‘I’ve got a beef with my bank I’m struggling to resolve’

I have a beef with my bank! Some serious financial concerns saw me recently change banks. I already had a car loan with my new bank, but I moved all my remaining accounts across, thinking I’d not have to worry about remembering additional identification numbers or customer numbers.

How wrong I was! I set up my new bank with the old car loan. It had the same account number, same bank, but now I owed more money because I’d upgraded the car.

Payment for this account — the old car loan — had always been on a Monday. Apparently not anymore.

In trying to rectify this, I spoke with four different customer service agents. That took me a full seven minutes to get through. I had to go through the rigamarole of “press X number for this”, “press X number for that”, “please enter your X number PIN”, “please press X number for X department”. Seriously! Finally, I get a real person to speak to and I am then asked to identify myself all over again. I had to take more than a few deep breaths, especially when my customer service representative told me he couldn’t attend to my request and put me on hold to refer me to another department.

With my blood pressure rising, and my patience well and truly gone, he comes back on the line. I’d had it. “You put me on hold without even asking me, what’s up with that?” I ask, thinking that by trying to talk to him in a friendly manner he might actually cut me some slack. Nope!

When I asked him to confirm that my car payment had come out he responds, “Oh, you want auto finance. I thought you said ‘home loan’.” I saw red.

“Is there something wrong with your hearing?! I just want to know if the money for my car repayment came out of this account. It is an ‘auto loan’,” I say. “An ‘auto loan’, not a ‘home loan’.” He couldn’t even muster words to respond to my outrage, so I have no idea if the car payment was debited from my account.

I thought visiting a branch might make things easier. I headed to my local branch, but when I walk into the bank, guess what? Not a teller in sight. It turns out this is one of those new ‘cashless’ facilities with no bank tellers. There were however, two people in cubicles madly shuffling papers and staring at their computers in an effort to look professional and busy.

I excused myself and asked one of the staffers if they could assist me. “I just need to speak with a teller,” I said.

“Oh no,” was the response. “She’s currently on her break.”

I am now waiting for them to call me back.

Have you found yourself in a similar, frustrating, circumstance? Do you miss the days of full- serviced banks?

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