A customer writes...

A month ago, I put my Nationwide bankers' card into a Lloyds cash machine - which then ate it. I went into the branch and got a whaddya-wann-us-to-do-about-it reaction: not our card, not our problem.

One expects this sort of hypocrisy from banks: very happy to cop for a quid pro quo on the machine transmission, very unhappy about accepting any responsibility for it. But the question remained: why had my card been swallowed by the electronic omnivore?

The following morning I rang Nationwide's call centre. After the customary multi-options plus classical music routine, I was put through to a lady who wanted to know how she could help me, so I told her. It took quite a few goes before she cottoned on, after which I was put on hold - and then cut off.

I'll keep the rest of the saga to a minimum, because this sort of nonsense is an everyday occurrence for most people. Suffice to say I was passed around to nine different people in four different call centres, every last one of whom insisted I'd ordered a new card, and cancelled the old one. The sequence ended - after exactly 94 minutes - with me screaming at the final robot to take my number, and get somebody who could say yes rather than no to call me back. Nobody did.

So two days later (still minus a working bank card) I drove the twenty miles from our house to Bridport, and went into a Nationwide branch.

They couldn't have been nicer. Lots of sympathy, and an assurance that somebody from escalated complaints would ring me back the same day. This duly occurred, and the lady fessed up to the fact that someone had pressed the wrong button, as a result of which a new card had been issued - and my old one had been eaten. There were grovelling apologies, and the repeated promise of another call from the bigwigs higher even than escalated complaints who watch over the Call Centre Undead.

What the provider did next

The call took place on time. Again, there were myriad apologies. Cutting across these (they were so badly in the wrong, I was more interested in compensation than yet more grovelling) I asked why no two phone manning persons seemed to know what had been added to my screen. "Oh well" the lady replied breezily, "We've only just started doing that, and the people get confused you see?"

No, I didn't see: starting automatic screen updating three years after the call centre opened struck me as rather like adding a roof to Wembley Stadium just before it closed down. It was all so awful and what could they do to make up for this, the lady burbled on. I'd like some money, I said. The silence at the other end was as if I'd farted at the Pope's funeral.

Now Nationwide is a mutual company and so I didn't push the issue: I figured that these folks had already been far more honest with me than any plc bank would ever be, and two hundred times more honest than any known species of ISP. So I said look, I'm going to France for five months next week so you'll have to courier the card there.

Ooh she said. Ooh. Ooh I asked? Ooh she confirmed: we're not allowed to call abroad, and we're not supposed to use couriers. That's your problem I observed. She rang off after I'd suggested sending the card to Bridport branch, who might not have such stringent rules about not looking after customers. Ooh she said. Ooh. She hadn't thought of that.

The next morning, a new card arrived in the post. It was the one to replace the one I hadn't cancelled in the first place, but had then cancelled when I found out about it and became hopelssly confused about why it had been ordered in the frist place, after becoming confused about why a machine had eaten my perfectly alright original card. It hadn't been cancelled as a delivery, but it had since been cancelled as a card suitable for obtaining money. I rang Nationwide and said what do you want me to do with it. Tear it up they said. Why, I asked: nobody can use it, especially not me.

After we'd been in France for two weeks, nothing had arrived and so I rang Bridport. As you'd expect, I had to start at base camp all over again. Eventually, an embarrassed manager came to the phone. The girl in charge of sending the new card on to me had gone on holiday. He'd send it right then, by express post. Which he did, and it duly arrived unregistered for anyone to have nicked had they felt like it three days later.

I could be lazy and say that words fail me about all this, but I'm a writer and so they don't. This was just another everyday story of chimps and typewriters liaising informally in order to maquerade as customer service. The whole had been exacerbated in this instance by the inability of those training the chimps to either work out what the point of it all might be, or that I - me, the customer - might also fancy making some money back from all the time, money and inconvenience I'd been forced to undergo as a result of stumbling unwillingly into the Monkey & Typewriters Club.

