Why The Benihana Story Matters

Image via WikipediaIt's been amazing to watch the Benihana Kuwait story spiral into the stratosphere. That the story has such a strong pair of legs is squarely down to the fact it matters deeply to very many people in the region and around the world - consumer opinion expressed in a blog crushed by a lawsuit filed by a company.

The story(I posted this yesterday which has more detail) was carried across a number of blogs yesterday (and will be in more today, doubtless). As SeaBee pointed out: "I wonder if they're beginning to understand how business works in the real world. You know, the place where customers have a say too. Where bullying and threatening creates a backlash."

It got taken up by a fast-growing community on Twitter (use the hashtag #BenihanaKUW to see the conversations) and then someone found that Benihana Kuwait had a Facebook page. The resulting flood of comments made it quite clear that public opinion was 100% against the idea of a company suing a blogger and expressed shock, outrage and a deep rooted anger.

Later in the day, the papers picked up on the story, The National, Gulf News and 24x7 all ran stories which, at least in the case of the first two, ran in print today. And now million-subscriber website The Next Web has picked it up - which is the start of what, IMHO, is an inevitable move into the international media.

Why so much outrage? It's a complicated mixture - most of the online people who have commented know perfectly well that Benihana's reaction is unacceptable today. Consumers have a new freedom to express their views and opinions in ever-expanding forums and it's a right we're not willing to give up easily. We're not going to tolerate being bullied or seeing the truth repressed. On a larger scale, that same sense of empowerment and fairness is driving some reasonably large collections of people, a million of them on the streets of Cairo today. Without wanting to 'big up' the Benihana story, I do believe it is a microcosm of the bigger one we're watching unveil in Tahrir Square.

We're talking to Kuwaiti blogger Mark on the Dubai Eye Techno Tuesday show today at 11am Dubai Time. If you're Dubai-based, you can catch it on 103.8FM or if not you can listen to the livestream at http://www.dubaieye1038.com  and follow the hashtag #DubaiToday.

Update: Here's the AudioBoo of today's talk between Jessica Swann, myself and 2:48AM's Mark  As many will know, this afternoon Benihana Kuwait chose to delete the comments from its Facebook page, one of the most obnoxious gestures of absolute contempt for the views of the general public - its customers and potential customers.

Benihana Bashes Bloggers

Image by Okinawa Soba via FlickrKuwaiti blog TWOFOURTYEIGHTAM (2:48AM to you) is a lively and wide-ranging affair put together by bloggers Mark and Nat. It's respected, popular, well-written, pretty objective and, as both are designers, is clean and easy to read. The B-side to 2:48AM is 2:48PM, which is a community blog and is pretty big as blogs in Kuwait go (and Kuwait has a lively blogging scene).

In the middle of December last year, Mark posted a review on the 'A sides' of Kuwait's newly opened Japanese restaurant Benihana Kuwait. It's linked here for your delectation and delight. Mark wasn't terribly impressed by his experience at the restaurant. Although he pointed out that, "The service wasn’t too bad for a restaurant that’s just been open for a few days and the staff were really friendly." he also went on to say: "The problem with my experience last night though was with the food, it was disappointing to say the least."

Mark  then explains the reasons for his disappointment in detail, concluding, "Would I go back to Benihana? No I wouldn't.'

He also took a video of the 'show' the chefs put on while cooking. The acrobatics at Benihana are apparently something to behold, but this is a very ordinary looking display of, well, cooking.

So there we go - a bad experience at Benihana Kuwait gets a bad review from a customer. And there it ended. Or not quite. Nested in the 74 comments (I said it was a popular blog, didn't I?) are several 'happy customer' astroturf comments that came from, as Mark pointed out, the same IP address. And then there's the comment (linked here for your listening pleasure) from a geezer called Mike Servo, who claimed to be the general manager of the Benihana management of Kuwait and who threatened to sue Mark. A couple of quotes:

"...our rights and name is being used in a wrong way and broadcasting the video without a proper consent from us is really annoying specially Benihana is just opened up its doors to the public. We are seeking and consulting our legal dept. on how we can form a type of law suit against your website to be brought up to the Kuwait authorities."

He goes on to trill: "We want you to give us your information, your name, your number and your address so our lawyer will take it from there and be sure that you in Kuwait were the jury is 100 % clean and fair."

And then for some bizarre reason starts talking about elephants: "We also expect that you might be sending people to Benihana to make a play and that is why we have informed the CID about that, In the past we encountered your add in Subway and it is one of our companies franchise, we really didn’t give it any attention, and it very clear now that Subway is an elephant while other competitors are closing down, however this time we will not let it go and we will follow you legally."

Not terribly nice, in all. He ends the comment by asking Mark if he's Lebanese!

"A comedy classic" says one following commenter.

"I have a feeling that your restaurant will be closing in no time at this pace! I’m planning to try it out to see how bad it really is, and if it is bad I’m going to probably write a worse review" says another.

"I was going to visit Benihana .. but after seeing how you treat customers reviewing your restaurant, I plan on avoiding it at all costs." Is another comment.

This comment neatly sums up the considerable outpouring of anger at the management of Benihana Kuwait - for astroturfing, for its furious reaction and for threatening a lawsuit. "As a representative of such a well known brand it is shocking that you would conduct yourself in such an unprofessional manner. I am sure the franchise policy of Benihanas is not one of engaging those who are not satisfied with its product by posting baseless claims and threatening frivolous lawsuits that serve no other purpose but discredit any legitimate concern or issue you may have."

Mark posted up on Twitter yesterday that he had received the lawsuit. Benihana Kuwait actually went ahead and sued a blogger for writing a bad review of their restaurant. I have the feeling this won't end here...

UPDATE: This is the Benihana Kuwait Facebook Page. A truly stunning read.
(You'll have to click 'Just others' to see the comments)
Update to update: They deleted the comments. Grief.

Sloganeers

Image by Rev. Xanatos Satanicos Bombasticos (ClintJCL) via FlickrI have always been fascinated by the Situationists, the revolutionary crypto-anarchic collective that sloganeered their way through the Paris student revolution of the late 1960s. My personal favourite is "Art is dead: do not consume its corpse." Now that's a slogan!

The Situationists were to have a seminal influence on the punk movement around which a deal of my adolescence was constructed. They were, as eny fule no, just dead cool.

There's a tremendous power to slogans, a way of condensing and simplifying thoughts that can become catchy, even thought-provoking. The wonderful world of advertising obviously became a very early adopter, two that I'll probably never shake (because they've been drummed into me through massive repetition), 'A Mars a day helps you work, rest and play' and, more recently, 'Al Futtaim Motors, we care and it shows'.

