Written by John Kruse, one of the leading experts on Bailiff Law, this consumer friendly guide is essential reading for anyone who comes into contact with a bailiff.
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I have registered today, just so that I can have a say for the hundreds of Bank Staff out there.
While I understand the frustration that customers are under with regards claiming their charges back, and while I have personal views of my own about the the whole charges issue, please could I ask that you spare a thought for the staff.
They have to deal day in day out...call after call with customers ...some perfectley resonable and polite....but a growing number that are plain rude and in a lot of cases agressive personal and useing totally inappropriate language.
We have in our site daily Five or Six advisors in floods of tears through being screamed at , shouted at, called names and having threats hurled at them.....some you really wouldn't believe.
At the end of the day they are just doing their job....and in the majority a very good one too.
Customers now have back up.....plenty of Web sites like this around ..and regular media coverage to turn to, there really is no need to treat staff the way that some people do.
We are human too, with families, debts, bills to pay.
The stress and anxiety level amongst staff is huge , I don't think anyone has really thought about that in all of this.
Any day now will be a ruling about charges , which customers and staff alike will all be so grateful for......we will all know where we stand.
All I am asking is that you spare a though for the staff.....courtiousness doesnt cost anything......and usually is met with the same.
I hear what you say jaffacat - but when people are blatantly lied to by bank staff, are promised returned calls which never materialise, are trying to sort out their finances only for all their negotiations with the banks to be ignored and defaults added etc. - writing off for information which the banks MUST comply with under law, and never receving it, having accounts closed, being harrassed by telephone calls up to 6 or 7 (or even more) times a day, finding that their neighbours have been contacted regarding their financial affairs, being strung along and spending colossal amounts of time preparing court cases only to find that the banks are constantly and continuously abusing that system and settle sometmes minutes before the court hearing. receiving letters from one department of a bank which contradicts those from another..............is it really any wonder that people get SO frustrated with what must be the most imcompetent, devious and bullying industry that we have the displeasure to deal with?
It is this bank staff members who are now beginnng to find this so stresful who should be banding together and making changes from the INSIDE - we, and other sites, have come together as unrelated consumers sick to death of being treated like dirt by the banks. Perhaps bank employees should now pick up their own cudgel???
Welcome to the site Jaffa, I'm glad you've taken the time to visit.
If you spend some time here, you will not only see that people are extremely frustrated by banks, but also that we NEVER condone the kind of approach you have described above.
As a site, we appreciate that the people on the front line of your centres are not the ones who are responsible for initiating the charges.
I gather from your post that you may be referring to the OFT report due shortly. This will not be a ruling on charges, only a point at which THEY would take your company to task, rather than the consumer.
I ask that you tell all your colleagues about the Whistleblower due to be aired on Wednesday night, 9pm BBC1.
This, rather than the OFT report, should set the bar!
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Opinions given herein are made informally by myself as a lay-person in good faith based on personal experience. For legal advice, you must always consult a registered and insured lawyer.
I have registered today, just so that I can have a say for the hundreds of Bank Staff out there.
While I understand the frustration that customers are under with regards claiming their charges back, and while I have personal views of my own about the the whole charges issue, please could I ask that you spare a thought for the staff.
They have to deal day in day out...call after call with customers ...some perfectley resonable and polite....but a growing number that are plain rude and in a lot of cases agressive personal and useing totally inappropriate language.
We have in our site daily Five or Six advisors in floods of tears through being screamed at , shouted at, called names and having threats hurled at them.....some you really wouldn't believe.
At the end of the day they are just doing their job....and in the majority a very good one too.
I have worked in a call centre for a very large mobile phone company so I do know what you are saying about people being rude.
However, most people who are putting in claims myself included are fed up with the false promises bank staff make at the end of the day I am sure we only get frustrated with the false promises like we will call you back, the calls never arrive, here is another example yesterday my friend called her bank only to to be told she would probably have to wait a week for someone to call her back, quite frankly it's not good enough.
We send in our letters asking for refunds we all get the same standard letter saying it will take 4 weeks to look into your claim, my own case I got told that I could contact the bank and arrange for an overdraft!! my account has been in credit for over 3 years I don't need an overdraft thank you, so how can the bank say they have carried out a full investigation? please tell me when clearly they have not.
People are sending sometimes three copy's of their charges only to get another standard letter saying we have not received them, some cases the charges have been handed into the branch and a receipt has been given.
