January 27, 2013

Man puts 60,000 euro on car roof for a moment, forgets about it

Filed under: Weird by Branko Collin @ 3:39 pm

What do you do if you don’t trust the banks? You keep your money under your mattress.

What do you do next if you don’t trust the locks on the doors of your house? According to Noordhollands Dagblad, this was the dilemma that faced a businessman from Sint Pancras near Alkmaar.

Last week the man claimed he decided to bring the 60,000 euro he had saved over the years to the bank. The man claimed he left the envelope with what he claimed were 120 bills of 500 euro on the roof of his car, after which he walked indoors to answer a phone call, or so he claimed.

The envelope with 60,000 euro may be lying somewhere along the road to Alkmaar. Whoever finds the envelope and its contents can expect a 10,000 euro reward says the newspaper. Noordhollands Dagblad has a couple of interviews with treasure hunters on video.

Today the thaw has set in, so if the envelope is going to be found, it will be today or tomorrow.

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September 1, 2012

Money bra wins HEMA design award

Filed under: Design by Branko Collin @ 11:17 am

A student at the Delft University of Technology has won the audience award of a design competition held every year by Dutch department chain store HEMA.

Hiske Elferink designed a brassiere that contains a small wallet which can hold some change, a bank card and perhaps a key. She told Radio Netherlands (see the interview below) that she got the idea because when she goes clubbing, she puts her bank notes in her bra. The problem arises when you get change, because coins will slide down and jangle.

A quick Google taught me that this is not the first money bra.

The professional jury did not award a first prize this year. The winners and runners-up will be on display at the public library of Amsterdam (OBA) until October 31.

HEMA organises a yearly design competition for students. In the past, several of the winners and runners-up have made it into the store’s inventory, such as the 103% Vase, a vase that had a little side vase for the inevitable broken flower.

See also:

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August 6, 2012

Bailiffs refuse to do bank’s dirty work in mortgage debt cases

Filed under: General by Branko Collin @ 8:59 am

Rabobank has been sued by a bailiff in Utrecht, GGN, because the bank tried to have it collect outstanding mortgage debts without a court order.

Last Friday the court announced it had asked the Dutch Supreme Court for advice.

The case seems to hinge on the fact that the contracts for the actual loans are of a different type than the mortgage contracts. The latter are drafted by a notary, which gives them greater weight. (The Dutch law speaks of ‘onderhandse akte’ and ‘bovenhandse akte’ respectively.)

Normally bailiffs are only allowed to force payment of a debt (by threatening to sell posessions or by actually selling them) with a court order. Apparently the ‘weightier’ type of contract confers the same power. Other bailiffs have also refused to execute Rabobank’s loan contracts. If Rabobank loses, it must secure a court order for every individual debt.

The case revolves only around debts for houses that have both already been sold and that have been sold for less than the market value. Rabobank admitted according to Z24 that this concerns about 100 cases each year.

Rabobank is one of the few major banks on the planet that wasn’t involved in the near-criminal subprime market that caused the global financial and economic crisis we are currently in, but you have to wonder if maybe it felt left out when you read this.

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April 7, 2012

Dutch pension system is broken, says Management Team

Filed under: General by Branko Collin @ 1:27 pm

We Dutch like to pride ourselves in our pension funds.

“The best in the world,” our politicos holler. We may not have the money printing machine the Norwegians have with their oil reserves, but we still have the highest pay-outs in the world, not to mention that the combined funds have 800 billion euros in the bank.

A mere smoke screen, business magazine Management Team warns. It lists 10 myths that the partners of the polder model like to spread, and counters with its own worrisome truths:

  • Seventy percent of the built up reserve will be paid out in the next 20 years.
  • You only get back what you put in if you started paying when you were 20.
  • Expect to receive at best only 35% of your last earned salary if you start paying into a pension fund now.
  • There is 800 billion euro in the bank, but that is a shortage of 240 billion euro.
  • Re-indexed pensions are payed from premium hikes, not from investment yields.

The pension funds claim that ‘on average’ they are healthy, but Management Team points out that they calculate an unexpected average. Instead of looking at the total coverage, they add up the coverage percentages of all the small, healthy funds with those of the huge unhealthy funds.