Do they? Does it? Doubt it, but the slogan's etched on what passes for my brain, for what it's worth...


BMW's advertisement on Dubai's Sheikh Zayed Road has a slogan. Oh yes. "Joy leads; others prosper" the advertisement thunders - like Situationist slogans, often deliberately provocative and wilfully obtuse, the advertisement attracts attention by its seeming simple meaning. Unlike the Situationists, it's actually not very clever.

It actually means absolutely nothing whatsoever. It's just mindless drivel constructed by mediocre intellects, an unwelcome flashback to the constant blare of 'Dare to Dream' dross that characterised the Dubai Property Boom (see yesterday's post). Does it intend to characterise Joy as the ownership of a BMW? I'd rather prosper, thanks. Or perhaps it's saying that other cars are Joy and BMW owners are prosperous. Perhaps someone called Joy has bought a BMW? But then who's prospering? The guy that sold it to her made commission, I suppose...

Yeah, I know I should drive past and ignore it. But it's like a grocer's apostrophe. It niggles...

Groundhog Day

It's like groundhog day around here. The film, not the event.

The Central Bank has extended the deadline indefinitely for the implementation of the new Image Cheque Clearing System (ICCS), following problems implementing the system on January 1st 2011.

Meanwhile in unrelated news, the collective fat-headed nincompoopery that is my bank, HSBC, has once again seen fit to dishonour my rent cheque to my landlord. Which is precisely what they did in January last year.

On January 6th last year, I posted about both of these events. It's linked here. I pointed out the many problems people would face trying to present old cheques that lacked the security features mandated by the UAE Central Bank's implementation of the new automated cheque clearing system. I also pointed out what a communications disaster the whole thing had been. Of course there was little attempt to communicate the whole thing clearly and effectively and so, precisely a year later, the system has been once again delayed, withdrawn temporarily as everyone tries to work out how to go about honouring old cheques past the deadline set for them to be honoured.

The ICCS was first started as  project in 2005. Now, five years later, it still hasn't been implemented. Last year's confusion led to more delays and a new deadline (the original 'new cheques only' deadline was 1/1/2010) which has now been extended once again purely because nobody invested in effective communications.

Meanwhile, HSBC is saying, as it did last year, that my cheque has been dishonoured because of my signature. Last year I went to see the morons and we sat together and agreed that their scanner had squashed my signature, which is naturally some 5cm high. We rescanned my signature (I had, first, to try and copy the squashed signature, my 'old' signature before they'd scan my 'new' signature. Honest.) and then their scanner squashed my signature to look like the 'old' signature. In order to do this, of course, they required my passport copy - and wouldn't accept my National ID Card as proof of ID.

My signature is,  believe me, highly distinctive. I have been paying rent to my landlord for some ten years now. I write only two cheques every year - one to him, one to the post office. You'd have thought my bank could check the history or even telephone me before deciding to dishonour my cheque for tens of thousands of dirhams (obviously it would be an important transaction to me), but you'd think wrong. You'd assume some level of applied intelligence, care or (gasp!) initiative. And they are all sorely lacking. My bank has managed to make a mess of absolutely every aspect of banking, from issuing cards to making transfers, from providing a reliable, sensible and usable telephone and Internet banking service to honouring cheques. I am left dumbfounded as to how the hell they make money, but can only assume that totally ignoring the needs of your customers is the key to success.

You may want to suggest I find another bank. I am open to suggestions.

Etisalat Plans - Mickey Mouse?

Image via WikipediaThe HTC Desire is a cool device, I have to tell you. It does many things brilliantly, some very well and even manages to be a mildly functional telephone. Based on Google's Android operating system, it's almost scarily integrated into Google services, but it does a lot of cool stuff and is pretty intuitive.

I've spent a week or so now getting used to it - after over 20 years of loyalty to Nokia, I finally snapped and followed Symbian Guru by throwing my N86 against the wall. There have been inevitable frustrations in the transition process, but they're mostly harmless. Google's habit of defaulting everything to Arabic for anyone located in the Arab World can be a bit of a shock - and I really do not need an uninstallable azan reminder. But all in all, I'm glad I made the change. Well, I was until Etisalat sent me a message telling me they have blocked my mobile Internet access as I had exceeded the upper limit on my plan.

My plan? What plan? I just have mobile Internet. It was called 'Mubashir' because nobody knew what 3G was ("I don't understand what 3G is!" "No problem, take this! It's called Mubashir!" "What is it?" "3G"). Nobody ever told me they'd introduced things called plans.

Mine apparently gives me 10 Meg of downloads for a fixed monthly fee. And then it charges me. A wicked amount. Enough for me to have racked up Dhs1,200 worth of phone bill in 2-3 days of using an Android phone. Because if you're using your wireless network to download apps and you walk out of the wireless zone, it defaults to Etisalat and their Mickey Mouse packages. And, unlike my creaky old Symbian handset,  this mobile is always online, checking, updating and RSSing like a little Googledemon.

You'd have thought Etisalat would send you a text when you got to the 10Mb mark, wouldn't you? But that would be far too sensible. They'd rather bill their unsuspecting, arguably duped, customers for the lesson.

So don't do what I did, people. When you throw that Symbian mobile against the wall and storm off to get a funky Android phone, change your mobile data plan. You can get a 1Gb package for Dhs145 per month or 5GB for 295 per month. They also offer "unlimited" data for a whopping Dhs395 per month. Unlimited is sort of like freehold, by the way: by unlimited, Etisalat actually means a 'fair usage' 10Gb maximum. Out of plan extras cost 50 fils per meg, which is a bit less than the Dhs15 per meg they charge on the default 10Mb package. Yes, you heard right. Dhs15 (a tad over $4) per megabit.

Plans from 10Mb - 1Gb are categorised as 'mobile Internet' by Etisalat, while 1GB-10GB are 'mobile broadband' and come with a USB modem. Because nobody would want to use a mobile for downloading lots of data, would they? Positively archaic thinking from the telco that likes to say 'ugh'...

Hmm. I wonder what the view from Du is like these days?


PS: Happy New Year, folks!

Chaos Theory

Image by Ingy The Wingy via FlickrThe chaos in Europe's skies is continuing quite nicely, with irate passengers all asking the same question we asked under the ash cloud: why on earth aren't the airlines communicating with us? All we want is information and perhaps even access to rebooking facilities.