Both myself and hubby lost our jobs at the same time (a few years ago now) we had dd's going out and no money coming in to pay them, it just seems to me that when we are down the banks seems to kick you even harder, in just one month I was charged £470 it was all debited on the same day, please tell me how I am meant to feel when you get paid for example £300 but £470 has already gone in charges,so as you can see already -£170.00 looking back at the situation now it would have been better to canx all payments and do manual ones, but when you are in this position it's easier to ignore things than deal with them, maybe if someone at the bank had suggested this then many of us would not have ended up in the situation we found ourself.
I really don't think anyone here objects to the principal of a charge when it's a fair charge.
And I am sure most staff are really nice and like you say are only doing their job's, (which they are being paid for), all I am saying is sometimes a little compasion would be nice and if you say you are going to call someone back then do it! if you can't because you are busy taking all the calls which I hate to think how many are being received a day then it's your bosses you really need to be shouting at, maybe it's worth asking for more staff to help handle the calls after all it's not as if the banks can't afford it,
Applied Abbey statements -40 day up 24/04/06(arrived 30/06/06)
Prem 04/01/2007 - reply rcvd 22nd Jan advising not paying
LBA 22/01/07
14/02/07 N1 filed @ local court
21/02/07 issued claim
23/02/07 deemed served
25/02/07 Abbey acknowledgement defend in full.
19/03/07 defence + 50% GOGW
13/04/07 AQ final day for submission
30/04/07 DEFENCE STRUCK OUT "ABUSE OF PROCESS"
01/05/07 Judgement order
Jaffa, good to see a bank worker on the site with their views. You should stay and help out like a few others who have remained on here. However, the revolution people talk about from within, has been happening by simply bank staff helping on sites like this by posting albeit from a bank workers perspective. Jaffa, this is the place to post and i think politeness costs nothing but we have to understand the frustration people feel when they feel they are misinformed and the communication breaks down.
I think it is really sad that staff and customers are the ones so badly affected by all this. The nameless bosses and shareholders just take the profits and leave the rest of us to sort it out. Sorry to hear about the problems in your workplace jaffacat. Really your management should be looking at the problem and seeing what they can do to address it!
I have to admit to losing my cool at times on the phone and for this reason I no longer talk to anyone on the phone from a bank. It just isn't worth the impact it has on your body. I really just want someone to say to me 'Oh yes I can see you have written, I will ask our legal department to look at this and we will write back to you as you requested' but it never happens. I secretly believe you have a handbook that says don't listen to callers and just repeat the mantra - I can only make a note on our records if you give us a card number on which a payment can be taken - I am not kidding I was really told that!
We all have bad apples and I suspect that some customers are VERY rude (they were around before the bank charges issue) and I have had some VERY bad bank staff call me too. Don't ask me about the rude man who refused to let me speak to his manager - he was probably concerned about what would be said to him afterwards. I managed to get the manager anyway so his refusal did him no good.
The problem here is that the human body produces adrenalene which makes us fight harder. I can't give any advice on how to deal with it - I only did Biology at school, never quite understood psychology. If it helps, in here we are a nice warm bunch at times. I care, honestly! I hope tomorrow (or Monday) is a better day at work.
It's really difficult for me as I honestly can see both sides of the coin.
I can't talk about individual cases, but the one thing that I think we would all agree on is that the current situation regarding charges is a really emotive one.
We have taken away charges calls from our India centres , in the hope that we give our customers a better service.
Abbey have taken the stance , unlike several other banks , that we will still deal with charges complaints over the phone.
I pesonally wish we would have done like so many others and gone down the letter only route- but were told we would not adopt this method due to customer care.
I have no doubt that a lot of customers may have been met with incompetance, rudeness etc by staff...and this is sad, it is not the level of service Abbey promotes.
I suppose I was promted to join the site , as yesterday I had to send two of my team home ..who just can't cope any more, being told several times a day how they personally are theives and that they are starving their children...sworn at, cannot help or get a word in edgeays........something has to give eventually .
I have recently contemplated leaving myself .....but have decided to ride it out in the hope that things will get better soon....I have a team that depend on me ....to help save their sanity as much as anything......and Abbey have lots of improvements currently in place and in the pipeline .....that I would love to have that feeling back of being proud to work for Abbey....something which eludes me at the moment.
Someone replied earlier get together and stand up to your bosses......it just isnt an option.....we are employees, there will be no more resourcing available...we are just having to work with what we have......as a bit of a footnote though ....communication internally is not good....as you guys know more about who to contact and who deals with different things than the staff do.We are not given any of this information....just keep getting told what process to follow..........and it is that , that we are doing .
