue to do business with your bank, I will be very carefully weighing my options.

What I didn't say was that after they started charging £20 a month, I got upset and had opened an account at one of the competitors, where they don't charge that amount, and who have a much better intergration of their offshore account with their UK-based branches, so depositing cheques and so forth is much simpler. I had never activated it, because of the abovementioned pain of moving all of my direct debits. Yesterday was it, though. I moved my salary to pay into the new account, and changed without much hassle three of the 16 direct debits. I will be making more phone calls and visists on Monday to change the remaining ones. I also moved money into the account so that I could use the debit card. That cost me £25, but I figured I was ok, at least I had access to my money.

By the way, there is still a £17 charge on my account for the DHL fee. Oh, and the £20 monthly charge was charged yesterday.

And bankers wonder why they garner so much hate.

Snow and Picture

It snowed today, virtually bringing the UK to a halt. It isn't a major storm on the scale of some of the ones I saw when I went to school in Minnesota, but there is a lot less infrastructure for dealing with it. So, I decided to work from home, and Christopher's school was cancelled.
Separately, I got some gift certificates from my company for doing above the expected level on the Paddington project, and bought myself a really nifty Nikon D40 digital SLR.
So, I went out for a walk and took a bunch of pictures. I am still figuring out how to set the aperture and shutter speed, but the great thing about digital cameras is that they don't cost much to learn. Anyway, here is one of my first attempts to use it.

Religion, Race, and Nationality in the Obama Era

Image by futureatlas.com via FlickrOur first black president. That is what a lot of people are calling Barack Obama. He seems to include himself among those who identify him not as mixed race, not as white who happens to have an African father, not as Hawaiian, not as any of the identities in the melting pot of identities that he could adopt if he chose, but as black.
I personally believe that his choice was a powerful one which will bring all Americans closer to a level of acceptance and respect for one another that has often been coloured by color. The absolute hopefulness that a black man becoming president represents is one of those things that, as one British journalist put it, could only happen in America.
What I find truly amazing about Obama, and also really hopeful, is the way that he has, as much as Jay Gatsby, defined who he is in the world. Half American, half Kenyan, yet here he is as the pillar of American conciousness. A middle name of Hussein, and a mother whose religious beliefs were quite open and free, Obama chose to be a Christian, and a Christian whose flavour of Christianity is deeply rooted in an African-American culture. Half white, half black, yet look at his diction, at his mannerisms, at his rhetoric, and it is clear that he has made a conscious and sustained effort to behave as a black man. Nowhere in his speech can you hear the Hawaiian influences, despite him having grown up there. In fact, you hear the speech of an urban black man, and specifically an urban black man from Chicago. That, despite the fact that he was raised by a white grandmother from Kansas. But he had choices, and he made choices. Certainly, as a half black man in America, the perception would probably always be there that he was 'black.' Obama chose to make that a positive thing, though, to embrace that identity that was assumed, no matter how at variance it may have been at first with who he 'really' was, how he was raised. That America accepts and believes in those choices is itself a very hopeful thing.
My own family is just such a melting pot, and for the sake of my son, half Japanese, half American, being raised in the UK, and my neice, who had a similar background to Obama, right down to being brought up in one of the last two states in the Union, today is a very hopeful day in the history of America. It is the day that a man who chose to be black has become president. That a man who chose to be American became president. That his choices were not only accepted, but embraced, is a cause for celebration. This is the America that I feel immensly proud of, the America whose ideal is hope, the America that, should my son choose it, is a country where not genetics, background, language, or anything else determines who we are, but where we make choices about all of those things.
There is a lot of hope in that. A lot of hope that real change, a time when none of those things even matter, is just that much closer to reality. We aren't there yet, but today, January 20th, 2009, we just stepped closer.