Having given up on Virgin Atlantic, whose failure to communicate extended to a Twitter account that tells you it can't do anything and directs you back to the call centre (and a GSA in Dubai that is as much use as a chocolate welding mask), we rebooked the inlaws onto Etihad (at almost twice the price, I have to say. Airlines, slow to help passengers rebook or endorse their tickets to another airline were nevertheless quick enough to ramp up their pre-Chrismas rates). The flight left just in time to be under the snow as it wended its merry way West from shamed Heathrow. They travelled to the airport down motoroways whitened with packed snow, getting to Dublin in perfect time to watch the airport close.

However, Etihad's handling of the situation was entirely a different story. They were met by meal vouches and, shortly after, a no-nonsense staffer who told them precisely what was going to happen. They were bussed to a hotel and put up awaiting the departure of the flight this morning following Dublin re-opening at 8am.

That's all it take, folks. A little respect for the customer and a little sensible decision making and communication. We all understand flights are delayed and cancelled - what's making everyone so riled up is being treated like mushrooms.

It seems to me that airlines can do some very simple things to ameliorate this type of incident:

1) Cut websites over to dedicated informational sites right away.

2) Suspend new ticket sales immediately, at least for the immediate future (say, 5 days).

3) Operate sensible Twitter accounts (Twitter has really come into its own through this whole incident, most major airports have accounts and airlines have started directing customers to Twitter too. As a real-time informational tool, it can hardly be bettered. But it's a TWO way street, people).

4) Open up rebooking facilities online to passengers. Build a rules based system for rebooking and, where necessary, endorsing tickets across to other airlines. This facility could be built on a 'dark site' basis, and brought into play only when there is major disruption. If your call centre people can deal with this screens, I think we can - don't you?

5) Now you've got the majority of people off your call centre's backs, you can dedicate it to handling the exceptional requirements of people in trouble, not just the everyday business of rebooking and finding out what's going on.

It seems so simple to me. Am I missing something? Or are the airlines?

Anyway, with the (fingers crossed) anticipated arrival of our belated guests and a million things to do before Christmas, it might go a little quiet around here so you'll just have to amuse yourselves...

Snow Joke

Image by nickwheeleroz via FlickrHaving been caught out by that Icelandic volcano thing in the summer (Tikkipikkapukka or whatever it's called), I thought that European airports and  airlines would at least have benefited from the very real learnings of the communications disaster surrounding the eruption disruption. Reviewing the way their communications, call centre and media teams performed, airlines must surely have concluded they had a massive customer service disaster on their hands and, in fact, were lucky not to have been called to give answer of themselves in the circumstances. So when this disruption hit, they'd be better prepared...

More fool me.

It's chaos out there today. With the in-laws and baby girl due out here tomorrow, we've spent a good hunk of today trying to work out what on earth's going on - and trying to find anyone who'll speak or in any other way be of any assistance whatsoever.

The biggest lesson, for me, from Eyeapickledpickle was that airlines had to have better contingency plans for large scale disruption - that information flow is an absolute must - the tools available to us today, specifically online, mean that one to one and one to many communication can be supported with interactivity, intelligence and information flow - all you have to do is respect your customers enough to enable it. Twitter was invaluable during the whole Eyjafjallajökull incident - accounts like @eurocontrol (European ATC) kept the information flowing from the horse's mouth. But it wouldn't be difficult to build re-booking tools, better online enquiry and requesting tools and even better 'dark sites' - websites set up to kick in right when trouble looms and provide instant information and responses. Virgin's site wasn't bad today, but its call centre was utterly inadequate to the task. It's not as if they couldn't have seen trouble coming, either. There were forecasts, people. As for Aer Lingus, words fail me.


It seems a little mad to have people looking at screens on the 'phone talking to customers when those customers could be looking at those screens themselves. Many of the world's airlines have shown us that the customer can actually be trusted (monkeys though they are) to actually make a booking by themselves (something that travel agents traditionally believed us to be incapable of), so why not let us make re-bookings or endorse tickets for cancelled flights onto alternative carriers?


But then again, maybe we'll just opt for ignoring them all, putting up some sympathy-inducing text on the 'dark' site about how hard it is for call centre staff to get into work in this weather (not that we had a plan or anything, you understand) and just hope the negative feedback blows over in a while.

There has to be a better way - and there is. The Internet. WE could do the work that the call centre guys are doing. Why do we still have to endure  the bottleneck?

The Emirates National Identity Card. A fiasco.

Image by dawn m. armfield via FlickrI've been moaning about the Emirates National Identity Card fiasco since early in  November 2008 - and I have by no means been alone - many august online voices (including SeaBee and Monsignor Goat) have been reeling around in awe at the ever changing cycles of misinformation that have clouded every aspect of the rollout of the UAE's national ID card scheme.

I suspect many of us viewed yesterday's pronouncements similarly - in fact, I voiced my glee on the Dubai Today show yesterday when I prophesied a round of the clarifications that SeaBee loves so well. Quite what has to be clarified isn't yet clear, because the lack of clarity in the things to be clarified is obscuring quite what could be clearer.

UAE newspaper 7Days, which has slowly but surely been regaining its tabloid swagger following the concerted campaign to eradicate it a while ago, today does what no other newspaper has dared to do. It listened to reader complaints and decided to actually investigate how people are meant to be making an application for a national ID card before the supposed December 31st deadline. Yes, you can pick yourself up from the floor now. It did journalism.

What was the result? The paper's Nichola Jones called all of the 30 typing centres listed on the EIDA website in Dubai to find out if she could start the application process. Only nine of these were working numbers - and of these, only three answered and only one actually confirmed they were accepting applications. None of the typing centres in Abu Dhabi answered the phone. This is perhaps understandable - one of the Dubai typing centres had explained to the paper they weren't taking applications as they were working through a backlog of over 1,000 forms.

Ten calls to the EIDA 'emergency hotline' weren't answered, confirming what the paper had heard from readers - it's chaos out there. Here's Nichola's story, Identity Crisis On The Cards?

Vague threats are being bandied about regarding fines - enough to prompt colleagues yesterday to start talking about applying for the card (I've had one since September 2009, although have not once managed to use it for anything useful like, for instance, identifying myself) and I told them to do what I did - download the amusingly titled application application. (You may recall, the application application was a PC application that let you fill out an application so that you can apply for an appointment to make an application. The application application didn't let you make an appointment for an application: you still had to apply for an application appointment even if you had an application filled using the application application.).

