>
>Kevin Williams wrote:
> >
> > Well, before you go over and make a fool of yourselves at Sanno Park
> > Tower, might I suggest at least getting NTT DoCoMo's president's name
> > right. It's not Tachiyama. It's Tachikawa.
> > While I don't necessarily believe that charging a 30,000 yen deposit is
> > the correct answer, I don't see too many people providing other
> > suggestions.
Before we can provide the answer, we have to know what the problem
is. In this case, the problem seems to be uncollectible debt that
Docomo is concerned with. And it seems that a heavy hitter in
regards to this uncollectible debt is debt accrued by foreigners.
If that segment happens to be non-permanent resident foreigners then
so be it. And if it takes a certain deposit amount to mitigate this
behavior, then so be it.
It's not reasonable for us to expect Docomo to come up with
some convoluted and expensive method to screen out different
types of foreigners.
> Should only the US military guys be hit with the deposit,
> > or is this just more discrimination?
If it's only US military guys doing this, or only US military guys in
Okinawa or Iwaguni or where ever I don't have a problem with them
discriminating against them.
Nor would I have a problem if the uncollectible debt was accrued
by foreign English teachers either.
> BTW, my understanding is that
> > DoCoMo approached the US military here and requested they plop down the
> > deposit to their troops instead of each individual person. That way,
> > DoCoMo would be safe from those that skip out on paying their bills, and
> > the US gov't could make sure their guys are responsible members of this
> > society. Unfortunately, they said forget it. Just shows how much faith
> > they put in their own people.
Whether or not the US gov't has faith in it's soldiers paying their
bills is not the issue -- the issue is whether or not the US gov't should
become an accounts payable intermediary for its soldiers, and as one
who prefers a smaller gov't, I'm glad they seem to have not become
involved here.
And just for your information, the US gov't does have faith in their
soldiers, which is demonstrated through the trust they bestow on the
servicemen who fly and maintain multimillion dollar aircraft, billion
dollar ships
and a nuclear arsenal on a daily basis.
James Santagata
AudienceTrax
http://www.audiencetrax.com
Received on Tue Jun 18 05:45:57 2002