We pay our rent using a scheme called National Rent Card (possibly so-called because it is run by the National Australia Bank). We have been issued with a plastic card with a long number on the back of it. Every month, I have to ring the toll-free number, type in that number, type in my secret identification number, specify how much I want to transfer, and then that much money is transferred from our bank account to an unspecified destination. I assume that the unspecified location is the back account of our landlord, but it’s possible it goes via some intermediate account so that the agents can take their cut.
Anyway, I’m telling you all this because it’s such annoying technology:
- I have to remember to do it at the start of each month—there seems no scope for automatic payments in my particular rent-paying universe.
- I have to remember how much it is we’re paying—perhaps I should take this as an invitation to occasionally register my contempt for the system by paying less than the required amount by some trivial amount.
- I dislike all phone-payment systems as a matter of course, particularly when there isn’t even an Internet alternative, as in this case.
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I loathe the general inanity of the messages on the system. Ever since I’ve used it (since March last year), there has been a message of the following form at the start of each transaction:
Please note, there has been a change to the system. When asked for your rent-card number, enter the whole number beginning with the 831.
Yes, it’s clear that the numbers issued have a redundant part to them, and some doofus originally allowed people to omit this part, but what really gets up my nose is that the same message is still being played, at least 10 months after the change. I can now recite at least its first part in exactly the same tone as the woman that reads it on the phone.
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