RBS - confidential policy

Enzo_L

https://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/discussion/comment/82101357#Comment_82101357

You were politely asked what resolution were you after on both complaints.

You replied with "Thought that would be obvious" instead of answering the question.

If the answer is so "obvious" then you could have answered the question very easily.

Instead you chose to respond with a pompous dismissal of the question.

When you wouldn't answer someone tried to guess your motivation, and you said they were making "weird suggestions".

Then you posted an accusation of passive aggressiveness.

Seeing it isn't obvious to any of us what resolution you were looking for, why don't you just say instead of behaving in such a childish way?

Gers

If it's not obvious what I wanted then there's no point, and I'm not up for giving in to this very male macho persuasion. Thanks for your input though.

Nebulous2

There is a lot of knowledge and expertise on some of the finance groups- but responses are often quite direct and to the point.

I've investigated complaints professionally, not in finance, but in care, and at an early point in the communication with the complainant it was essential to clarify what resolution they wanted. That did two things - first of all it set what we were aiming for, to see if the outcome they wanted has been achieved. Otherwise we could go round and round in circles, producing proposed solutions, with the complainant saying they were still unhappy with us not understanding why.

Secondly it allowed us to 'manage expectations.' If someone wanted the service closed and or the manager to be sacked, we had to point out that was not an outcome which could be achieved.

Possibly for very serious complaints someone could be sacked, but only after due process. For most complaints that simply wasn't going to be an outcome.

Where someone wanted to ensure another family would never have to go through the same thing we couldn't guarantee that. We could put measures in place to reduce the likelihood of it happening, but we couldn't guarantee it.

It often wasn't obvious what people wanted, and in asking them it often wasn't what I expected it to be.

In any complaint handling process, regardless of the industry, I'd expect that to be a key part of it.

MeteredOut

https://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/discussion/comment/82101003#Comment_82101003

Whether the transaction should have been declined or not depends on who you are. The OP rightly states it should not have been declined, as they knew it was a valid transaction.

But to the bank, where approving a suspicious transaction can often lead to the bank having to take the loss and refund the customer, the decision to decline was entirely correct. The system didn't just do it for laughs - there was something in that transaction, or in the recent spending history of this customer, or with the merchant at which that customer was attempting the spend, or when the spend was taking place, or the authorisation method being used, or with one of many other variables at play, that mean the bank system marked it as suspicious.

Most banks now have some sort of feedback loop so, so that false-positives (such as this was) helps the systems learn, so they are a little less likely to happen in future.

But, to your final point, I very much doubt any bank has ever said their fraud detection system is 100% reliable and that false-positives will never take place. By their very design, they are algorithmic, so will make decisions that customers see as mistakes.

HillStreetBlues

https://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/discussion/comment/82103233#Comment_82103233

It's impossible to know if it was entirely correct, and the system worked as it should. It could be bugs is the system that flags up false positives when no way they should be.
What we do know are there can be bugs in computers systems and we also know some companies lie about them.

Maybe it's just my nature, but just because a bank states they are correct, I don't automatically think that is 100% truthful as they have a vested interest not to be open and admit defects in their systems.