Bankers

My favourite bunch of bankers, HSBC, have been entrusted with raising $4.2 billion to help finance Bourse Dubai's takeover of the Swedish OMX Exchance.

I can't trust 'em to send a transfer, issue a cheque book, credit card or basically offer any other normal high street banking service in an orderly, efficient and timely manner, let alone respond to any request whatsoever.

You wanna trust 'em with $4.2 billion, boys? Well, that's your lookout...

Serendipity

How strange after I posted that leaving HSBC bank in Dubai would be a Day of Joy. The young lady that processed our application for a new bank account at Lloyds was called Joy.

Taxi!

I've always found taxi drivers to be essential to getting a quick feel for how things are going in a particular country at a particular time. Mr Ghulam, our 'regular' driver, is no different. A Ghulam's eye view of the world is often an interesting counterpart to my own.

Travelling, I always make sure to talk to any cabbies I meet. This has often resulted in me having a remarkable 'inside view' of the place I've just landed in. Once, in Jordan, it resulted in me having my fortune told by an excellent numerologist. He was also, incidentally, driving the taxi but he was better known in his circle as a numerologist and was consulted by many as a result of his talents. I could see why - an uncanny reading and a refreshingly careless attitude to the less metaphysical question of foreign objects occluding with our own co-ordinates in the space time continuum meant that I was deeply glad to be able to get to the end of the reading with no direct reference made to the imminence of my meeting with my maker. That meeting is not one I am particularly keen to hasten as I am keenly aware that said maker is going to be expressing a great deal of disappointment, probably forcibly.

Anyway, Mr. Ghulam's highly amused that the UAE's petrol pumpers (with the exception of ADNOC, for some reason) have decided not to accept credit card transactions - a situation that I hate to say I predicted some time ago as the result of the nasty little spat between the petrol companies and the credit card companies. Ghulam's point of view is that they're forecourt pirates who are charging too much for petrol anyway and should give the banks the fees they're demanding.

My own personal view is, not unreasonably, that the overwhelming majority of bankers are scum and should be hung from meathooks - particularly anyone whose bank has the letters H, B, C and S in their names. I'm hugely amused to see the UAE's petrol companies take on Visa and Mastercard as the card companies try to levy their payment taxes. I'm sure the little guys (the petrol companies) won't win in the end. But there's a 'Passport to Pimlico' sort of David against Goliath fight against bullying, faceless force and willful bureaucracy that the Brit in me admires immensely.

Trust a cabbie to have it in for the petrol companies, of course. I always enjoy chatting with the cabbies at Heathrow about how much I pay for petrol here in the UAE (we pay per gallon what they pay per litre, a fun challenge for people with scientific calculators to work out what the ratio actually is I'm sure). It cheers them up, the poor dears.

I've always bought my petrol in cash. Just in case you're interested, Ghulam who, as a cabbie, is an expert, says that credit card accpeting petrol company ADNOC's a damn sight cheaper than anyone else anyway.

UAE Banks Can Disable Cars? NO! NO! NO!

The People’s Newspaper, Emirates Today, has once again pipped its rivals to the post with a smashing front page lead today. The story is that some daft company has launched a new device that will disable your car if you default on your car loan – and it’s already been adopted, according to ET, by two of the UAE’s lenders. The story is, oddly, wholly uncritical and unquestioning of the device and its aims.

Letting UAE banks disable cars? This is beyond unbelievable.

If the UAE’s lenders were capable of administering their way out of a wet paper bag, you could see where this system might – I said might – have some utility. But there are two teensy-weensy problems I can see in this – quite apart from the issue of who meets the extra expense of having the device (let me guess here…ummm… the customer?) or getting the thing installed it what is intended to be your car without them smashing holes all over the dashboard.

Firstly, let’s bear in mind the fact that we all have to write cheques to guarantee the loan here in the UAE (either 24, 36 or 48 individual cheques, depending on the loan term, or a single cheque for the full amount, which is becoming more common). The thinking behind this, which has worked just fine so far, is that if you bounce a cheque in the UAE you’re potentially in for major trouble – the police can be called and you can be imprisoned - if you do it twice, your banking facilities are suspended.

So loans here are about as secure as it’s possible for them to be. You default, the cheque is presented and bounces and you get a call from the boys in green. So banks don’t actually have any real need to have this device installed.

Secondly, UAE banks are in, my personal experience at least, incapable of administering the most basic of financial transactions without screwing them up and turning their customers’ lives into a hell of petty-fogging bureaucracy that would make the average Byzantine blanch. Specialising in rote process without empowerment, idiotic beyond measure and unhelpful to the point of inviting violence, banks here should not be allowed to go anywhere near people’s cars, let alone be given the ability to disable them.

Apparently rent-a-car companies are also using the system. I can see where that works. But banks? No, no and a thousand times no. I'd pay cash rather than put them in the position of being able to interfere with my car!

Petrol Companies Revolt Against Credit Card Surcharges. Consumers to Get Stuffed. Again.

Although Gulf News reported in a news story that ENOC was collecting a 1.65% credit card transaction fee from customers, Emarat only got fingered in an editorial feature. Which is funny, because they also started passing on the 1.65% fee to customers on the 1st September.

Interestingly, ENOC didn't mention its move was due to any increase on the part of banks when it talked to Gulf News, but Emarat's explanatory leaflet to customers says the move comes 'due to increase in Bank Administration fees' and goes on to say that Emarat 'will add the 1.65% bank imposed fee to all credit/debit card payments...'

So Emarat is giving the clear impression to consumers that this move comes as the result of a new increase in fees from the bank. ENOC did not make that claim when it spoke to Gulf News, attributing the move to the loss it already makes selling fuel.

Charging consumers for the use of credit or debit cards is expressly against the merchant agreement that merchants enter into with the card networks. In fact, the card companies got all bellicose with GN when it was contacted by the newspaper regarding the ENOC move and both Visa and Mastercard made vaguely threatening 'this is not on and we're taking action' noises.

Banks contacted by GN called the move, apparently, 'unilateral'. Although if Emarat is also passing on the charge it would tend to suggest the move is 'multilateral'.

Passed over in the main by our brave news media, then, is the fact that a pitched battle is breaking out between petrol companies and the credit card networks and their acquiring banks. As usual, the people that are going to get royally screwed are the consumers. Sure, it's only a couple of dirhams in every hundred. But it's also yet another unwelcome price rise among a number of insidious little increases.

I do think the papers have missed the significance of this little standoff. You see, if these petrol companies get away with this (and there's no reason to suppose that they won't out here in the Klondike), you won't be waiting long for everyone else to join in. If Visa and Mastercard don't nip this in the bud soon, we might well be seeing a broader revolt breaking out. Which, although interesting to watch, is going to hurt consumers as merchants start surcharging us left, right and centre.

Sharjah Electricity and Water, as well as Emirates Post already charge a card handling fee - again in contravention of the card networks' stated policy - and Dubai Electricity and Water makes a 2.5% credit card surcharge at its cash collection points, although Internet card transactions are free of charge. In the UK, the world's most intensive credit card economy, merchants are specifically allowed to surcharge by law: although most don't, some (like low cost airlines) do. In many US states, regulations prohibit surcharging (nice bit of lobbying, card companies!).

In the UAE, the legislature has taken no stance - nor is it likely to any time soon. So it's down to the forces of 'laissez faire' and the 'market economy'.

Whoopee.