Jack Yan on Vox

One letter off

nobody@vox.com(Jack Yan) — Thu, 10 Jul 2008 02:02:34 +1200

From the menu at Arbitrageur, a wine bar in Wellington, New Zealand:

I would have had a Château Lucire instead …

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ANZ Bank: revelations from the executive level

nobody@vox.com(Jack Yan) — Sun, 06 Jul 2008 00:17:56 +1200

[Cross-posted] If you follow my ramblings, even when they don’t make sense, you know I had my knives out for the ANZ National Bank here in New Zealand for what I think is questionable practice. So it was interesting to meet a few people tonight who are employees of the bank, one of whom was very staunch about defending her workplace against my charges about, well, bank charges.
Humble pie time ﬁrst: Sir John Anderson left the bank as a director 18 months ago, so the criticisms I put at him were unfair. I apologize to Sir John.
Tonight, I don’t know whether I should be applauding the ANZ for brainwashing its younger staff so effectively or whether I should be congratulating myself for closing the overwhelming majority of accounts held there, given that there are people who do not give a damn about the customer.
While people should defend their positions, they should also be open to hearing others’ viewpoints. Respectfully. The customer is right. Not so, it seems, at the ANZ.
‘The bank must make a proﬁt, so it should make it from the mass customer base,’ I was told. ‘How would you do it?’
I answered, ‘Through investing, as you did years ago before charging us.’
She argued the usual points of the bank providing a service, before I confronted her with some basic logic that I have stated here before.
A deposit to the bank is, after all, my loan to the bank. When the bank loans to me, can I charge it a “Jack privilege fee”?
Around this point I was asked if we could change the subject.
There are several conclusions we can draw. First, an executive at the ANZ bank, a fairly high-up one, is not open to hearing from her customers. She has her own world, where she has been conveniently conned into thinking the monetarist solution is the only one, when history tell us it isn’t—and that the bank’s cutting of costs over the last 20 years should actually make it more efﬁcient.
Another member of the staff, a little older but I understand a little more junior, put forward her theory which made a bit more sense, about how mortgages no longer funded the bank’s costs as effectively. She did not know for sure.
But this shows just how bad the ANZ brand is. Different answers from different people—but the higher up you go, the less they care.
Front-line staff, as I discussed earlier, cannot offer a credible explanation about bank fees that any customer who has been there for 20 or more years can fathom. Fact: people do have memories.
And it seems that it is accepted as gospel that customers are to be taken from even at a higher level, no questions asked.
How well ANZ has managed to blind its staff.
A good brand is one that listens to consumers about their concerns—and actually levels with internal and external audiences about its policies.
This experience conﬁrms that the ANZ cannot level to either executives or front-line branch personnel, which means consumers are too far down the food chain for it to reach.
This Australian-owned bank has been proﬁting very well from everyday New Zealanders over the last few years, too.
But I cannot see that continue.
Any brand expert will tell you that for all the ﬁnancial analyses that a client shrouds itself in, the minute the brand falters, the effects on the bottom line will be felt.
One of the symptoms is what I describe above: one based around the hope that people simply do not remember how they behaved before they began cutting their services and putting up charges.
It is a failure to be transparent and to tell the truth to those consumers—and it only takes one who is aged over 30 to be able to remember the good ol’ days versus what I consider to be the unethical treatment that is metered out today.
Just as I said a few months ago, the TSB Bank seems to be the only choice New Zealanders have, and at least the proﬁts don’t make their way over to Sydney.
It was my ‘prerogative’, said the executive, for me to do as I wished with my money, if I had gone to the TSB.
No attempt to get it back—no promises to look into things. Even others have offered that to keep me on as a customer. Higher up, I guess, no one really cares. A lost customer isn’t important.
Even if the lost customer is a stubborn bastard with a big mouth.
If the ANZ wishes, I am happy to run a seminar for them to inform them of the niceties of listening to their customers. Unsurprisingly, I understand tonight that its proﬁts are heading south this year.
This problem won’t be ﬁxed with advertising, rebranding or PR.
It might be ﬁxed by giving customers what they want and pursuing something other than short-term proﬁt, which is exactly the message the ANZ has been sending me year after year.
Because if banks aren’t looking at the long term, then what heck are we entrusting a penny to them?

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My ass is cold but at least I have sat-nav

nobody@vox.com(Jack Yan) — Thu, 03 Jul 2008 13:57:52 +1200

Audi A4 1·8T

Got this baby till Monday. First time I played with sat-nav in New Zealand and it is surprisingly accurate. Without the ass-warmers, I mean, seat warmers, and heavier steering you kind of feel you are taking a step down from the A5 with the S-Line pack, but the sat-nav partly makes up for it. Quite sprightly for a 1·8 and better than the previous BMW 320i, though to be fair I need to compare it with the latest model. Easily better than the Mercedes-Benz C200K in terms of the gearbox (eight speeds in this sucker) but that heavy steering is a surprise. Full review in Lucire later.

