Well, it does not happen often, but i’m actually very pleased with a new product i’ve bought – a Toyota Prius. It’s not flash, but it has good gadgets in it and just drives well.

Of course all did not go 100% smoothly; I leased the car and had a torturous time getting the paperwork I need from the lease company to get residents parking and residents discount for congestion charge.

Same happened with the last car – reminder to self, don’t lease another car without sorting this out in advance.

Well, i’ve finally found time to start blogging again, so will try to stay on top of it this time.

So, just to update on my stolen identity…Barclaycard refunded the money from 3 fraudulent transactions and sent me a new card. I wrote back to them askin if they could provide information on how this fraud was likely to have happened….and I heard nothing back from them (other than the usual marketing junk).

Needless to say, I no longer use Barclaycard, if they can’t be bothered to answer my query, then I can’t be bothered to use there service – it’s not like there is a shortage of credit card providers.

That card was one of my longest supply relationships (22 years I think), a bit weird and symptomatic that this relationship can die without even being noticed by Barclaycard and their CRM systems.

Well, it had to happen eventually given the pace at which this crime is growing.

I’ll keep a running commentary here for my own records as much as anything else.

Here’s what’s happened so far:

- My Barclaycard Visa bill arrived this morning.

- I almost choked on my breakfast when I saw an charge O2 for £1,027.31; my iPhone bill should be £45.

- I assumed that it was a mistake at O2, who had a lot of trouble moving from my old O2 account to the new iPhone one (not a surprise given my previous post on the matter).

- I phoned O2 who, on the first call, handled it badly, telling me that they could not see such a transaction on my account and that I needed to phone up Barclaycard and get a ‘GED’ number for the transaction.

- I phoned up Barclaycard who told me that only a merchant could request such a number.

- While I was on the phone to Barclaycard, I noticed another two Paypal payments that I did not recognise…..the penny was starting to drop.

- I asked Barclaycard to put a stop on the account and send out a form for me to challenge the transactions.

That’s where we are at the moment. I don’t really regard it as identity theft at the moment, much more likely just plain old credit card fraud….but let’s run with it and see what happens.

When O2 first announced that they were to be the first UK mobile operator to have the rights to sell iPhones and contracts, there was a lot of debate as to whether they had paid too much in terms of revenue share they’d have to give to Apple.

I actually thought that they’d do well from it, irrespective of the relatively high share they were giving away. My logic was based on that they were likely to be acquiring ‘happy customers’, i.e. customers who, on average, would be advocates – of the phone and by default of O2, until such time as their exclusivity runs out. As input to that, I had considered the USA launch, noting that despite locked phones, the post launch price cut, and relatively poor mobile service from AT & T, the vast majority of existing customers are still massively positive about the device – and sales figures continue to look good.

I even pondered for a moment that O2 might have taken this acquisition of happy customers into account in their calculations and that they had figured out the ‘net promoter’ impact to show an overall positive return. Of course that would therefore mean that O2 were in full control of the launch plan, had designed the perfect customer experience around it, and all they had to do was hit the on button on 9th November……and that was where my assumptions seem to have fallen apart.

Consider what has actually happened in my case:

- I am a long term O2 contract customer, on a reasonably high tariff, and they regularly tell me how important I am to them, and how I have my own special ‘select’ number to call if I want to talk to them.

- When the iPhone deal was announced I phoned them up to see what the deal/ options were going to be; their answer…….go to our web site and have a look, we can’t tell you anything over the phone.

- Fair enough I thought, their call volumes will be very high so I can understand their logic, although I thought the might have a programme to allow existing customers to talk to someone.

- As time went on, there were no more details announced, so I thought I’d phone up again to have some specific questions answered. On that call, the penny dropped for me….there is no designed customer experience, or at least not a good one, there is no segmentation in place that differentiates between existing and new customers…..and that the all my thoughts about O2 acquiring advocates were about to fall by the wayside.

In fact it’s worse than that – the 1600 minutes I have stacked up in credit with O2 will disappear if I merge my existing account with an iPhone account. So as an existing customer it costs me more to switch to an iPhone than it does for a new subscriber. And when I then look at how I come to have 1600 minutes built up, I realise that the O2 proposition that supposedly keeps me on the right tariff is not worth the paper it is written on

So – what does that tell us (other than that I will need to spend most of this week on the phone to use up my credits)? I think it tells us that:

1) O2 are going to miss out on the chance to buy/ convert a load of high value, customers who could improve the advocate balance of their customer base (which according to Reicheld is the only metric that matters).

2) That there is obviously some weirdness going on behind the scenes in which O2 and Apple, whilst partnering, are squabbling over the customer experience – and Apple won.

3) That there is a strong danger that O2 will negatively impact trust and quality of relationships in that segment of their customer base that is already a loyal customer, and which switches to an iPhone.

Come on O2 – you’ve got 3 days to at least notice that you have ignored your existing customers. You seem to be able to send me text messages about all sorts of irrelevant stuff – how about one about my iPhone and how to avoid losing my credits????

Each time I log into my Network Solutions account I get reminded of the need to fix CRM from the outside.

They have tried really hard, and their cross-selling engine is a work of CRM art – but why oh why would you ever thinking that a Scotsman would want to buy these domains that they keep trying to sell me????????

Let’s just wait and see how long they keep trying to sell me this complete irrelevance…..I make it about 60 days so far.

Here’s a good example of the need for VRM. It seems, according an industry expert, that some retailers would be un-profitable if it were not for the monies that they make selling dubious warranties.

I’m just back from the first Project VRM planning session in Boston, lots of good progress made – ably facilitated by Joe Andrieu from Switchbook.

At the meeting were Doc Searls, Joe Andrieu, Chris Carfi, Dean Landsman, Charles Andres, Brett McDowell, Keith Hopper, Sean Bohan and me (Iain Henderson).

We agreed on a mission statement for the project:

‘Enable buyers and sellers to build mutually beneficial relationships’

Underneath that we have some project/ organisation development to do, and then a number of Mission Objectives to deploy.

More details to follow as they emerge…

I took out a 12 month subscription to Setanta in July 07 and then found that I did not use it much (Rangers were having a very poor season so not much reason to watch).

I called them in mid July to cancel but could never get through – the call centre system did not have a queue and just kept asking me to ‘call back later’.

So, I backed things up with two e-mails – neither of which were responded to. Bear in mind that they had already taken my August payment and no doubt will be trying to take my September payment.

I finally got through to them on the phone this morning, only to be told that I had to put my cancellation request in writing.

They have wasted a lot of my time, and stolen my money – not good!!!! Now i’ll need to spend more time fighting to get my money back.

Well here’s a surprise from the same marketing newsletter…when will they learn.

Mobile operators sending ‘irrelevant’ marketing messages

“On the other, it clearly points to a major opportunity for those operators who can harness vital information about a user’s interests and behaviour and offer them relevant services at the right time.”

Saw this today on one of the marketing newsletters – what a farce…..

Direct Line has come under fire for using misleading comparison figures on its website.

A table comparing competitors’ rates with those for Direct Line’s direct access savings account showed rates for Halifax, Lloyds TSB, Nationwide and Abbey that were a year out of date.

Direct Line was alerted to the error when it was contacted by a tabloid newspaper. The table has since been removed from the Direct Line savings website and the gaffe has been blamed on human error.

This embarrassing blunder comes at a time when Direct Line is running an advertising campaign claiming that price comparison websites are unreliable.

The Financial Services Authority states that all financial promotions must be “clear, fair and not misleading”.