Except you can't. There is no longer an application application. It has expired.So you can only go to one of these mythical typing centres. It's worth noting that 7Days doesn't actually tell us which typing centre was open, contactable and claiming to be able to process applications. That'll be because the 7Days team are all down there today.

So what happens on the 31st December? Are people without an ID card application registered going to blow up? We can only wait for some clarification.

With all my twenty four years' in Middle East media and communications, I can tell you that in my professional opinion the introduction of the national ID card system in the UAE has been a case study in botched and muddled communications that has confused, and quite possibly squandered, millions. Some of the amazing backstory is in these posts from the past.


I am only amazed that over two years later, it is still going on.

(And now, with thanks to Mita, The Inevitable Clarification)

On Your Bike

Image via WikipediaIt’s always a delight when a new radio advertisement appears that stands out in the awful sea of half-baked drivel that punctuates the stuff you actually want to listen to. My delight is only enhanced that the latest piece of drooling, witless buffoonery originates from those admirable fellows at HSBC, the bank that likes to say 'Is there anything else I can do to help you?' at the end of calls where they have been signally useless. This is just one of many endearing habits, but I shall not allow myself to be sidetracked. Back to the radio spot.

The script goes something like this:

"In Beijing a bicycle means transport, in London it means recreation while here in Dubai it means working out in the gym. We understand the world so give us your money."

For a start, as both a consumer and business customer, it’s always reassuring that one’s bank can demonstrate a clear understanding of world bicycle usage trends. There are few aspects of the global financial services market that occupy me more.

However, the fact that the insight on offer from HSBC is clearly based on mildly egregious generalisations and actually represents absolutely no insight whatsoever may be a worry to some. For instance, some Chinese people may (I know this is hard to appreciate, but bear with me here) actually use a bicycle recreationally or may even visit a gym. Londoners certainly use bicycles in the gym and many use it to get to work. This even in the city of London where you would expect people to be somewhat more advanced than those amusingly manual slanty-eyed coolies pedal pumping across the rutted tracks over in Chinkyland.

And here in Dubai, while I’m sure we’d all like to take comfort in the image of a city packed with successful young executives working out before a day of glorious triumph over world markets in their globally aware organisations, I’m afraid it doesn’t quite do justice to reality. In fact a bicycle to me rather evokes the gentleman in a grubby shalwar khamees who comes by our dumpster every day and picks out the cardboard to add to the tottering pile strapped to the back of his bike with a threadbare bungy.

But I’m cavilling, I know. It’s just an advertisement and not meant to represent the reality of the situation at all. It’s meant to increase my awareness of my bank’s global insight and the bicycle thing is just a sort of metaphor. Or to old fashioned moralists, simply a lie. What's tragic is that it's a badly told one...

The UAE BlackBerry Ban: Barmy

Image via Wikipedia

Why does all the fun happen when I'm away? Woke up today to the news that the UAE is to block BlackBerry Messenger, BlackBerry E-mail and BlackBerry web-browsing following a ruling by telecom regulator the TRA.

Gulf News online reports the story, which WAM broke today as far as I can see from over here. The National's story is here. Etisalat has made a statement which includes the immortal words, "BlackBerry data is immediately exported off-shore, where it is managed by a foreign, commercial organisation."

Oh, the LOLs, from a country where all requests to browse the web are immediately referenced to, errr, foreign, commercial organisations. Unless something's changed since the McAfee acquisition, US security company Secure Computing used to parse all searches to make sure that we weren't being exposed to all the naughtiness and stuff that's out there. We weren't so shy about 'foreign commercial organisations' then, were we folks?

BlackBerry customers were, infamously, not subject to the arbitrary restrictions of the block list. Many will remember the furore that erupted, extensively discussed on this very blog, which appeared to be a muckle-headed attempt on the part of the Telco That Likes To Say Ugh, Etisalat, to cludge security software intended for other purposes into an attempt to introduce surveillance and monitoring capabilities to the otherwise hard to intercept BB.


It's interesting for telecom regulation watchers that the customer is to be harmed extensively as a result of this move by a regulator, a class of organisation that is everywhere in the world tasked with holding the customers interests as one of its primary goals. The Telcos are being forced to breach their compact with their users (The vast majority of people bought BlackBerrys precisely with this very functionality as their primary reason for buying in) and tens of thousands of devices have been rendered basically unfit for purpose overnight.

I look forward to this move being 'clarified'. As it stands, it's yet another attempt to bomb ourselves back into the digital stone age. The madness of it all is that nothing has changed about the BlackBerry or the way in which the device works - and nothing has changed (correct me, please, if I'm wrong) in the 'moral and cultural' environment, or indeed the regulatory environment, since the BB was first introduced to the UAE - it has always worked using the company's own servers which underpinned the very services that CrackBerry users find so very appealing. If you can't live with it now - you shouldn't have sold it to us back then.

Will customers be offered refunds for the now barely functional hunks of black and chrome plastic they hold in their hands? Or will Etisalat and Du be offering free plastic covers that say 'I am browsing happily. Carry on as normal.'???

PS: In a move that appears to highlight that this move is being prompted by security concerns more than anything else, WAM has published an odd document that purports to 'compare the existing telecom regulations of the US, UK and UAE' but which is actually something of a 'dossier' that appears intended to justify the idea that a regulator can just turn around and delete a service being accessed by tens of thousands of consumers. It's a long read, but it's here.

Right. I'm going back on holiday...

Blockheads Reprised

It would appear that the UAE's Telecommunications Regulatory Authority (Or TRA to you an' me) has blocked YouTube's age verification screen.

The problem was highlighted on Twitter yesterday when a link to the now infamous 'Sheikh Zayed Road Madness' video was shared - the link came back with the blocked splash screen on both Etisalat and Du networks. A good link is, BTW, here.

Although the first assumption is that the block was because of the nature of the content, which is a group of nutters endangering the lives of motorists on Dubai's busiest road by pulling doughnuts and the like, this was not in fact the case

(Dubai's police website still allows you, rather charmingly, to key in number plates and get a record of fines and the like without requiring any corroborating evidence that it is, in fact, your own plate you're looking up. So you can look up these chaps' driving history if you want.)

What had happened was the video had been flagged for age restriction (you can't actually tag a video with an age limit on YouTube when you post it, it has to be 'flagged' and a YouTube staffer will review and age restrict the video) and therefore viewers were sent to the YouTube Age Verification Page.

And THAT is the bit that had been blocked. One can only assume that 'if you need to be asked, the answer's no' is the policy in place here.

Helpfully, Etisalat's Twitter Twit suggested to me that YouTube itself was responsible for the block, which is patently not the case, and then referred me to YouTube's Terms of Service which, of course, are totally irrelevant to the point in question.

