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A Bankers View, Open Letter To Martin Lewis And His Followers On Bank Charges.
BANKER_GIRL
Posts: 26 Forumite
Hello Martin, my names Aly, I am 21 years old and I work for one of the banks taking part in the charges test case as a specialist telephone banking advisor, I help customers sort out their accounts and will happily refund or waiver charges if it is an error or in any case, if they are eligible, to be eligible for a refund customers must not have had a refund or waiver in the last year and they must have an acceptable risk bank.
I have worked for the bank for the last 7 months and thus have knowledge of how bank charges reclaiming has been dealt with before and during the test case.
I would like to have a frank discussion about how your site makes me feel, which is depressed and ashamed. Ashamed for the poor misguided fools your site attracts and the false, undeserved and unnecessary hope it gives them.
As you probably know, we have changed our charging strategy to make it fairer to the customers who look after their accounts and to effectively wean the customers who have a "who cares they can only charge me 90pounds a month and I’ll claim that back anyway" way of looking at things.
It may be awful, but sometimes when I get a person on the telephone who has been silly and thinks he will not be punished for it brings me great happiness to tell themm the charges he will receive. This may sound terrible to you, and maybe I am jaded. But customers take the !!!! every single day and do not care, they are jeopardising their future and, partly because of you, they do not care one bit! They quote your name.."Martin Lewis says..." and it means nothing to us. They think you are god and it is tragic shame. We will help customers who want to be helped. And only then when they intend to work with us to help them out of the hole they have got themselves into, it is a two way thing, and when it works, it is beautiful. I have had letters sent to my office from customers previously in dire straits who I have helped just by simply going through their account and figuring out what is going wrong and how to budget, as some people simply do not know how. And this is simply not the message you convey on your website. You seem to convey the message that customers are in a fight with their banks when truly all we want to do is make sure they do not continue to go overdrawn and hurt their own future. So our charges are meant to act simply as a deterrent. And for close to 80% of customers this is highly successful. I have been brought up to believe that I should be ashamed if I ever went overdrawn and got charged. And I have been overdrawn, and I have been charged, and I have paid up, because when this happened I knew it was my own fault, something that would not have happened if I had been more careful, and since then, even before working with the bank I have not gone overdrawn, simply because of the sheer shame of it. And I cannot understand or sympathise with the customers that feel they should not take responsibility for their own actions. When they come on the phone to me and ask for help, help I will gladly give, but when the customers come on screaming and yelling and demanding I give them “their” money back because Martin Lewis says it is unlawful, I find my sympathy melting away, and I close down. Telling them there is nothing to say yet that what we are doing is unlawful and that the customer simply needs to manage their money better. This is what the ignorant and often arrogant and piggish customer gets told. As this is exactly what they need to do. Not decide the world is against him and decide he is going to sue us
<o></o>
My true message is that customers need to take responsibility for their own money and not rely on what you say, You have no real contact with some of the customers you claim to wish to help, and you have no idea how you affect their treatment of bank workers. You have no idea how many times I have been sworn at, screamed at and verbally abused by customers who believe what you say. You seriously need to look at what you saying to people and the message you are giving as it is simply wrong.
We will help the customers who accept out advice and ask to speak to our Customer Support Units and do not start screaming, crying or swearing at the poor person on the end of the line, if a customer accepts this began as a result of their own actions and are willing to accept the consequences, and our advice to remedy it then they will be helped.
<o></o>
With all respect to you, you have obviously done your homework and believe what you are saying, but please thing of it from the bank workers, not the BANK, but the bank WORKERS point of view and how you’re writing has affected us. We are just normal people who try our best to look after the customers and offer many services to stop them going overdrawn and not getting into this mess. We are not in a war. We are the same people and you need to recognise that. Please do.
Thankyou Aly
I have worked for the bank for the last 7 months and thus have knowledge of how bank charges reclaiming has been dealt with before and during the test case.
I would like to have a frank discussion about how your site makes me feel, which is depressed and ashamed. Ashamed for the poor misguided fools your site attracts and the false, undeserved and unnecessary hope it gives them.
As you probably know, we have changed our charging strategy to make it fairer to the customers who look after their accounts and to effectively wean the customers who have a "who cares they can only charge me 90pounds a month and I’ll claim that back anyway" way of looking at things.
