First Contact

On Monday 21st, two things happened. Firstly, our new debit cards arrived (hooray! It had taken 22 days for a new card to be issued, 16 days for my husband). Secondly, I got a phone call from the branch manager.

He sounds like a nice guy. I've always thought of bank managers to be big and scary, not be people who apologise unreservedly on behalf of their company. He said that I would get a letter from the complaints department, and a full investigation would be carried out, but in the meantime, he wanted me to know that if I had any more problems, I was always welcome to contact him at the branch. He even gave me the branch's direct phone number, and said to ring if I needed any help. He apologised profusely, and said things like "there's no excuse for what has happened".

I know it was a courtesy call, but it was certainly appreciated.

Letter #1

On 18th May, I handed in two letters at my local branch detailing my complaint - one to Abbey's head office, and one for the attention of the branch manager, as part of the problem had occurred within the branch. As well as explaining what had happened, I expressed my disappointment and anger over events that I felt could have been handled so much better. I explained the impact on our banking - for example, once my card was cancelled, I no longer had access to online banking, could no longer make online purchases (a couple of things I get regularly, so this was very inconvenient) and we had to go into the branch to do the simplest of banking tasks. After my experiences on 11th May, I refused to use Phonebank, no longer trusting them to do what was asked.

I received a standard reply to this letter on May 30th (that was sent second class post)

"Thank you for contacting us and I am sorry that you have been so unhappy that you felt you must complain.

One of my team will be responsible for investigating your complaint and I have enclosed our Complaints leaflet, which explains our procedure for doing this. High quality customer service is of great importance to us at Abbey and we will do everything we can to resolve your complaint in a timely and satisfactory manner.

I know it is important to you that we resolve your complaint quickly, but we want to do a thorough investigation and sometimes this can take time. If we have not contacted you before then, we will write to you in four weeks to let you know what is happening.

Although I do not know what the outcome will be, I do hope that we will be able to find a solution that you are happy with.

Yours sincerely,

(printed signature)

Richard Harris
Head of Complaints"

Wot, no Card?

On Tuesday 15th May my husband took time off work again to go to the bank. It's worth pointing out the rigmarole of simple transactions when you don't have your debit card.

Firstly, you can only do this during branch opening hours. Unless you can pre-empt all your banking needs on a Saturday morning, you have to take time off work to do this.
Second, you need to bring a statement, something with your address on, and something like a passport or drivers licence.
Third, you need to wait in the queue, get an odd look off the staff member behind the counter, and wearily explain to them why you don't have your debit card.

That particular day marked the 7th working day since our cards had been ordered. As such, while at the counter, I mentioned it. The girl looked at the computer screen for a little while, then said, "excuse me a moment, I just need to check on another computer..."

When she returned, she said "I don't know how to tell you this - your cards weren't ordered on the 5th..."

I felt sorry for her more than anything. During the course of the conversation I'd already told her what had happened before, and asked about where to send a complaint letter. To her credit, she was incredibly embarrassed. There wasn't a lot we could say - I knew it wasn't her fault, and shouting wouldn't help. Aside from anything, I was just about speechless.

She told us the cards had been ordered now, that her "administrator" (I assume some kind of supervisor) had checked it, and they were definitely ordered. I wasn't being entirely ironic when I said, "are you sure?"

Afterwards, we tried to dissect what had happened. Maybe they'd forgotten, or gone off sick or something. I did not know. However, one thing struck me - the guy I'd spoken to on Friday 11th May told me categorically that the cards had been ordered on May 5th. He told me this after I'd explained about going into the branch on the 4th, and what had been said there. So he lied.

Why I hate Phonebank

On Friday 11th May, I telephoned Phonebank for two reasons. Firstly, to check on the status of the new cards, and secondly to query bank charges that had been applied because of the mess with my husband's late pay. I explained briefly what had happened, and said that I was concerned because the cards had been ordered on May 5th and I hadn't heard anything. I said that as a result, I hadn't had access to my bank account for over a week.

He asked me the expected security questions, one of which was "what is a recent transaction on your account?"

"I don't know" I said, "I haven't had access to my account for a week."

"Any transaction will do, such as a debit card payment or direct debit..."

This repeated a couple of times. "Look" I said, "I have my most recent statement here, there was a direct debit..."

"No" he said, "It has to be something more recent, from this month"

I really don't know how many times I said "I've not had access to my account for a week" but I eventually asked "is there nothing else you can ask me?" He seemed interested only in that one question. Only when I asked to speak to a supervisor did he ask "what branch was the account opened at?"

He told me that my debit card had been ordered on May 5th, and I should get it within seven days. I said "thank you" and he replied "thank you for calling Abbey" - without bothering to find out if there was anything else I wanted. He seemed to be in a hurry, and although I know call centre operators have call targets, speed shouldn't be the only consideration.

When I explained about the bank charges (total of £145) and asked if they could waive them in light of it a) not being our fault and b) not having had any problems with the account for ages, he told me he could only take off £50. I said that because of my husband's pay problems, we still couldn't afford that, but his response was simply to tell me to contact the complaints department. He asked if I wanted their phone number, I said "no thank you - I already have a complaints leaflet with all that information on it." He went quiet for a second then said "would you like the number?" as if he hadn't even undestood me.

As he could not remove more than £50 worth of charges, and was not able to indicate whether the complaints department would be able to help in time (as the charges were due to come off the account on May 20th) I asked if he would confirm whether these charges coming off would not result in any further charges, as I was fairly certain that there would not be the funds to cover them. The man merely said "is there anything else I can help you with?"

At this point in the conversation, I had lost confidence in anything he said. The call was so ridiculously and obviously scripted that I half expected him to say "computer says no" like the character on "Little Britain".

I know a lot of people complain about foreign call centres. The problems are numerous - communication being the obvious one - but I feel sometimes that the massive cultural difference has an effect too. This guy was convinced that I could magic money out of nowhere to cover these bank charges, despite having my full current account and savings account details in front of him. Looking back, I'm not even sure he understood what I was saying, and subsequent conversations with Phonebank have convinced me that the call taker must have scripts for everything. If what the customer is saying doesn't fit the script, they pick the nearest thing. (Please, if I'm wrong, or if anyone can enlighten me as to how it works, let me know.)

The call ended, and I decided to draft a complaint about events so far.

Branch Shenanigans

On the afternoon of Friday May 4th, my husband took time off work so we could go into the local branch and fill out the fraud form.

The first thing we got was a funny look - we shouldn't have been told to come into the branch, but to persevere with the busy Fraud Department phone number. I stressed that we'd taken time off especially to do this, so the staff decided to help. There was a bit of a furore over finding an actual form - phrases like "we haven't used them for years" were bandied about, then "it's a good job [staff member] hoards things!"

Meanwhile, I mentioned that I hadn't received my new debit card yet. The lady checked on the computer system and decided that it could be to do with it being a joint account. She felt fairly certain that both mine and my husband's cards would have to be cancelled* - in spite of me knowing for a certainty that it was my card that was used fradulently. She spent about 20 minutes phoning Card Services and checking with other staff members, before she said, "right, both cards are cancelled, and the new ones will be ordered tomorrow".

All this was done at the front of the branch, and presently we were ushered to a desk to sort out the fraud form. It took about half an hour, forms were filled in and signed, copies of statements with the relevant transactions were printed, and we were told that they would be "faxed off straight away".

We came away from the bank feeling happier that this was being dealt with.

*the "both cards need to be cancelled" thing is utterly wrong - a friend who also has a joint account at Abbey lost her card, and Abbey cancelled it and issued a new one without even blinking...