Have you read YouTube's TOS? Here. Fill yer boots. Bet you can't finish it without going mad.

In the meantime, we await the results of the investigation that is being conducted, I am sincerely advised, into whether it is morally or culturally reprehensible to answer the question: "Are you over 21?"

Dubai Vehicle Registration And The National ID Card. A Farce

Image via Wikipedia

Popped off to get the car registered, a tad late admittedly. Was just girding the old loins to do it when I was amazed to get a text from the RTA telling me I was in danger of blowing it and to get my butt online to register or go to a Shamil Centre. It's wrong of me to be so delighted when stuff like this happens, I know.

The Emarat Shamil station was amazingly fast, efficient and even friendly (up to a point) and the whole thing took just over 20 minutes.  How things have been transformed since the days of yore, when vehicle registration was at least a half day marathon often involving having to travel to other emirates to pay fines, multiple procedures, inexplicable counters with grunting staff and constant, shuffling queues!

It was almost all done, when the grumpy bloke behind the counter (the only grumpy bloke around, I have to say) says "Bassbort."

A passport is not, of course, a requirement that is outlined in the RTA's online vehicle registration guidelines. But I'm old enough to know that you need your passport for anything official, semi-official, quasi-official or where a bureaucrat is involved (for instance, the bank) or where you can see no conceivable need for a passport.

I thought I'd try my luck. "I have my ID card. Here."

Incredibly, the response was "Not this. Not need this. Want bassbort."

"But this is the National ID card. It has all of my information. My biometrics. It confirms me."

"Need bassbort."

"Why?"

"It has information. Visa expiry and sponsor name."

And so I had to get my bassbort out for him and pocket my, now confirmed as totally useless, national ID card, the document that, as you'll recall, was the most critical thing that you absolutely, certainly needed for vehicle registration as of last week.

I wonder if you can play tiddleywinks with them?

PS: There's a new rule whereby you have to have a little triangular warning thingy in your car. The Emarat stations sell 'em for Dhs30. 

Cereal Killer

Image by Sam Cockman via Flickr

The post I put up on Tuesday was at least partially influenced by a chat I was having with Dubai-based personal trainer Kai Mitchell in a few off-air moments during a Dubai Today radio show I co-hosted a few weeks ago.

It was Kai’s discomfort with the practice of selling people content-free breakfast cereal based diets that turned me on to the whole issue in the first place – and it was Nestlé’s atrocious ‘pull pull’ radio advertisement that pushed me over the edge into Tuesday's wee slice of grumpy bloggery suggesting you might like to eat paper instead of breakfast
cereal products as part of your new dietary regime.

You can only imagine my delight when the blog post attracted a couple of anonymous comments. I'm not a big fan of  these as they're often used to express negative sentiment without the grace of culpability.
Anonycomments can also come from people working for companies who are trying to influence debate without being open about who they are. This is infrequent precisely because it is widely considered as dishonest, egregious and stupid behaviour. And, as eny fule no, you can be traced even if you’re ‘anonymous’. I have written about this in the past, offering guidance to companies engaging with blogs.
Anonymous comment one came at just after 11am. I haven’t (obviously) edited it:

before you go ahead and diss ads make sure you know which is which :)

the tasteless "pull pull oh my god my fat thighs into a dress is worse than labor" is a Nestle Fitness ad,the 2 weeks challenge is a Special K line that has nothing to do with Nestle..
and ps. two totally different cereals, and at least they are promoting a relatively healthy weight loss program,as opposed to the other crazy fad diets out there

In this case, the comment was saying I had mistaken one ad for another, which I did not do. I also didn’t mention Special K or, indeed Nestlé. I purposefully referenced ‘the breakfast cereal people’ and not those nice, searchable brands Nestlé and Special K, let alone the Special K two-week challenge. Special K is a Kellogg's brand.  You know Kellogs? The breakfast cereal people represented by advertising agency Leo Burnett in the Middle East?

The second comment came 14 minutes later. Having obviously reconsidered the original response, ‘anonymous’ added (again I haven’t corrected the text) this:

You know i agree that that particular radio ad was HORRIFIC. And i would probably NEVER buy that brand. But not all low-fat cereal brands preach "get skinny by eating our brand."

Some brands, specifically the ones that offer the 2-week diet, target people who have unhealthy eating habits. The are not talking to the kind of people who are already health conscience and eat organic-type food. And in order to break any habit you need to have a disciplined amount of time doing the opposite. Why do you think there are a minimum of 21 days for rehab? Becuase research shows that it takes 21 days to break an addictive habit such as alcoholism. Similarly, 2 weeks is enough to get you off of junk food/fast food AND offers you an incentive (a little weight loss) to START leading a healthier lifestyle. And im sorry but at least THIS diet is healthier than starving yourself!
Plus,cereal is MUCH better food then the greasy crap people are used to eating now a days. It probably has more vitamins than they know existed!
So the ad you mentioned really does degrade other cereal brands that are honestly trying to help women become healthier.
Lastly, please don't take my comments personally. Everyone is entitled to their opinions but i believe that informed opinions are worth listening to more.

Of course, both comments – posted as ‘anonymous’ come from the same source: a place SiteMeter identifies only as 80.227.101.130 (Leo Burnett Middle East).

Now don’t get me wrong. The commenter may well not work for Leo Burnett. The IPs could have been mixed up or the commenter might have been a random, albeit arrogant and illiterate, visitor to Leo’s offices ‘camping’ on their wireless. I mean, we don’t want to jump to conclusions now just because some dribbling idiot has wagged their fingers at us in a mildly offensive and patronising manner, do we? So let’s stick to the facts.

As a direct result of these two comments, it is now likely that any number of search strings with permutations consisting of either of these two brands and questions regarding diet will bring this post (and therefore the original one linked again for your convenience here) relatively high into Google search results. That has the potential to drive thousands of people to read my little nag about the attempt to foster the uptake of breakfast cereal diets of questionable nutritional benefit who otherwise would never have bothered.

What do YOU think? I’d be particularly interested in your views if you are employed by the Kellogg Company, the world's leading producer of cereal and Kellogg's convenience foods, including Kellogg cookies, Kellogg crackers, Kellogg toaster pastries, Kellogg cereal bars, Kellogg fruit-flavored snacks, Kellogg frozen waffles and Kellogg veggie foods. You might have concerns regarding the whole Kelloggs two-week challenge promotion, or have worries about sugar levels in Kelloggs’ foods, the use of high fructose corn syrup as a cheap sweetener in breakfast cereals  or even iron content (for instance the Danish government’s 2004 ban on Kelloggs products because of the high added vitamin content and, apparently, non-dietary iron added to its products).

