Showing articles tagged Bank of Queensland

Hello Bank Of Queensland.

I wanted to share with you a recent customer experience that I hope can assist with staff coaching. Or at the very least make you feel slightly bad about yourselves and create the compulsion to eat your feelings via large quantities of cinnamon donuts and vanilla slices.

I have a loan with you. The interest rate on it is high, and over the term of the loan I will be paying you 1.5 times the initial amount borrowed. I’m fine with that, as this has allowed me to purchase a shiny new iMac and really without that I wouldn’t be able to write grumpy passive aggressive complaint letters to you which I feel would be a great loss to all concerned.

When this loan is paid out, I will have given you two thousand dollars in pure profit. My complaint today specifically relates to the amount of service this hefty sum provides me. 

Currently the dollar amount of service I have received from your (now I’m really stifling a giggle here) “organisation” stands at negative fourteen dollars and has knocked approximately nine days off my life. 

I base this loss of my future time on earth on the assumed damage caused by several blood vessels bursting simultaneously during the course of my interactions with your staff coupled with my diminishing will to live while I try to achieve the most simple of tasks - updating the direct debit details for my loan.

Yes, Bug of Queensland. I want to PAY YOU SOME MONEY AND STUFF. Allow me to explain further before I experience a full stroke and end up shorting out my Bluetooth™ keyboard by involuntarily drooling on it.

Every month my loan is paid automatically. You take it from my bank account. This has, for the past two years created rainbows, kittens, tap dance scholarships for several gifted unicorns and filled me with happiness and joy.

On Monday I changed bank accounts, and like a good little customer contacted the five institutions that I needed to update my direct debit details with.  Three did it over the phone. The fourth needed me to fax the details with a scan of my driver’s licence. Easy and convenient for someone who works during business hours (did you know that people have to work to be able to pay you?  Isn’t that astounding? Australia! What a country!).

With my first four calls going smoothly, it came time to call the Bank of Queenslime. The following conversation took place:

REP: Hello, this is (I’ve didn’t catch the rep’s name, but for the purpose of this let’s call her Gertrude Unhelpful-Smythe) How can I help you?

ME: Hello, my name is Seb, I was wondering if you can help me update some direct debit details for a loan I’m paying with you? I have a re.... (gets cut off)

GERTRUDE: You have to go into a branch.

ME:  Oh, okay. I’m in Perth. Do you have any branches in.... (gets cut off)

GERTRUDE: Yes.

ME: Is there a way that I could fax the…. (gets cut off)

GERTRUDE: (sighs) NO, YOU HAVE TO GO INTO A BRANCH.

ME:  Oh.  I’m wondering though - I work from 7am to 4pm, and I’m worried I….(gets cut off)

GERTRUDE: (in the way you’d speak to someone who just vomited on your lunch) You HAVE to go into a BRANCH.

At this point I was so dazzled by Gertrude’s tone I had to thank her and end the call lest I get all caught up in the moment and ask for her hand in marriage. I’m gay, but she’d totally be worth it. 

I then rang The Borg of Quitesad a second time and got an infinitely more helpful rep who confirmed apologetically that I would indeed have to go into a branch. She helped me locate one close to me. I asked her when it closed. She told me 4pm. I arranged to leave work early to rush to this branch.  I got there at half three. It was closed. It closes at two thirty.

Foiled in my attempts to pay you on time, I looked at your website and found a branch that was open on Saturday.  The closest one to me was 45 minutes drive away, but I needed to make sure you get your monthly payment. Because if you repossessed my iMac I wouldn’t have access to my Bananarama MP3 collection and would therefore have no choice but to promptly find a corner to sit in for the next few months while sobbing/rocking back and forth while humming ‘I Heard A Rumour’ from their hit album ‘WOW’.

So, today being Saturday I set off with several sherpas and began the journey to THE LAND BEYOND THUNDERDOME with a packed lunch of tuna sushi and a small diet orange cordial. After 45 minutes, a Mexican standoff over a parking space and some time dedicated to burying those who had perished on the journey I was finally seated in my “nearest” branch with my neatly typed written request and some photo ID.

The teller who helped me provided fantastic service and is a credit to your organisation. You would do well to send Gertrude over to her in the hopes she learns how to be helpful while suppressing the urge to snarl and spit at your customers.

The only problem was that she couldn’t update my details. She rang for assistance and after several minutes was informed that (uh-oh, here comes the caps lock) I NEEDED TO CALL ON MONDAY TO SPEAK TO SOMEONE WHO WOULD UPDATE MY DETAILS OVER THE PHONE.  She very kindly took my document and scanned my ID and did promise to follow up… but seriously, Bag of Quicksand  – what on earth do you call what you’re doing? Service? Why are you the only organisation that won’t let me organise to keep paying you?  Am I that horrible? What have I done to deserve this? Did I ignore you in high school? Put the empty milk carton back in the fridge? Finance a Ke$ha album?

Thus far, I’ve been insulted by the attitude of your reps, been given incorrect information, lost 90 minutes today and 40 minutes on Monday driving to and from your branches and all of this has been to try and give you six digits followed by eight digits. (Right now, you get a single middle digit).

Indiana Jones went through less to get the Ark of the Covenant. And he got a cool hat and a whip and stuff. All I’m getting from you is aggravation and the privilege of paying you two thousand dollars in interest to be treated like something that dog down the road with the wonky eye barfed up.

So, Bucket of Quagmire. The ball is in your court. I want to pay you. I have the sacred digits required to unlock my monthly payment and will happily give them to anyone in your company who has the ability to enter them into a computer so that rainbows, kittens and tap dancing unicorns can again go about their lives without a care in the world.

I will regard this action as being equal to two thousand dollars of service and will let the 14 dollars in petrol I’ve spent getting to your branches slide. Unless you’d like to credit that to my account.

Bet you don’t though. 

Sincerely,

Seb Sharp

Customer. (kuhs-tuh-mer]

noun

- a person who purchases goods or services from another; buyer; patron.