Lloyds just get worse with the hard sell

Aegis

Inactive wrote: »

Get real, they are either banks or they are shops, make up your mind.

There's no reason they can't be both. What you're saying is similar to someone telling me that my car can either be a Toyota or a Yaris, but not both. It can easily be both, as one is a subset of the other. In fact, it would be impossible for my car to be a Yaris without also being a Toyota.

In this case, a bank is a subset of the generic retail term "shop", and as such banks are a type of shop.

They are banks, they carry out a significantly different type of business to shops.

Whenever I go to shops and see store credit cards, financing agreements, loans, etc, I see how much overlap there really is.

In any case, carrying out a different type of business doesn't make them different. I would consider a business selling Ferraris different to my local newsagent, and different again to an organisation like Play.com, but they're still shops when all's said and done. They all provide products to customers and make a profit from doing so.

Geoffo_M

Aegis wrote: »

There's no reason they can't be both. What you're saying is similar to someone telling me that my car can either be a Toyota or a Yaris, but not both. It can easily be both, as one is a subset of the other. In fact, it would be impossible for my car to be a Yaris without also being a Toyota.

In this case, a bank is a subset of the generic retail term "shop", and as such banks are a type of shop.



Whenever I go to shops and see store credit cards, financing agreements, loans, etc, I see how much overlap there really is.

In any case, carrying out a different type of business doesn't make them different. I would consider a business selling Ferraris different to my local newsagent, and different again to an organisation like Play.com, but they're still shops when all's said and done. They all provide products to customers and make a profit from doing so.

But banks are "selling" a damaged product. They need to change their sales strategy. They need to regain the public's trust. And you don't do that by trying to sell them stuff they don't need.

Aegis

Geoffo_M wrote: »

But banks are "selling" a damaged product.

Very much depends on the product. Sometimes I absolutely agree there, but not all that often.

They need to change their sales strategy.

Again, I agree in some cases, but more often than not the bank employees are honest enough people selling what they're allowed to sell in order to make a living.

They need to regain the public's trust.

This one's true, but that has less to do with the products being sold and more to do with the reports of what is going wrong with the banks, often blown out of proportion by the media.

And you don't do that by trying to sell them stuff they don't need.

I couldn't agree with you more on this one. Selling something someone doesn't have a need for in the financial world is just terrible practice. However, I've only met one salesperson in my organisation that would happily sell a product that wasn't needed, and I refused to send any customers to him because of it. You find that these people are often on the worst offenders list within the branch, and will usually find themselves being reigned in by the branch manager before the complaints mount up.

However, with all this said there's an element of responsibility on the part of the customer as well. The sales staff are told to mention certain things to customers in meetings, and if they hear about the features of a product and decide that they would benefit from it, that's their choice. They can certainly say no.

I support 100% the idea that the features and charges should be explained in full to a customer looking at a product, and if that is done before the customer makes a decision to buy, I have no real problem with the bank in question even if other people think that the product is rubbish. There are several products that my bank offers which I don't personally want, but customers still seem to take them every now and then for their own reasons (sometimes even after I've tried to put them off...)

Inactive

ldavies wrote: »

We need to disagree on this one because even the bank regard branches as stores.. we have shop floors, sellers, counters, products to sell....

Definitions of store on the Web:

• shop: a mercantile establishment for the retail sale of goods or services; "he bought it at a shop on Cape Cod"
• wordnet.princeton.edu/perl/webwn

ld, your bank may well call your bank a store, that doesn't even surprise me TBH. You may well flog ( mainly over priced ) stuff to the gullible trapped audience, but it is not a shop in the true term, if it depended upon true competition, like real " shops " in all probability they wouldn't sell very much.;)

Perhaps if the banks concentrated more on their primary role of banking, we would not be in the mess we are in now.

Inactive

Aegis wrote: »

In any case, carrying out a different type of business doesn't make them different. I would consider a business selling Ferraris different to my local newsagent, and different again to an organisation like Play.com, but they're still shops when all's said and done. They all provide products to customers and make a profit from doing so.

Of course it makes them different, a bank has confidential information about customers that a " shop " doesn't have, it has access to their customers postal address's etc. etc.

It is a uniquely different business.

Inactive

ld, from your own link, just changed the word to " bank ";
http://wordnetweb.princeton.edu/perl/webwn?s=bank&sub=Search+WordNet&o2=&o0=1&o7=&o5=&o1=1&o6=&o4=&o3=&h=000000

No mention of " shop " or even " retail " there !!

Aegis

Inactive wrote: »

Of course it makes them different, a bank has confidential information about customers that a " shop " doesn't have, it has access to their customers postal address's etc. etc.

It is a uniquely different business.

Play.com has access to my credit card details, my home address, my old university address and my parents address.

Paypal has access to my bank and credit card details.

Banks have access to whatever information you choose to give them, just like any other company. The difference is that because of minor inconveniences like anti-money laundering regulations, banks need to know slightly more than most other companies.

Again, this does not mean that they're automatically not shops unless you can actually demonstrate how knowing more about your customer stops you from being a shop and turns you into some other kind of business.

Aegis

ldavies wrote: »

lol you make me smile Inactive, really you do...:D

what would you like banks to do, in an ideal world that is!

Lose money and go out of business, perhaps?

Inactive

ldavies wrote: »

lol you make me smile Inactive, really you do...:D

what would you like banks to do, in an ideal world that is!

Hows about " bank " ..

Inactive

Aegis wrote: »

Lose money and go out of business, perhaps?

They seem to be quite capable of doing that without any help from me.. :rolleyes: