Is AA Financial Services Ltd and BOI staffed by a bunch of incompetent people ?

adindas

Is AA Financial Services Ltd staffed by a bunch of incompetent people from Underwriters to the Frontline staffs?

I will say yes, here are my evidence and all of my evidence could be found here on this MSE.

1. People have been sent the wrong card, e.g. it should be a Balance transfer card but was sent a non BT card.

2. They fail to do the electronic verification. Many people are already in the electoral role, have other credit card, bank AC yet they still ask the people to submit extraneous paper work, e.g. ID verification, Address Verification, Bank Detail, Employment detail.

3. The documents could only be certified by Solicitor, Accountant, Bank or Doctor. So they do not even understand the document certification procedure here in the UK. From here https://www.gov.uk/certifying-a-document e.g.
From official UK gov website, the ID could be certified by bank or building society official, councillor, minister of religion, dentist, chartered accountant, solicitor or notary, teacher or lecturer. Doctor and staff in Post office are even not on the list

4. They have representative here, although claim to be an official representation of AA Company representative they do hit and run, they just provide a generic answer and never come back.

agrinnall

Having never had any dealings with them I can't say whether they are incompetent or not. But in response to two of your points:

2. They can instigate whatever procedures they want to in order to confirm identity. If they want to do checks in addition to or instead of electronic verification that's up to them. The are certainly not the only ones to do so.

3. I can see no reason why they should not insist on their own procedures for certification of documents. The gov.uk page is highly unlikely to be binding on the private sector (and in any case doctor would certainly be acceptable - the list is only examples).

This should be on the Praise, Vents & Warnings board.

YorkshireBoy

When they didn't want my custom I just shrugged, accepted it, and moved on. Just like I did with First Trust (£100 current account incentive) and their ID requirements.

I've mellowed with age.

adindas

Another Evidence of incompetence is here.

https://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/discussion/5388952

"I applied for a credit card in August with Post Office. During the application process I opted to transfer £3000 to my debit account, with the intention to pay off my overdraft. I didn’t realise at the time but the Post Office don’t transfer from credit to debit; unfortunately their automated system didn’t detect this during application so they tried to send it anyway.

The money never reached me so I called customer services, they explained the issue and I was advised that they will recall the £3k and that it could take up to 8 weeks. I was advised that in the meantime I should pay the minimum repayments so to not incur late payment fees and more importantly adversely affect my credit rating. I was promised that I would receive all my payments back when the £3k is back in their account.

I chased up every couple of weeks to see if there was progress. “Sir please wait the full 8 weeks” was a common phrase. Fair enough.

8 weeks passed, still nothing. “Sir we are not sure what has happened to the money, we are investigating it”

More weeks passed and they asked me if I would like to log a complaint and there’s nothing more customer services can do. I spent an hour relaying the situation (this was tedious, I’d gone through it 10+ times on thephone already). I verbally logged a complaint and was told it would take 8 weeks for the complaints team to assess it!!! Oh great, I’ll pay you for another couple of months repayments whilst you do nothing then!!!!

Sometime later I check up to see how the complaint is progressing and to see whether they found their ‘lost’ money. “Sir no complaint has been logged, would you like me to log a complaint for you?”. (I’m really frustrated by this time and the customer service rep has to earn their money whilst I tell them what I think of their customer services.)

This time I log the complaint via email so that I have a time stamp. I call up to ensure that the complaint has been logged and the yconfirm. To much frustration they won’t let me speak to the ‘customer complaints team’, despite being told previously they would put me straight through once I have logged the complaint, until I have been issued a complaint reference number. It’s been weeks now and I’ve been issued nothing.

So, here I am, 5 months later, hours on the phone to customer services tediously explaining the issue to incompetent staff over and over, £400 in repayments down (and counting) and this has still not been resolved. It’s quite painful sending a company that is struggling to locate money they lost even more money… all for nothing and only a 'promise' that it'll get returned.

I’m a level headed guy and can take quite a bit of stress before I crack, but with remortgaging looming a month away and credit check websites telling me I’m ‘dependant on credit’ (because it shows I’m 3k in arrears), I’m starting to lose my cool.

Am I wrong to get stressed!? Should I wait another 8 weeks whilst ‘the complaints team’ file my complaint and sit on it for 8 weeks, probably then to be told the complaint was never logged correctly and I need to start again?...

I’d like to stop paying them and walk away, but I’m £400 invested and would rather not have missed payments logged on my credit score.

Feels good to vent, all advice appreciated. "


I am aware that this case is From Post Office. But keep in in mind they are managed by the same guy, e.g. Bank of Ireland (UK).

adindas

Another Evidence come up here recently
From nellycouture 09-01-2016, 9:10 PM post #23

https://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/discussion/5381115

"I was really surprised that MSE didn't flag up the costs (and time & hassle)involved in applying for this AA card, Having already had the credit search flagged up on my credit history, Having no accountant or solicitor, I went to my doctors to verify my documents - they were too busy, then my bank - they won't do it for other credit card companies, then queued up at the post office for 30 mins & paid £8.50 for the privilege (which isn't even mentioned as a possibility on the AA application & I only found out after phoning AA to tell them I couldn't get verification from any of the 4 sources they mentioned) . Now 3 weeks later, I have heard nothing back and meanwhile 2 months of paying interest on my existing balances have passed since I first applied. Terrible service on the part of AA and a really surprising recommendation from MSE. I really wished I had gone with a more familiar brand such as Tesco, even if the terms were not so appealing. I wanted to warn other people of applying for an AA card - really not worth the risk!"

agrinnall

adindas wrote: »

Another Evidence come up here recently

I suggest that you take your anti-AA campaign (some would say vendetta) to Praise, Vents & Warnings as it's getting rather tiresome on here.

adindas

agrinnall wrote: »

I suggest that you take your anti-AA campaign (some would say vendetta) to Praise, Vents & Warnings as it's getting rather tiresome on here.

This is open for discussion and I am just summarising evidence which are scattered in different thread.


AA has an official representative here. Of course they are welcomed to argue against this.

Another Evidence is here:
https://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/discussion/comment/69894317#Comment_69894317

agrinnall

adindas wrote: »

This is open for discussion and I am just summarising evidence which are scattered in different thread.

Then do it on the appropriate board, this is a board for questions about Credit Cards, not for slagging off a particular provider.

System

I have no love (think Small Claims) for them but they can choose how they want to identify you etc. They are making you an offer, you don't like it then you can walk away.

mcpitman

adindas wrote: »

This is open for discussion and I am just summarising evidence which are scattered in different thread.

Put simply, if you don't like the company, it's procedures or it's staff, don't engage in business with them.

Move on with your life (life is too short).... :beer:

GingerBob_3

Heng_Leng wrote: »

I have no love (think Small Claims) for them but they can choose how they want to identify you etc. They are making you an offer, you don't like it then you can walk away.

Yes, I expect large numbers of punters will do just that. But there's a problem with the approach of this idiot company. They don't tell you up front in big red letters (as far as I know) that you will have to go through the stupidity of certified documents before you can open an account. Consequently, by the time you decide to walk away they've already screwed you over with a credit check.