If you do, you might like to add a comment. I’d really prefer it if you could do so only if you are prepared to put a name to it. If you work for an organisation with a vested interest, perhaps you’d like to declare that – or just wait until you get home so that your IP doesn’t track straight back to your company’s network and expose your idiotic attempts at corporate mendacity by proxy.

Pissy

 

http://image.guardian.co.uk/sys-images/Technology/Pix/pictures/2008/02/01/SeaCableHi.jpg

It’s been like spending a week trying to pogo in molasses – the Internet is just not terribly well. And I have to confess, after a week of pages not loading, Twitter not updating and email taking an age, I’m feeling somewhat frustrated and generally pissy.

The statement from Etisalat (back on the 20th) that its services were unaffected as it had rushed to route bandwidth through other means was piffle, as usual. Du made the same statement, but I don’t use their services so can’t comment. Etisalat’s network quality most certainly has been significantly affected by the outage, but why let the facts stop you lying to you customers and treating them like morons? It never stopped ‘em before, anyway. I’ve also had a few dodgy voice circuits, which might be a result of the telco that likes to say ‘ugh’ cutting some of its voice traffic over to IP from its beloved yoghurt pots.

To be fair, it’s not their fault that some Captain Pugwash type decided to drag SEAMEWE4 on the end of his anchor ‘till it snapped (or whatever mad series of events led to the break). But I do wish they’d just tell the truth.

SEAMEWE (anoraks will know it stands for South East Asia Middle East Western Europe) and FLAG (Fibre-optic Link Around the Globe) are the two main cable systems upon which the bulk (if not all) of the UAE’s Internet traffic depends. There are four SEAMEWEs – the last time we had problems, it was a cut in SEAMEWE4, the latest most sparkly terabit capacity cable. SEAMEWE3 is also operational, but SEAMEWE1 and 2 have been phased out.

Although it is feasible to use satellite, and there are satellite circuits available, this is an expensive and limited option that most telcos will only use as a last resort – the great undersea cables are where it’s at.
There are other circuits apart from SEAMEWE 3 and 4 and FLAG, for instance (as you’ll see from the map above) there’s a circuit that goes around Africa. But the Red Sea and Suez are the most vulnerable points in the network of sub-sea cables that underpins our ability to do important stuff like play Chatroulette and listen to the Moon Song.

Until there is better diversity, we’ll continue to be highly vulnerable to breaks – and will continue to see limited bandwidth sold to us at premium prices compared to other world markets. It constantly rankles when I think that the Japanese are paying $0.27 per megabit month, with the average subscriber taking a 60 Gig line. Yes, 60Gig. In fact, much of the world gets plenty more bandwidth (with less latency) for less money than we do. A hell of a lot less money.

Hey, ho. It’s not as if Internet connectivity were critical to the development of the Middle East region and the largest single factor in its ability to be competitive moving forward, is it?

Is It Any Wonder People Have It In For Bankers?

Image by TW Collins via Flickr

The scene. A shop. Quite a noisy sports goods shop playing pump it up let’s get this fitness ting movin’ music. Sarah is trying to get me to make the decision between the black trainers with the black stripe and the black trainers with the pink stripe for her. The mobile rings.


“Hello, Alexander McNabb.”

“Hello?”

“Hello!”

“Hello.”

“What do you want?”

“Is this Alexander McNabb?”

“Yes, it is.”

“This is HSBC customer service.”

“And?”

“Hello?”

“Hello.”

“I’m calling regarding the issue you had with a transfer. You raised a customer support issue with Internet banking.”

“Right...”

“I need to ask you some security questions.”

“Okay.”

“What accounts do you hold with us?”
(told her, not telling you. Not that I don’t trust y’all, ye understand)

“What is your current balance?”

“I have not got the faintest idea. Not a clue.”

“Well, what was the last transaction on your account?”

“I couldn’t even begin to tell you.”

*desperately* “What is your date of birth?”

“Fried eggs and ham.”

“Thank you. You had an issue with Internet banking. I’m just calling to help you.”

“What issue? I don’t remember an issue? When?”

“About ten days ago. You had an issue with IBAN numbers.”

“Oh, Lord, yes! I remember now! You require an IBAN number on transfers to the UK but there’s no field specifying that you need an IBAN number on the online form.”

“We now require an IBAN number on transfers to the UK. You can insert this in the ‘comments’ field in the online transfer form.”

“I know that now. I had to call your call centre to find out and then I asked the call centre person to escalate the fact that there’s not actually a field in the form that requests an IBAN number. That was my problem, you see? If you require a critical piece of information to complete a process, you actually need to ask people to insert that information in an appropriate field, marked, for instance, ‘IBAN NUMBER:’.”

“Yes. You have to put it in the comments box on the form.”

“But that’s my issue! How am I supposed to know that I need to put the IBAN number in at all? By osmosis? By a process of miraculous information transfer? Holes opening in the space-time continuum? How simple is it to put a field on the form that says: IBAN NUMBER:?”

“I apologise, but that is not possible at this time.”

“Oh come on! Of course it’s possible! A badly trained macaque of below average capability could add a field to an HTML page in less than ten minutes. Instead, they got you – a call centre operative with about as much chance of influencing any policy decision regarding your bank’s woeful inability to make its systems even marginally fit for purpose as I have of winning the UK national lottery – to call me and say sorry but it’s broken and we’re not going to fix it.”

“I do apologise. I can put a request to escalate this with Internet banking.”

“They pushed the whole issue down to you! Are you going to escalate it to them so that they can push it back down to you so that you can call me to tell me you’re sorry that the issue about the issue regarding the problem I had is still an issue?”

“I’m sorry.”

“Let’s face it, you have absolutely no ability to escalate any issue whatsoever, do you? All you’re going to do is repeat sorry until I stop shouting, aren’t you?”

“Sorry.”

“Why don’t we end the call right here? I don’t have to be rude to you and you don’t have to listen to a rude and angry customer and we can both get on with our lives without the irritation and frustration of this call and your Internet banking form will continue to lack a simple input field requesting information that is crucial to the process in question.”

“Is there anything else I can help you with?”

Etisalat's Emails - Phish off!

You can only imagine the joy deep in my  black heart this morning when I received an email from the telco that everyone who's not a Du subscriber loves to hate, Etisalat, snappily titled "Security Alert - Beware of Email Fraud Disguised as Official Emails".

