[Reader-list] my mobile phone provider thinks i am an tsunami victim...

[paul keller]

... and has a pretty poor sense of geography.

got my monthly bill from my mobile phone provider (orange Netherlands 
which an almost completely different entity than the orange operating 
in bombay. they just use the same brand identity and parts of the 
companies are held by the same holding: hutchinson whampoa limited).now 
getting a monthly phone bill is nothing special, but getting one which 
informs you have been a tsunami victim an that they therefore credited 
you with €42.05 for 'possible extra phone expenses related to the 
tsunami' is somewhat strange. especially if you have not been affected 
by the tsunami as you where safe on a jet airways flight from bombay to 
delhi when the whole thing hit the coasts of india and sri lanka. now 
it is no secret that mobile phone providers record the location data a 
mobile phone generates, but at least under dutch law this data cannot 
be used by them for anything else except invoicing purposes (and they 
have to retain it for law enforcement purposes for half an eternity or 
so). and as far as i can tell remember i did not generate any data at 
all during the time the tsunami hit. i switched of my phone on the 7th 
of december in delhi, replaced the sim card by and airtel india branded 
one and switched back to my orange sim on the 11th of january at the 
airport in delhi to make a couple of calls before flying back to 
amsterdam. so as far as they can tell i have been delhi all the time 
which thanks to its inland location and altitude is probably even less 
tsunami affected than amsterdam. of course they could also have a look 
at my call record and would discover that i did not make any calls 
during that time either....

for sure i am not comfortable with my phone company using this (non) 
data to become some kind benevolent paternalistic entity that does a 
little monetary intervention here and then when things get a bit more 
bumpy that the average european can be expected to be able to cope 
with. and if i should ever want something like this i will buy a travel 
insurance policy. i can imagine how these public relation geniuses at 
orange have seen this golden opportunity to build up a personal 
relationship with their customers. given all the suffering that this 
catastrophe has caused to all these poor western tourists (which is the 
real reason why we Europeans have donated so much to the relief funds), 
they went strait to their data-minig department and told them to get 
them a list with all their customers that have been in the hit by the 
tsunami. so the data miners go a and get themselves a CNN info graphic 
that shows the tsunami affected countries run a couple of queries based 
on this information and come up with a list of tsunami victims among 
their customer that goes back to the marketing department and there the 
amount of money available for this stunt is divided by the amount of 
victims and the billing department is instructed to credit each victim 
with the resulting amount. and now they are probably all excited how 
they come up with a way of effectively allocating ressources where they 
are most needed... credit where credit is due!

when i called their customer center today to complain about using my 
location data for something which they are not entitled the call center 
agent simply failed to understand my problem. he could not see how i 
could complain as i benefited from this measure of theirs and told me 
that i was ungrateful. and when asked about why i was getting the 
credit when i was in delhi the whole time he told me 'well that is in 
the region isn't it?'

best, paul