The Yaxis Live by Rajesh Kumar

In the last ten days or so, we have seen a spate of ads, on TV, Billboards etc announcing the rebranding of Indian Telecom operator Hutch to Vodafone. Newspapers have been talking about the huge sums that has been marked for this transformation.This NDTV report event mentions about a sum of 300 crore being earmarked for this brand makeover.The entire campaign, including creative is very tasteful and simple.The blitz appears so pervasive.

However, there is branding in nooks and crannies, which is still to be done.

Look at the network signature of a visitor who visited this space last night from a handheld device on Hutch network.The network is still identified as Hutch.

Don’t blame the brand managers though, this is one space that they may not think much about(or know about). Don’t blame the network guys either, they are not incharge of the brand. It just goes onto show that such mammoth brand makeovers have more dimensions than a brand manager can possibly think about.

It is indeed amazing that Yuvraj Singh became the first batsman to hit six sixes in an over in nascent Twenty 20 format. But what is more amazing is the way internet has made it possible for people to see the magical moment as and when possible, at a time of your choice, and as many times.Not only did I receive an email containing a clip of this Yuvraj packing off Stuart Broad of England at Kingsmead, Durban as an attachment and folks also forwarded multiple links on various video sites. Not sure where these sites stand on the issue of Copyright violation in such cases, but at this point it is all up for folks to see.

I was at BlogCamp in September last year, and became a big fan of guys who were behind it. There is another event coming up coming October and this one sounds very promising too. SearchCamp is all about SEMs and SEOs, terms that are widely spoken about, but in my frank opinion, understood much lesser. SearchCamp on 6th & 7th October, (again an Unconference, wow) and promises to bridge that gap. I look forward to it, and hope to see you there.

No, Google is not distributing PR 9 as complimentary gifts here! See you there!!

Few months back, a friend of mine sought to transfer some money from his ICICI Bank account to to my ICICI Bank account. We choose the most convenient route, which was an online transfer. Was it that that convenient indeed?. Read on.

It so appeared that the account number I sent by mail to my friend was wrong by exactly one digit. A real costly mistake indeed. My unsuspecting friend promptly executed two transfers and the money, a sum of few thousand rupees, landed in a third account, which wasn’t his intention.

As soon as we learnt of the error, we reported to ICICI Bank, and surprising enough, this completely wired bank decided that this cannot be reported to the call center. One has to visit the branch. So be it we said, and dutifully filed a written report at the ICICI Branch where my friend has his account. We were advised, that the Bank would seek to reach out the third account holder, and after his/her permission , reverse the transaction. Not so simple. For months, my friend kept following up with the ICICI Bank staff by phone.In the course of this period, the bank kept saying that the delay is because the customer has not updated his/her telephone number and not responding to postal communication.

We then visited the branch once again. We were pointed out that bank really cannot give any SLAs on rectifying this error, since the error has happened from the customer side. Also, that the receiving account was short by ‘some amount’. We also learnt that this is not an unheard of occurrence at that branch.

The error happened because in ICICI Online Banking money transfer, there is no payee validation mechanism to ensure if the account indeed belongs to the person who you are seeking to transfer the money to. A paper instrument, bears the payee account name, and has to be deposited along with the correct account number. In case of a mismatch, it would not be processed. In ICICI online system, it just vanishes behind a number. So risky.

So with much follow-up, a major part of the money was transferred to my friend’s account, which I helpfully took from my friend, and the mode chosen was non electronic. The deficiency of an amount of over thousand rupees, one understands, is because the wrong payee had that much deficit in his/her account. So, whatever he/she owed to ICICI Bank for whatever reasons has now become my friend’s liability and therefore, mine.Cool!

We were told, in slightly coated words, that the Bank has taken some precautionary steps to prevent such an error, and we have neglected that. The hint was to an sms message that goes to the payer whenever he/she adds a new payee to make a transfer. The sms contains a numeric code, which has to be keyed in to complete the process. According to the bank, we should have noticed the error at this stage. I am tempted to challenge this. A real validation would happen only if the sms comes to the payee who would pass it on to the payer.

So, next time you are about to make an online payment via ICICI Bank, look at the good old cheque leaf as a valued alternative. Or consider transferring an amount of 10 rupees first, call up the other party and check if they received the same. Do not assume fancy systems to be more robust and foolproof. An application is only as good as the process design given to the programmer.