It may be awful, but sometimes when I get a person on the telephone who has been silly and thinks he will not be punished for it brings me great happiness to tell themm the charges he will receive. This may sound terrible to you, and maybe I am jaded. But customers take the !!!! every single day and do not care, they are jeopardising their future and, partly because of you, they do not care one bit! They quote your name.."Martin Lewis says..." and it means nothing to us. They think you are god and it is tragic shame. We will help customers who want to be helped. And only then when they intend to work with us to help them out of the hole they have got themselves into, it is a two way thing, and when it works, it is beautiful. I have had letters sent to my office from customers previously in dire straits who I have helped just by simply going through their account and figuring out what is going wrong and how to budget, as some people simply do not know how. And this is simply not the message you convey on your website. You seem to convey the message that customers are in a fight with their banks when truly all we want to do is make sure they do not continue to go overdrawn and hurt their own future. So our charges are meant to act simply as a deterrent. And for close to 80% of customers this is highly successful. I have been brought up to believe that I should be ashamed if I ever went overdrawn and got charged. And I have been overdrawn, and I have been charged, and I have paid up, because when this happened I knew it was my own fault, something that would not have happened if I had been more careful, and since then, even before working with the bank I have not gone overdrawn, simply because of the sheer shame of it. And I cannot understand or sympathise with the customers that feel they should not take responsibility for their own actions. When they come on the phone to me and ask for help, help I will gladly give, but when the customers come on screaming and yelling and demanding I give them “their” money back because Martin Lewis says it is unlawful, I find my sympathy melting away, and I close down. Telling them there is nothing to say yet that what we are doing is unlawful and that the customer simply needs to manage their money better. This is what the ignorant and often arrogant and piggish customer gets told. As this is exactly what they need to do. Not decide the world is against him and decide he is going to sue us
<o></o>
My true message is that customers need to take responsibility for their own money and not rely on what you say, You have no real contact with some of the customers you claim to wish to help, and you have no idea how you affect their treatment of bank workers. You have no idea how many times I have been sworn at, screamed at and verbally abused by customers who believe what you say. You seriously need to look at what you saying to people and the message you are giving as it is simply wrong.
We will help the customers who accept out advice and ask to speak to our Customer Support Units and do not start screaming, crying or swearing at the poor person on the end of the line, if a customer accepts this began as a result of their own actions and are willing to accept the consequences, and our advice to remedy it then they will be helped.
<o></o>
With all respect to you, you have obviously done your homework and believe what you are saying, but please thing of it from the bank workers, not the BANK, but the bank WORKERS point of view and how you’re writing has affected us. We are just normal people who try our best to look after the customers and offer many services to stop them going overdrawn and not getting into this mess. We are not in a war. We are the same people and you need to recognise that. Please do.
Thankyou Aly
0
Comments
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So you think that charging £67 pounds for going £67.99 overdrawn for 2 days is reasonable?
You chose to work for a bank, you chose to face customers, don't tell me I should be nice to you when I can't feed my family through your employer's greed.0 -
I smell a troll...
Never does martin advocate being nasty to bank workers. And this site is all about managing your money carefully.
With respect, the people making profit out of the bank have put you on the front line to deal with the consequences of ripping people off to make millions of pounds profits. If you dont like it, get another job.
Fool.0 -
If you can't stand the heat....Tank fly boss walk jam nitty gritty...0
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Well the bank i work for would not charge that amount. But certainly i feel that not looking after what is coming in and coming out is irresponsible behaviour, especially since i know how many measures the bank puts forward to stop this happening that people will not take up. People do not even look at their statements, they flip straight to the charges page and dont even ask why they have been charged, so yes i feel that going overdrawn for 67.99 should be charged for. But I know my bank would not charge that much. And no i will not disclose what bank i work for.0
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I love my job, and my employer treats me exceptionally. And the people that treat me this way are in the minority, I am only talking from professional experience of the customers who quote Martin Lewis's name, and my distaste for it.0
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Is the charge reasonable or not? Answer the question. What should I have been charges? A fiver? A tenner? I offered £25 and it wasnt good enough. You tell me.0
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I also work in a customer care role - although not within the banking industry. Barely a day goes by where I do not have at least one customer who becomes abusive towards me - it's part of the job!
It's interesting to see a different view on the reclaiming of bank charges, although I do not agree with it, however I don't think it's fair to blame Martin or anybody else here because you have to speak to abusive customers as part of your job. The reclaiming of bank charges has only really been around for a few years; believe me, abusive and irate customer have been around a helluva lot longer.
I agree with fair and proportionate charges for operating an account outside of it's terms and conditions, however a lot of the charges applied are not fair and proportionate.
To giv an example, my mother (a carer for her disabled partner) allowed her Natwest account to go overdrawn by less than £10, for a period of less than 3 days. During this time, over £100 in charges were accrued. As a result of these charges, she was unable to meet commitments the following week and therefore accrued near on £100 in charges again. How can £200 in charges be fair, when the initial 'debt' wa only £10, and only for 48hrs?0 -
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I feel a charge should be a tiered system, depending on how long, and how much you are overdrawn. My banks system works like this, after 24 hours of you going overdrawn you recieve a 15pound statuatory charge, after that, for ever day you go overdrawn, depending on what you are overdrawn you will be charged like this, from between 1p to 25pounds you will be charged 6pounds a day, from between 25 to to 50 pounds a day you willbe charged 15 pounds a day and above you will be charged 20 pounds a day, but if you put your money in before 3.30 on any working day you will not be charged for that day. This means if you were overdrawn for 67.99 for two days you would be charged a total maximum of 55pounds depending on what time everything happened. And yes, i absolutely feel this is fair.0
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£55 for what is effectively a 48hr loan of £67.99?? :eek:
And you think this is fair...:rotfl: (actually, it's not funny, that £55 could be the difference between eating or not
)
Even Provident don't charge anything like that much! (And yes, I am aware that we are talking about an unauthorised OD, not a lone, but surely morality should still apply?)0
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