MBNA Misinformation

Superhoopza

Before anyone starts, I am not seeking compensation, purely want to engage in conversation about the topic and see people's thoughts.

I couldn't see any balance transfer offers on my MBNA app yesterday, not surprising given my credit record. Thought I'd just ask on live chat to customer services how often these get reviewed and if it could change soon. Probably not a question the live chat representative could answer. I'd rather they said as much. Instead I get told they can see I have an offer expiring in exactly one year from now. Odd I thought and asked why I couldn't see it on my app and whether they could give me further details of the offer. They then said I should call the relevant team who can discuss it more with me and provided me with a phone number and then closed the chat.

Confused, I log onto chat again and speak to someone else, and tell them about the previous conversation. They say they cannot see an offer on my account which makes sense to me, but I ask why chat representative 1 said I did have an offer. The second person then comes back and says oh you do have an offer, expiring 12 months from now at 0% rate. Now I'm more confused, two different bits of information from the same person. Again they tell me to call the relevant team. 

Today I call the team and get told I'm speaking to the correct department but that I do not have any offers. I ask why I may have been given wrong information by two representatives and they seem perplexed and just apologise to me and give me the phone number if I wish to make a complaint. I say I'll stew on it. 

I log onto chat customer services again and ask why I was given wrong information. They say they'll make a complaint for me and apologise and offer me £30 if I am to close the chat. Anyone seeking compensation, which I am not, accepts this and moves on. To me this seems like they are bribing me to take the money and not open the complaint. I say no I don't want compensation and do not like I was bribed to keep quiet and would rather MBNA focus on investigating internally how and why I was given wrong information by not just one, but two customer services reps. The chat rep tries to tell me it was not a bribe but agrees to escalate the complaint to a manager and I'll be contacted within 8 weeks as per FCA rules.

From my point of view, I don't understand how I could be given this information, I either have an offer or I don't. But to then get told that twice, even by someone who initially said I had no offers. How can their systems and staff be so wrong? Then secondly this smacked me as a bribe to go away before the complaint was investigated. Is this pretty standard behaviour? It's left a very sour taste in my mouth but is this pretty normal?

Brie

Because banking systems are not as robust as anyone would want and any one that has been around very long like MBNA will have all sorts of odd things to look at and dead ends that lead, perhaps, undertrained phone people to think and then say the wrong thing.  It could be a ghost from some other record or a hint about what might be available in 6 months time but without 30 years working for the company they wouldn't be able to untangle this. 

That's my guess anyways having seen some pretty stupid systems in all sorts of jobs over the last few decades.

eskbanker

Superhoopza said:

I log onto chat customer services again and ask why I was given wrong information. They say they'll make a complaint for me and apologise and offer me £30 if I am to close the chat. Anyone seeking compensation, which I am not, accepts this and moves on. To me this seems like they are bribing me to take the money and not open the complaint. I say no I don't want compensation and do not like I was bribed to keep quiet and would rather MBNA focus on investigating internally how and why I was given wrong information by not just one, but two customer services reps. The chat rep tries to tell me it was not a bribe but agrees to escalate the complaint to a manager and I'll be contacted within 8 weeks as per FCA rules.

From my point of view, I don't understand how I could be given this information, I either have an offer or I don't. But to then get told that twice, even by someone who initially said I had no offers. How can their systems and staff be so wrong? Then secondly this smacked me as a bribe to go away before the complaint was investigated. Is this pretty standard behaviour? It's left a very sour taste in my mouth but is this pretty normal?

I'd say it's not unusual, not that that makes it right - if you deal with four different data sources within a large organisation (app plus three employees) then it's not a massive surprise that the answer isn't always consistent, even though it obviously shouldn't be like that.

The offer of a modest sum of money isn't intended as a 'hush money' bribe as such, but simply a token gesture to recognise the inconvenience.  There's nothing to stop you choosing to proceed with the complaint, but realistically you won't hear anything meaningful back from them - you might be given a bland assurance that the matter will be investigated and appropriate actions taken, but I'd be amazed if there was anything more concrete than that, i.e. don't expect chapter and verse about exactly what they'll do, if anything, in response.

Perhaps worth bearing in mind that, even though this understandably seems like a significant issue to you as a customer, Lloyds banking group will process over 300,000 formal complaints per year, each of which could potentially initiate a thorough internal investigation, but of course they have to prioritise such activity, even though corrective actions could/should reduce such numbers.

