Bank complaint voided

gcampb

Hi all 

I have recently been dealing with BoS/Halifax, regarding an issue I’ve had with an account. I won’t go into specific details, however I wanted to ask if anyone has ever had a complaint ‘voided’ by a bank or insurer? 

I had raised a complaint over the phone about 4 weeks ago but had not received any update so called them back today. To my surprise I was told that as per the banks process, my complaint had not been logged as the original call had disconnected so it was ‘voided’.  To clarify, after spending several hours on the phone to them trying to resolve an issue, I eventually raised a complaint as I was being given the run around - at this point I was verified by the bank, they had the full details of my complaint and I was placed on hold for about half an hour while they logged the complaint on the system. The call disconnected, but I never called back as I assumed that my issue would be looked into.. but apparently the banks process is to ‘void’ the complaint. 

I work in financial services and have lots of experience with complaints procedures and the FCA guidance pertaining to complaint handling - so I was shocked that this is the banks process and seems to go against anything I’ve heard before. 

My concern is - if the bank wants customers to wait half an hour while they type up and log their complaint - how many complaints are being voided on the grounds that the call disconnected? And further to this - what’s the rationale behind this policy, given the fact that all the details of the complaint had been communicated and my personal details already verified.

Ed-1

gcampb said:

Hi all 

I have recently been dealing with BoS/Halifax, regarding an issue I’ve had with an account. I won’t go into specific details, however I wanted to ask if anyone has ever had a complaint ‘voided’ by a bank or insurer? 

I had raised a complaint over the phone about 4 weeks ago but had not received any update so called them back today. To my surprise I was told that as per the banks process, my complaint had not been logged as the original call had disconnected so it was ‘voided’.  To clarify, after spending several hours on the phone to them trying to resolve an issue, I eventually raised a complaint as I was being given the run around - at this point I was verified by the bank, they had the full details of my complaint and I was placed on hold for about half an hour while they logged the complaint on the system. The call disconnected, but I never called back as I assumed that my issue would be looked into.. but apparently the banks process is to ‘void’ the complaint. 

I work in financial services and have lots of experience with complaints procedures and the FCA guidance pertaining to complaint handling - so I was shocked that this is the banks process and seems to go against anything I’ve heard before. 

My concern is - if the bank wants customers to wait half an hour while they type up and log their complaint - how many complaints are being voided on the grounds that the call disconnected? And further to this - what’s the rationale behind this policy, given the fact that all the details of the complaint had been communicated and my personal details already verified.

Complain..

km1500

probably a good way is to write a complaint letter (keep.it short) and post it.

gcampb

Already done - just curious if anyone else has encountered this. I’ve worked in FCA regulated firms that would log a complaint if it was written on the back of a cigarette packet and thrown in the office window  

 Most firms interpret the regulations in the same way - but voiding a complaint is news to me. 

boingy

That is surprising. Financial companies are usually so sensitive to anything even remotely "complainy" that they will sometimes raise a formal complaint even thought the customer did not really intend to make one. I've certainly had a couple of examples where I've given what I considered to be feedback and suddenly I've got a voice mail or an email from the complaints department acknowledging my "complaint" and laying out the process. 

DullGreyGuy

gcampb said:

Already done - just curious if anyone else has encountered this. I’ve worked in FCA regulated firms that would log a complaint if it was written on the back of a cigarette packet and thrown in the office window  

 Most firms interpret the regulations in the same way - but voiding a complaint is news to me. 

Rules and guidance changes over time, back in my front lines a complaint was defined as "any expression of dissatisfaction" but now thats been supplemented with that it will/has caused "financial loss, material distress or material inconvenience" by the FCA so your basic moaners no longer have to be logged as complaints. 

You are generally supposed to be told about the complaint process, potentially given a reference number etc which may be done after the complaint has been logged hence if you've dropped off mid call this cannot be completed. I've no idea on what the guidelines are these days in that level of detail. In my day if I had enough to complete the claim registration I would have, if I didnt then its more complex in part as I wasn't in a true call centre environment so didnt have the next call coming in immediately etc. 

General_Grant

DullGreyGuy said:

gcampb said:

Already done - just curious if anyone else has encountered this. I’ve worked in FCA regulated firms that would log a complaint if it was written on the back of a cigarette packet and thrown in the office window  

 Most firms interpret the regulations in the same way - but voiding a complaint is news to me. 

Rules and guidance changes over time, back in my front lines a complaint was defined as "any expression of dissatisfaction" but now thats been supplemented with that it will/has caused "financial loss, material distress or material inconvenience" by the FCA so your basic moaners no longer have to be logged as complaints. 

You are generally supposed to be told about the complaint process, potentially given a reference number etc which may be done after the complaint has been logged hence if you've dropped off mid call this cannot be completed. I've no idea on what the guidelines are these days in that level of detail. In my day if I had enough to complete the claim registration I would have, if I didnt then its more complex in part as I wasn't in a true call centre environment so didnt have the next call coming in immediately etc. 

It's not as though they wouldn't have an email address or other contact method in order to provide this to their customer even after a call cut-off if they had sufficient information to begin recording the complaint.  Even without all the information they wanted, they could take action to obtain it.

TheBanker

It's been a few years since I've been close to complaint handling, but when I was our contact centre instructions were to try to call the customer back if possible to complete the complaint. If that wasn't possible they were told to log the complaint with the details they had, and it would be allocated to a complaint handler who would try to call the customer. If for some reason they couldn't get hold of the customer, they'd send a letter. This would either address the complaint based on the information available, or ask the customer to get in touch if we needed more details. 

We did use the expression 'voiding a complaint' - this was where a complaint had been logged in error or duplicated. For example if the complaint handler called the customer back, and the customer said they hadn't intended to make a complaint, it could be 'voided' - i.e. it was no longer considered a complaint in terms of FCA statistical reporting or provision of FOS rights. Obviously the complaint handler would still be expected to deal with whatever had prompted the complaint to be logged in the first place e.g. if the customer had been calling about a missing bank statement, making sure a replacement had been sent. 

born_again

I wonder if by "Voided" they mean that the rep has logged it as resolved, as the call ended?

But as you have done, a complaint on the "Voided" is in order, as well as reopening the original complaint.

We would get hung, drawn & quartered if we did that...

DullGreyGuy

born_again said:

I wonder if by "Voided" they mean that the rep has logged it as resolved, as the call ended?

But as you have done, a complaint on the "Voided" is in order, as well as reopening the original complaint.

We would get hung, drawn & quartered if we did that...

"void" would mean it never existed so wouldn't count in either the number of complaints received or number resolved etc. 

We would occasionally have them but its when the agent was overly keen setting up the outline of the complaint whilst the customer is still talking, our system wasn't well linked to the core system so copy/pasting required between the two. Sometimes after saying "I want to complain" they either didnt really or they get side tracked and never loop back to the "complaint" or they get cut off almost immediately and cannot be reached. In those cases a manager could void a record to exclude it from the counts. In the later case most customers called straight back, hence why the agent couldn't get hold of them, and the new agent creates a new complaint 

penners324

Lodge The complaint with FOS 8 weeks after the original complaint date.

It's the banks fault for not lodging it properly. Against FOS regulations as well