We've all got these stupid mails from Weisatwit before. I've blogged about 'em before too. Surely they must have learned by now from the online howls of derision that accompany these well-intended but knuckle-headed emails. Apparently not.

The email, immortally, once again contains the words: "Etisalat will never email links, or call you, asking for such information." as well as, of course, a number of links to online forms asking for your name, email address and telephone number ('personal information'). The site itself also requests a user name and password as a log-on.

Of course, we could all rest assured that the user base has already been educated about computer security by the pathetic radio ads being run by UAENic, which purport to be raising 'public awareness', in which a voiceover artist doing a bad fake of an Emirati with a cold trying to English tells us 'I am Salim. Don't download undrusded zoftwares widge good arm your gombuter.' I initially thought this would at least be one of a series ('Don't run wiz zizszors in ze ovice'; 'Don't drawl born sites wizout bobub bloggers') but sadly, no. It's just the one repeated piece of useless advice that is of no utility whatsoever to anyone with enough intelligence to successfully switch a computer on. And who the hell is Salim anyway and why do we want to know?

You have to wonder about the security standards being applied to public networks and resources here when the standard of communication regarding security is so utterly woeful.

Cheque this out...

Image via Wikipedia

The new chequebook requirement is not just on the part of HSBC, as my landlord’s man thought happily last night when I passed over my rent in cash to him. He was shocked to hear me tell him that every bank in the UAE is likely to start rejecting ‘old’ cheques and he had no idea at all how to tell the difference between ‘old’ and ‘new’ cheques. He is holding several ‘old’ cheques as PDCs preparatory to depositing them when the rents on other properties come due – I wonder how many other landlords are in a similar position.

In my humble opinion, this whole sorry episode is a case study in totally inadequate communications, a demonstration of breathtaking arrogance from banks and a clear sign that the UAE’s banks have a huge leap forward to make in customer service and communication. I might be overdoing it, but I doubt it: this is what I do for a living – communications. I might be useless at it, I might not. But I have never seen it so badly mismanaged in my life – and I have been working in the Middle East for over twenty years now.

All UAE banks have to upgrade their cheques to conform to new guidelines mandated by the UAE Central Bank and so there is a very real danger that the vast majority of cheques held by people out there are now duds. And that the majority of cheque books out there are useless.
The UAE is a society where a cheque was previously regarded as ‘as good as cash’ because of the Central Bank’s ‘two strikes and you’re out’ policy. In the UAE, if you bounce a cheque, the person you have issued the cheque to can call the police and file a case against you and if you bounce a cheque twice, the Central Bank can (and, I hear, will) withdraw your access to banking services.

This has been an amazing deterrent to any form of ‘bad cheque’ and, in fact, there are no cheque guarantee cards here. A cheque is a man’s word and bond and respected as such.

The new guidelines from the Central Bank have been triggered by the introduction of a new automated clearing system, ICCS. This demands banks take extra precautions before scanning cheques and sending them to the Central Bank for clearing, hence the mandated ‘more secure’ cheque books.

HSBC and other banks started to refuse cheques without the new features on the 1st January 2010. I have no record of HSBC contacting me to advise me of this – I did, incidentally, search through the 33 junk and phishing emails that purported to come from HSBC that I have received since November last year, but they are all fakes. HSBC has not responded to my post yesterday asserting that the bank had not effectively communicated the vitally important new changes to me.

There is some confusion regarding PDCs. According to Mashreq’s FAQ:
Retail and corporate customers may have already collected cheques which do not comply with cheque security features prior to this deadline. In view of this, collecting banks will accept such deposits and process them as usual in ICCS till 31/07/2010. Any PDCs dated beyond 31/07/2010 must be lodged with Banks before 31/12/2009 for collection on the due date.

But HSBC’s FAQ is a little more clear (my bold):
Post dated cheques without the security features, which have been collected by customers prior to 31 December 2009, can be accepted until 31 July 2010. After this date no cheque without the security feature will be accepted.

Post dated cheques and discounted cheques deposited in advance without the security feature and already held by banks for any date will not be affected by this rule; however HSBC will not accept any new cheques without the security features post 01 January 2010.

In other words, PDCs will only be honoured if the bank already held them prior to 31/12/2009 – think about it, a cheque dated now and lodged now is just a ‘new cheque without the security features’, no?

I haven’t seen any news stories or advertisements about this massive change to the banking system. If other banks have contacted their customers, well and good – but nobody I have spoken to has been aware of this whole issue at all. I should point out that some people commenting to the last post I put up on this issue do say they were made aware – although some said they received emails as late as 28/12/2009.

By the way – as far as I can see, the ICCS rollout from the Central Bank has been done with remarkable care and some two years of trials, dry runs and suchlike. I remain amazed that two years down the line, banks seem singularly unprepared to meet the challenges of the rollout.

There has been no concerted awareness campaign on the part of the banks to ensure that customers know about this issue. I can gather evidence of, at best, cursory and almost derisory attempts at communicating what’s going on (mounting a FAQ on your website is not communicating with your public). And that strikes me as verging on insane – let alone highly insecure – given that this move potentially invalidates every cheque in the UAE that does not conform to a new standard that most people are unaware of.

So what does this all mean? Try this lot:

• PDCs held by landlords in the UAE that have not yet been lodged or discounted with a bank are likely not to be honoured by banks. They are potentially worthless documents as of 1/1/2010.
  

• Anybody issuing a cheque using the old style cheque book is potentially defrauding the person they are presenting the cheque to. And anyone accepting such a cheque (do you know what the new ones look like? HmmMMM?) is likely to have it bounced by the bank.
  

• Any payments, for instance mortgage payments, car loans or PDCs issued by businesses against scheduled payments, may well (probably will) bounce.
  

• Anyone who doesn’t know the difference between the ‘new’ cheques and the ‘old’ cheques issued by every UAE bank is in danger of accepting a dud cheque.
  

• The criminally minded punter can now have a field day – imagine selling someone some ACs, a fridge or suchlike. By the time the cheque has gone ‘thud’, what are the chances you’ll be able to find yer man? Yeah, zero.
  

• Cheques in the UAE are no longer as good as cash. They’re as good as junk until someone gets their finger out and clearly communicates what the hell is going on here. And that means, collectively, the banks that have so far stayed resolutely silent need to start taking responsibility.
  

Incidentally, the cheque that HSBC bounced on my landlord (a cheque for tens of thousands of Dirhams returned without even making a call to me, of course) came back marked as 'Irregular Signature'.

Cheque Book Fraud

Image by Getty Images via Daylife

I suppose I should be angry that HSBC failed to communicate the changes in cheque book requirements with me, but I’m not – merely resigned. I had to find out about it from someone on Twitter in the end.

I should equally, I’m sure, be angry that the bank dishonoured a post dated cheque I had previously given to my landlord, doing so, as usual, without attempting to contact and inform me. But I’m not. I’m just resigned to the lack of communication or basic care for the customer.

The UAE’s central bank has made changes to the way it handles cheques and has therefore made it a requirement that cheques should have an additional level of security, including a tamper-evident watermark. These have been added to new cheque books and banks are no longer accepting cheques made out using old style cheque books.

What amazes me is that a bank could actually contemplate making such a move without any attempt to communicate this effectively to its customers. I consider myself to be unusually contactable – I am quite an online person and you can get in touch with me by telephone, mobile, SMS, fax, email, Twitter or Facebook. You could even leave a comment on the blog. In fact, HSBC has frequently contacted me using SMS, typically to let me know about a discount I can avail at Joy Alukkas Jewellery when I use my HSBC card. Strange they didn’t think of using the same medium, or in fact any medium of communication, to let me know they were about to dishonour my cheque.

But I’m not angry about that. Just resigned.

They could even have bothered to write to me. To enclose a new cheque book, for instance, or at least a letter explaining what was happening and how it would affect me. They could have put a mandatory screen up on the Internet banking system that would have made me click on ‘NO I don’t want the new cheque book’ or ‘YES please send me a new cheque book now in plenty of time before the changes take place.’ That wouldn’t have cost them a penny but would have avoided my landlord getting a bounced cheque. They could even have sent an email using their woeful little Internet banking messaging system, but records show no such communication since November which is as far as records go back.

Given that I am a busy little bee with plenty more important things to do than muck about with this stuff, they could have used several routes to get through to me and let me know I had to act and that there would be consequences attendant on my inaction. They could have written to me, put a screen on Internet Banking AND sent me a letter, SMSed me and emailed me/messaged me via their Internet Banking service. All of them. Just to make sure I knew what was happening. They did none of them. Not one.

It’s not a time thing, either. HSBC has had plenty of time to inform customers of the changes and prepare them for the new system. The first phase of testing ICCS, which appears to have been a thoroughly well managed rollout by the Central Bank, took place in July 2006. HSBC has known for over two years that the new system was to be implemented and therefore has had two years to prepare its customers for the new security requirements. As the global local bank, it would have had experience from other markets of earlier implementations of Image based clearing, surely?

In fact, the whole thing has been a world class shambles, managed with the usual complete disregard for the customer and leveraging the communication skills of a deep frozen wombat.

But what makes me angry, because yes, I am angry, is that my landlord is a decent man but a very sick one and he didn’t need to have to deal with a bounced cheque. That cheque was written and issued in good faith, drawn on the bank account that I am paying the bank to manage on my behalf and returned without any reference whatsoever to the account holder. What’s more, the cheque was written on the cheque book issued to me for that very purpose by the bank – the very same bank that had previously taken to bouncing my cheques because it claimed my signature had changed (it hasn’t). The very same bank that I visited personally in August last year to sort out that whole sorry mess and who did not even think to let me know then and there that I would need a new cheque book. Although they must, at that time, have known that these changes were taking place as they'd been working on them for fully two years since full trials of the new system had taken place.

The bank has at no time communicated to me the requirement for a new cheque book or that it was going to start unilaterally dishonouring my issued cheques for reasons that were completely unknown to me.

Bankers.

BlockBerries

Image via Wikipedia

So Etisalat and Du have put their heads together and decided to block the evil BlackBerries. From this day on, no longer will the UAE's population be able to access gambling, pornography,drugs and *gasp* Voice over IP sites.

It's interesting that the telcos rank VOIP alongside gambling and porn - an insight into telco morality, if you like. What are the worst things the UAE's telcos can think of - the most mind-corrupting, society-challenging, youth-destabilising things possible? And Skype is right up there with the worst things that the Lord of Mordor could possibly imagine.

You do have to wonder, don't you? The telcos, according to the report carried in The Paper That Tells It Like It Is, Gulf News, are acting unilaterally and not waiting for 'Nanny' regulator the TRA. Damn right they are - because while three of the four categories are culturally arguable, the fourth, VOIP, is a purely commercial decision that is contrary to the interests of the people that these telcos are supposed to be serving.

At least they're not forcing people to accept spyware...

Language

Image by jovike via Flickr

Language is a funny thing: when you're writing, sometimes you have to stop in mid-flow and cast about for the right tword, the mot juste. Sometimes your choice of word can be telling - and make the difference between how things appear. Sometimes a word can give away what you're really thinking and not what you'd like to project - what you'd like people to think you're thinking.

There are two words that are part of my everyday life that I believe are telling in this way. They're used by my bank, HSBC. No doubt selected thoughtlessly and dashed down in seconds as a tiny part of the greater job of building a sprawling empire of flawless customer service, they do rather give the game away.

When I use telephone banking, a service that I truly appreciate as it has meant I have had to make only infrequent visits to the branch and therefore have been largely able to avoid interacting with the drooling, slack-jawed incompetents that infest the place, I frequently make transfers between accounts. When this process is successful (which is quite frequently, as no member of the bank's staff has the chance to insert themselves between me and the computer), I get the message 'Your request has been processed.'

This is a screech to a stop moment for me every time. It's my money and you're providing a service to me in return for which I pay you. So it's not a request really, is it? It's an instruction. I am instructing you to do something, not begging a favour. I'm wearing the big boots, I'm the customer and it's a bloody instruction to you regarding the arrangement of my assets.

When I use an ATM to take money from my account (again a process that is frequently successful for precisely the same reason that telephone banking works - its totally automated and as long as you don't want to do anything in any way slightly unusual or intuitive, you're onto a winner) and the ATM confirms that I'm about to get my money, it tells me 'Your withdrawal has been accepted'.

Again, I apply the old locked brakes here. Accepted? Like an officious dame ticking a box to confirm that I don't have any threateningly anti-social tendencies and can, indeed, use the swimming pool, my bank is accepting my request to take some of money out of my account. And here was me thinking that my instruction was being processed.

I'm the punter, not a beggar in front of a mosque. Those two little weasel words are a constant reminder to me that HSBC's view of our relationship is somewhat different. To paraphrase the bank's intensely annoying UK advertising campaign:

Customer Beggar Beggar Customer