Weblog

Thursday September 21, 2006

Liquids on planes

On a recent flight to the USA, I was somewhat surprised to see that the airport I was at had erected metal fencing around the area for the gates serving flights to the USA.

This is a result, of course, of the "no liquids on a plane", fallout from recent issues in London..

So I got patted down and all my stuff x-ray'd, just like an ordinary criminal.

When I got off the plane and was unpacking, I discovered I'd taken on board two different containers of liquids/gels, including one that is 60% ethanol. One was in a bag, another was in a coat. The bag in question was examined, by hand, but perhaps the examiner had no clue about what he was looking at so didn't recognise it.

This along with an incident last year is making me wonder if there is any tangible benefit to the huge inconvenience and insistence that everyone be treated like a common criminal.

I wonder if there is more or less security entering into a prison than the USA?

Saturday September 02, 2006

Bill payment systems

In the USA, a suprisingly large number of bills need to be paid by cheque (not check) and even large utilities like PG&E are unable to accept bill payments vis the Internet using credit cards, rather they need bank account information to deduct the money from.

Come on guys...this is the 21st century...get with the program and make it easy for your customers to pay their bills (electronic or otherwise) using whatever form of payment is convenient for the customer. Disclosing bank account details feels very bad to me.

Even with bank account details PG&E claim it will take 3 days to process the payment. Wow. What are they doing, printing out the details you submit electronically, sending them to your bank and then the bank verifies the cheque? Come on! You can be more efficient than this!

Maybe in Australia I got spoilt - paying utilities by credit card and be able to verify the next day that the payment had been made - electronically of course.

But then maybe things in the USA are structured around the concept of pork barelling, where rather than try and run the leanest, meanest and most competitive operation, utilities continue to be fat pigs that are inefficient and lazy?

I wonder how companies like PG&E would change if you could pick up the phone and call Sierra-Pacific Power or Southern California Edison and say "I want you to be electricity provider, starting tomorrow."