Momentum Multiply: How not to run a loyalty programme

Momentum has two loyalty programmes: Save Thru Spend, available to its clients for free and Multiply, which provides additional benefits, for a monthly fee. Multiply is a status based rewards programme, similar to Discovery's Vitality.

There are two types of savings that Multipy offers: discounts and cash back into investments. It's a brilliant idea, and some of the savings on offer (steep discounts on gym memberships, movie, car hire and plane tickets) are good.

Unfortunately, the execution is poor. The Multiply website is down with alarming regularity, and has some appallingly uninformative error messages. Although the site does warn that it will have limited functionality after hours, someone doesn't seem to understand that the web is a 24x7 medium, and sites are not supposed to keep Pretoria civil servant's hours (I exaggerate, but only slightly).

Try booking a Nu Metro movie ticket (only allowed through Computicket) on a Sunday, and if Multiply is down, you are out of luck. Of course Sunday is "after hours", but tell that to my friend who wanted to book a ticket that day.

If the system is up, you have to contend with the confusing and clunky Computicket Multiply booking procedure. Did anyone do usability testing on that thing?

Want to book a plane ticket through the "low cost airline", and get a discount? You can't book on the website: you need to phone, or email(!) them. The airline's systems are probably not integrated with Multiply's. Nor, it appears are many of their other partners (Spar being a notable exception).

Points sometimes take ages to be updated.

This is a poor show. Momentum is a fairly slick company, and not all their systems are as bad as the Multiply one. But unless they fix their apparently half-baked Multiply systems fast, they will find that their loyalty programme is a liability, that reflects poorly on them.

Remembering the victim of another senseless murder

A few years ago I blogged about a Chinese immigrant who was shot in central Durban when I was nearby.

Today, another murder made the papers. The brutality and callousness of those that raped an elderly woman and then slit her throat, should cause outrage. But when I heard the story, I felt very little. There have been so many brutal murders, so much crime, that I felt a distant sort of rage, but no visceral reaction. No feeling of shock. Murder has become so much a part of our lives, and we are so conditioned to crime that very little causes outrage anymore, and that is an outrage.

When the history of this era is written...

perhaps forensic auditors rather than historians will be in the best position to describe South Africa's "miracle" transition.

Why is it fashionable to complain about crime only now?

Crime is a huge problem in South Africa and it has been been a huge problem for years. I have had family members hijacked, burgled, robbed at gunpoint (numerous times), tortured and killed, in the last 10 years.

Ordinary people have had to put up with crime for a long time, but the South African media seemed reluctant to move beyond merely reporting crime. Suddenly, though, along with big business, they seem to have found their voices, and are complaining that the government is failing in its most fundamental duty - to protect its citizens.

Is it because of the 2010 World Cup? Or is it the lame duck factor - with Mbeki's quasi-authoritarian reign coming to an end, are they less afraid of reprisals¹ from the Great Denialist and his henchmen? What has emboldened the media and big business?

^{Note 1: Even though they were intimidated into dropping the anti-crime campaign, I doubt that FNB would have even contemplated such a campaign 2 years ago.}

Durban Robots

Two years after I first mentioned it, I found that the people in charge of Durban's traffic lights still haven't figured out that they need to change the lightbulbs regularly. Idiots.

Three years of blogging

The three year anniversary of the first entry on this blog just passed. How time flies.

Life insurance crooks

I had the unfortunate experience of dealing with someone who wanted to sell me a life insurance policy this week, who works for a huge "respectable" insurance company (which lately seems to be developing a reputation for ripping people off).

The high pressure tactics he used were quite remarkable (even resorting to emotional blackmail at times); although I didn't fall victim to his tactics, the experience left me very angry. A lot of innocent, less-savvy people are being ripped off.

Although most of the other people I've dealt wth in the financial services industry were relatively decent, people like him give the whole industry a bad name.

The sooner the (literally) blood-sucking bastards are brought under control, the better for all concerned.

Holy war hotting up?

The pope-Islam hostilities appear to be heating up again, ahead of his visit to Turkey.

The Time article contains the following rather interesting fact:

In late October, Benedict received a different kind of validation in an open "Your Holiness" letter from 38 of the best-known names in Islamic theology. The missive politely eviscerated his Regensburg speech but went on to "applaud" the Pope's "efforts to oppose the dominance of positivism and materialism in human life" and expressed a desire for "frank and sincere dialogue."

The article refers, of course, to the speech the pope gave a few months ago, that got (small) parts of the Muslim world foaming at the mouth, which was praised by many of those who read it.

Now, in case you missed it, the letter from the Muslim heavyweights to the pope can be found here (by the way, Muslims need to improve their PR operations - it was fairly difficult to find this).

Unfortunately for the pope, it appears that his controversial speech contained some glaring errors, and wasn't as well thought-out as many of us first assumed. If he wants to confront Islam and impress Muslims as much as he impresses the chattering classes in the West, the holy father needs to up his game a little.

Borat movie: disappointing

I had high expectations for the Borat movie, but instead of rolling in the aisles with the rest of the people in the cinema, I was disappointed.

The movie is basically a collection of the usual Borat humour, as found on the TV show, unfortunately made so over-the-top and dumbed-down that it becomes embarrassing.

An example, I have seen a few funny clips where Borat meets with high society types for dinner, and there is also such a scene in the movie. However, in the movie he goes absolutely over the top, and after visiting the toilet he actually brings a turd back to the dinner table. Instead of talking about a prostitute as he did in the TV series, he brings one to dinner. Instead of exposing the latent prejudices of his hosts he just acts like a jackass, and when he gets kicked out, it's less funny than inevitable.

The scripted scenes could have been written by a cruder version of Leon Schuster, and were tedious as hell.

A few laughs don't make this movie worthy of the hype it has generated.

From the archives

I sometimes hear people claiming that "African culture" leads to people blindly supporting their leaders, regardless of their actions. Of course, this is not an exclusively African trait at all. At times, all countries, even the most advanced, get caught up in fits of leader worship.

I remember reading the neocon National Review Online's Corner blog coverage when Bush did his now infamous "Mission Accomplished" photo-op on an aircraft carrier back in 2003.

Here, for your enjoyment is a link to the fawning coverage from that day, three years ago (scroll down to May 1 and work your way up).

Looking at the references to bush as a "stud", and the praise for the now-embarrassing photo-op, one cannot help but cringe at the bullshit put out by this bloodthirsty outfit.