Why do people hate banks?

 Back in the 1960s when I worked on a farm we had discussions about which were the worse: Insurance companies or Banks.  The conclusion at that stage was Insurance companies because they sank the boot in when you were already in trouble.

In 2017 we found our Insurance Company was very helpful in dealing with the bushfire.  However I have just has an experience with our bank - Westpac - that puts that industry well in the frame for needing some serious attention.

It began about 4pm when I got an SMS directing me to activate my new Mastercard as my current VISA card would be deactivated in about 5 weeks time.  This was the first I had heard about getting a new credit card although we had heard that Westpac were switching from Visa - presumably they have a more profitable deal.

I thought I had better ring Westpac as:

  1. They had probably sent the cards to our Canberra address which, thanks to COVID, we can't currently get to; and
  2. I needed to give them the rounds of the kitchen for making such a change and not warning me in advance (apart from anything else that would have allowed me to overcome point 1).

So I rang the helpline and despite the rubbish about higher than usual number of calls got though quite quickly.  The guy I spoke to (Robert) tried to be helpful but really couldn't overcome the basic issue of the Bank having no concern for their customers.  At least one F-bomb was dropped which seemed to upset him.  

He kept wanting to register me for telephone banking, even though I never use it: apparently this will make contacting them with problems easier.  I was pretty sure I was already registered but apparently not.  He looked into this and yes, I had been registered but that had ceased for some reason.  I needed to give them a new 3 digit security code.  So I suggested 3 digits that I knew wasn't the last I'd used.  Not satisfactory as I had used that sometime in the past.  Shouting happened.

It then turned out the cards had already been sent to Canberra although they also had a Mallacoota address for us.  Which was a little wrong but Robert corrected that on the system.

I can't remember exactly what happened next but I spoke to our daughter (in Canberra) and she went and checked the mail, finding the cards.  She also found that they had misprinted my given name.  So back on the phone to Westpac.  That couldn't be fixed unless I could give them the number on the card - which Westpac hadn't told me!  So back on the phone to daughter to get the number.

Ring Westpac again and speak to Sophie.  Apparently the issue was only able to be dealt by directing me to the new accounts area which she did, and I found I was back with Robert!  It turns out he wasn't the lad for this job so transferred me to Tegan who could fix it.  She couldn't explain how it happened but would get new cards issued.  When I asked for them to be sent to our Mallacoota address it was evident that Robert's changes hadn't taken effect.   Tegan had to talk to Robert to find out what to do and hopefully managed it.  I have asked daughter to keep the old vards in case of future stuff ups.

All of this took about 90 minutes: thank goodness I am on unlimited minutes on my mobile plan.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Insects from pine trees

Image
This afternoon (13/1/2015) we were looking out of our sunroom and noticed a strange bit of mist.  On getting my binoculars on the case I found it to be a cloud of tens of thousand of insects.  They appeared with naked eye to be flying away, but with binoculars I thought they were circling. Here are some images In the second one it may be possible to see there are two streams coming from the top of each tree. There was a loud buzzing noise but that could just be several thousand wings. Earlier in the day Frances had been to some nearby willows and they were infested with many little black soft bodied insects.  Perhaps they shifted to the pines and were swarming? Help!! Any information welcome. A colleague, from Wamboin, had noticed a similat phenomenon, but involvng eucalypts rather than pines!  Here are the photos he took with his phone. I have consulted some expert friends.   Their responses were: I would have gone for chironomids. I rec...
Read more

A tour of the West (part 1)

Image
A friend from my time in the UN sent me some photos of her family trip along Route 66.  They did this is a large camperwagon rather than a Chevy Corvette (apparently the kids jacked up about being offered a trip in the trunk).  It seems to have been a very good trip for them and most interesting to see their photos.  It was also educational for me, as I found out the German for rocking chair (schaukelstuhl, since you ask). They did 7200 miles in 30 days - a pretty serious bit of distance. This made me think of the trips we did in 1981 when living in Denver.  Frances initiated that idea by getting a book about the National Parks of the West  and marking interesting places.  I then worked out a route on a Rand-McNally Road Atlas (GPS was unknown then  - as were iPhones, personal computers and the internet).  From memory, taking nearly the whole Summer school holidays we covered about 10,000 miles in 70 days.  Here, approximately,  are ...
Read more

Maslins beach rules

Image
Anyone who was in Adelaide in the 1970s will be having a good nudge nudge at that title.  However the beach is really nice even though it is the haunt (in Summer ) of naked people.  (As an aside one of the 'van park staff was talking to some other guests and commented that the sights on the beach in Summer were not at all exciting.)  In April it is the haunt of seniors, many of them exercising their dogs, and thus a far more attractive place. Getting to the beach was a walk of about 1km along roads, from our van.  The second half of this went past a rather daggy looking paddock with many formed ridges in it, as though it was irrigated, although a water sources wasn't evident.  The paddock got interesting towards the end as some green parrots appeared.  Thanks to Frances eye for detail we have subsequently identified these as Elegant Parrots: my first lifer for 2014.    The locale is indicated by the red lines in this mudmap: Here are the bird...
Read more