Today, when I was checking my personal email box, I had a very strange experience: one of the women I had thought I had been writing to through chnlove, through emf mails, sent an email to my personal email address to tell me that she hadn't written any of the letters I'd received from her, and she wanted me to know about it. What was surprising for me was that the only chnlove emf mail she'd ever received from me was the very last one I ever sent to her, when chnlove was investigating a complaint I'd made about this particular agency.
As an aside, I have to say that chnlove itself were a great deal of help and they even refunded me a pile of emf credits, so I have no complaints in relation to the way they dealt with the matter.
Anyway in response to her email, I forwarded her all of the letters she had supposedly sent me and all the letters she had supposedly received from me (none of which she had received). She was just furious about what happened because she said that she had paid a lot of money to her agency (supposedly $2,000 US) and they had just let her down so badly, and played her for a fool.
She was really happy that I was able to send her all the letters, because she was going to visit the manager of the agency tomorrow and have it out with him. I hope that she manages to get some of her money back because it seems the way she has been treated is really unfair.
I was having a think about this and I thought to myself how much of life depends on trust.
I can remember while at university reading a number of economic essays which discussed the way in which trust affected transaction costs between purchasers and suppliers in a market. It fascinated me because it showed the way in which something inward (eg acting in an ethical fashion) interacts with something external (eg commercial activities). Sometimes we don't take ideas and ethics very seriously because it is not possible to assign a monetary value to them. However in the absence of trust, commercial and other activities becomes quite impossible.
I love this little quote about trust:
"Deciding whether or not to trust a person is like deciding whether or not to climb a tree, because you might get a wonderful view from the highest branch, or you might simply get covered in sap, and for this reason many people choose to spend their time alone and indoors, where it is harder to get a splinter."
It seems to me to be easier to trust a person than an organisation. I think we respond emotionally and intellectually differently to people and families, compared with the way we respond to corporations and other artificial legal entities.
It recalls to me the situation described in "Outlaws of the Marsh". There is considerable pathos in observing the faith of many of the bandits in their emperor, because their faith seems quite misplaced. They continuously make excuses for the emperor, blaming the emperor's advisers for the corruption and injustice that persists throughout their land. The bandits appear to trust the person of the emperor implicitly, while at the same time having little or no trust at all in the feudal administrative system that placed the emperor in a position that allowed him to be so easily manipulated and misinformed.
Anyway, it's all food for thought.
I would really appreciate it if anyone can suggest a few good chnlove agencies. My confidence in chnlove is at rock bottom at the moment. I still have a pile of credits and I want to use them up on an agency that's worthwhile.
