Because Life is Complicated Enough...

[Steve_Perry]

I bank with Abbey (formerly AbbeyNational, I wonder how much dosh was sunk for that radical change of image) for my sins. Yesterday, I decided to pay my 'leccy bill via their telephone banking service, £78.04. The lady on the other end of the line confirmed all was sorted and even re confirmed to me that 78 quid had been paid.

I was in town today and got cash from the ATM and thought hmm I should have more than that so decided to print a mini-statement... Swalec have £780.40 coming their way grrr So I've wasted a large portion of my Saturday afternoon trying to sort this mess out. It's taken 3 phone call attempts before I could get through to someone who could talk sense to me, not even my high street branch could help me, "You have to deal with telephone banking" was the reply. The first two people were about as much use as chocolate teapot. The last guy who was great at sorting the problem also confessed to me that he was being made redundant in 8 months time

It's like playing russian roulette these days when phoning any customer service dept... get nowhere with absolute numpties, then try again until you get through to someone half decent ntl were exactly the same when I had to deal with them a couple of years ago.

Thanks for reading, I've just been so frustrated today it's untrue, thought typing it down would help me feel better.

Grrrr.

S.

 

[R2D2]

I bank with Abbey (formerly AbbeyNational, I wonder how much dosh was sunk for that radical change of image) for my sins.

Answer £11,000,000!

edit , thats the amount before sorting out the fact that Abbey has been a trading style of Abbey homes for oh about the last 30 years! Still if you only pay 11million you cant expect to check he ftse100 to see if any one else is called abbey can you!

 

[pammy]

mmmmmmm - amazing how complicated things can be isn't it Call centres just get worse and worse - and no criticism of ppl who work there - but half the time they don't know how to put things right - that's not in the script - and increasingly they can't speak English as your call is routed to Bombay or some other tropical paradise!!!

Hope you get your dosh back quickly - just watch them bounce any DD's etc you may need to go through!!

 

[C240Sport97]

I have been using internet banking with lloyds since the last millenium, and it's been very good. does Abbey not offer such a service?

 

[sym]

Oh Dear !

I have just ditched Abbey after 6 years of total incompetence (and much compensation!) in dealing with my mortgage !

Much prefer online banking to telephone banking - at least if there's going to be a mistake made when paying a bill I only have myself to blame ! Have never had a problem ..... so far !

S.

 

[fuzzer]

Just wait till the move to india.

not only will you ahve idiots working there .. but idiots who can't understand what youre saying ...

Vote with your feet people . if someone yorue with moves the callcentre to india .. close your account and make it clear why youre doing it..

 

[Kinky]

Ahhh - the Abbey - the company I utterly detest.

I went to get a new mortgage with them a few years ago. I popped into their Egham branch, had a useful chat with them, got all the forms, etc.

I duly completed said form, and had all necessary paperwork including my last 3 payslips (as detailed on the application form).

I then popped back to them on a Friday lunchtime, dressed in jeans, t-shirt and got dealt with by an old trollope who had absolutely no interest in me or my custom whatsoever.

She went through the form, line by line checking every nth detail. Then she arrived at the section about my payslips and asked me "so you have your last 6 payslips with you then?". I replied no - I have the last 3, as documented on the form. I duly pointed to the line on the form which said "last 3 payslips" at which point she got a pen, crossed out the 3 and wrote 6, then said to me - no it says 6, so I can't process this.

At this point I was fuming, so ripped up the application threw it in her face and told her I'd never deal with them again.

I also took immense pleasure in closing down my saving account and transferring to the Midland (now HSBC). It only had £72k in it - their loss - not mine.

And what annoys me even more - when I closed the account they made no attempt whatsoever to question why I was closing it, would I reconsider, etc, etc ...

Been with HSBC ever since (approx 15 years now) and have never looked back.

K

 

[jaymanek]

72K in a savings account. Want me to invest it for you... Hmmm SL55...

 

[Kinky]

Cheers for the offer J.

Fortunately I invested it in a property which has since returned a very tidy sum and is ever increasing :bannana:

Might semi-retire soon :bannana:

K

 

[Ian B Walker]

It only had £72k in it - their loss - not mine.