Dinner with a friend

Ray is a friend that I have had since I came to the UK. When I first came here, he was working on my team at Vodafone. We hit it off, and the first six months, working together, were fantastic. It was wonderful working with someone that I like and respect as much as I do Ray.
I was forced to cancel the contract that he was on, which wasn't great, and there was some drama about a subsequent project, which ended with my boss trying to take advantage of Ray. I made sure that didn't happen, but we didn't work together for quite awhile.
We did, however, stay in touch, and meet up to talk or have the odd beer, and continue to be friends. He is involved with us on a business basis again, but I don't have so much to do with that, since it is more 'strategic', which I don't have much to do with anymore.
But we are still friends. He knew I was feeling down, and tried to get me out of myself for the evening, which I really appreciate. To be honest, he has his own stuff to deal with, so it was quite generous to be thinking about mine.
I really enjoy the chance to just talk to him. We had a great dinner tonight at the Black Swan in Ockham, Surrey. He is a kind of mentor, and talking with him helps me clarify where I am. He has helped me negotiate life in the UK, and working in a big company on many occasions. I feel lucky to have a friend like him.
Besides some shitty stuff happening, he also has some really exciting things happening, and is starting a new company, vPod, which I am sure will do great. Hearing him talk about this, also, was good. It gives me a really good feeling to see someone I know doing something so exciting. Something that I have been involved in, at least to a small degree.

Switching off

Image by _Blaster_ via FlickrI might have mentioned that I have been working quite a lot lately. In return for that, I decided to take some time of in lieu of the weekends missed and the overtime worked. I didn't go to work yesterday, and am not due back until next Tuesday. I don't think that will totally cover what I worked, but will take the rest later.
Yesterday, though, I still worked a couple of hours in total, and it wasn't much of a day off. Even standing watching my son's rugby practise, I got a call from a certain wanker at work. Why I took it, I can't say exactly. We had an arugment, and it was based on his assumption, patently wrong, that I am always trying to weasle out of work and laying it on his guys. I really shouldn't have answered. (...thinking about it just now really pissed me off, and I wrote him a nasty e-mail, which I didn't send...I will wait until I see him in person to tell him off).
After yesterday, I wrote to my boss, and said that I would be turning off my phone, and not answering any e-mails. I actually found that quite hard, as there is a fairly big problem that is really impacting our area. I didn't do very much, but it was a conscious decision, and it was hard to pull back from.
I have e-mail on my phone, which is not a good thing, as it means that I am always aware of the communication that is going on, even in my absence. Working for a mobile phone company, there seems to be a tacit acceptance for employees to use their company phone as their single phone, though they can't put that down in writing, or income tax would have to be paid on it. So, even when I am not working, I am available, because I carry my phone with me.
I never thought of it as that unhealthy, since I work less here than I did in Japan, and definitely have a much better work-life balance. But I am starting to think that I should probably get my own phone, and really turn my work one off when I am not working. Not look at e-mails, and really get my head out of it. This has been awhile coming. On my first holiday, to the Algarve, two and a half years ago, I had my PC and really was upset at my then-boss. Fourteen months ago, when I went to Japan, I carried my phone and PC, and answered work e-mails, and last summer in Italy, with my mom over, I also answered e-mails, though since it was in August there weren't that many.
I think the difference is that this time I can't seem to extricate my own head from it as easily, partially because there is a lot going on, but also because I have been working more than usual, and suddenly switching that off isn't easy.
I will check e-mails tomorrow, though, as I made a bet that layoffs would be announced, and I just want to see if I won the £5. Every little helps.
Speaking of which, Tescos have a deal on energy-saving lightbulbs at the moment that is incredible: I got 5 20w (equivalent to a 100w incandecent bulb) bulbs for £.29. Yes, that is 29p! That is on their own-brand ones, but on GE ones they have another deal--buy one get two free. Bizarre, but very nice. I may be back there tomorrow for some more, though if one believes what is on the label, they also last for 10 years, and therefore I only need as many as I need.
In the end, I probably need a longer holiday to completely switch off. But at least if I am still switched on, I am not wasting energy. ;-)

Poor and hopeless

My wife doesn't much like the UK. There are a lot of things she doesn't like:

• The food. Pub food is generally overpriced and of quite low quality, restaurants are generally expensive, and we don't have lots of money to go out.
• The people. She is Japanese, and can't get used to the laissez faire attitude of Britons. There is just not enough care given where there should be, and the attitude of people is generally not what she would consider 'majime', or serious enough.
  
• The weather. Actually, I disagree with her there, which is quite incredible considering some of the weather-related disasters that have really disrupted my life here, but she doesn't like the rain, and cold, cloudy weather. Fair enough, but I grew up in Oregon, which is pretty much the same.

I remember suggesting some good things about Britain to her:

• The motorways are free and generally quite fast.
• The Indian food is good.
• There are many free museums in London.
• There are some really beautiful villages and countryside.
• Our son can learn English.

Alas, my arguments in favour of our adopted home, while she agreed with most, failed to change her mind. Her comment was something like "if the food, weather, and people are bad, what could you possibly say to change my mind?" Nothing, apparently.