Oddly enough, our pension reserve could be used under European rules to calculate a lower national debt, but instead the current government prefers not to do that. The Eamelje.net blogger thinks this is so that its constituent partners can keep fear mongering, as fear begets power.

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May 20, 2011

Customers forget chip-based bank cards at the till

Filed under: General by Branko Collin @ 8:42 am

On 1 March 2011 the Dutch started a 9-month process in which bank cards with magnetic strips are replaced by chip-based ones. Paying in stores with a bank withdrawal is the most popular card based payment method. Cash is still good for 66% of all payments in brick and mortar stores, but paying with bank cards makes up almost all the rest of the payments, according the 2010 annual report of the Dutch National Bank.

The new chip-based cards must by stuck into a device rather than swiped through it, and this leads to problems with forgetful customers leaving their cards at the till, according to De Pers. The newspaper quotes Hans de Jong of the Esso van Hasselt gas station in the North of Amsterdam: “People keep forgetting their cards. I easily end up with ten to fifteen of them. I tend to wait a week for our customers to collect their cards, after which I will cut them in half.”

The chip based card is being introduced because it is allegedly safer than the swipe card.

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January 1, 2011

Winner new year’s lottery has to pay income tax twice

Filed under: Weird by Branko Collin @ 3:50 pm

The Dutch revenue service (Belastingdienst) has announced that the winner of the Staatsloterij Jackpot will have to pay income tax over these winnings for both 2010 and 2011.

Since 2001 the Dutch income tax is divided into three parts, a tax on wages, a tax on business interests (including dividends), and a tax on savings and investments. The latter category is calculated by taking the money you own on December 31 and the money you own on January 1 of that same year, and halving it. You then pay a one percent tax on the resulting average, the idea being that an average person should be able to realize a profit each year on their savings of investments of 4%, which is essentially a sort of income.

The tax service takes its own formulas very serious and figures that since the prize is won in the dying seconds of 2010, the winner also has to pay this tax on savings over 2010, even if they have not been able to collect and enjoy the prize.

Tax law professor Ruben Freudenthal has been quizzing his students for years on exactly this eventuality, and sides with the Belastingdienst. He told Financieel Dagblad: “Right after the draw the lottery ticket becomes valuable. You could sell it to somebody else.”

The 2010 lottery had a jackpot worth 27.5 million euro. The 2010 tax would amount to 137,500 euro.

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December 25, 2010

Winter hunting ban; porn and clown voices; secretary most wanted job; and more

Filed under: Animals,Automobiles,General,Sustainability,Technology by Branko Collin @ 3:20 pm

* Several provinces have instated hunting bans for a variety of animals because of the cold weather. Zeeland, Drenthe, Noord Holland and Limburg have ordered a general hunting ban, while others have limited their bans to a selection of animals. The Party for the Animals (PvdD) has called for a nationwide ban, Trouw reports.

* Car navigation software voiced by porn actress Kim Holland was the most popular of the Navigatiestemmen.nl stable in 2010, Blik op Persbericht reports. Her voice was also the most popular in 2009. The winner of 2008, Clown Bassie, came second this year. Unrelated: recently Holland’s demand that Internet provider Ziggo release the personal data of a customer suspected of infringing her copyrights was rejected on appeal.

* The most wanted job title on Monsterboard.nl in 2010 was secretary, just like last year. Visitors searched 500,000 times for the title. Manager and controller were other popular job titles, Blik op Nieuws writes.

* Almost 1 billion worth of guilder coins and bills are still hiding underneath mattresses and in other places, Z24 reports. Half of that money is in coins, and can no longer be exchanged for euro. Paper money can be exchanged at the central bank (DNB) until 2031. The amount of unclaimed banknotes seems to be the same as last year’s.

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March 13, 2010

Half a billion euro’s worth of unclaimed guilders floating around

Filed under: General by Branko Collin @ 11:36 am

Before the euro was introduced as a pan-European currency in 2002, the Netherlands used the venerable guilder.

Until 2006 citizens could still exchange their guilder coins and bills for euro. The deadline for trading in guilder banknotes is 2032, and the Dutch national bank (DNB) estimates there are still about half a billion euro worth of guilder bills floating around.