Superhoopza

eskbanker said:

Superhoopza said:

I log onto chat customer services again and ask why I was given wrong information. They say they'll make a complaint for me and apologise and offer me £30 if I am to close the chat. Anyone seeking compensation, which I am not, accepts this and moves on. To me this seems like they are bribing me to take the money and not open the complaint. I say no I don't want compensation and do not like I was bribed to keep quiet and would rather MBNA focus on investigating internally how and why I was given wrong information by not just one, but two customer services reps. The chat rep tries to tell me it was not a bribe but agrees to escalate the complaint to a manager and I'll be contacted within 8 weeks as per FCA rules.

From my point of view, I don't understand how I could be given this information, I either have an offer or I don't. But to then get told that twice, even by someone who initially said I had no offers. How can their systems and staff be so wrong? Then secondly this smacked me as a bribe to go away before the complaint was investigated. Is this pretty standard behaviour? It's left a very sour taste in my mouth but is this pretty normal?

I'd say it's not unusual, not that that makes it right - if you deal with four different data sources within a large organisation (app plus three employees) then it's not a massive surprise that the answer isn't always consistent, even though it obviously shouldn't be like that.

The offer of a modest sum of money isn't intended as a 'hush money' bribe as such, but simply a token gesture to recognise the inconvenience.  There's nothing to stop you choosing to proceed with the complaint, but realistically you won't hear anything meaningful back from them - you might be given a bland assurance that the matter will be investigated and appropriate actions taken, but I'd be amazed if there was anything more concrete than that, i.e. don't expect chapter and verse about exactly what they'll do, if anything, in response.

Perhaps worth bearing in mind that, even though this understandably seems like a significant issue to you as a customer, Lloyds banking group will process over 300,000 formal complaints per year, each of which could potentially initiate a thorough internal investigation, but of course they have to prioritise such activity, even though corrective actions could/should reduce such numbers.

Thanks very much for your thoughts. I found the language used by the final rep interesting though, when I refused the £30 he said ok we will pursue the complaint but upon investigation I may not be awarded anything. I told him I was not seeking compensation but that to me suggested he was trying to scare me into taking the money just to close the matter. Appreciate your thoughts though.

pmartin86

Superhoopza said:

Thanks very much for your thoughts. I found the language used by the final rep interesting though, when I refused the £30 he said ok we will pursue the complaint but upon investigation I may not be awarded anything. I told him I was not seeking compensation but that to me suggested he was trying to scare me into taking the money just to close the matter. Appreciate your thoughts though.

As the others have said, its not perfect system, and without consistently investing huge sums of money, it won't ever be.

The £30 was likly a "cost of business" decision. If they ahve a formal complaint, its staff time and resource to investigate and issue that they are extemly unlikly to be able to resolve anyway, so their likly to spend more than that for no gain, its "cheaper" to give it to you, you walk away happy with 30 quid you never had, they save staff and resource and the end result is ultimatly the same, nothing changes.

born_again

Complaints cost money for staff to investigate, which will be far more than £30. Then they having done this, make the decision if any recompense is due.

So your complaint will be logged as a complaint with the reason for it, but then marked as resolved with a £30 (call it what you want)
Rep just using their write off & common sense to solve the issue.

eskbanker

born_again said:

Complaints cost money for staff to investigate, which will be far more than £30. Then they having done this, make the decision if any recompense is due.

So your complaint will be logged as a complaint with the reason for it, but then marked as resolved with a £30 (call it what you want)
Rep just using their write off & common sense to solve the issue.

I think that's OP's point, that a small goodwill gesture doesn't solve the issue as such, in terms of the root cause of the customer being given conflicting information, it just allows a complaint to be closed off!

Superhoopza

eskbanker said:

born_again said:

Complaints cost money for staff to investigate, which will be far more than £30. Then they having done this, make the decision if any recompense is due.

So your complaint will be logged as a complaint with the reason for it, but then marked as resolved with a £30 (call it what you want)
Rep just using their write off & common sense to solve the issue.

I think that's OP's point, that a small goodwill gesture doesn't solve the issue as such, in terms of the root cause of the customer being given conflicting information, it just allows a complaint to be closed off!

Yep bang on.

I've worked with CRM systems, I understand people could read or rely information slightly differently to otherwise but this is black and white, I either had offers or I didn't. Then for one rep to change their story 5 minutes apart seems completely odd and something MBNA should look into, to ask, how is this possible?

th081

It just seems a simple mistake. You knew you had no offers on the app, the online people may have given some wrong info you called and was given the correct info. No big deal not really worthy of a complaint to waste people's time. 

Superhoopza

th081 said:

It just seems a simple mistake. You knew you had no offers on the app, the online people may have given some wrong info you called and was given the correct info. No big deal not really worthy of a complaint to waste people's time. 

presume you can explain if it's so simple why a chat rep said no offers then 5 mins gave me an expiry date and rate for an offer?

th081

Because the staff are undertrained and underpaid and likely have a high turn over. Maybe he was looking at offers not applicable to your account. Who knows.