Just can't get the staff these days

1spiral

So in the past couple of weeks, I have received 3 emails from institutions regarding rate reductions that contain incorrect dates. HTB, Paragon and Monument. The first 2 referenced the year as 2024 for changes to take effect in Jan and Monument stated the date of the email rather than a future date for the change.

I remember a question being put to me once.

"If the company you worked for made aeroplanes, would you fly on them"?

I wonder what HTB, Paragon and Monument staff would say.

flaneurs_lobster

I think that it's The Internet's fault.

In the olden days, when a company wanted to communicate with its customers (potential or existing) then the preparation of the documents might well involve several people/departments as well as external suppliers for the preparation of printed material. At each stage there was review and signoff, printing and mailing costs were significant and reputational (and possibly financial) risk was present if details were wrong.

Modern electronic methods make the creation of new communications almost trivially easy -  anyone can take (eg) the last rate sheet and cut'n'paste new rates and dates and whack it out to the customer mailing list in ten minutes.

One would hope that at least one other person might give any such mailout a look-over but sometimes I wonder.

I notice mistakes quite often in institution's output (usually trivial, usually online). The attitude of the publishers to such errors does seem to be casual, as if it's the price that must be paid for getting stuff in front of the punters as fast as possible. 

Albermarle

Probably the people sending them out are doing it from home, whilst watching Netflix at the same time.

TBC15

Not as bad as the Dear Rich !!!!!! mail shot.

boingy

The last couple of places I worked both had a fresh out of college "social media/comms person" and it was terrifying seeing some of the things they would post, seemingly with little supervision or oversight. And that's before you get into their dreadful grasp of basic grammar and spelling. But nobody seemed to care.

dunstonh

1spiral said:

So in the past couple of weeks, I have received 3 emails from institutions regarding rate reductions that contain incorrect dates. HTB, Paragon and Monument. The first 2 referenced the year as 2024 for changes to take effect in Jan and Monument stated the date of the email rather than a future date for the change.

I remember a question being put to me once.

"If the company you worked for made aeroplanes, would you fly on them"?

I wonder what HTB, Paragon and Monument staff would say.

A lot of people don't want to pay for service nowadays and its a race to the bottom on cost cutting.

That means cheap staff, often on temporary contracts with limited skills and no prospect of career progression just to get that extra 0.0x% that pushes them up the comparison table.

Nintud

Lack of oversight and signing off documents can have serious consequences. Back in September I attended court for divorce finances. I was then sent the order, which I duly signed.  It was then picked up that the document contained the wrong court name and the judge’s name was misspelt. It’s now three months later and I haven’t received the corrected document to sign. The judge has decided he’s not happy with his ruling (clean break) and at some point next year we’ll be back in court.

In the meantime, my not-yet-ex cannot draw out the lump sum from his pension. He’s having treatment for cancer, and that money would alleviate some of his stress.  He wants to remarry but our divorce can’t progress because someone did not check the form before sending it out for signature. If the cancer treatment doesn’t work and we are still married, the spousal pension comes to me, and not to the woman he wants to marry. A potentially costly mistake by the court typist. Thankfully, I doubt they make airplanes.

LHW99

Thankfully, I doubt they make airplanes

Lion Air 610, Ethiopian 302....

Archerychick

It might also be the case that there are fewer people in the same department still doing the same amount of work. When you’re very busy it’s really easy to miss things that you might have otherwise picked up if you had the time 

1spiral

Although I agree with all the reasons above, it still makes them look very unprofessional which is not a description that most companies, let alone banking services would like to have labelled against them.

Also we're not talking about the body of the text here but the specific fact they are trying to get across. If there is one error on these emails they don't want to make, it's the date and that's the mistake all of them made.

callum9999

1spiral said:

Although I agree with all the reasons above, it still makes them look very unprofessional which is not a description that most companies, let alone banking services would like to have labelled against them.

Also we're not talking about the body of the text here but the specific fact they are trying to get across. If there is one error on these emails they don't want to make, it's the date and that's the mistake all of them made.

I feel like you'll be surprised how few people notice these errors and of them, how many care.

The person who took over marketing at my old company made a mistake on virtually every single marketing email. Of the hundreds of people calling in response to those emails, I don't think a single one picked up on the mistakes.