Thread: WARNING: Co-operative/Smile - their legal obligations

Thanks for that MARTIN3030. I certainly will do as you suggested.

I got a reply from Debbie Murphy dated 19th September 2008, a tad late but here it is with my own comments:

At the outset please accept my apologies for having given you cause for complaint. At the Co-operative Bank we aim to provide the high standards of service our customers are entitled to expect and I am sorry you feel that we have failed on this occasion.

I have now reviewed your account taking into consideration the points raised in your letter and I would like to advise you as follows.

Ok so they are not admitting anything is wrong which I expected and Debbie is advising me. Oh how helpful of her!

I am extremely sorry for the concern caused by our recent telephone calls. I must assure you that it was not our intention to alarm you or cause offence. We do, however as previously advised, have a duty to inform customers that payments have not been received.

There she goes - trotting out the same line as I got via secure message.

There have been enourmous changes within the financial industry and it has been essential for the Bank to adapt to this challenge.

Yada yada. So because everyone has decided to jump on the lets harass everyone using the latest in technology bandwaggon, so have Co-op?

As part of our commitment to customer service we are using Automated Voice System. The use of automation allows us to contact more customers sooner than before to remind them that they have overlooked payments. Early contact should then avoid any financial deterioration.

If only it was to remind customers! I was asked in a very demanding way how I was going to pay back the debt a few days before I got paid which always cleared the overdraft and any overlimit amount, so what was the point of the call if not to harass?

We appreciate that you may not wish to use an automated system, but unfortunately if the account is not run in accordance with its terms and conditions then there is a possibility that you may be contacted in the same way in the future. If this does occur and you do not wish to conduct the call via the automated system, the Bank does offer you the option to contact one of our advisors.

I did contact their advisors using secure messaging but still got hounded by telephone. So what gives? In addition, it is my legal right to not receive telephone calls I consider to be of a harassing nature especially related to debt and especially when I have informed them of my repayment proposal, i.e. getting paid within a few days.

Whilst I apologise for the inconvenience that you have experienced I trust my letter clarifies the matter for you, but please contact Debt Management on telephone 0845 6001170 should you have any further questions or concerns. Should an agreeable solution not be reached after this, you will then be able to refer the matter to the Financial Ombudsman Service. However, if I do not receive a reply within eight weeks from the date of this letter, I will assume I have answered your concerns to your satisfaction, and close the case.

Well no Debbie, your letter is exactly the same statement as made by the various "advisors" that said that Debt Management was a telephone based department and therefore they can call as they see fit.

She totally missed the point of my complaint (whether intentionally or intentionally I do not know) which was that the manner in which I was spoken to and the frequency of calls as well as the fact I received calls at all once I informed the Bank of my repayment proposals may be a criminal offence rather than a minor cause for complaint within the FSA guidelines.

I am drafting a reply to her.

and here it is....any thoughts anyone?

Thank you for your letter dated 19 September 2008 the contents of which I have noted. I must, however, stress that you have entirely missed the point of my complaint.

Whilst I understand the necessity for a bank to telephone its customers regarding their debt(s) to the bank and I also agree that making such telephone calls does not by itself infringe on the rights of the customer, any call that is made by anyone regardless of whom they work for and regardless of the purpose of the call is NOT permitted (by various acts of legislation) to persistently harass or cause distress. In particular regarding debts, if the customer has already informed the bank of their intention to repay a debt and provided a proposal of how they intend to repay that debt, then the bank are NOT permitted to continuously chase the customer regarding that same debt.

The relevant legislation includes but is not limited to Section 40 of the Administration of Justice Act 1970 and the Protection from Harassment Act 1970 (and as amended 1997) which prevent harassment for the purpose of debt collection. In addition, Section 127 of the Communications Act 2003 serves to provide protection from general harassment and nuisance calls by means of telecommunications (which most definitely includes your “Automated Voice System” regardless of whether it has become the process of choice within the financial industry). Furthermore, it is possible that the Bank’s behaviour also contravenes Article 8 of the Human Rights Act 1990 in which provision is made for the “Right to respect for private and family life”. If the Bank has a process which is setup to make nuisance calls regardless of the provisions made by the above acts, then that process cannot be used as an excuse for those calls - as an analogy, if I were to set up a trap at the door to my home which would shoot any callers on ringing the doorbell, I could not use as an excuse the fact that an automated process caused the deaths of unfortunate people who came to the door as it would have been my fault for setting up such a process in the first place.