Again, I can understand everyone's frustrations....jsut wanted to promote the message that there are others affected in all of this besides the Customers and the banks
Thanks for coming back jaffa - I hope you can spend some more time here too. Maybe you could look through the Abbey forum and start to make notes that could then be useful when you receive calls from customers on this issue - after all (if you are allowed) giving people a name and address that has real relevance to their problem will help everyone concerned.
Some bank staff have even told their customers that there are websites that can advise them
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Opinions given herein are made informally by myself as a lay-person in good faith based on personal experience. For legal advice, you must always consult a registered and insured lawyer.
Hi Jaffacat.
I appreciate your honesty coming on here & saying all this, and you certainly sound as if you take pride in your work and want to be able to provide high standards of customer care both personally and via your staff.
I can only assume that you are in the minority.
I do appreciate that bank staff are "following orders from above" so to speak.
It is evident, though, that many, many front line staff are ill-trained both from a simple customer care point of view, and in the issues that customers are now addressing with them, such as the Consumer Credit Act, the Data Protection Act etc. For front line staff to hazard a guess in order to respond to customers is not good enough - now that the consumer is beginning to know his rights, it is unsurprising that he gets annoyed when he quotes a fact pertaining to his rights only to be told by bank staff that he is wrong. This make the bank looks stupid, and only adds to the frustration and ill-feeling of the consumer.
The general tenor of banks is patronising, intimidating, vindictive and petty. Let me give you an example, I have banked with my bank for years and years, amicably, with a few ups & downs (the downs, though, mainly being mistakes made by the bank on my accounts). 2 weeks ago, I went on holiday. The day before I left, I paid all my bills. Earlier that week, I also submitted a prelim. letter to my bank reclaiming some charges (& I'm only talking about £160). Unfortunately, I misread my visa bill, and I sent my bank £17 short of the required payment. My card was blocked, leaving me in very cold, very snowy Manhattan, late at night (I was travelling alone) with no means to pay the driver of the airport shuttle bus(which had 6 other people waiting to be dropped of). My hotel very kindly lent me the cash, and then I had to go and find an ATM - thank goodness they know me at the hotel. On my return home yesterday, I find I have had 19 calls from the bank, - all about the missing £17. And this after 20 years of banking with them - and such a coincidence that this happens just as they receive my claim.
Unfortunately, the consumer is now getting his own back for the banks riding roughshod over them for years, and I'm only sorry that people such as yourself are having to take the brunt of it.
I think that yours will be an interesting thread to follow. I, and I'm sure the majority of people here, appreciate that the staff in the branches and in call centres are people trying to do their job.
I hope that you will stay and continue to offer your opinion and share experiences. KnellyK
the banks (including your employer) are reaping what they sow. If your staff are having trouble coping, its your bosses and managers you need to talk too, not bleaking and moaning on here.
Whilst there should be no need for anyone to be rude to bank staff, my own very personal experiences are that all I get is fobbed off, lied to and harrassed by calls from financial institutes. There have been many occassions I have found it difficult to keep my cool dealing with bank call staff. This I have managed. However I currently have two complaints in with Halifax for their staff being rude and unprofessional!
Now I refuse to talk to any bank and even though I have written to them all and told them to communicate only in writing, oh the phone is ringing again. Time to update my log on harrassment calls!
Oh my gosh - I think I may becoming addicted to this forum.
I would like to apologise for my post earlier - spelling mistakes, poor grammer etc.....I was in a rush.
I speak to customers daily , and our conversations are always polite and amicable...with the usual parting comment being Thank -You for your help.
These are usually from customers who have screamed and demanded to speak to a manager......and if I am available will always be happy to do so, but to be honest in most cases ,I have merley reitterated what they have been told by the advisors ....but I guess we all want to speak to what we feel is the voice of authority.
My aim by coming onto this site was merley to try and make people aware of the "little people" who are caught up in the middle of all this.
It is so easy for people to say Take it to the bosses.......but let's be real about this ......that's not an option that has worked !
I am sorry that srmjmm10 thinks that I am merley bleaking and moaning , this was not my intention.
If this is the general consensus , then I shall refrain from any further posts....if I have helped at least one person feel a little compasion towards Bank Staff , then that's all I can ask.
