The best banking system

OPINION: To give financial advice these days, one is normally expected to be a certified financial planner and to provide all interested persons with a personal disclosure statement.  I won’t bother to do this as my advice is so basic and clear.  What should you do with your money?  Simple.  Keep it under the mattress, never on any account try and use a bank.

Why do I proffer this heartfelt advice?  Well, I have recently tried to open a bank account at the branch of one of New Zealand’s largest trading banks.  My friend (JW) and I went into the local branch one fine morning to open a new account for a club we belong to and then transfer the small balance held in another bank to this account.  Both of us had been long standing customers in our own rights of this bank.  We had a club resolution and full explanation of what we were doing signed by all interested parties, and also our passports with us for proof of identity.

JW had tried to make an appointment with the bank a few days previously and had spoken to the bank’s call centre.  As all readers will be aware you can no longer just phone your local branch for an appointment but instead, you deal with a disembodied voice – situated God knows where.  Despite the automated promises, we never heard back, so decided to call into the branch.

At the bank, there was a huge queue waiting to see the two tellers on duty.  There was a desk with a notice saying, “Inquiries” so that seemed a good place to start.  There was no one seated at the desk but a bank employee was hovering nearby.  JW hailed her and asked if she could help us.  A look of horror and consternation appeared on the employee’s face.  The thought of a real live customer wanting her help seemed too much for her to comprehend.  Hastily she informed us that she was not working at the inquiries desk.  Our reply that we didn’t mind and that we assumed that as she worked for the bank she would be happy to assist a customer was not enthusiastically received.  Grumpily, after hearing what we wanted, she told us we must join the queue and a teller would help us.  Grumpily we joined the queue.  No one standing in the very slow moving queue seemed very happy.

Eventually, we reached a teller and explained our business.  The teller immediately told us we should go home and phone the bank for an appointment.  JW through her gritted teeth advised the teller that we had already gone down that path some days earlier and the bank had failed to ring us back.  Seeing that we were becoming obdurate in our approach the teller said she would leave her post and find someone to help us.  She disappeared upstairs for a long period of time leaving the one remaining teller to cope with an ever-lengthening queue.  Eventually, the teller returned and invited us to go upstairs and take a seat on the red chairs at the top of the stairs, and Mr X would see us shortly.

After a long wait, a young Mr X appeared and made the mistake of telling us we should have phoned the bank for an appointment.  After we put him right and told him what was wrong with that advice, he invited us into his office.  His name was on the door and his work title, which included the word ‘senior.’  As everyone else upstairs worked in an open plan arrangement we made the mistake of assuming Mr X was important and capable of dealing with our little request.  On hearing what we wanted, Mr X spent a lot of time on his computer reading through the bank’s internal policies and instructions. He eventually handed us each a lengthy form and suggested hopefully that we might like to take them away and fill them in at our leisure and post them back to the bank.  We advised him that we were good at filling in forms and could do so immediately in his office – which we did. After viewing the forms, Mr X departed the office to seek further advice, probably from someone whose job title was ‘very senior’.

Eventually, Mr X reappeared and told us that our request was under way and we should hear from the bank by the end of the following day.  We thanked him and departed. A week later when we still had not heard anything from the bank JW phoned and after a search by bank staff it appeared our forms and request were sitting on someone’s desk still un-actioned.  We told the bank what we thought of their customer service and went to another bank where although we were made to jump through many hoops a charming young lady gave us good service and actually seemed interested in having us as customers.

For baby boomers who used to deal with bank managers regularly in business, the current attitude by banks towards their customers is hard to accept.  The Bank of Under Mattress looks very appealing.

By Terry Carson.

This is another of Terry’s posts on GrownUps. If you would to read more from him click here.