Well, the parents have left the building and have all returned home safely. We had a fab time and it really was all over way too quick.
As always after a few weeks off, re-starting work will be a completely mammoth task. This time it should be relatively easy for me, I’ve got some accounts stuff I need to catch up on, need to prepare a brief for the guy who writes my content (a great way to feel like you’re getting back in the saddle without really having to do much!!), and need to finalise moving my business here to Australia under a new company name.
Did I say It’d Be Easy?!
Nobody with an aversion to swearing should ask me about the last point on my affiliate to do list. I had to open a GBP account here and was staggered to discover that none of the staff in my local NAB branch had a clue how to pay my cheques in for me. I first had the audacity to try and pay in my cheques on Thursday, but after a seemingly endless wait whilst the teller checked with any staff member she could grab to see if anyone knew what one of these accounts was, called a helpline, printed a form, read the Ts & Cs, etc - I was informed that as I had no ID I couldn’t give them any money. This took us 30 minutes on my parents last day in the country. I think the teller was glad there was some glass separating us because I could have melted it quite easily with the 1000 megawatt glare which I treated her to.
Upon returning today clutching my form (which as an aside would make any beaureaucrat beam with pride), and no less than two forms of idenfication I enjoyed another hour stood in the bank whilst (the same lady as her bad luck would have it) made phone calls and generally admitted she had no clue what the form was on about.
“Oh, it must be a new product.” My poor teller twittered.
“No, NAB have been doing these accounts for at least 2 years. The terms and conditions are dated 1997″ I managed to say (very nearly politely)
“Oh. You’d think they’d have told us”
At this stage the teller beside her leans in with “Nobody here knows how to do that you know. It’s new.”
“Yes, I can tell” I said, winning several awards for diplomacy.
After 2 or 3 more eternities, another call to a helpline, a debate with some other tellers about one or two of the options on the form and what they might mean, she trooped off to the managers office to get him to countersign my application to give them some of my money. After 20 minutes she returned and declared,
“Manger’s never seen one of those forms either. He didn’t have a clue what it was about.”
“Oh how super, you must feel so much better!” I enthused (winning 3 baftas)
So Webgains and Affiliate Window I may well be asking you to reissue some cheques. They’ve probably been sent to Outer Mongolia for all I know. The only silver lining in todays sterling customer service experience was seeing the look on the tellers’ faces when I remarked,
“I’ll be in every month doing this you know.”
“Can’t you get paid electronically?” They gasped.
“NOPE!” I beamed. “See you again later in the month!”
Hopefully that will be the most of the switchover sorted now, it took them no less than a month to even open my account so it’s something I’ll be really glad to see the back of.
I should be firing on all cylinders by the end of the week and getting back into a nice bit of Christmas type fun. Now I (allegedly) have somewhere to store my money, this will actually be worthwhile again!
November 2nd, 2009 at 11:58 am
lol.. reminds me of the “fun” I used to have trying to pay USD cheques from CJ into my local branch of HSBC – “The World’s local bank” had never seen a foreign cheque before it would seem!
November 2nd, 2009 at 1:26 pm
At least you got to talk to someone face to face. Back in the uk, you would be told “we are unable to deal with your enquiry in branch,” and then would be faced with a call to the dreadful call centers.
Its actually painfull.
November 2nd, 2009 at 6:59 pm
Sadly I get this level of hassle with most banks, even for their (supposedly) day-to-day business. One bank lost £10k of my life savings, then claimed they needed 60 days to resolve the issue and refused to give me updates.
Dan
Oops…forgot to say great post! Looking forward to your next one.
November 2nd, 2009 at 7:13 pm
Ah Kirsty, the pains of Australian banks.
The magic words to use are “banking ombudsman” and they suddenly become very efficient and work out what they should be doing in the first place.
November 3rd, 2009 at 12:51 am
Hi Kirsty,
Banks… I wanted to set-up another business account with a bank I’d been with for 28 years. The manager was really apologetic but he had to go through the process – he even asked me if I was a terrorist or had any intentions of using the account for laundering money – boy they really know how to catch you out.
I suppose all affiliates have a business account and pay tax. Dont they?
I’ve only recently started to take AM seriously and I’m following your feed. Good luck in Australia.
Chris
November 3rd, 2009 at 4:12 am
Urgh, we all love the banks and their beaureaucracy don’t we? I realised this morning that should I wish to withdraw money from my account I will need to ring their international services department. I have not yet been furnished with that information and doubt that popping into my branch to ask is the way forward. Mind you, I might just nip in and do that at 4.55PM one day this week
November 8th, 2009 at 1:41 am
Hey Kirsty – I just pay foreign cheques into my normal account… it takes 60 days or so before funds are available – but after the first 2 months you don’t notice. It costs me $16 for 3 cheques with St George
November 8th, 2009 at 5:46 am
Hey Ty, In my case I have “spare money” that I don’t want to change into dollars because of the dreadful exchange rate at the moment. I’ll be sitting on it until things get better. And 60 days clearing time on top of the 2 months to get funds from networks – I’d go bust! LOL.
June 1st, 2010 at 5:33 pm
Hi Kirsty,
I read this post a while back and when I read “need to prepare a brief for the guy who writes my content” it triggered a thought – I could be more sucessful at affiliate marketing if I focused on the areas that I’m good at and outsource the other bits.
Outsource the copywriting / content creation. I’ve used elance.com in the last couple of weeks and that has so far worked out ok. I’d like to ramp up the content creation a bit and get a few regulars doing copy for me. It’s travel related so I’m looking for people with “local knowledge” in different locations.
I think that a good step forward is for me to create a content style guide that covers audience, tone of voice, etc. Have you spent any time on creating one? If you have do you have one that I could take a look at to help get me started or a list of ‘pointers’ that I should include in a brief?
June 2nd, 2010 at 5:57 am
Hi Bart, well… I didn’t put in a very detailed brief with my guy at all. I just said the writing style should be lighthearted and easy to read.
Fortunately he was quite good LOL