1441 Bank in Training

1441 Bank in Training

You hear this often:  “When I grow up, I want to be a…” (insert occupation.)

Well, it’s not only true of little kids who want to be a cop or a firefighter or a doctor or a lawyer or a pilot. It’s true of companies, too.

One in particular, The Mini-Megabank down the street. Basically a small bank of the kind you’d find on Victorian era streets of London or in the middle of an Iowa cornfield or in a suburban strip mall.

Mini-Mega is practicing to be Chase.  But they have yet to complete the degree program at Megabank University.  So they’re only doing some of the bad stuff.  Guessing they haven’t gotten to the “good” part yet.

They know about mortgage bundling, peddling non-bank financial products, peddling auto and home equity loans to the three customers who have credit ratings above 740, overpaying executives and underpaying branch managers and tellers.

But they haven’t gotten the customer service right yet.

You have an account at Chase or Wells Fargo or Bank of America or Citi, and you can reach real people at any hour of the day or night.  In English, Spanish, Korean, Chinese, Transylvanian-accented Esperanto, and TTY.

You can reach them by phone, by fax, by email, by Internet, by smoke signals, telegram, semaphore and sometimes by seance.

Mini-Mega just chugs along singing the national anthem of customer service “Your call is very important to us.” Or the national anthem of the e-bank: “Website is down for maintenance until 4/23/2017. Sorry for the inconvenience. Please visit the nearest branch any Monday through Friday between 9 am and 3 pm.

Of course, 9 really means “ninish” and 3 pm really means 2:45.

Mini doesn’t update its website on weekends.  Its 17-thousand word “privacy policy” can be summarized by three words, “we have none.”  The interest it pays can’t be seen without an electron microscope.

And if your direct deposit paycheck is scheduled to arrive on a Saturday or Sunday, it ain’t gonna be there until the next business day.  Unless the next business day is a holiday.

Holidays include New Year’s Day, Martin Luther King Jr. Day, President’s (presidents’ presidents) Day, Memorial Day, Independence Day, Labor Day, Thanksgiving Day, Christmas Day.

Also, JP Morgan’s birthday, the Feast of St. Barnabas, Lunar New Year, Groundhog Day (PA,) Pioneer Day (UT,) Rosh Hashanah (Lower East Side,)  Al Capone Day (Chicago and Brooklyn,) Miley Cyrus Day (TN,) Skin Cancer Day (FL, AZ,) Babe Ruth Day (Bronx,) Suge Sharpton Day (57th - 140th St.,) Elvis Day (MS, TN.)

Customer service on a Sunday?  Forget about it.  But if you owe them money and it’s due on a Sunday and you haven’t paid, you better believe they’ll be at you with notices and fees.  Instantly.

For that, they work holidays.

Shrapnel:

--Okay, Stuporbowl is over and we can all go back to sleep now, those few who managed to waken to begin with.  The game got faintly interesting, briefly,  because all of the balls were properly inflated and the team from Foxborough MA came from behind to win, which was almost as exciting as Katy Perry’s new tattoo.

I’m Wes Richards. My opinions are my own but you’re welcome to them. ®

Please address comments to wesrichards@gmail.com

© WJR 2015

1440 Take Me Out of the Bowl Game

Sunday upcoming is the best travel day of the year. The highways will be empty and all will be quiet.  It also is the best shopping day of the year.  You will have the place to yourself, whatever the place.

Stuporbowl Sunday.

Yes, once again it’s time for Madison Avenue to show the latest stunning commercials about which you’ll remember everything except the name of the advertised product or service.

And it’s time to surround those commercials with the world’s longest hour, all 300 minutes of it.  

It’s Super Bowl Sunday, glorification of the lowest of the low i.q. sports.  A choreographed street brawl with a lot of time- outs.  Big men running around a football field the size of a football field occasionally kicking and throwing a blimp-shaped bladder covered in pigskin but mostly just bashing the daylights -- such as there are of them -- out of each other.

And this year it’s in that great mecca of professional sports, Glendale, Arizona, a tiny city on the verge of bankruptcy and which fires municipal workers and raises taxes so it can attract major sporting events that it subsidizes.  This game is the World Series or World Cup of football.  But, mercifully, it lasts for only that 300 minute hour instead of dragging on for weeks.

