Current Account Switching Service Issues

I see the Financial Sectors paid help are rallying to try and defend the indefensible. Perhaps if I use a simpler vocabulary.

The Finance Sector view the compensation advised by the FOS as a cost of doing business. This means they make a commercial decision based on cost to the business.

From this experience it looks like the banks are happy not to investigate issues with the Current Account Switching Process and instead bounce customers to fix the issues themselves manually.

The Current Acount Switching Service Guarantee offers only this when it goes wrong and it certainl does go wrong - "Refund you for any missed payments or fees incurred as a result of your switch."

Currently it looks like the bank are not taking responsibility for the Current Account Switching Service and are telling customers to sort out the switching failures themselves manually.

That takes time and effort and incurrs costs. Add to the standard practice in the financial sector of making it more and more dificult to record a formal complaint. Despite speaking to a number of senior managers and even c-level teams I was not provided with a complaint reference number. The FOS provide a complaint reference number at the first point of contact without request. Essentially false reporting on complaints by the banks and as stated across the finance sector.

Vocallink's CEO immediately recognised the failure and expressed concern for their own operations. Anyone with a basic understanding of ITIL knows that issues and process gaps cannot be fixed unless the issues with the system are flagged to the people that can investigate and fix the issues, close the process gaps.

The process as stated in RBS and The Current Account Switching Service's own switching guide is absolutely clear. Where there are issues you contact the new bank / building society and they are responsible for investigation the issue. Vocallink were quite clear. Any issue raised with a bank should be passed to them through the Customer Service Group liason and The Current Account Switching Service. That is failing to happen.

RBS's bizarre reason for this was that their dedicated switching team were unaware of the process.

When this was raised with CASS along with further concerns about a chasm in their own switching process that is being flagged to the Payment Systems regulator, they quickly went into hiding. The matter was closed and they would no longer communicate on the matter.

Their lack of response could not be raised with FOS as it is outwith their remit. They cannot investigate CASS, just the bank / building society.

The upshot of this is that The Current Account Switching Service has some very basic procedural issues. The banks are failing to offer the service they promise when they are offering the new current account. This leaves consumers exposed to all manner of issues and a very real headache in terms of sorting out the issues. The first they will know about it is when someone they owe money to challenges them for non-payment or when their salary payment fails to be processed.

The bank will treat their compensation payment as a cost of doing business. The level of compensation awarded will not cover the issues or costs of sorting out the issues.

Ultimately the Current Account Switching Service issues will not be investigated never mind fixed or improved as they will be unaware of the issues as the bank has decided it is more cost effective to bounce the consumer.

Here is the Current Account Switching Service sales pitch to consumers - "The Current Account Switch Service makes switching your current account simple, reliable and stress-free."

Here is the call to action should you have issues with the switching service - "If there is a problem with your switch you should contact the bank or building society that you are switching to." - perhaps they should add "........and the bank will in turn do absolutely nothing to resolve the issue."

Hence the reason for the post. The bank will shut up shop at the first contact regarding a switching issue. They will then deny any issue and try to front it out knowing that the worst they will have to fork out is a token compnesation payment for anyone keen enough to take them to task on their failure to follow their own processes.

They are effectively pushing the cost of an issue of their making back onto the consumer and the other impacted parties...employers, businesses, etc.

We need to either extend the remit of FOS to investigate issues with CASS. Or we need to get genuine meaningful analysis and reporting of complaints regarding CASS somehow to the Payment Systems Regulator. For some reason they have opted to make themselves as uncontactable as possible.

Bizarre that anyone would argue against this - can only assume the posters concerned are not consumers and are paid help for the finance sector.