Lessons in e-commerce, advisory sell Net 1 shares

I've been using Easypay to pay municipal and Telkom accounts for the past 13 years (since 1998). The company was an offshoot from Pick 'n Pay who always acknowledged themselves to be more of a financial institution than a retailer (they make money off the cash flow rather off the goods), and they had been accepting Telkom and municipal payments for many years prior to the online payment company Easypay was established. The Easypay website and system was simple and easy to use, one could save ones account details and login monthly (anytime) to make payments with ones credit card. It took a few minutes....

The website and systems worked flawlessly for more than 13 years... then some bright spark thought it must be upgraded and changed everything. The new site took about an hour to work out how it worked, one needed to call the support line in order to get it working, and finally the banks stopped allowing them to transaction (Both ABSA and FNB that I am aware of). Now they say on their site:

EasyPay's SOLUTION will launch in 26 days: As you are probably aware, a number of reports have been published in the press regarding Credit Card fraudsters targeting EasyPay's website. This led to ABSA, and other financial institutions erroneously suspending all credit card transactions processed through EasyPay's website. Some banks inferred or simply blamed EasyPay for the failure of their own Credit Card security systems. "We at EasyPay have always adhered to all the rules as imposed by the banks." 

Yes, Easypay you have always adhered to the banks rules and your new system failed because the users could not work it, and because your old system worked there is no wonder as to why the bad press is happening! It is so clear that Easypay are playing with words to try save face. We know that it's not fraud, it's the systems you built and changed to (which cause the people using it to revoke the payments they tried to make), since the new system is bad and customers revoked payments as they did not intend to make some that the system forced. I went through the whole process personally and I've spoken to others who had the same experiences.  

Now they say "EasyPay have considered the weaknesses of the current credit card security protocols, and will in the following weeks educate our users with regard to a newly patented system, developed by EasyPay's holding company, Net1 UEPS Technologies, Inc" 

Sad and disappointing from a consumer point of view, I can also see them spending heaps of money on even more systems development that will shed even more customers. I'm disappointed, Pick 'n Pay must have sold out... anyone know the best alternatives? 

Fixing scale electric racing cars

This is in dedication to my wife, may she be able to pursue her quest for knowledge to 120. Since she mentioned there isn't much on this topic I decided to write this up since it worked so well.

Photo above shows the method to lift the brushes 'clip' in the bottom of the car using a small flat screwdriver (also shows the fixed clip). See the album of photos of the fix

Whilst this is a generic fix for scale electric cars, we use Carrera racing cars which are not allowed to be changed or manipulated by third parties intended for sale. Since this is only a hack which we found works better than the original, it's not considered a commercial enhancement.

Since I was a kid we always suffered the loss of the brushes under the electric car, this deems the car ineffective and retired. It's often time consuming and complex to find replacement brushes and they're usually quite expensive. In this experience it took no longer than 12 minutes and all the cars were working better than the original.

All you need is some old electrical copper wire (usually called electrical flex) which you can cut off any old appliance destined for the dump. A blade or stripper gets to the wires inside, try keep the individual wires twisted flat. They are very fine so be careful they don't spike you or the kids.

Scale Electric racing cars - fixBe careful not to break the metal clips that hold these brushes. You can wedge them off the car with a small flat screwdriver (see photo on top). Then wrap them around the side that has the missing brush (or both sides). Then twist them so they appear as flat as possible (i.e. do not try twist round and round, flatter is better). They should have a little 'springiness' to them.

You may need to use a flat nose pliers to flatten the tips of the clip which holds the brushes, in order to clip them back into the car.

Try it out on the track, if it's not 100% check all metal connections are being made (ie all metal parts are touching where they need to).

Koreans all learn Talmud

I was pretty taken aback this morning when I learned of the popularity of the Talmud in S. Korea (and North I suspect too). Almost no Jews live there and there is very little history of Jews ever living there, yet they appear to (all) know Talmudic stories they learned as kids. Clearly, the Koreans did not not somehow translate Steinsalz or the full Talmud Bavli (or any other). A homeschooling mother of four who lives a traditional Torah observant life in Israel married to an IT consultant working in Korea explains: "Rabbi Marvin Tokayer wrote a compilation of stories from the Tanach and the Talmud for the Japanese audience. Now this is fascinating in and of itself, because what the Japanese want with Agaddic tales is a probably a great story. But then this Japanese compilation was translated into Korean, where it’s really taken off. In the bookstore, my husband saw about twenty different editions of this work; there was a variety of different publishers with different illustrations. Some are aimed at younger children, some are aimed at teens. There’s even a five volume set."

An English-speaking young Korean woman explained what the book in his hand was. “The Talmudeh. It’s famous”, she said. The man asked her, what is in this book? “It’s children’s stories”.
He asked her, who reads this book? “Parents buy it for their children, so that they can have the knowledge of the Yutayne”, she answered. He asked her to translate the words on the cover. She told him it said, “Talmudeh, the Wisdom of the Yutayne”. “Who are the Yutayne?”, the man asked.
She did not know. She had to google, and it was clearly not a translation issue. The Wisdom of the Yutayne may as well have been the Wisdom of the undersea dwellers of Atlantis. Yutayne is the Korean for Yehudim. You know, Jews.

The Koreans believe that the study of Talmud is what makes the Jews smart and as announced in the past week by the Korean ambassador in Israel, they really love the lessons and there are probably more (translated) Talmudic stories in South Korean homes than in Israel!

On the right is a cartoon from the Korean Kids Times, take a look over here, there are hundreds more

Calling Australia's 1-300 numbers

Just a quick note to remind anyone calling an Australian 1-300 number, these are mis-advertised as the same as calling a land-line (they maybe in Australia), but when calling from overseas they are really really expensive. I was put on hold and kept waiting for 7 minutes and the call cost me 2.20 Euros for just over 10 minutes.

Note to Australian companies, these numbers are advertised very widely and agressively with so many benefits. Please keep in mind that they are not telling you the disadvantages, you will lose brand loyalty from any overseas customers - TPP Internet, I hope you're listening.

Rewardco - anothr call centre selling cell phone contracts...

I'm really frustrated at the number of calls I receive from noisy call centres with semi-literate people reading from scripts, trying to sell me a cell phone contract. I just received a call from Jevon at Rewardco who totally lied to me when he claimed he was not trying to sell me a new contract. After 10 minutes of listening to him read his script he admitted that in fact he had lied and he put the phone down on me. I get at least 1 of these per week and it's a complete waste of time. They tell me that they get my number from Vodacom but since this isn't an 'application provider' it doesn't appear to be covered by the WASPA code of conduct. What can we do about this? Is there not something that can protect a consumer from this voice spam (actually much more expensive to me than email spam).