Friday 19 October 2012

Banks (or Why Today Sucked!) Part 2

I thought I should perhaps give you a quick update on how this panned out.  Not because I feel the banks deserve equal representation, but in case you’re interested.

A few days after I posted that previous blog entry, I got a phone call from someone at the customer complaints team.  They’d been trying to contact me all day but because I was buried in work I couldn’t take the call.  Anyway, the gentleman I spoke to seemed genuinely concerned with my issue, and seemed to understand why I was so pissed off.  I’ve worked on-line in call-centres and I know the training you get for talking difficult customers down so perhaps he was just flannelling to mollify me – either way I wasn’t actually that agro at the time so it was fine.  Anyway, he asked me what I wanted to get from my complaint and I told him that I wanted a written apology and a guarantee that the issue would be looked into.  Who was I kidding?  A written apology MIGHT happen, but investigation into the issue wouldn’t happen.

The written apology DID happen.  About a week after I spoke to that guy, I got a letter through apologising profusely for my inconvenience and promising to investigate my complaint in more depth.  Also as a token gesture (their words not mine), they would be crediting my account with a small amount by way of an apology.  Since no charges were levied against my account (I was largely complaining because of the possibility of charges rather than the appearance of them), I’m going to take the receipt of £35 as a personal victory.

So there you are people: if you’ve got a complaint about your bank, don’t bitch at your partner (which I did) or your workmates (yeah, did that too).  Instead, bitch at your bank.  If you can keep the language fairly civil (insulting but not abusive which is unusual for me), you’ll stand a good chance of being heard.

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