You stated that “the Bank does offer you the option to contact one of our advisors”. What would you consider my secure online messages to be when I specifically inform the Bank that I am aware of going over the overdraft limit and state when and how I expect it to be paid. It is quite incredulous that after providing all information that I can and whilst I admit I have often gone over the limit, I have also paid back the entire overdraft and then some on each and every occasion. Being continuously called by what I was previously informed by secure message as a “telephone based department” can therefore be construed as harassment under the terms of the Administration of Justice Act and Protection from Harassment Act.


In addition, when a reply by secure message from one of the Bank’s advisors states that the Bank is able to call me as it sees fit regardless of me requesting that the calls stop, that could be construed as exasperating the problem by the Bank making false legal claims.

You should also be aware that as my complaint relates to criminal law and not procedures under the FSA guidelines, I can at any time refer my complaint to OfCom and the Office of Fair Trading irrespective of the complaint procedures you are allowed to work within with regards to the FSA guidelines. Currently, corporations such as MBNA, Capital One, and CitiCorp are being investigated for reported breaches of customer rights with respect to harassment calls when recovering debts, and it would not be unsurprising for other corporations including the Co-operative Bank to also face investigation should it continue to treat its customers so unfairly and unethically, even during the current global financial crisis. I have noted the number of reports by customers of Co-operative and other corporations that the practice of harassment is rife within the financial industry, initially as a tool of greed and now most likely as a reflex action to the global crisis caused by those corporations in the first place. It is a sad indicator of the industry when even a corporation that claims to be ethical cannot even uphold those ideals and will only serve to deepen the mistrust consumers have of those corporations.

I now have a second complaint in progress with the Bank, which I did not explicitly ask to be escalated but seems to have been by mistake. This relates to my overdraft renewal being refused with no explanation whatsoever. While I understand the Bank is not obliged to lend to anyone, I suspect that it was refused due to my complaint and that in itself is unreasonable and unethical. That simple act of defiance and petulant child-like characteristics displayed by the Bank regarding the renewal has simply made me more unhappy with the overall treatment I have received by your organisation and I have therefore joined the growing ranks of customers sharing their stories online and looking to each other to make complaints en masse to the authorities.

The Bank are not helping to instill any confidence in their customers that they are banking with an ethical company, and I suspect that it is not keeping the most profitable customers happy either, especially those of longer term profitability. Perhaps Co-operative Bank will be the next casualty of its own greed and mismanagement, I hope it didn’t dabble too much in CDOs!

You should note that I will not accept any telephone calls from your organisation and that I wish all communication to be in writing be letter or by secure message should any cause to contact authorities with evidence be required in future. It is my right to ask for that and it is the Bank’s responsibility to adhere to my legally accepted requests irrespective of its procedures.

It is currently impractical for me to move my business away from Smile and therefore I will continue to use the services of your company until it becomes practical but any attempt to cause harm to my business through any form of punitive action will result in the matter being referred to the Financial Ombudsman as a matter of urgency.

I must, also, stress that any further cause for complaint against your company will result in immediate escalation of this issue of harassment to the relevant authorities and any further complaints will be made in accordance with permitted procedures and will be undertaken with full intention to see them through to the end. Make no mistake that harassment of this sort is a CRIMINAL OFFENCE and that those individuals that are involved as well as the organisation that sanctioned the behaviour may be liable to CRIMINAL PROSECUTION.

I trust that this letter clarifies my position. On this occasion, I will accept the apology that thinly disguised a persistent “we can do what we want” statement but I insist on a response regarding how you think persistent calls from your Debt Management team fit within the laws that exist to protect consumers from harassment.

I await your earliest response.

Does anyone know how to report the less than accurate summary of the recent judgement on the OFT case, presented by the Smile website?

I believe that the page help: unauthorised overdraft charges presents a misleading summary of the judgement. Does anyone else think the same? Is there a way to report this to the OFT or the court?

Send a screen shot to both the OFT FSA & the Advertising Authourity

& get free Skype & free Pamela & record them when you are they next call. Make sure you cancel the automatic message which tells the caller they are being recorded

Great idea! I have Skype and use a SkypeIn number for the banks to call me on, it's great as you can block numbers as and when! ;-)

URL sent to OFT and screen grab saved for future reference should they change it before the OFT can check it.

Watch this space for more news!

Great & if you can record them you could, if you wished, transcribe the conversation & post it on here

Ha ha, well I tend not to bother speaking to them anymore but if I do, I'll be sure to record and if it is interesting enough a conversation, I will post here.

Cheers