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