More on Mercantile Club

More on Mercantile Club

I would like to add my full agreement with the letter from Mr.
Sia Ka-Mou entitled Desperate Mercantile Club (The Jakarta Post,
Feb. 15, 2002).

I am also a Life Member of the Mercantile Club, Jakarta and
have also raised strong objections to the arbitrary and
unreasonable policy of charging a minimum monthly fee to Life
Members of the Club in particular. I fully subscribe to Mr. Sia's
view that, it is not the amount of the charge which is at issue
here but the principle. Life members of this Club subscribed,
and invested considerable sums over and above the regular
membership fees on the understanding that there would be no
monthly fees.

For this club to change the rules retroactively is, and again
I fully share the views of Mr. Sia, an egregious example of bad
corporate governance.

I also fully agree with Mr. Sia's opinion that the club
management should, if the Club is not being used by its members,
analyze the reasons why and make the necessary changes and
improvements to the products and services offered to its members
before arbitrarily penalizing particularly Life Members of the
club who have entered into a long-term bond of trust with the
club in good faith. It should also be noted that this " Club "
is, in fact, not truly a club at all in the traditional sense of
the term but a for-profit organization which, like any other
business, must develop and survive on the basis of the quality of
the services provided to its customers.

Further, in my exchanges of correspondence with the club over
this issue, which appear to have been almost identical with those
of Mr. Sia, I have experienced a degree of arrogance which made
me conclude that I wanted no further part of being involved. I
therefore canceled my membership as a statement of protest,
despite the loss of the original membership fee and with no
attempt on my part to ask the club for any refund or to assist in
selling this membership. I then received a letter from the club
manager, Mr. Urs Wuthrich, confirming that my membership would be
canceled with effect from March 1, 2002 and offering me "
profound appreciation for my support towards the development of
the club".

In English, we call this sarcasm. In German, I am unsure of
the term because I do not speak the language, but in "bahasa
business", we call this arrogance, particularly in what is, I
always understood, to be a service industry?

PHILIP A. TOWNSEND

Jakarta