PC World, the near–monopoly UK computing superstore, have a policy of deliberately insulting customers who use certain banks. I use the Co–op in the UK. If I try and use my Co–op debit card at PC World, I am always told that I have insufficient funds. I always have sufficient funds, actually, and, according to my bank, who should know, PC World make no attempt to check.
They tell me I had insufficient funds. First of all, I don’t like being lied to. Secondly, this is effectively accusing me of attempted fraud. I don’t like being accused of attempted fraud. I don’t like being accused of attempted fraud by people who are lying. I don’t like being accused of having criminal intent. I especially don’t like being accused of having criminal intent by people who are lying. But I’ve tested this on a number of occasions. It always happens. It is clearly policy. I really detest being accused of having criminal intent by people who repeatedly, and clearly deliberately, have a policy to lie and insult people who use certain banks.
If their policy was based on simple unwillingness to use a particular bank, they wouldn’t say I had insufficient funds, they’d use some other formula to simply say they couldn’t accept the payment. Instead, they deliberately fail to check my bank balance, and they deliberately insult me. That attitude is unpleasant, and rude, and clearly deliberate.
So I strongly suggest anyone who wants to pay excessive prices for poor quality computer equipment to go to one of their competitors. Obviously, anyone who wants to pay a sensible price for the product doesn’t go near them anyway.
Why do they do this? Well, the chap who ran Dixons and PC World, until recently, is Stanley Kalms. He subscribes to nationalism, his politics have been described as rabid. To my mind, there are two forms of nationalism. The civilised form promotes “us”, the irrational form denigrates “them”. The irrational form attacks and denigrates people who know better than them, such as, by necessity, non-nationalists. The Co–op bank is associated with the socialists (I am not a socialist). I am quite convinced the inability of PC World to take Co–op cards is political, is because the people who ran PC World suffered from nationalism. I am equally convinced their refusal to be honest about it, to insult people who use the co–op, is because they suffer from irrational nationalism.
Incidentally, if anyone questions my dislike of irrational nationalism, may I remind you of ETA, of Northern Ireland, of Serbia; all examples in recent years of irrational European nationalists expressing their belief that anyone who holds a different opinion, or has a different accent, should be murdered; all examples who don’t seem to have noticed a rather big and extremely nasty event that took place in Europe in the 1930s and 1940s, an event of great evil caused by nationalism.