Lloyds unscruplous sales tactics -is this allowed??

Steve_xx

sinizterguy wrote: »

This is what they do.

Somewhere in the small print you would have agreed to this when you agreed to attend the appointment.

There'd be nowt in any small print that says they can phone you and tell bare faced lies in order to get you into a branch. The OP is right to feel a tad annoyed.

Steve_xx

jayjay21 wrote: »

I don't see the huge problem? They offered you potential ways to save you money and for some reason you declined.

No, no. They offered themselves the opportunity to sell to OP something or other and they did by blatantly lying about the reason for the invite to branch.

Steve_xx

Everynamestaken wrote: »

It's all free banking, you don't pay for it, so like someone said, just take it as experience.:D

There's nowt "free" about banking. Don't be under the illusion that it's all free when interest rates to savers are so shamefully low.

eskbanker

Steve_xx wrote: »

There'd be nowt in any small print that says they can phone you and tell bare faced lies in order to get you into a branch. The OP is right to feel a tad annoyed.

Steve_xx wrote: »

No, no. They offered themselves the opportunity to sell to OP something or other and they did by blatantly lying about the reason for the invite to branch.

Not sure OP was actually told any bare faced or blatant lies:

jmb1 wrote: »

Hi guys. Lloyds rang the other day and told us they were wanting to set up a meeting to 'discuss my bank account and your overdraft' and could we come in for a meeting.

jmb1 wrote: »

she produced a print out of my bank account statement and had highlighted direct debits to for eg insurance companies, external credit cards, even payments to and from my partner, from which she then attempted to tell me how much I could save if I use their services instead

Obviously only OP can say what the actual words used were but based on what was posted it sounds like 'bare faced lies' is a bit of an exaggeration....

PeacefulWaters

If you don't want them to call you again, amend your marketing details to no telephone contact.

You were under no obligation to attend the meeting.

If you don't want your bank to know what direct debits you've got, you have a problem. They already know. It's pretty much a done deal when you give your bank account details to another company.

When I spent 9-10 hours of my day in a bank branch, I had sales targets. Invariably I achieved these targets by talking to people face to face. I'd start chatting to them when they wandered into the branch, encourage them to sit down with me for a few minutes and assess what accounts they had and move them to better options. If they had financial products elsewhere I'd talk about those and see if I could beat them on price or convenience of service. If I could, the customer walked away better off or just said "no".

The annual customer survey results always has a really annoying quote from a not insignificant minority of customers. "You didn't do enough to tell me about new or better products".

Despite having a team of cashiers programmed to inform customers about what's new, numerous "advisers" set up to chat about and sell those products, and me swooping in my banking hall (in a friendly, personable way) several times a day, we didn't do enough.

Oh, not to forget centrally organised mailings, press advertising and multi million pound advertising campaigns. The bank didn't do enough to inform its customers.

I cannot recall ever getting a complaint about staff trying to inform customers or trying to "flog" stuff.

A Lloyds customer has a reasonable chance of sticking £5,000 in a Club Lloyds account and earning 4% interest on it. Growing a monthly saver balance to £4,800 and earning 4% interest on it. Perhaps their existing current and savings accounts are paying a rate between 0% and 1% and this will add £150+ to that customer's annual income.

Getting Avios points on their credit card when their current provider gives them nothing. It's even possible that the customer is paying more on their mortgage or insurance than Lloyds would charge - unlikely but not impossible! They could certainly save you £60 a year in overdraft fees by looking for alternatives ...

While I'm an advocate of seeking out best value for yourself, as many on here do, most of the public never quite get around to it. There is a middle ground - letting the bank sort it for you. That £150 or so a year from a Club Lloyds account is worth an hour of your time if you couldn't be bothered to sort it yourself. As is the loan rate that's 5% lower than you are paying on the one you took out 2 years ago.

I object strongly to mis-selling. But there's no suggestion that is what's happened here. Making customers aware of what's available is a sensible thing to do. Because they'll be the first to moan if you didn't.

MABLE

The Lloyds bank rep is keeping very quiet on this one!

adindas

I get this offer almost every year, especially around new year ....
I always decline it because I already know what the meeting will be and I do not need their offer ...

They are financial adviser (a salesmen is a more precise term), working to meet their own target of the number of people who s/he has consulted. So the main point of the meeting here is to offer you their financial products, especially stocks/shares, funds selling. IF you need it is fine but you might find a better deal out there rather than a limited number of Lloyds products if you shop around .....
Also they might be quite pushy during the meeting so you do not have time to do desk work to compare it with another product

For such kind of meeting, it will never be an overdraft review like some people who have not been such kind of review meeting would think as this is not the interest of financial adviser like that, neither will they get credit for it ....

jmb1 wrote: »

Hi guys. Lloyds rang the other day and told us they were wanting to set up a meeting to 'discuss my bank account and your overdraft' and could we come in for a meeting. Thinking this might be something serious or problematic with my current account we duly arranged to go in at 3pm the following Wednesday.

On arrival at 3pm the 'account manager' assigned to me didnt appear until quarter past and when she did, no apology for the wait, but thats another matter. What she then told me is what I wonder is allowed; she basically wanted to sell me all sorts of Lloyds services, nothing to do with my overdraft facility or account health. What I found more unbelievable was that she produced a print out of my bank account statement and had highlighted direct debits to for eg insurance companies, external credit cards, even payments to and from my partner, from which she then attempted to tell me how much I could save if I use their services instead, and even trying to get my partner to move bank to them, asking how much he earns etc etc.

I felt this an invasion of privacy and a very underhand to bring me in under the pretense of needing to discuss an urgent matter only to be brought in using my time and travel costs just to have her try to sell me their products and services.

Are they allowed to do this? Particularly I mean going through my finances in order to try to sell me their products instead??

eskbanker

Steve_xx wrote: »

There's nowt "free" about banking. Don't be under the illusion that it's all free when interest rates to savers are so shamefully low.

There's plenty free about banking, the fact that savings rates are low doesn't change the fact that, for most, access to current accounts in this country is free of charge. In that specific context it's hardly surprising that banks treat current accounts as loss-leaders and seek to find ways of making some profit from their current account customers, as they're simply commercial organisations rather than the benevolent charities some would appear to believe they should be....

Steve_xx

eskbanker wrote: »

Not sure OP was actually told any bare faced or blatant lies:Obviously only OP can say what the actual words used were but based on what was posted it sounds like 'bare faced lies' is a bit of an exaggeration....

Well I'm sure that the OP was told bare faced lies.


What Lloyds should have said to the OP is that they would like to discuss the purchase of products, because that's what the reality of the invite was. Had Lloyds done this then the OP would very likely have said no thanks and time would not have been wasted on both sides.

Steve_xx

eskbanker wrote: »

There's plenty free about banking, the fact that savings rates are low doesn't change the fact that, for most, access to current accounts in this country is free of charge. In that specific context it's hardly surprising that banks treat current accounts as loss-leaders and seek to find ways of making some profit from their current account customers, as they're simply commercial organisations rather than the benevolent charities some would appear to believe they should be....

No there isn't anything free about current accounts. Banks don't run for free. For every interest bearing current account there may be several more that pay nothing. Nobody denies that they should make a profit and indeed find ways of increasing their profits. However, inviting a customer in to on the pretext of discussing his bank account and then doing anything but discussing the bank account is blatantly wrong and it is irritating.


I think most of us will not view the banks as being "benevolent".