It is for this very reason that i am putting on my initial letter to Abbey that i will onl deal via email or post, i will not deal over the phone, because i know if i am being told something is not correct and i know 100% certain it is correct i will not give up until my point is proved, i would rather do this by email as i can sit and think about it, make sure i word things right and most of all i wont get mad and start argueing, which isnt fair to anyone and doesnt serve any real purpose, keep up the good word jaffa
the banks (including your employer) are reaping what they sow. If your staff are having trouble coping, its your bosses and managers you need to talk too, not bleaking and moaning on here.
Whilst there should be no need for anyone to be rude to bank staff, my own very personal experiences are that all I get is fobbed off, lied to and harrassed by calls from financial institutes. There have been many occassions I have found it difficult to keep my cool dealing with bank call staff. This I have managed. However I currently have two complaints in with Halifax for their staff being rude and unprofessional!
Now I refuse to talk to any bank and even though I have written to them all and told them to communicate only in writing, oh the phone is ringing again. Time to update my log on harrassment calls!
Think that is a little unfair, i know from experience if you start complaining about things to higher level workers all you sucseed in doing is getting their back up, they rarely listen, and generally dont want to be told what to do from the minnions on the front line, and when you try to do so they will make life as difficult as possible.
This might sound a little naive and out of touch with today's circumstances but I thought that bank workers had a fairly effective union. It seems to me that there are major workload/stress issues which need to be addressed. Perhaps the Health & Safety at Work Act could be a stick for you to prod your bosses with?
Nationwide
- Prelim sent 02/07
- MCOL filed 04/07
CHARGES SETTLED IN FULL!! Woolwich
- Prelim sent 04/07
- Offered 90% - 06/07 accepted MBNA
- Prelim sent 02/07
- CCA request sent 03/07
- CCA reply (illegible + no T&Cs)
- DCA sent packing
- Restons now trying
- gone quiet Citicard
- Prelim sent 02/07
- CCA request sent 04/07
- replied 04/07
No contract & not enforcing!
- passed to 1st Credit
- gone quiet Egg
- Prelim sent 02/08
- 3 letters - full offer 03/08
SETTLED IN FULL!! (All starry, rep, clicky thingies gratefully received!)
My aim by coming onto this site was merley to try and make people aware of the "little people" who are caught up in the middle of all this.
I do understand where you are coming from on this and as ladybird17 has said I also think you should continue posting.
I have to say when you are in the position that alot of people on here are some even have lost their houses due to these charges you can understand why they are upsest.
If I do lose it on the phone I do generally say to the advisor I am not aiming my agression at them personally but at the company they are representing, I never make it personal.
Maybe it would be an idea for you to go back to your team and tell them none of this is personal , but the continued underhand tactics that banks are taking I think really it's your employer should be the one offering compasion towards bank staff.
Applied Abbey statements -40 day up 24/04/06(arrived 30/06/06)
Prem 04/01/2007 - reply rcvd 22nd Jan advising not paying
LBA 22/01/07
14/02/07 N1 filed @ local court
21/02/07 issued claim
23/02/07 deemed served
25/02/07 Abbey acknowledgement defend in full.
19/03/07 defence + 50% GOGW
13/04/07 AQ final day for submission
30/04/07 DEFENCE STRUCK OUT "ABUSE OF PROCESS"
01/05/07 Judgement order
I think jaffacat should continue posting. Customer-facing bank workers are caught between a rock and hard place when it comes to charges and they certainly don't deserve any abuse over something which they are in effect powerless to do anything about. The presence of someone who can remind members about the ill-effects being suffered by those in caught in the cross-fire can only be beneficial.
There are always going to be the odd exceptions and no doubt some collections staff take a little too much pride in their work, this I don't condone.
As is very common the real decision makers are insulated from those they affect most.
Jaffa, i do have one final tip because the last person from Abbey to come on here left because his bosses were looking for him. Please can i suggest you edit the role you do in the bank and the years you have worked in the bank because if i am right and you are remaining on here it will help that you cannot be identified with details that you have posted. Keeps you safe if you take the advice. I will edit this one when i have read what others have said.
My further comments reiterates most peoples in that Jaffacat, it is a lot more difficult in this day and age when you have no real discretion is any size shape or description to help and those in the higher echelons of our respective companies brush the issues of as either media getting its facts wrong or worse the OFT making a decision that people have taken to claim bank charges are unfair. There are a few of us bank workers here helping out as much as we can. Keep posting and keep safe.
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Originally Posted by srmjmm10
