Epassporte – Ponzi Scheme or Inept?
Posted: under Cunt of the Month, Hall of Shame.
Epassport - Cunt of the Month
They say that idle hands do the work of the devil, and since epassporte has single-handedly put me in the poor house, at least temporarily, I’ve had plenty of time on my hands to consider their motives. And it gave me a great idea, I’ll start my own bank!
Note that I’m not claiming that this will come true, but as you will see, it is an incredibly simple and effective way that I can do as little as extract extra fees and do as much as to turn it into what is effectly a modified ponzi scheme, denying a portion of the clients EASY access to their money so that I can pay other clients with it.
The story starts with epassporte’s inability to produce a visa card in a timely manner, even though they have had 2 YEARS lead time to prepare. In fact, it takes them almost 105 weeks to produce the atm card. While its easy to write them off as inept idiots, I know that the inept idiots at the cell phone shop have no problem creating the mastercards in 15 minutes or less. I don’t know how the card creation process works, but if the cell phone company can deploy machines to print mastercards in their offices, it can’t be that difficult.
Add to this epassporte’s refusal to take resposibility and refusal to supply any kind of remedy, other that to blame somebody else, without specifying who they are blaming or offering any proof that they sent the card at all. Epassporte then claims to have sent the card by the same postal service that they have on record in their files as having a 50% failure rate in delivering my atm cards from their company.
In my thrashing about, trying to get some cash out of my account, I talk to someone else here in town, and their card is late too. At first I think that this is a good thing. After all, I’m not the only one and possibly this is an indication that the card has not yet been stolen by the postal service.
Please note, they are most certainly NOT denying me access to my money. I have the choice of transferring the money to another bank or another atm card, for a FEE. And if I want another card to be delivered in a method that will insure its delivery, that is available as well, for a HEFTY FEE, with the added bonus that if they do that, they will have to invalidate the earlier card, whether or not it was actually sent, meaning that if they did send it as they claim, and it did actually arrive, it would not work.
So all these things add up. You have the choice to wait and watch yourself go down in flames, as I did, or pay hefty fees, on top of the fees that they are never late to deduct from your account, to alleviate a problem that they created and are actively perpetuating while also actively denying that they have any responsility for the problem. They deny that there is even a problem at all. Don’t all banks send the customer’s new card after the old card expires? I don’t know about you, but in my 30+ years experience with atm and credit cards, this is the first time that one has been sent after the old one expired. But all banks try to charge as many fees as they can, thats how they pay the bonuses to the bigwigs, although they usually try to do it on the backend, instead of up-front by holding your money hostage.
But wait, there is more, and this is where it gets really interesting. What if this is not an accident at all? What if this “delay in card imprinting” is just a smokescreen.
Lets look at the planned numbers for my own (coming soon) bank, WorthlessCunt Inc. I’ll use extremely lowball estimates to conserve zeros.
WorthlessCunt Visa card expiration (24 months) / total customers = monthly turnover = 4.17% percent of cards expire, on average, in any given month.
Given: Monthly turnover = 1000 customers x Average Balance of $1000 = 1 Million Dollars (US) = “The Float”
In the beginning, the cards are delayed 1 week past the expiration date, essentialy freeing WorthlessCunt Inc. from the need to have $1,000,000 available in liquid cash, available for withdrawal in that week.
In the special case of customers that demand their cash to be tranferred to other banks/cards, there is the 5 day delay, meaning that that portion is still in the float and does not have to be in any liquid account. In any case, the previously mentioned hefty fees are enough to pay “Vinny the Loan Shark”, “Rajiv the 5/6 Guy” or “Fritz the Swiss Banker” (choose your poison) to cover the transfer for the remaining 2 days.
Now, I’m thinking, as the bank owner, this float thing is great! So lets have fun. Big house, fast cars and faster women, all for free! Hell, its so goddamn good, lets PRODUCE A MOVIE!!!
And its only getting better, for a while. The next step is simply “Tell Hadji at the call center in Bombay that when a customer contacts them, blame somebody else and tell them we sent their card already. If they still are not satified, tell them about our FEES” to buy time. And it works..
“Dat was gooood.. hit me again!”
And then the light bulb comes on and I take my bank into Bernie Madhoff mode, LETS DO THIS EVERY MONTH AND WE CAN FLOAT FOREVER!!!
I’ll stop there, I think you’ve gotten the picture already. Remember that its possible that I can get 100′s of sites pay through WorthlessCunt Inc. to 1000′s of affiliates and then think about what “The Float” might actually be. I think adding 1 or 2 zeros is a no-brainer, and it could be even more than that.
But it will never happen. I’m too lazy to run a bank and I’m not a very good liar.
But it could happen somewhere, somehow. And if we all sit around waiting, it might just happen with some other bank.
Have Fun!
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Jul 22 2010