K

Only 72K...................giyus a loan M8 need a respray

 

[Kinky]

It's all tied up I'm afraid at the moment.

However, it might be going towards a nice little place not too far from you

K

 

[Anders]

Just wait till the move to india.

not only will you ahve idiots working there .. but idiots who can't understand what youre saying ...

Vote with your feet people . if someone yorue with moves the callcentre to india .. close your account and make it clear why youre doing it..

I may be reading this the wrong way, but why the India slagging, and the - IMHO - rather crude equating of India with idiots?

 

[Sp!ke]

I may be reading this the wrong way, but why the India slagging, and the - IMHO - rather crude equating of India with idiots?

Have you yet had the misfortune of being diverted to an Indian call centre?

If you had, I think it likely that you find the whole experience frighteningly awful... Its not that they are not intelligent or educated, it's the fact that they have no real world experience of how we in the western world expect to be treated or like to conduct our business.

For this reason, many companies that moved their call centres to India have found that they have lost many customers due to the shambolic customer care and many are now bringing the call centres back to the UK.

 

[andy_k]

Indian call centres do offer a very poor service, but they are cheap for the companies. Is it just coincidental that some companies offer a standard service from India and a Premium service from the UK?

Andy

 

[Tan]

To be honest to blame the Indian call centres, is wrong IMHO. After all its is the large corporates that are employing and training them. If they can't be bothered to do the job properly then more of the blame should be directed at them.

In some respect these call centres are a victim of their own success, the companies that went over early on have good staff that are fully up to speed with Uk business affairs, however as demand has increased the quality of staff has decreased.

The only winners are the corporates who pay lower wages and make higher profits.

For many companies their customer service has always been appauling just the public have a new thing to blame it on.

Regards

Tan

 

[MyFirstMerc]

My wife called the bank's call centre and was routed to India. She wowed never call the bank again because the helpdesk basically read a script in front of them (sort of standard Q&A of all questions) and that upset her. She had to explain problem all over again!!! Agree with Tan that it's the bank faults for not training them properly. What the different with automated call-centre than a helpdesk reading out from a standard script? Outrageous.

Eric

 

[Shude]

Just wait till the move to india.

India? Luxury! Even the Indians are worried now, because not only are a lot of their workforce employed as outsourced callcentre staff and not experienced in anything traditionally useful in India, but there are cheaper places in the world to host callcentres...like Vietnam, Malaysia or the Philippines, and that's where a lot of the work will be going to soon instead of India!

 

[Satch]

Oh dear. Outsourcing. Gets a lot of people upset.

My own experience with this was dealing with a large-ish function being outsourced to a joint venture provider in Bangalore. Great deal of time, effort & money went into this for training, language skills, IT telecoms etc at the Bangalore end. Net result was that after 6 months of learning curve everything was fine 98% of the time, one key factor being retaining an experienced UK based support team dealing with oversight, problem resolution and "soft" issues. Despite time differences they worked during the same hours as Bangalore staff.

Trouble is that a lot of companies with incredible foolishness think only in terms of short term cash saving. (maybe Abbey had to!) They skimp on training, do not have sufficient contractual rights of oversight nor retain enough UK staff to get a grip on how things are actually going.

Thus the local staff can be left mostly to their own devices.

But same thing can happen if you outsource to an outfit in Bognor and try to do it on the cheap: unhappy punters!

 

[pluggers]

I was watching a program on telly last night called "Brassed off Britain" It went on about call centres in Deli Where the call operator has to be a graduate just to get too work for them,Most have degrees of some sort, and can earn £2000 a year and can earn more than a doctor over there <faints now>But the best bit I thought was that they are taught British culture by watching programs such as "Eastenders" Oh and the program also said they were crap

 

[Satch]

Yes, a whole new industry has sprung up around UK companies outsourcing to India: Accent Neutralisation Courses. And they do tend to make call centre staff watch East Enders and the like. Supposed to be for them to become familiar with English like wots aktually spoke, innit?

And no, it does not really work. Force fed East Enders: what a price to pay.
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