FNB Platinum - best in Credit Card in SA for now

After my frustrations with Easypay I paid once for my telephone and electricity at Checkers (my local supermarket) and then realised that I could just add them both to my FNB platinum card via their internet banking list of recipients. Duh! What a pleasure, I must also thank FNB for the time they took to confirm how simple it is to get a platinum card and the benefits of the SLOW lounge at the airports. I also send kudos for a flawless Android App which makes banking (using my credit card account) a cinch.

It really saves to fly Mango (or Kulula) and hang out in better luxury than the SAA lounges. There are a number of other benefits like free card delivery and secondary cards, petrol cards with benefits, and some less useful ones like the platinum support but overall this is IMHO the best credit card in SA today by far.

Paypal integration also good as you may expect as they own Paypal in SA. And their CEO is a young practical approachable guy who spoke at the Silicon Cape event last year.
Much more than that I must also admit that I've owned an FNB credit card since my Bar Mitzvah so it's realy my oldest bank account (even when I was out the country for four years I managed to maintain it thanks to my late fathers help).
This leaves much to be desired for my other bank ABSA. As opposed to eBucks which I consider the premium loyalty banking service in the country (linked to dozens of online and offline services including most notably Engen and Kalahari as well as Woolworths, Makro, Kulula, Dischem, etc.) ABSAs Leisurelink closed down over 2 years ago. At the time we thought it was just ABSA insourcing. 18 months later I was sorry to say that had become the biggest thorn in ABSAs side. The promise was: "If you are an Absa Rewards member, earn Cash Rewards and qualify for great specials and discounts every time you use your Absa debit, cheque or credit card to pay at any of our participating Rewards Partners". Going to www.absarewards.co.za site one got: "The site's security certificate has expired!: and "The Absa Rewards programme has terminated with effect from 1st April 2009 however after paying a nominal fee (of a few hundred rand a year) one got absolutely nothing. Apparently the rules changed at the beginning of this year and the ±1% in 'ABSA rewards' was re-instated for all credit card purchases (for the 18 months prior it was only purchses from 'selected' partners that one earned rewards. I have yet to see what benefits can come about from these rewards and I'm aware ABSA is operating the Woolworths credit card which I considered getting for our domestic recently until I saw something better... see my next post....
Had to slot in an info graphic made by Scott Mooney a connection of a connection old family friend:

House to rent for the World Cup - or any big 'attraction'

We wanted to share in the economic development we've seen happening in our city over the past couple of years, so we planned to rent out our house in our beautiful city of Cape Town during the World Cup. It's more difficult than we assumed and it appears the mass of visitors everyone expected may not materialise. Or is there a glut of accommodation and not the shortage the alarmists we're initially projecting. updated: July 2010: Cape Town - Green Point was rated by far the best location for the 9 games held here, but it didn't attract the players (it's sea level) nor the media teams and other infrastructure groups. It was ironic that we had no tenants in the house for the duration of "the silly season" and straight afterwards everything returned to normal. Hope others can learn from this.

Website at http://braemar.za.org

Cape Town - Smart Community - Dark fibre and all that...

Last night the Intelligent Communities Forum announced the list of the Smart21 Communities of 2008. We made it! Cape Town is there, and I'm so proud that it's largely due to great efforts and more than three years of work we've (Radian) done for the City of Cape Town (mostly work by my partners Mark Neville and Raven Naidoo).

We spotted this award - got the appropriate approvals to enter - and wrote the motivation. More importantly in the background, we've been helping the city with a Telecoms strategy since 2004. This year the Dark Fibre project was been accepted by the powers that be.

The dark fibre project is based on the Swedish example where the city of Stockholm provides dark fibre (i.e. not lit, just the cable) between point A and point B. We were amazed at how much the Economic Impact Assessment showed the benefit to our economy with be, see the ITweb article: CT network 'to add R211bn to GDP'

Citi Sprint Courier review

I just had to write something after so many years of using these guys (and gals). It's not that we send many parcels it's just that occasionally there's one that requires essential timing and its just my understanding that the purpose of a courier is to get things there quick. Anyhow, in November we had a tender to get to Pretoria (which happens less than half a dozen times a year) and we had confirmed with Citi Sprint a week before sending it, that they would have sufficient time to get it into the tender box by 11am (it only really needs to get there by noon). As usual they confirmed and collected the tender docs the day before at 3pm. Unfortunately we received a call from them the following morning at 10:30am saying that they would not get it there in time. Their lame excuse was that the planes were full and would not take their bag. Our tenders usually requires over 60 person hours (this was no exception), so they're now fired! I can no longer recommend Citi Sprint (http://www.citisprint.co.za).

That said, who can I recommend, I'm not sure... The Post Office "Speed Services" has always been excellent for me and I'm not a fan of Post Net (mainly because they have forced me - as a recipient - to collect from some obscure location, and it was at a price premium). I'm sure that one of the other global players may work, but I'm not interested in dealing with underqualified call centre operators so we've chosen another small company, Internet Express. The sales person on duty, Janine Naude, gave me a full run down of how the industry works. Looks like that there was little that Citi Sprint could do at the time, other than be in better communication. Nevertheless, I'm confident that we're onto someone that will be watching carefully for our interests. All we really need is to get Government departments to adhere to the ECT Act and allow us to send tender responses by email (and thus not discriminating against us geographically disadvantaged small businesses).