back to article Totally Sardonic Bank: Well, it must be, to have a TITSUP* the same week as THAT report

TSB has again managed to capture the ire of thousands of customers after a technical glitch meant delays to payments into some accounts - just days after a damning report heavily criticised the bank for last year's IT meltdown. The comedy bank has deployed that over-used five-letter word - sorry - to the legion of account- …

  1. Anonymous South African Coward Bronze badge

    TSB - setting the bar for poor performance.

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      "TSB - setting the bar for poor performance in banking"

      FTFY - we wouldn't want to step on BA's toes.

      1. Sgt_Oddball
        Pint

        Capita...

        Hold my beer...

    2. Boris the Cockroach Silver badge

      Another

      phrase springs to mind here

      They have set extremely low standards to achieve..... and then failed to achieve them.

      The solution is obvious

      Keep 500 quid in each of the big 4 banks (and several smaller ones), the chances of them all falling over at the same time are extremely unlikely.. say a million to one

      1. Evilgoat76

        Re: Another

        But stil they ...... Oh no, thats aliens..

      2. OssianScotland
        Holmes

        Re: Another

        But Million To One chances happen nine times out of ten (or might just work)

        (Sort of a Sam Vimes icon - GNU pTerry)

    3. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      TSB - Limbo to success

  2. Blockchain commentard

    The bank has learnt from it's mistakes - their customer's apathy about changing banks means they can continue to provide a shit service and neither customers or any toothless regulatory body will do anything worse than a tweet. Nice was to run a business.

  3. WolfFan Silver badge

    Why does anyone still use this bank?

    Many years ago I removed all accounts from Hell’s Cargo for a lot less than this.

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Why does anyone still use this bank?

      That would be the 3% interest on balances up to £1,500 on 3 accounts held between 2 people (one each and one joint) with only a £500 pm pay-in requirement on each. And now a £75 bribe for you and your soon-to-be ex-friend if they open an account.

      (And no, I don't work for TSB!)

      1. Doctor Syntax Silver badge

        Re: Why does anyone still use this bank?

        Could that be £500 cycled round the 3 accounts each month? If so it would be OK for stashing away £4,500 but not so good if you want to use it for everyday banking.

        1. Anonymous Coward
          Anonymous Coward

          Re: Why does anyone still use this bank?

          Not sure if they'd let you get away with that, but I have a few different pensions coming into the three accounts and then sweep them all into one of them for everyday banking and they haven't complained so far.

        2. Swiss Anton

          Re: Why does anyone still use this bank?

          Not sure if that is possible, but its easy enough to have an account with a different bank and move the money around using that account,

    2. Yet Another Anonymous coward Silver badge

      Re: Why does anyone still use this bank?

      Fans of "50 shades" ?

  4. Phil O'Sophical Silver badge

    TITSUP

    TSB IT Spoils User Paydays?

    1. macjules

      Re: TITSUP

      Transfer Incompetence Totally Spoils Users Paydays.

  5. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    After looking at their timeline i'm not sure if 'alain' is a real person.

    1. Tilda Rice

      Yer. How many people did it impact?

      The first guy Alain doesn't look real.

      The second whiner said he can't buy tickets (surely he has a credit card, or an overdraft?)

      Bad PR timing, but I'm not sure the sky has fallen down. The big outage a couple of years ago could have been a real pain for some, but this one, not so sure its so interesting.

      1. Jim Mitchell

        If you're living so close to the financial edge, you probably shouldn't be buying concert tickets?

      2. Robert Carnegie Silver badge

        I haven't looked up Alain but he says he has mental issues that account for not coping with the situation.

        Not everyone has a credit card for online shopping and it's not like they'll be able to get one in the middle of this. And not everyone wants a bloody overdraft. (As I understand, Americans think overdraft is dishonest, and most Europeans don't have a credit card, but things may have changed.)

        People are entitled to spend the money that is rightfully theirs, and waiting until they HAVE the money is prudent, but in this case it's gone missing "thanks" to TSB.

        Last time was a bigger problem admittedly - possible biggest losers were a family reported by BBC who were house buying and their mortgage didn't come so they were suddenly homeless, at least till it was sorted out. Or, people whose money was taken by fraud in the middle of the fuss.

        1. sofaspud

          American here.

          I don't know about the 'dishonest' part, but when we overdraft we usually get dinged for an extra $30 or thereabouts on top of the transaction amount -- and that's per-transaction, not just a one-time fee for going over.

          Those add up *fast*.

          Not sure if that's how it works in other countries.

          (Let's not even get into banks selling what they call "overdraft protection" which does not do what it says on the tin but rather, for a flat fee, means they charge you a little less when you overdraft.)

          1. Martin-73 Silver badge

            That;'s how it used to be here, but most banks now limit the charge for unauthorized overdrafts to a set amount per day or week... It still acts as incentive to not let it happen but stuff doesn't get ridiculous as easily.

