McGarvey's Words: Journalist…Podcaster..Speaker

By Robert McGarvey

A distinction held by this year’s winter Olympics is that it will go down in history as the first where the widely listened to advice was: bring a burner phone and that is because the Chinese government required athletes, Olympic staff, media, probably everybody to download an app named My2022 that was buggy and almost certainly spied on the phone’s contents.

You’d have to have been nuts to bring your own phone. Or just ignorant.

China is a notorious cyber thief. As far back as 2010 I routinely heard from Fortune 50 security consultants: if you are going to China bring a burner phone and a new computer with no content on it. Or bring no technology at all. Whatever tech you bring will be hacked.

Even so, did some bring their own phones to China for this Olympics? No doubt. But before we snigger, ask: am I personally practicing better cyber security on the road today?

Here’s the big point: collectively we have forgotten what we need to do to stay cyber safe on the road.  Understandably, It’s been nearly two years.

But here’s a primer on simple steps we all need to take when traveling.

Burner phones.  There are some countries that just scream: bring a burner. Russia, China, Israel, Iran top most lists.  The more cautious travelers add France and South Korea.  Some whisper that the biggest threat is the U S of A.  

Know also: that many countries have dramatically upped their phone tracking as a step in thwarting the spread of Covid. Location tracking is step one. The next step is data tracking.  

If in doubt bring a burner phone especially when traveling abroad. 

Phone recharging stations.  They are common in airports, often seen in meeting venues, and starting to show up in museums. Never, ever use them. A dead phone is a lot better than a hacked phone and too often criminals have hijacked those charging stations. There’s even a phrase: Juice jacking.   

Public wifi networks.  Never, ever use them, part 2.  Not in airports, not in airline clubs, not in hotel rooms, not at meetings.  Your phone can create a hotspot and in my experience my phone’s hotspot is at least as fast and sturdy as the public networks used by peers. A hotspot is a lot harder to hack into than a public wifi network.  I just don’t understand why everybody doesn’t run on hotspots when traveling.

Bring cheap computer gear. I am going on a business trip imminently and my travel computer will be a Chromebook that is so old I have no memory when I bought it – but it boots, it runs Chrome, it can read an SD Card which I need because I am doing some recording.  If it gets broken or stolen on my trip, who cares? And there is no meaningful data on it.  

Trust VPNs – but Verify.  Not all VPNs are created equal. Some work, others work less well, and a few are downright criminal in intent. Beware of free VPN but don’t believe all VPNs that charge fees are necessarily safe.  VPNs are indeed a useful safeguard for traveling executives but they are not a cure-all. If your employer requires one, use the one they specify.  If you provide your own, carefully research the choices before signing up. And when traveling abroad recognize that VPNs often work better in some countries than  in others.  You may need several on a multi country trip.

Be wary of QR codes. So often now we are confronted with a QR code and instructed to click – to read a restaurant menu, to access information about a painting in a museum, to claim a place in a queue.  I am not saying never do it (although I am tempted to) because sometimes we really want what is on offer (like that restaurant menu).  But be cautious.  QR codes are ridiculously easy to counterfeit and if you click on the wrong one you will find yourself delivered to a cellphone hell.  Think before the click.

Guard your log-ins.  We live in the age of ransomware and a key to criminal success at that is getting a mark’s log in.  I know, I know, on the road we often look at emails and text messages when we are tired, even bleary eyed.  Who hasn’t done that?  But be careful. It is too easy to hand the jewels to a cyber criminal. Better to leave an email unread than to lose your log in.

To quote the eminent philosopher Popeye Doyle, never trust anyone. Definitely not on the road,

How many loan applications does your credit union reject because of the applicant’s credit score?

Harder question: how many times are those credit scores erroneously lowered due to faulty information in credit reports?

Listen to Clint Lotz, ceo of TrackStar AI, and the answer is that plenty of loan apps are rejected for exactly those reasons.

What if your institution could harness machine learning tools to swiftly analyze a credit report and identity probable errors that when fixed would result in a 50 to 100 point jump in the credit score?

