Halifax Problems. advice needed.

Savvy_Money · 14 January 2013 at 11:10PM

pvt wrote: »

whereas the service the bank provides should simply be an entitlement?

No not an entitlement but plenty of people receive free banking, but the last time I checked BA aren't giving away free tickets.

Naf · 14 January 2013 at 11:32PM

Whether or not you paid for it is irrelevant. It's the service you signed up for, and so that's the restrictions. Sympathy/empathy don't enter into it either: people are walking into this eyes open; making choices that lead to this product. So all that's left is either accept it, or move.

Savvy_Money · 14 January 2013 at 11:43PM

Naf wrote: »

Whether or not you paid for it is irrelevant. It's the service you signed up for, and so that's the restrictions. Sympathy/empathy don't enter into it either: people are walking into this eyes open; making choices that lead to this product. So all that's left is either accept it, or move.

And I'm sure the OP has the message.

opinions4u · 15 January 2013 at 6:43AM

pmduk wrote: »

I've always suspected that Halifax want their queues to be full of people that they can sell additional services to. It would explain why they allow the queues to get so long, possibly I'm being cynical.

There has, in the past, been mixed management thinking on this.

Initially it was a desire to reduce queues. Get people to use ATMs, Internet etc. Or, in the case of the short-lived low balance charges I mentioned above, a direct effort to price low quality customers out all together.

Then the sales culture came in. Get somebody in the banking hall to talk to the queue. Manage their expectations, encourage them to use ATM and wheel them in to a room for a chat / review.

Occasionally you'd get some mantra coming out of head office to "build a queue". Consciously take a cashier off a till so that a queue would build giving you more customers to talk to. I tended to ignore this nonsense as my cashiers were more than capable of talking to their customers anyway! Most managers at the time had a similar view.

There was then a policy of closing till positions. A typical branch would have five till positions but staff levels meant the manager could only ever hope to man two or three. So positions were boarded up. Helped to remove the complaints about all the empty till positions!

The main three reasons for Halifax queues tended to be:

1) a huge number of customers with passbook accounts.
2) a large number of lower quality accounts compared to other banks.
3) a less than generous number of cashiers.

Branches have, for years, had a maximum queuing target of 4 or 5 minutes. I assume it's similar today. Targets are all well and good, but if a bus load of customers turn up at once you're usually unable to meet that target. Especially if a more complex transaction blocks up one cashier. All your available cashiers are on - little else you can do. Chat to the queue, set their apologise for the situation and drag one or two kicking and screaming to the ATM. Occasionally you could service non-cash or cheque transactions in a private room.

The other problem with a four minute wait is how it feels to the customer. Standing there. Shuffling. Four minutes. It feels like an age. It's boring. I did get the occasional complaint about 15 minute queuing times being unacceptable when I'd timed the customer coming in and knew they'd only been there five minutes.

When Halifax experimented with Sunday opening about 14 years ago, they posted a notice on the door of my then local branch, stating that there were no services available in-branch on Sundays for Cardcash holders. (Cardcash being the predecessor to Easycash.) So this isn't a new attitude they've adopted.

For reasons known only to those in IT the online systems in branch weren't capable of checking account balances on a Sunday back then. Odd when the ATMs could. So it wasn't a queue control policy. It was all about risk of loss.

pmduk · 15 January 2013 at 12:35PM

My first job in the 70s was working for the Halifax. Our District Manager would have a fit if there were closed tills and customers waiting. He'd not recognise branches nowadays. Most branches have blanked out cashier positions so that they can claim they have all positions staffed. Certainly our local branch here has 3 out of 5 blanked off, with usually only one cashier working, even though there are queues to the door.