Daily Archives: October 8, 2007

Banks and Bank Accounts

Posted by Wendy on October 8, 2007 No comments

Who these days does not have a string of complaints about both banks and the bank accounts they offer?. I would say just about all of us but they are a fact of life, and, a necessary one nowadays. I have seen just how much the banking scene has changed over the past twenty years and the way we conducted our banking even that short time ago is so different to how we have to manage these days.

Back then you got your first job, chose a bank account to save your money in, opened the account with relative ease and walked away with your passbook. Each week you went to the bank, lined up at the teller and gave the book and the money to the smiling girl behind the counter. Your money was counted manually and she either hand wrote the amount in or it was passed through one of those new high-tech printers that displayed your balance in a nice and clear manner. You could see how much you had and the balance pretty much stayed the same until you either withdrew some or deposited more money. It was that easy, you had your savings accounts, cheque accounts or your current accounts - nothing complicated.

Then, as the 80′s rolled along came the advent of the ATM – these computerized creatures that were built into a wall outside the bank and instead of handing your money over to a smiling teller you fed your precious earnings into the ATM via an envelope and a slot and watched it disappear into the unknown. All you got in return was a tiny faint slip of paper revealing your balance. And sometimes it was wrong!. It took me a few years to trust those ATM’s before I would use one. Along with the ATM came the new innovation of bank charges; those indecipherable messages on your bank statement that told you nothing except that the bank had helped itself to your money for one reason or another.

Further along came the trend to actually dissuade bank customers from even entering the bank at all, telling them to use that greedy metal giant implanted in the wall outside to deposit and withdraw their money. Problem was the things either ran out of money, you forgot your secret code or it went offline during your transaction leaving you with no money and no receipt!. You finally had to go into the bank to report it whereby you had to fill in duplicate and triplicate forms to prove who you were and that it was your money you wanted and that it WAS your money!. Of course there would be a ‘charge’ to process all of this for you and it would come out of your money – the money you cannot get at.

For those of us whose patience wore thin with all of this de-personalising of the banking industry we grabbed at the new option of the online savings account. This enabled us to sit at home and see our balances on our computor screens as well as transfer money and pay bills as well. Which has actually been a great innovation. What is not though is the way the banks now charge us for doing our own banking!.

You have to admit it has all become so confusing now, and so expensive; some banks even want to decide if you are good enough to have an account with them rather than YOU deciding if THEY are good enough to handle your business. I really feel for those elderly folk who only ever withdrew their money from the local branches that are now disappearing, where do they go instead?.

Maybe back to putting their money under the mattress again…not a bad idea really.

Copyright © 2007-2012 Cultured Views. All rights reserved.

Those ripoff tv quiz shows and comps.

Posted by Wendy on October 8, 2007 No comments

 Have you ever dialled of those TV phone-in lines to answer a multiple choice question in order to win cash, a holiday, a dream home, car, etc?. Have you noticed how, especially in the

UK recently, nearly all those phone-in quiz’s have been proved to be fakes?. The producers have got a winner before anyone gets a chance to call, or, the ‘winner’ was actually a staff member of the TV station. All you have is a premium number bill to pay next time you get your phone bill.  This is nothing new and, if you have ever seen the film ‘Quiz Show’, you will have found out that those so-called ‘TV quiz’s’ and ‘phone-in comps’ are basically set-ups. This has even happened in

Australia; I know because I was part of a so-called ‘selection process’ and saw with my own eyes what went on. And honesty had nothing to do with it.

 Back in the 1990’s a Sydney TV channel launched their own production of the famous quiz show ‘Jeopardy’ and for several months prior ran TV commercials inviting prospective contestants to write in and apply for the chance to be on the show. I was interested and so applied, with my mother. I thought it would be fun and a chance to maybe win some great prizes. Especially as Mum is an inveterate reader and has an inexhaustible supply of general knowledge. Mum though was sceptical about TV quiz shows and said we would never actually get on…I thought I’d give it a go anyway. I wrote in for both of us and in due time received application forms on which we had to describe ourselves and our lives, then a week or so later a letter arrived asking us to present ourselves at Channel ***’s studios on a certain day and at a certain time, with instructions telling us implicitly to be on time…’any latecomers would NOT be admitted’. On the day we did just that. Here is how the selection process worked: 

Mum and I, along with approx 200 other prospective contestants, were ushered into a studio ( I recognised it from a TV show I had been an audience member of 2 years earlier) and we were all told to sit in the audience seats. On each seat was a five page questionnaire and pencil which we were told not to touch until the word was given to do so. Then a female, carrying a clipboard and wearing a headset, began to address us all as if we were five year olds on our first day of school.  We had 60 minutes to complete the questionnaire; after the 60 minutes was called no-one was to continue writing; only those who had completed the questionnaire with the most correct answers would be selected to go through to the next audition stage. We began. 