Sound good? That’s why you want to listen to Lotz as he talks about contemporary, cutting edge credit repair tools that will enable a credit union to empower a loan applicant to quickly initiate repair of his/her credit report and, in the process, position the credit union to comfortably grant the credit the applicant seeks.

How good does that sound?

Why haven’t you heard of similar before? Probably, says Lotz, because it is all new, enabled by the emergence of inexpensive cloud based computing (think AWS, Amazon Web Services).  But powerful cloud on demand computing is here and that has made it possible to analyze loan apps and credit reports in wholly new ways, says Lotz.

Along the way you want to hear what Lotz has to say about FICO.  No hints here as to what he says. But buckle up when this moment arrives.

Listen up.

Like what you are hearing? Find out how you can help sponsor this podcast here. Very affordable sponsorship packages are available. Email rjmcgarvey@gmail.com

And like this podcast on whatever service you use to stream it. That matters.

Find out more about CU2.0 and the digital transformation of credit unions here. It’s a journey every credit union needs to take. Pronto

By Robert McGarvey

It was reading about two American Airline flight diversions in one day – caused by misbehaving passengers – that made me think: we have to stop this and it has to stop now.

How many lives need to be disrupted before we – carriers, passengers, and the federal government – resolve to act to stop it?

In many cases, the passengers on a diverted flight lose a day, maybe two or three, may incur the costs of a hotel, and may have to buy meals.  The out of pocket isn’t that much. But that lost day will never be restored, 

The thought fries me into wanting action.

From the government, of course.

If history is a lesson, however, buckle up because your newborn will be shaving before the feds act decisively.

But maybe now we can do better.  Especially since the FAA says last year it investigated 1000 cases of unruly passengers – more than the previous seven years combined, according to the New YorkTimes.

That’s why we are seeing more stories about diversions. And it’s why we need be cogitating on how to end this mayhem in the air.

What put my mind in this action mode is, Exhibit A, an American Airlines flight from Los Angeles to Washington Dc was diverted to Kansas City after a passenger attempted to force open the cockpit door and, failing that, he tried to open an exit door.

What happens if somehow an Exit Door is opened at 30,000 feet? Esquire has asked and answered that question: “Pilot and Vietnam War veteran Pete Jordan knows exactly what happens when a pressurized cabin decompresses 30,000 feet in the air at 300 to 600 mph: ‘There’s no oxygen, and it gets damn cold in a hurry.’ An open door would release the cabin’s ball of pressure, causing an immediate “suction explosion.”

Meaning passengers could be sucked out into the sky.

Experts say that it has become impossible to open an Exit Door on a commercial jet at 30,000 feet.  They are probably right. Let’s hope they are.

But, personally, that logic would not reassure me in the moment if I were watching a nearby raving maniac trying to pry open the door.

In this case, it took three flight attendants and three passengers to subdue this man.  One of the flight attendants apparently used a coffee pot to keep bashing him on the head.

Exhibit B – another American Airlines flight – took off from Phoenix, heading to Honolulu and – for unexplained reasons but due to a “disruptive passenger” the plane u-turned and returned to Phoenix.  

Both incidents occurred Sunday, February 13.  

Let’s stop waiting for the government to solve this growing problem.

Let’s do that ourselves.

When I write that I think of the 15 years of hijackings of planes that were diverted to Cuba.  The first was in 1958, the end of the period came in 1973 when Cuba agreed to treat hijacking as a crime and also agreed to return the planes to the carriers (although fees could be imposed).  There have been occasional incidents even into this century but with that 1973 treaty the party was over.

Also in 1973 metal detectors were installed in airports.

The hijacking era was definitely at an end.

But I think we can stop today’s diverted plane phenomenon much quicker than will happen if we wait on the government to act.

How? Money talks, sometimes loudly. Let’s make it howl.

First: urge carriers to pursue legal action against the unruly passenger, meaning file a civil suit for damages. Amounts awarded that I know vary from $50,000 to six figures. For instance: UK based Jet2 billed a passenger $106,000 for allegedly trying to open exit doors in flight which prompted the pilot to return home.  