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Audi A5 at night

nobody@vox.com(Jack Yan) — Thu, 03 Jul 2008 13:51:43 +1200

Not the best shots since they are off a cell but the better ones are on my 35 mm.

Audi A5 grille

Audi A5 rear

I really love this shape from the rear, too. It looks very low and purposeful but the car is narrower than you think when behind the wheel (I kept parking it far from the kerb), and it’s also reasonably high for front-seat passengers. Audi, Walter da’Silva and his team have done a good job.

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A5 at rest

nobody@vox.com(Jack Yan) — Mon, 30 Jun 2008 17:33:02 +1200

Audi A5 3·2 S Line

I love it. Haven’t really opened it up yet—the fastest I have gone so far is 60 km/h. I need to find some tougher roads.
This is after I cleaned the bird poop off.

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Herbie lives

nobody@vox.com(Jack Yan) — Thu, 26 Jun 2008 23:21:08 +1200

Someone in Wellington must really love Herbie and The Love Bug. This is a Volkswagen Käfer done up with the perfect Herbie livery, it’s a 1963 model year (which I believe is accurate), and the interior trim looks right to me, too. The steering wheel is on the wrong side, but other than that, the detailing seems to be spot on.
I saw the driver once and I was tempted to shout, ‘Oi, Dean Jones!’
Which might get a better response than, ‘Hey, Lindsay!’

Herbie 1

Herbie 2

Herbie 3

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‘I dream of Gene Genie’—now download the Manc Lion

nobody@vox.com(Jack Yan) — Tue, 24 Jun 2008 14:12:51 +1200

Just been brought to my attention: your own downloadable Gene Genie cellphone illustration!

http://www.voeveo.com/images/wallpaper/81694

It’s Ashes to Ashes Gene rather than Life on Mars Gene. And, fortunately, not US Life on Mars Capt Gene Hunt of the LAPD.
I should also note that Voeveo is a Wellington, New Zealand-based company (as all the great internationals should be), one that has done well globally in spite of our government.

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Here’s 12½¢ I didn’t claim back

nobody@vox.com(Jack Yan) — Thu, 22 May 2008 01:02:44 +1200

9-11 parking stub

Despite the shock of 9-11, which happened in New Zealand on September 12, 2001 thanks to the time difference (why don’t we insist on calling it 12-9?), I still had to attend the breakfast for the first day of the Wellington Fashion Festival for Lucire. And, that morning, I had to pay for car parking.
   I had used this parking ticket to write on—the back has a note to my father—and when he lent me a suit to wear to Dan’s funeral today, I found this item.
   It brought back a lot of memories and a lot of worries that morning—a friend of mine working for Verizon used to get off at the WTC stop on the subway. I rushed back to the office to see if I could get through to New York, found out everyone was alive, then hung up so other services could use the phone.
   I watched a lot of plans go up in smoke that day—I had intended to return to NYC in October 2001, funnily enough with one intention of checking out the World Trade Center’s observation deck.

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RIP, our friend Dan Chan

nobody@vox.com(Jack Yan) — Sun, 18 May 2008 10:35:23 +1200

I want to make a public tribute to a family friend, Dan Chan, who passed away last night. Dan was one of the guiding forces behind the Wellington Chinese community, a former chairman of the Seyip Association here, and a true leader who bridged the gap between cultures in his years in New Zealand.
   I was one of the ushers at his wife’s funeral earlier this year at the Wellington Chinese Baptist Church, which wasn’t that long ago.
   Dan was 100, and I have a feeling he might even have been 101. (My aunt says he was 101.) He was still very alert the last time I saw him, and only had a bit of a problem walking. At 100, he had a better memory for faces and names than I do. He was still driving till recently.
   He is one of the subjects of a film about Wellington’s Chinese history and early Chinese business owners. As with many in those mid-century years, he worked in the service industry, owning a restaurant—I think on Molesworth Street.
   I pray for him and his family, and the decency, dignity and honour they always displayed in all their dealings.

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Look up! Look out!

nobody@vox.com(Jack Yan) — Sat, 17 May 2008 16:21:10 +1200

Sometimes when you look up, you see some interesting things. First, on the Terrace in Wellington, when I noticed a lovely blue sky in autumn.

Buildings on the Terrace

Then, when in Auckland:

Abseiling in Auckland

I was heading down to Simon and Marie Young’s office so I didn’t stop to find out what this was all about. Was it training, a fancy way of washing the building, or fans of Police Rescue doing a tribute?

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