Customer service FAIL
Scribbled down on March 13th, 2009 by she
Posted in Frothing At The Bit
My parents were Credit Union members for ages. My mum still is. As a kid I had a credit union account. Drew had one too.
The only downside to Credit Unions – other than the MasterCard affiliation – is that they’re not national. Accounts would constantly need to be opened and closed with each move. Since Drew is military and we moved around a lot, we moved our accounts to a national bank well over a decade ago. Over the years they’ve held all our business – mortgage, payroll deposits, RRSP’s, etc.
Today I tried to deposit a bank draft from a Credit Union into a tax free savings account in my bank. Tried being the operative word. After making me wait 45 minutes while they “discussed” the situation, they refused the draft on the grounds that they thought it was fraudulent. Never have I been so mortified or angry in my life. If our accounts weren’t joint (or Drew had been home) I would have yanked every account and our mortgage from the bank immediately. Remember, we’ve been “customers” of this bank for over a decade. They have all our financial history stored in their computer system. They know what our income is, that we’ve never had a late payment, and anything else they could possibly want to know about us. We’ve paid their ever increasing “service fees” for years receiving little in return for the pleasure. Despite this record, apparently, I’m a sketchy character capable of trying to deposit a bad cheque.
Needless to say I left the bank fuming. And walked into the nearest Credit Union and opened a new bank account with cash. Oh, and they didn’t immediately assume the Credit Union bank draft was fraudulent. Go figure! I opened the tax free savings account while there as well.
We’re not planning on leaving the city anytime soon so I don’t think we need to have a national bank anymore. If this is how I’ll be treated after a decade I certainly want nothing to do with them anymore.
I’m not a number. And my business can and will go elsewhere. Slowly until Drew comes home. But certainly I’ll be moving my accounts away from the bank once Drew returns.
Chalk one up for the pissed off customer. I suggest banks start rethinking their treatment of customers or I won’t be the last customer they piss off and lose.
You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
March 14th, 2009 at 4:54 am
Bank behaving badly. Serve’s ’em right. Go where you feel like you are getting the service you deserve.
March 14th, 2009 at 8:55 am
I don’t think people even know the meaning of what customer service is anymore. Good on you for doing that. At the least they could have called the friggin’ bank to verify if the bank draft was legit. In my line of work I occassionaly get calls from banks asking me to verify a cheque.
March 14th, 2009 at 10:32 am
good girl…vote with your feet.
if they don’t know how to treat customers, let them look for new ones
March 14th, 2009 at 11:07 am
I’d have been less annoyed if they’d said they needed to hold it until it cleared or called the source Credit Union to verify it. Both normal bank behaviours. Telling me I was knowingly trying to pull off something illegal was just incredibly crass on the part of the tellers and supervisors! It’s insulting to me, the person who provided the draft, and the Credit Union it came from.
March 14th, 2009 at 6:57 pm
I have a funny story about Stu trying to cash a bank-draft from Bayview CU at a TD-bank in London, Ontario… same thing ~ they told him that “there is no such bank as Bayview Credit Union”… In the end he did leave with the cash, but it was apparently a bit of a fight…
March 15th, 2009 at 10:12 pm
Thanks for sharing your story about the bank. It is a great example to set to fellow Canadians that we now have more choices than ever when it comes to financial institutions. As consumers we need to protect our rights and be treated fairly.
March 16th, 2009 at 10:28 am
My bank last week cleared my first rent cheque, then due to a clerical error turned around and bounced it. I feel your fuming and mortification. I am not feeling particularly enamored with the Canadian banking system at the moment.