Understand I am no lawyer and I do not offer legal advice but I will tell you what I have decided to do if I am ever on a flight that is diverted due to an unruly passenger: 

Step two: aggrieved passengers on a diverted plane should think of their own lawsuits against the perpetrator.  To quote from Mainor + Wirth, personal injury lawyers in Nevada: “If an individual urinates on, harasses, or otherwise assaults a passenger, that passenger may pursue civil claims against the individual for physical injuries, property damage, and emotional distress.”

If nothing else, file in small claims court.  In Maricopa County, Arizona for instance the maximum claim is $3500.  But multiply that by 10 and it’s $35,000. By 100 and it becomes $350,000.  Will such sums be collected? Very probably collection will be a difficult matter.

But the headlines will be the persuader.  Divert a plane and, between passenger and carrier claims plus federal fines and you are out a fast half million dollars.

Will this work? I admit I am unsure.  Most of the diverters I read about seem utterly unhinged, probably impervious to the fact of personal bankruptcy as a consequence.

But in my mind we have to try something.  If there are better ideas, tell us.

-30-

Update: On February 11, aboard a Delta flight from Salt Lake City to Portland, OR, a 32 year passenger attempted to open an exit door because he hoped passengers would video him as he spouted anti vaccine nonsense. He was restrained by flight attendants; the flight was not diverted. Nonetheless, the risks that incidents will multiply are real if inflight antics are used for purposes of political theater (cf. the Cuba hijackings). #stopthestupidity

by Robert McGarvey

Buy now, pay later (BNPL) is the big, transformative force in retail. In fact, Insider Intelligence estimates BNPL will account for $680 billion in sales in 2025 — up from $285 billion in 2018.

If you are an online retailer, you need to know about BNPL because your customers want it. Online shopping is where BNPL first took off, and now it is becoming an expected option at checkout.

BNPL is everywhere today — even luxury products. For example, says Jackie Mattia, director of financial services strategy at Movable Ink, Peloton owes a great deal of its quick success to its relationship with BNPL leader Affirm which offered many buyers 36 months to pay for their exercise machine. That brought the monthly cost to around $70, which is comparable to a high-end gym membership.

At a different price point is Goldbelly, where the Jacques Torres Valentine’s Day heart truffle box sells for $34.95. But just before checkout, a pop-up advertises “4 interest-free payments of $8.73 with Klarna.” 

Continued at Startup Savant

by Robert McGarvey

The friendly skies are getting friendlier – at least they are getting cheerier because, as of mid February, more carriers will be serving beer, wine, and cocktails in coach. Southwest, for instance, says it will be pouring as of February 16. For now American Airlines is a holdout (it does pour for front cabin pax) but as it hears the cash registers merrily ringing at competitors it certainly will start pouring too.

Understand this: I cannot recall the last time I had an alcoholic beverage on a domestic flight – possibly never in this century. I am a Diet Coke or coffee guy at 30,000 feet. Yes. on international flights I usually will sip some bad wine with a meal but that really is only because I am bored and know I have lots more hours of not much in front of me.

Yet I am supportive of this carrier move to sell booze. For many people, a drink or two in the air has a calming effect. It certainly isn’t enough to get a person drunk.

That said, I know many flight attendants are in a frenzy about this resumption of alcohol service in the air. Lyn Montgomery, president of Transport Workers Union Local 556, the union of Southwest flight attendants, called the airline’s decision to resume alcohol sales “both unsafe and irresponsible” in a statement emailed to the Washington Post.

“We have adamantly and unequivocally informed management that resuming sales of alcohol while the mask mandate is in place has the great potential to increase customer noncompliance and misconduct issues,” Montgomery added.

I don’t dismiss her concerns – or similar concerns on the parts of tens of thousands of flight attendants who have faced a spike in astonishingly bad and violent behavior on the part of many passengers in the pandemic era.

I also know the FAA has reported that it has logged hundreds of cases of disruptive passengers who were fueled by too much alcohol.