According to Z24, DNB bases its estimates on the missing banknote numbers. About 24 million banknotes are still to be traded in.

See also:
* Rules for trading in guilder bills (Dutch)
* Oxenaar exhibit in Museum for Communication, The Hague

(Photo by Robin Papa, some rights reserved)

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February 10, 2010

Right to public transport refunds finite

Filed under: General by Branko Collin @ 12:56 pm

Dutch public transport companies have forced a new payment system onto their users, the ‘OV Chipkaart’ (‘Public transport chip card’), and are now complaining that travellers do not understand how the system works.

Rather than buying a ticket, you have to hold a chip on a card to a reader, once for checking in and once for checking out. Not surprisingly, a lot of people forget to check out, and in doing so lose the deposit that was subtracted from their digital wallet when they checked in. Until now most transport companies have refunded these lost deposits, but nu.nl reports that the refunds won’t be given forever.

Bus company Connexxion told the news site: “We look at this on a case by case basis. If you bump your head often enough, you’ll eventually learn not to.” Qbuzz, another bus company, estimates that it will keep giving money back for only a few more weeks.

Metro company RET of Rotterdam reports that people forget to check out about 0.5% of the time. Since the deposit is higher than the average amount of money the transport companies expect to make on a single fare and they do not have to do anything in return, that’s going to be a nice windfall for them.

The previous system (Strippenkaart) had a built in moneymaker like that too, in that you had to buy several tickets at once, which would undoubtedly get lost in one’s sofa to emerge only when the last date you could use the card on had gone by. Although it was possible to buy a ticket for just a single trip, these tended to be a lot more expensive.

The introduction of the OV Chipkaart also seems to have gone hand in hand with price hikes, Dutch News reports:

The government is to assess whether the switch to the new public transport smart card has made using buses and trams more expensive, Trouw [newspaper] reports on Tuesday.

There are have been numerous reports of price increases in recent months but the introduction of the OV Chipkaart had been coupled with a government pledge that travel would not become more expensive.

Uselog describes a host of usability problems with the OV Chipkaart.

(Photo by Franklin Heijnen, some rights reserved)

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January 30, 2010

Loyalty schemes yield higher rewards than savings accounts

Filed under: General by Branko Collin @ 1:43 pm

Z24 points out that collecting so-called supermarkt saving stamps can yield a considerably higher interest rate than even the best savings account at a bank.

Plus supermarket has an advantageous scheme where every two euro put in gets you three euro in return.

Saving stamps schemes work by letting consumers buy stamps for every euro of groceries bought. These need to be pasted onto a card, and once the card is full, it can be exchanged for cash. Plus’ generosity is easily explained, as they will let you only buy 2 cents’ worth of stamps for every euro you spend on groceries.

Albert Heijn has a scheme where you can get a 10 cent stamp for every euro you spend, and after 490 stamps you can exchanged your card for 52 euro. That is a 6% interest rate, paid out after only two or three months of shopping for a single person household.

Recent changes to Dutch tax law included a tax on property of about 1%. Interest on savings accounts these days (typically between 1 – 3%) is so low that it doesn’t even counter inflation. Z24 suggests that supermarket savings plans are therefore much better, because not only do they use higher interest rates, they also represent cash and therefore stay under the radar of the tax man. The argument is silly though, as property tax is only paid over property additional to the first 30,000 euro you own, whereas saving stamps will typically only account for a couple of hundred euro each year.

The Dutch are eager participants in loyalty programmes. Here are some of the things we participate in:

  • Spaarzegels (saving stamps), outlined above.
  • Spaarpunten (points), schemes like Airmiles, where you save for products you can get from a catalogue. In some schemes, having enough points will get you stuff for free, in others they will merely help reduce the price of a product, typically used by both supermarkets and brands.
  • Coupons, vouchers distributed in magazines or news papers, where you can get money off of specific products, usually for a very short period (like one or two weeks). Used by all kinds of stores.

The only scheme I ever participated in was one by a local supermarket chain called Groenewoud, where you got free points for every purchase, and after you had collected enough of them, they gave you a plant. Exactly my speed.

What loyalty programmes are popular where you are?

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