However, I reiterate one very mind-concentrating reality: had this been Lloyds or RBS or Orange or Microsoft, there would've been a third element beyond the ape/word-processor landscape - accountants.

The Accountancy Mindset

Accountants know the price of everything and the value of nothing. Wilde should have restricted his famous observation to this profession alone, but then also he shouldn't have tried to sue Lord Queensberry for libel either. He was a bit of a Gay chancer Oscar, but that isn't germaine to this piece.

The thing is, your bean counter asks only 'Will this save money?' and if the answer is yes, then he or she says great, let's do it. Those who say 'but hang on, we're dealing with astronauts' lives here or anti-listeria probiotics in chocolate bars or people with cancer and Alzheimer's'....these born-yesterday miscreants are brushed aside like so many vaguely irritating ants.

Thus: 0800 numbers will cost us money, so we won't have any of them. Email addresses will need us to hire people who can reply, so we won't have any of them either...to keep the customer happy, we'll have Noreply email addresses. Head Office numbers will need us to hire switchboards so we won't have any of those. Addresses will need added-value executives needing to recoup £70.59 per hour answering this useless shit so we won't show any addresses I mean for Chrissakes get real, nobody uses snail-mail any more. Look guys, this is a marketing issue, right? Get them to stick something on the site like 'HI! WE WANNA HEAR FROM YOU!' or whatever. It's not my concern. My concern is the shareholders. Now go away, I'm busy.

What can we do?

Here's something that happened earlier this year (2009): this is from Reuters.

'Some 100 customers of a Portuguese investment bank that is threatened with bankruptcy occupied its offices Thursday, demanding the return of their savings.

By nightfall, after a fruitless hour of video conferencing with executives of Banco Privado Portugues, the protesters vowed not to leave the premises until the bank's management resigns en masse, local news media said.'

Now this was seriously embarrassing for BPP, because they couldn't reopen for business and thus fleece yet more mugs the next day. So they got on the phone to the Government, and two days later the Wall Street Journal ran this piece:

'Around 10 people occupied the bank's offices Thursday night vowing not to leave until its management resigns en masse. After a parliamentary debate Friday, Finance Minister Fernando Teixeira dos Santos said their savings are protected.

"The customers of BPP who have contracts with this bank ... are covered by state guarantees," he said, reiterating a pledge that the government will secure the stability of the financial system and protect people's savings.'

Now, do you imagine that debate would've happened without the occupation? No...so: result!

Nearer to home, after the Gurkha episode we've all seen how uncomfortable Ministers can be made by the physical presence of those who pay their salaries - esepcially media-savvy celebs.

To change the way things are, there is no need for violence. We need only embarrass the buggers, and peacefully obstruct their ability to do business and/or retain the public's trust.

My father taught me this lesson over forty years ago. As an independent cloth supplier to huge garment-maker combines, he knew how quickly one could go bust acting as a bank for the big boys. So if a client persistently went beyond his normal credit terms, Dad would pay smelly vagrants to go and sit noisily in their receptions. Each tramp clutched a copy of the overdue invoice. Once exposed to this tactic, few if any clients made him wait for money again.

A specific Idea

It would require but one day of customer demonstration to terrify Britain's clearing banks. A few weeks of it and they'd abandon every call centre they owned - or upgrade the staff while giving them far more responsibility - which is probably what we really need.

Nor do we have to have a 'Day of' thing, or an Angrython. All that's required is this: the next time you have a bank crap-service problem, go into the nearest branch and ask them to deal with it. Within minutes, a huge queue will have built up behind you. With perseverance, just ten people a day insisting on a solution 'right now' would cause enormous customer irritation - and a flood of complaints sufficient to overwhelm the Call Centre.

The data suggest that 5% of us (29 million working folk) have a banking query once a week at least. This means (taking into account the existing footfall) an extra 1.4 million customers a week at retail level. There's no way they could cope with it....and this plus the Call Centre complaint overload would be enough for them to get the message.

Think about it.

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