Mum sailed through her questions, I did pretty well also as the questions were high school easy, she finished her papers after 40 minutes, I was not far behind. Then, about five minutes before ‘time’ was called a group of 10 ‘latecomers’ entered the studio and took their seats with one of them, a man, sitting right beside Mum. He picked up his questionnaire and just sat and held it without writing one single thing on it. Then ‘time’ was called. As we filed out we each handed our questionnaires to people standing at the studio exit. We were told to wait in the cafeteria area while our papers were marked. 

After a mere 20 minutes we were all called back into the studio to hear who had been chosen for the next stage. I was positive that Mum had made it through at least. But, 20 minutes to mark 1000 pieces of paper…how did they do it?. We sat in the same seats as before and as the names were read out something began to smell, and smell badly. 15 contestants were chosen and of those 15 all 10 of those ‘latecomers’ had been selected, and in particular that man who had sat down beside Mum five minutes before the end and had failed to mark one single question on his papers. This is what told me that the whole process had been a fix. That man had not answered one single question and yet he had made it through. The other five I guess were token choices aimed to make it all look above board. 

I can tell you that a lot of very angry people filed out of that studio that afternoon and, if times had been a bit different back then, Channel *** would not have gone to air with that show due to the complaints. But they did, and it did not last very long. It flopped. My Mum and Dad had appeared on TV game shows (e.g.The Marriage Game) back in the 60’s and Mum told me that there was no selection process involved at all…Dad was in showbusiness and his agent got them onto those shows. She knew how the process worked and only went along to Channel *** to prove it to me…she is of the opinion that all TV quiz shows etc are a farce. And they obviously are. Australia’s biggest TV quiz show is ‘

Sale of the Century’ and two of it’s biggest winners were Hutton Gibson (Mel’s father) and Kit Denton (Andrew’s father)…obviously their connections got these two otherwise unknown men onto the same show. Yes, they were bright fellows, but I would say their surname’s were the deciders…and I’ll bet they never went through the audition process like the other poor sods who lost out to them.

 If you would like to win a lot of money, a dream home, holiday or flashy car then I advise you do it the easy way…buy a lottery ticket; you’ve got just as much chance in the end. And chances are the results wont be rigged

Copyright © 2007-2012 Cultured Views. All rights reserved.

France Telecom: A telephone service sans ’service’

Posted by Wendy on October 8, 2007 No comments

There are some aspects of life in France that make you want to bang your head against the wall; trying to post a letter at the village Poste is one; understanding how their dinosaurial banking procedures work is another but the biggest cause for possible self-inflication of cranial damage has to be trying to deal with France Telecom. For the simple reason that this is a telphone service that places no emphasis at all on ‘service’. And especially if you get a fault on a Friday afternoon.

Our phone line went down at 4.30pm on a Friday afternoon which is a huge problem here as we need the phone connection for the internet, reservations, phone enquiries and our guests who prefer to pay by credit card. No phone connection = huge problems with the previous. I thought it was to do with some mildly bad weather we were having so waited an hour before attempting to call France Telecom. First problem, their assistance numbers do not work when the line is cut. Wherever I have lived in the world you can report a fault to a phone company via a special emergency number that works even when your phones dont…not here though. Of course.

I spent an hour trying to contact Telecom on my mobile but to no avail. Next day, Saturday, still no phone connection so I attempted again to call on my mobile. After several years I got through and explained the problem, and the implications, only to be told that France Telecom does not employ technicians in our region over the weekend – ‘c’est trop trop cher’. A national phone company that cannot provide an after hours service!. We would have to wait until possibly Tuesday. Four days to fix a fault!!.  And as it was just us and our neighbour who were affected – we live outside of the village – we would have to remain cut off until France Telecom could find the spare change to pay it’s workers.

Pathetic. It is widely acknowledged that France has a very long way to go to providing polite and efficient customer service. I think they could start by finding and employing polite and efficient PEOPLE to start with. If our phone was not so important to our business I would display the same cavalier attitude to paying the phone bill that France telecom display when it comes to assisting their customers when they need help.

I will say though that the guys who came out eventually to fix the fault were professional and friendly, maybe they could show the administrative side of France telecom a thing or two about being ‘customer friendly’.

France needs privatisation – competition – then many companies here would pull their socks up I’m sure.

Copyright © 2007-2012 Cultured Views. All rights reserved.