To be honest, I have a significantly less judgemental, and more nuanced view of both the people and the food of Britain. I have lived in four different countries for significant periods, now, and if one went around saying 'everything sucks in this place', you would definitely be miserable. Exhibit 1: My wife.

My own feeling is that there are good things and bad things about this place, like anywhere else. I am not willing, for my own happiness and sanity, to come down on the side of "the bad outweigh the good in this place." However, there is one thing that I truly do not like about living here: Being poor. The taxes are applied in such a way that, if you were a married couple, and both working, earning £30,000 each per year, you would be about £6,000 per year better off than if just one were working and earning £60,000. That is £500 per month!

Even earning a good salary here, I feel really poor. Well, not only feel poor, but am poor: At the moment, I am £2 overdrawn, with 17 days to go to pay day. This is not the result of profligate spending, though of course I did spend some money on Christmas. It is the result of rising gas and electricity prices, as well as some weird timing: Our company pays out our December salary on the 22nd of December, which was almost 3 weeks ago.

I reduced my combined television, internet, and phone bill from £68 per month to £22. I sold back 9 annual leave days to my company for an after-tax monthly salary increase of about £90 (which is no problem, if you saw my blog post from Monday--I have already earned most of those days back as time off in lieu, and last year and the year before I barely used any paid holidays). I have done economising where it could be done. But I am still £2 overdrawn. Ok, sure, I am putting the maximum amount into company savings plans every month, about £350, which will hopefully increase in value, but are pretty safe to maintain value, and also avoid some of my income tax bill. By later next year, some of this money will be available, and I will hopefully be a little richer than I am now. Hopefully.

However, in this area, the area of hope, Britain does a woefully poor job of increasing the hope of people. It is interesting, people are pathologically afraid to utter positive or hopeful words in this country, and if such words should, by some miracle, pass their lips, they hurry to "knock on wood," that the utterance won't cause the thing they hope for to disappear. Talk about expecting the worst! I got a dose of, perhaps, why people may have this attitude last week:
I did my taxes several months ago, and calculated that the government owed me some money. The calculations were done quite carefully, and using formulae that the accounting firm hired by my company to do my taxes for the last two years had used. I received the incredible news, however, that they believed that I owed £2,000. They ignored an important aspect of my return, and one that I did in exactly the prescribed legal way, and sent me a bill saying that I owe this amount by January 31st, even though they can't give me a formal accounting of why I owe it by that time, because they are busy! I am still liable to a £100 fine if I don't pay it by then.
I won't say the U.S. is better, because I don't think it is. Japan is, though. Their tax authorities don't see it as their job to grab every last penny for the government, only to take what is absolutely necessary to provide essential services. It is much easier to hope there that if I do well it won't all be taken from me. It is also much easier (and cheaper) to not feel poor. There isn't the same sense that anything good that I might have, or that might happen, will be taken by a cynical government.

My wife wants to return to Japan this year. I have opposed that, at least until there is some payout on the savings that I have been doing in my company's plans this summer. I am not particularly money-oriented, but I have to admit that, the day after I finished working a 70-hour week, being overdrawn by £2 really sucks. This constant struggle is beginning to weigh on me, though. Maybe it is time to go back...

Comment: Tesco: 'Wal-Mart's Worst Nightmare'

This story does a really good job of pointing out Tesco's strong points:
1. Their own brands are really excellent, and do a great job of meeting the needs of customers. The 'Tesco's Finest' brands are as good as you will find, though of course at a premium price. But they are good, and customers actually trust the quality, and so are willing to pay that price. They do a much better job at the higher end than Walmart or Asda, and since that is where the margins are better, that puts them, whether they are number the two or three largest supermarket chain, in a better position EBITDA-wise, which in this market is pretty crucial.
2. They are also a lot more flexible in their format, which they need to be in Europe, where space is dearer. That ability to adapt to different markets with flexible formats also puts them in a good position to challenge Walmart.
3. Finally, Walmart has an abysmal record overseas. They pulled out of Germany, their Japanese operation is, to say the least, far from ambitous, and the only geographies where they have had consistent success is the Americas. I wouldn't say that Tesco is far and away better in this regard, but Walmart is clearly weak.
Link to original story:
http://www.businessweek.com/globalbiz/content/dec2008/gb20081229_497909.htm?link_position=link1