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Strategies & Market Trends : Galapagos Islands -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: AugustWest who wrote (18828)	12/28/2002 1:50:52 PM
From: mishedlo	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 57110

If FDC's clients are the credit card companies and the free use of plastic is curtailed, they make less money. But doesn't FDC get paid merely for generating and sending the bills? So the responsibility for payment would fall solely on the issuers of the cards. Regardless if I pay my CC, I get a statement every month. I suppose until I file for personal bankruptcy. Right? I don't have the answers here So I'm just poking around with ideas trying to take the other side of the argument And the other side of my position<GGG>. Thanks for the thoughts. I am quite familiar with FDC. At least a portion (I guess a big portion but it could easily vary by client) is generated by credit card volume. FDC has an ancient system that takes (or it did not too long ago) two full days to process a fraud card. One day to close the card, one day to issue the customer a new one. Why, because it is a horrid batch tape system with minimal online access to non real-time data. The system is more or less a 20+ year old horrendously antiquated 1/2 million line single COBOL mainframe program that runs the entire company in a single nightly pass. Tape in Tape out. Better make that 20+ tapes in 20+ tapes out. An amazing mess. It is hard to believe the percentage of card transactions in the country that run thru that piece of garbage. You are correct in that FDC is not hurt when a consumer defaults, the issuer of the card takes a hit. FDC has two risks. 1) Loss in volume 2) Loss of a major client Either one would hurt immensely. Actually they have a third risk. I do not believe their system would meet any legitimate outside audit. This is my belief but I can not prove it. FDC pays a huge penalty if the system is not done daily at at customer designiated times. Reports will go out balanced or not to meet those deadlines. I am 80% certain that chargebacks are (were?) not handled properly. (Customers are getting screwed on interest if I am correct). There are (were?) lines of code in the program to handle specific customers (as opposed to specific situations). My favorite was for Dolly Parton who blew away their credit buckets by booking an entire wing of rooms at las vegas. Blew up the system. Rather than handle the situation in a generic manner they put in a test for Dolly Parton. That is how messed up the code is. My favorite line of code in the system was IF "bla bla bla" (I forget what the condition was) DISPLY "GOD HELP ME I'M LOOPING" UPON CONSOLE. The system would keep looping untin an operator replied to message and cancelled the program. My info is 2+ years old but to the best of my knowlege, the card process at FDC is still a gisgrace. I hazzard a guess those problems still exist and many many more. They told their customers that they were developing a new system (and the last I heard they are still telling them that), but to the best of my knowlege they cancelled the project and put of a token online screen to stripped off batch data instead. M