How to: get decent service from your bank
Or, how ombudsman is my favourite Swedish loanword.
Back last year, the estate agent through which I rent my current flat gave me the wrong bank details. The account number was correct, but the sort code was off by one on the last digit. I shouldn’t be surprised. Expecting competence from an estate agent is like expecting bipedalism of a dog: it’s an unnatural state seldom seen in nature.
I transferred some money to their account and set up a standing order from the following month. When the standing order came around, the money was returned to me instantly and the standing order cancelled. I received a letter in the post explaining the situation.
But what about the initial transfer? What had happened to that? I asked the agent whether they’d received it. They didn’t reply. A few months later, they phoned me up threatening to evict me for not paying, so I paid it again.
For the next seven months, I struggled to get my money back. I called my bank (Halifax). They told me different things on different occasions:
- It was none of their concern because it was I who had typed the incorrect details.
- The clearing department would sort it out.
- I should contact the receiving bank (Lloyds)
At one stage, I received a letter promising to look into it, and asking for more details. My reply went unanswered.
I wrote to Lloyds. They didn’t reply. I called them, and they told me that I would have to talk to Halifax, who would initiate the recall procedure. Halifax told me to talk to Lloyds, who told me to talk to Halifax, who told me …
Usque ad nauseam.
In search of a way out of the impasse, I contacted the Financial Ombudsman Service for advice. They told me that it was Halifax’s responsibility.
Armed with this opinion, I went back to Halifax, but, yet again, they were disinclined to assist.
I returned to the Financial Ombudsman, who wrote a letter to Halifax on my behalf.
In contrast to their dismissive attitude to their own customers, it appears that banks actually pay attention to the Ombudsman. A few days later, the phone rang. It was Halifax. For the next few days, I enjoyed a personal service from a person at Halifax’s customer service department, who looked into my situation and called me daily with updates. She spoke to Lloyds and worked out where the money had gone.
It turns out that the money had been deposited into the correct account in the first place. Although the branch code had been wrong, Lloyds had found the correct recipient through the name and account number.
All this stress and hassle for nothing! The estate agent had the money all along! Getting money back from an estate agent is harder than prying the Ring out of Gollum’s hands, but with this evidence I was able to do so.
In all this, the banks had done a pretty good job of moving the money around. However, they did a terrible job of providing assistance when I needed it. Halifax’s consistent position—that they would not help me because the error was not their responsibility—left me frustrated and deeply resentful. The fact that they were able to assist me once I had involved the ombudsman makes me wonder why their default position is so bloody-mindedly unhelpful.
I’d strongly recommend the ombudsman service to anyone else who has been given the run-around by their bank. It seems to get results.
2010-03-22 23:14 UTC. Comments: 6.
Zoe Hendrickse
Wrote at 2010-03-23 01:46 UTC using Chrome 5.0.356.2 on Mac OS X:
Sadly, for my sins, I used to work for Halifax many years ago.A few interesting facts:
1) Every time the financial ombudsman receive a complaint letter regarding a bank, that bank is immediately charged an admin fee for dealing with the complaint by the ombudsman. Doesn’t matter if they come back and decide the bank was correct – the bank still has to pay.
2) Once a case is being dealt with by the ombudsman, the bank has very strict deadlines under which to provide evidence (if the bank wishes to argue against the case) and/or sort out the issue with the customer. The fines given towards the bank for missing these deadlines are huge.
It was always easy to tell when a complaint involved the ombudsman, as “low level” members of staff would rarely touch the file – in fact if we received an additional complaint for a customer that already had a case being dealt with via the ombudsman, then we where always instructed to collect together any relevant information needed and then pass the file/complaint directly to a supervisor to deal with.
You could also tell that a case a supervisor was working on involved the ombudsman, as while working on such cases the supervisors always had this look of “if I mess this up – I could be fired”.
In short – yes, the ombudsman is your best friend. they’re the only body that banks are really scared of it seems. And it’s amazing to watch staff drop other things that they see as important in order to deal with ombudsman cases.
Tim
Wrote at 2010-03-23 09:49 UTC using Firefox 3.5.8 on Windows XP:
The worst customer service nightmare I’ve ever had was with Paypal. Briefly they froze our account for 6 months after we sold one totally legitimate festival ticket on eBay. The website ceased to make any sense, asking us to click non-existent buttons and submit non-existent documents. On the rare occasions we could actually get through on the phone lines they were just totally rude and offensive, accusing us of fraud and theft. At one point they had my wife in tears, and that’s really not like her. It sounds silly now, but we needed the two hundred pounds.Eventually we went to the ombudsman who wrote the usual “please respond within 4 weeks” letter to Paypal. On the day before the end of the four weeks Paypal just released all the money, with no further explanations or ado. Job done!
Mind you, I’ll never use Paypal again.
Owen Blacker
Wrote at 2010-03-26 08:23 UTC using Chrome 4.1.249.1036 on Windows 7:
I had trouble with PayPal a while ago, happen.They screwed up. They deposited something like £1k of someone’s money into my account (two people’s, in fact) and paid about $700 to a third person. (And for some reason didn’t transfer any of this to or from my bank, thankfully.) So I contacted them, like I was meant to.
It took 10 days for the balance to be sorted out. Which included me having to argue with them on the phone to get them to refund the currency exchange fees.
Then they locked my account, because I’d tripped the EU’s money laundering limits, so needed to verify my account in some new and obscure fashion. The fact that there had been a net transfer of zero between myself and any of the three other people involved didn’t help, nor did it being entirely their fault.
That took the best part of a year to resolve, exacerbated by them losing my verification stuff.
If it weren’t for the fact that PayPal have no real competitors and that they are too useful not to use, they would have lost my business then. As it is, I’ll choose any other payment method wherever I can.
It was easily my worst customer service experience ever. And that includes trying to find a phone number for Amazon.
Alexandre Brooks
Wrote at 2010-03-29 13:49 UTC using Firefox 3.0.3 on Windows XP:
I believe there is an ombudsman for estate agents in the UK too (and estate agents have to provide it’s details on their lettres and contracts).If they owe you money, you might want to start looking in that direction…
Phil Champ
Wrote at 2010-03-30 11:05 UTC using Opera 9.80 on Mac OS X:
A true confederacy of dunces. Perhaps your real villain, Paul, was your agent: they had your money, and then threatened to evict you. However, a tenant’s relationship with their agent is always a delicate one.I can confirm that contacting a regulating body works wonders. I had a similar problem trying to get my landline back from Tiscali after I’d cancelled my account with them. Absolutely the worst customer service I’ve received in my entire life. A letter to OFCOM worked wonders, although Tiscali never apologised or offered to compensate me in any way.
A letter to the bank’s head office threatening the ombudsman may do the trick. That worked for me when the Abbey locked £2000 of my money in an online savings account.
Nicholas Polydor
Wrote at 2010-03-30 17:20 UTC using Firefox 3.6.2 on Mac OS X:
Paul, why don’t you name and shame the company and responsible individuals in the lying estate agent and unhelpful and evasive bank, and praise the individual at Halifax who helped you? These guilty cretins deserve not just to be sacked but publicly humiliated and prevented from ever being employed, anywhere, in any capacity ever again.