But I just do not believe passengers on planes, certainly not in coach, will ever be served enough booze inflight to get blotto. There just is not that much service. And flight attendants are not allowed to serve an intoxicated passenger anyway.

So how did that passenger get drunk? In some cases passengers are and have been sneaking their own booze aboard. You can’t do that – it violates multiple rules. But, anecdotally, I hear of many, many cases of passengers smuggling booze aboard and getting away with it. I also rather doubt too many flight attendants will challenge a passenger: Is that smuggled vodka you are swilling? No, I just don’t hear that.

Even so, I don’t see smuggled booze as the problem. TSA limits on liquids mean quantities smuggled aboard can’t amount to much.

And I think a way to stifle the smuggling that does occur is to slap the most flagrant violators with the $11,000 fine that can be levied. That will grab headlines and it is a frightening thought – smuggle a miniature nip aboard and pay $11,000 for it.

That still leaves the biggest issue in passenger drunkenness unresolved and that’s the passengers who stumble aboard drunk.

How did they get in this blotto condition? Often it’s by downing a half dozen martinis at an airport bar.

There’s an easy fix for that: Every state has laws that impose penalties on licensed establishments that serve an intoxicated customer. Penalties range from fines to arrests for misdemeanors to suspension of the liquor license. In many states a licensed establishment can also be held legally liable for damages caused by a drunk patron after leaving the establishment. Just remind airport bars and restaurants of their legal exposure – and inflict fines and a few arrests – and they will straighten up. The FAA needs to speak up, as do local airport authorities. That is a big, brutal stick. Wave it and hit a few who ignore the threats.

The last step is reminding carrier gate staff that they can and should deny boarding to inebriated passengers. In the US, carriers do have the right to deny boarding to a drunk – and very occasionally they exercise that right. They need to do that more and, yes, local police typically are available to assist in convincing a drunk it’s time to go home and climb into bed, not to climb on a plane.

Meantime, Delta Air CEO Ed Bastian has written to the US Attorney General asking that the government initiate a federal do not fly list that would be shared among carriers. That is a wonderful idea. Even the fear of it may be enough to coax some pax into being more civil in the sky.

Bottomline: There are ways to reduce onboard violent drunkenness but will let passengers have a Bloody Mary on board. And they are not that hard to implement.

 NSF has become the new four letter within the financial industry.  While many institutions have grown dependent upon the $30 or so they charge a customer/member for an NSF, Washington DC is revving up to throw shame at FIs that impose those fees.

What’s a credit union to do?

A year ago we did a podcast with Joel Schwartz, founder of the then fledgling DoubleCheck, a company created to help consumers – and their FIs – better navigate NSFs. You are going to want to listen to that podcast – link here.

A lot has happened since that podcast. Washington DC has gotten more vocal about NSFs – you aren’t the only one having nightmares about the CFPB and Elizabeth Warren.

A lot of FIs – from Chase to B of A to many credit unions have slashed or eliminated NSF fees. You might think that this is curtains for Schwartz and DoubleCheck.

Think again.

There is the NSF and then there are the ripple effects such as late fees imposed by merchants and credit card companies. Often the late fees can add up to lots of money that inflicts still more damage and pain on a consumer struggling to stay afloat. That’s where DoubleCheck’s patented technology comes in. It gives an early warning to the consumer about late fees heading his/her way and it also offers alternatives (such as putting some charges on a credit card).

This is win-win. It’s good for the consumer and good for the FI (and it does not create bad press which doing nothing can).

You might think this will be a somber podcast, talking about bounced checks and fees and cranky politicians.  Be prepared instead to laugh. Schwartz knows what he is dealing with is serious stuff but he is a man who can see the lighter side too.

Listen up.

Like what you are hearing? Find out how you can help sponsor this podcast here. Very affordable sponsorship packages are available. Email rjmcgarvey@gmail.com

And like this podcast on whatever service you use to stream it. That matters.

