Citibank is systematic... Duh!!!

When I had applied for my Citibank credit card, I was asked to authorize them to auto debit the credit card bill’s minimum amount payable directly from my savings account. Well I know why this has to be done and I have done the same with ICICI bank too. The idea is to make sure that I pay at least the minimum amount payable towards the credit card bill in case I don’t pay the bill amount fully. Otherwise if I forget to pay the bill, I will end up getting a ridiculous late pay fine charged to my next bill. ICICI debits the minimum amount on the pay by date if I haven’t paid any money towards the bill till then.

Recently I made some purchases using my Citibank credit card and I promptly paid back the bill amount fully well before the pay by date. But on the pay by date, Citibank completely ignored my payment and went on to debit the minimum amount from my savings account just to make my total payment more than the bill amount. I called the customer care and explained the problem.

Customer Care: No problem sir. The extra amount which got debited from your account will be adjusted to your future purchases

Me: But why do you take money from my account even after me paying the full amount?

CC: Sir you have authorized us to debit the minimum amount from your savings account…

Me: But I have paid you the full amount…

CC: Yes sir next time onwards you should pay us only the amount less the minimum payment. The minimum amount will be taken automatically.

Me: But don’t you think it’s stupid? Aren’t you supposed to take the money only if I haven’t paid you?

CC: I know sir but it’s all systematic, you know. We can’t do anything…

Me: Yeah I’m sure… Next time I will be careful not to pay the bill fully.

Let me shout from the roof top one more time… Computers are supposed to make my life simpler and easier. Not to make me take out my calculator to do the math to find out how much I should pay my credit card company.

Tamil Sky Wala

Usability is not only about product design, but about everything in life.

In my opinion, Tata Sky is an example for pushing Hindi forcibly into my life. The worst case happened when I was watching a programme on Animal Planet, originally made in English but dubbed in Hindi. I was aware of an option for me to choose my language; of course I had set it as English, but only to be ignored.

I called them but I was told they can do nothing about it. I was furious, I was not asking it to be dubbed in Tamil, but leave the original as it was.

However, I do appreciate them for making an effort to change.

Recently I called them again for a query and was greeted in Tamil. Surprisingly, after listening to the message, I learned that I also had a Leg Transplant

Ungal "Call"ai oru tata sky associate-kku maatrum bodhu, thayavu seidu kathirukkavum

which in English translates to

Please wait while we transfer your "Leg" to a Tata Sky associate

My friend has started taking usability seriously in life

Some things need not change

I use the MediaMonkey software to synch music files with my iPod, instead of iTunes. MediaMoney not only gives me more control over the synching process but also allows me to transfer songs from the iPod to the computer which is not possible using iTunes. As I have all the current songs made as play list on MediaMonkey, I have also made it as the default music player in my computer. But every time I go to stop playing the song I freak out seeing the stop button. The stop button looks more like a delete button (cross mark) to me and every time I go to hit it, I get a feeling that I'm deleting the song from the hard drive.

I'm not sure why they changed the globally accepted and identified music/video player button icons and broke the consistency but it only meant a bad user experience. There are many things users have already got used to doing, and its better not to change it significantly so that they have to unlearn whatever they know and learn once again from scratch. As I always say, once someone got used to doing an activity, there is no point talking usability there.

Update: The new version MediaMonkey screen shot shows the standard stop button.