Pro Football is different from college football. First, the athletes are better paid. Much better paid.  And not under the table.

With the pros, you can’t bring your own food into the stadium, something that’s tougher to do at college games than it used to be.  

With the pros, injuries are better hidden but more severe.  Young college players are more resilient and recover faster than the creaky oldsters in the NFL.

And by the time a professional gets to the big time, he’s already pre-injured what passes for his brain, his knees and his hips to the point that additional scarring and swelling will settle in and feel right at home.

Superbowling is a fine way to keep undesirables off the street for a Sunday afternoon or evening. And it gives the rest of us a chance to travel at the speed limit.

Shrapnel:

--Glendale’s in big financial trouble.  But here’s an idea: bundle its bonds, get the rating agencies to give the bundles a top rating.  Then soak the suckers who want a piece of the inaction.

--Subprime auto loans are going the same way as the subprime mortgage finagling that caused most of the ‘08 depression.  Bundling. No credit, no problem!

Grapeshot:

-Question for the minimum wage earner who just bought a Lexus: do you think you actually can pay back that $40-thousand loan with an interest rate of 25%?

-Question for the loan sharks: How did you let the credit bundlers outmaneuver you on your own territory?

Personal Stuff: I note with profound sadness the passing of Carlo Greco, guitar builder extraordinaire.  Carlo was a friend of many decades, the creator of a marvelous classical guitar of which I am the proud owner and whose artistry and skill helped establish the original Guild instrument company as a major player.  He was a beloved and respected figure in the world of his craft, a friend to players and wannabe players and one of the great musical instrument artisans of the late 20th and early 21st century.  

CA 2012.Source unknown

I’m Wes Richards. My opinions are my own but you’re welcome to them. ®

Please address comments to wesrichards@gmail.com

© WJR 2015

820 Five Little Words

820 Five Little Words

Around this time of year, everyone is agog about the Super Bowl Ads. Which was the best? Which was the worst? Which will you remember? Which will you remember but forget what’s advertised?

This year’s game was the first in a long time that was better than the ads. So the self-induced hype about commercials took a back seat to the players on the field. Amazing!

Most of the votes seem to favor Volkswagen which featured a cute kid in a Darth Vader costume in shock when he made some magical gesture at an empty car and it actually started. (Dad was at the kitchen window with a remote starter, but the kid didn’t see him.)

But there’s a non-Super Bowl ad in circulation now that should get the Subtle Classic Award, though it takes a little bit of pre-knowledge to fully “get.”

It’s from Verizon Wireless and introduces the long-awaited and hoped for arrival of its version of the iPhone, previously licensed exclusively to AT&T, which a major consumer magazine says has the worst phone service in the country.

The iPhone does a lot of things very well. Unfortunately, making and receiving phone calls isn’t one of them. AT&T has more complaints about bad service than most of the other big carriers combined. Dropped calls, difficult to hear, difficult to be received.

Back in the day, Verizon touted the quality and reach of its network with a series of ads that featured the phrase “can you HEAR me now,” usually shouted into a phone by a frustrated user.

The new ad features the Verizon “it’s the network” logo actor, a combination of telephone lineman and tech-nerd holding an I phone to his ear and saying into it very very quietly “I can hear you now.”

Five words that speak volumes.

The arrival of the iPhone puts Verizon in an awkward spot. It has invested gazillions in promoting and selling the competing Android phone, based on a Google operating system. It has invested more gazillions in supporting and promoting the BlackBerry. Now, it has all three “smart” phones. Is that too many? If so, what’ll they do about it.

Shrapnel (Liberal Media Edition):

--Keith Olbermann has landed at Al Gore’s “Current TV.” Anyone receive this channel? If so, what else is on it?

--Arianna Huffington has landed at America On Line, selling her independent website, the Huffington Post for 315 million dollars, all but 15 million in cash. Didn’t someone just call AOL “the place startups go to die”?

--Since the Huff post now is a part of AOL and Tina Brown’s Daily Beast is part of Newsweek, there is a shortage of left-leaning women who write well and have their own websites. Which means it’s time to find a new left-leaning woman who writes well who will start an independent website. Any candidates?

I’m Wes Richards. My opinions are my own but you’re welcome to them. ®
Please address comments to wesrichards@gmail.com
© WJR 2011