Find out more about CU2.0 and the digital transformation of credit unions here. It’s a journey every credit union needs to take. Pronto

by Robert McGarvey

It’s only been one year that we have been required to wear masks inflight – the initial federal mandate took effect February 1, 2021. The present federal mandate runs until mid-March and there is no knowing if the White House will extend it. But know this: more and louder voices are getting raised that suggest the mask mandate will become a permanent fixture.

Impossible?

Sure, the mask protesters may want to believe this is an impossibility – doubtless they believe it would be a violation of some fictitious right they claim. But I am beginning to think masks just may prove to be an inflight staple, not much different from the seatbelt (which we also are required to wear and have been since the early 1970s).

Incidentally, even into the 1950s arguments were made that seatbelts weren’t just superfluous inflight but dangerous. This Smithsonian article tracks that debate but of course belts won out and we have been wearing them for 50 years, at least for takeoff, landing and when flying through turbulence. Few voices speak out against this practice now.

Now, what prompts me to suggest that masks may become staples too? First there are statements by Dr. Fauci dating back to late 2021, where he said masks may be here to stay. He added: “Even though you have a good filtration system [inflight], I still believe that masks are a prudent thing to do, and we should be doing it.”

Now more voices are echoing this idea.

Neil Sorahan, CFO at Ryanair, told the Times of London, that masks would be ‘with us for a while longer to come’ and were a ‘small price to pay.’

Sorahan, who seemed to think the mask requirements will persist into summer, drew an analogy to the treatment of liquids, post 9/1/1 when, suddenly, we were forced to carry miniatures (and who didn’t toss a larger container or three into TSA bins?).

Multiple anonymous sources are also quoted in that Times piece saying masks will be with us for some time.

Arguably, too, another analogy is to the ban on smoking inflight which took effect, in stages, in the 1980s and was a clear-cut ban on smoking on domestic flights by 1990. There was indeed resistance to that ban – many smokers covertly puffed in lavatories, even after smoke detectors were installed and even today vaping apparently is commonplace inflight. But, bottomline, non-smoking became the norm on airplanes and even smokers learned to deal with it (chewing tobacco anyone?).

Personally, too, I am drawn to the idea of masks as a permanent inflight feature. For years I have dreaded long flights in the winter months (“the cold and flu season”) because, seemingly inevitably, I came down with a nasty cold that in my mind at least I blamed on the flight and the many pax who were sniffling and coughing. Was I right in that blame? Who knows. But research funded by Boeing a half dozen years ago – pre Covid – found that indeed diseases did transmit inflight but you have to be rather close to the infected person.

If we are all wearing masks, transmission of colds and flu and other respiratory diseases just might decrease.

What about those who insist masks are useless inflight? They have a point. Especially as carriers add more food service and of course beverage service. Lift the mask to take a swallow of water or beer and, yes, you are exposed to the virus risks in passengers near you and they are at risk for your viruses.

Lift to nibble that stroopwafel and ditto.

That just is fact.

But I nonetheless plan to wear masks inflight, at least until I go through a large box of 3M N95 masks that presently sits on my desk and, yes, I have relegated my cloth masks to recycling even though I rather like many of the cloth masks I have because they are quite comfy. But cloth just hasn’t proven effective with Omicron and many carriers, meantime, have banned many kinds of cloth masks. So I have switched to the higher grade masks and have even gotten accustomed to wearing them.

N95 masks are not the cure-all but I will be wearing mine with no stop date in sight.

 To start the podcast we asked NCR executive Doug Brown the hard question: exactly what can mid-size and small credit unions do to stay alive in the face of relentless competition from fintechs who increasingly are gobbling up home mortgages, p2p payments and a lot more – and what can NCR do to help them.

The questions only got harder from there.

In the podcast Brown tells about how to beat fintechs by achieving better member engagement.

We also talk at length about BNPL, where credit unions may find a piece of this action, and questions to ponder about BNPL. Does it make even a tiny bit of sense to pay for a $100 gourmet sandwich in four easy payments – and by the time you’ve paid it off do you even remember what you ate.

