Last Thursday’s Vista Group lunch was particularly good, although Mark di Somma was absent after all his jet-setting. Jim, Natalie and I got down to business, after I forcibly made Natalie walk further by giving her a lift (I ran into her en route, offered her a lift as she was 150 yd from Vista and parking 200 yd away). We did discuss recession-beating in the 200 yd back, and left the more morbid subject of an online repository of funeral videos when we saw Mr Donovan.
   More positive is that Jim and I were in the presence of a power company mogul—Natalie is one of the folks behind Flower Power, an electricity retailer that aims to offer lower prices and, in time, a separate venture where customers can offset their carbon footprint. (Natalie is one of those rare people who practises what she preaches about the environment.) It’s tied in to the opportunities provided by a power retailing online market-place, Powershop, which I had never heard of, though I am told it is heavily advertise on television. Of course, in this day and age, heavy TV promotion has little correlation of whether people have heard of you.
   Powershop has a logo that is about as trite as I can imagine (I have seen it all before); at least Flower Power itself has gone for something far more fun and enjoyable.
   And in this day and age, any saving on one’s power bill is welcome.
   Our opinion: this is going to fly. Why not democratize one’s power retail selection? If we buy groceries by shopping around, we might as well buy power accordingly, and this time I can say I know the boss. And she’s way prettier than the old dude from my present power company.
   We seem to be more in accord about the ANZ National Bank group’s “accidental” overcharging of customers this time (‘Oops, did we do that? Let me fix that now’) and Natalie seems more convinced that the Bank of New South Wales, I mean Westpac, could give a more honest deal. I had closed the last ANZ account we had, after which the bank put our used counterfoils in the bin (naughty, naughty—that’s customer property). They would have gone into banking heaven and ANZ would have had some serious explaining to do if it were not for a hurried phone call I made that got to the bank just as Document Destruction Services walked in. (Well, when they handed me back the chequebook folder, you just assume your own property would be in there, right?)
   Vista Café putting chorizo and pasta on the menu was duly noted. Posted by Jack Yan, 08:57  permalink

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