In this podcast you will also hear crypto currency brought very much to earth.  Brown tells how NCR is planning to use crypto and blockchain to revolutionize international remittances and how cool is that?  This may also be a fast track to bringing many under- and unbanked into the credit union universe if crypto helps them move money to relatives and friends faster and at much reduced expense.

Blockchain, maybe it’s not just for geeks anymore.

Listen up.

Like what you are hearing? Find out how you can help sponsor this podcast here. Very affordable sponsorship packages are available. Email rjmcgarvey@gmail.com

And like this podcast on whatever service you use to stream it. That matters.

Find out more about CU2.0 and the digital transformation of credit unions here. It’s a journey every credit union needs to take. Pronto

by Robert McGarvey

It’s the fastest-growing marketing vehicle and well within the budget of every startup. The magic word? Influencers.

Continued at Startup Savant.

by Robert McGarvey

One number in the recent Expedia 2022 Travel Value Index, where some 5500 adults across eight countries offered up their thoughts and feelings about travel in this year, caught my eye: “Travelers are…keen to lean on loyalty programs, with two in five (40%) of respondents saying they plan to use loyalty points for at least part of a trip in 2022.”

Why isn’t that number 100%?

I have a six figure stash of Amex miles and my plan is to burn most of them this year. If I use them all, that’s fine because nowadays miles are a highly unstable currency. Some carriers don’t even publish rewards charts – mileage fees are instead dynamic, meaning the carrier charges what it believes the market will bear.

JoeSentMe has often featured broadside attacks on airline miles by Will Allen and Fred Abatemarco and others – and they are spot on. Miles, as Joe Brancatelli has commented, are for frequent flying suckers.

That’s all the truer today because it gets ever easier to accumulate miles. Cards that offer six figure mileage bonuses for enrolling are increasingly common and many of us now use cards at grocers, restaurants, department stores that shovel miles at us with every purchase.

If I need a fast 100,000 miles I’ll sign up for Capital One Venture X Rewards Card and, whoosh, there are the miles.

Or I could go in cheaper and get the Citi Premier Card ($95 annually) and get 60,000 miles.

Or the Delta SkyMiles Gold Amex Card (free in year one, then $99) and get 40,000 miles plus a bundle of Delta perks (free checked bag, priority boarding).

Miles are there to be grabbed when you want them.

Miles also kind of grow on trees – for instance Rakuten, the shopping service, even allows users to take their perks in Amex miles. I have 4000+ miles that I earned for doing what, I don’t recall, but they will transfer to Amex eventually. Install the program and when you surf to a site that’s a Rakuten participant, up pops a reminder about Rakuten and you are about to get more free miles.

It is damn near impossible to avoid accumulating miles, even in the pandemic era of little or no flying.

I keep earning miles even though I have consciously shifted significant spend to cash back cards – Amazon and Discover in particular – and I also do some spending on a Venmo card that is set up to reward me with Bitcoin so I now an an owner of a tiny fraction of a Bitcoin

Right there is the big wake up moment. I had been mentally stuck in a mindset where to earn miles I had to actually fly and the more miles I wanted, the more I had to fly – which often I did not actually enjoy doing. Talk about yesteryear’s headlines.

I hoarded miles because I remembered how hard I had worked to accumulate them.

Now miles just about jump out at me.

In the instant I realized that I also grasped that a wise man uses miles as they come in. The airlines are busy printing new miles that they sell, typically to credit card companies, and the more they print, the more devalued miles become. There really seems no end to that plunge.

Remember when it took 10 x-country round trips to accumulate 50,000 miles? And now I can double that just by signing up for the new Capital One elite card, which would take me about one minute to apply for. I know how fast it is because a few days ago I applied for an REI card that offers 5% back on many REI purchases (on top of the member’s 10% back) and most of my clothes shopping now is there. And if I make a purchase within 60 days I get a $100 REI gift card. Yep, more cashback.

That’s where my head presently is at – if only because I know I can always score miles if I need ’em. If you have ’em, use ’em because a refill is as easy as filling out a short form.

How great is that?