          2. Robert Carnegie Silver badge

            It is or was quite ordinary for a British business or personal bank current-account to provide overdraft authorisation up to a certain amount; easy borrowing by a more-or-less trusted customer - with interest charged, of course. I think my information is from journalist Alistair Cooke's radio broadcasts from America - he died in 2004 though - that this basically doesn't exist in the U.S. and is considered perverted. More formal loans with regular repayments also exist. And credit cards.

            Since some time in the 1980s, I think, most British personal bank accounts don't charge for your individual transactions when the account is in credit, which means basically that your bank earns money from the relationship by selling other services or by charging the customers whose account is in overdraft. That's often an unwelcome surprise. The fairness of overdraft fees has recently been scrutinised.

      3. Korev Silver badge
        Thumb Down

        >The first guy Alain doesn't look real.

        That sounds totally real to me. If you've ever got to know someone living with severe mental health problems then you'd know that sadly this is "normal" for many people.

  6. Doctor Syntax Silver badge

    "TSB CEO Richard Meddings apologised and he insisted the bank had learned from its mistakes."

    They must be learning a lot.

    1. Aladdin Sane

      Only a fool learns from his own mistakes. The wise man learns from the mistakes of others.

      Otto von Bismarck

    2. robidy

      How to keep his salary after an IT cockup?

  7. steviebuk Silver badge

    No

    You clearly, fucking haven't.

    "TSB CEO Richard Meddings apologised and he insisted the bank had learned from its mistakes."

  8. Scott Broukell

    I'm sure all this can be fixed quite easily - by substantially increasing the bonuses that are paid to senior executives. /s

  9. Dwarf

    Over-used statements

    I get really annoyed by the insincere statements organisations throw around such as :.

    1. We apologise for the inconvenience this has caused

    Meaning : We cut the budgets so much that now things break all the time as everything is running flat out / wearing out.

    2. Security is our top priority

    Meaning : We don't understand security or how to operate all this stuff as all the good guys (and gals) have gone

    3. Customer satisfaction is our top priority

    Meaning : The customer service department is only there to frustrate you and to try and stop bad news on social media, not answer your question

    Call Centres : We are experiencing higher than normal call volumes

    Meaning : The call centre staff are always backed up 20 deep as we have cut the numbers to stupidly low levels. We're also having problems keeping staff in our call centres as they keep quitting.

    5. Trains : You were delayed by an overrunning earlier service / congestion on the line

    Meaning : We run the whole network and you we were screwed by us being incompetent earlier in the day as well.

    Never do they say whats actually happening

    1. Management bonuses and stock options are up 560% since last year, Doubles all round !

    Meaning : F*ck you, I'm all right jack.

    1. jtaylor

      Re: Over-used statements

      Worse, #1 is often, as in this case, "We apologize for ANY inconvenience caused." It grates my nerves when an apology starts by refusing to acknowledge that a problem really does exit.

      #4 "higher than normal call volumes" is a pet peeve. It usually is exactly as you describe. I won't beat up the person trying to help me over the phone, but I raise it if they brush off my concern. "Your hold message announces that you have a sudden surge of customers calling for help. If you cannot help me and are unaware of any incidents, please give me a warm hand-off to your supervisor."

  10. sanmigueelbeer
    Joke

    We apologise for the inconvenience that has caused

    Not really, no.

    will ensure customers are not left out of pocket

    Yes, you will.

    customers can still use their cards to make payments or withdraw cash

    Non-TSB cards and accounts, that is.

  11. ElectricPics

    I worked for Lloyds TSB before the split - TSB was always known as the Totally Shit Bank long before the merger with Lloyds. Sometimes corporate DNA can't be altered.

    1. Doctor Syntax Silver badge

      It was certainly the behaviour of a member of staff at the TSB branch who provided the trigger for my leaving Lloyds TSB but in attempting to close the account it was replicated by one of the staff at the main Lloyds branch. As far as I was concerned they were indistinguishable.

      In the recent report much was made of the fact that TSB wanted to be a "challenger" bank. If they really wanted to challenge the other banks they could do so by opening more branches. Instead they're challenging their customers further by closing about a fifth of the network. So even less of a chance of getting their next fubar sorted out in branch. Maybe they thought they'd take advantage of the TITSUP to bury that bit of news.

    2. Warm Braw

      The TSB started out as a set of independent mutual organisations that provided savings account for people who would not otherwise have any sort of banking service.

      There was active encouragement from the government to amalgamate and provide additional services, such as loans, to challenge the market dominance of the traditional banks (in the same way that building societies were encourage to demutualise) and the TSB was ultimately turned into a commercial organisation and sold off.

      Surprise, surprise, turn a dull but worthy organisation into a clone of an existing financial institution and it starts to behave exactly like the kind of financial institution it was supposed to challenge. Roll on to the financial crisis and the government was forced to buy back the bank it had previously been desperate to sell off.

  12. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    The best man in charge.

    I think the CIO is Mike Errington, who was with RBS at the time of their meltdown. He has much experience of systems failure, so they are in safe hands.

    https://www.finextra.com/newsarticle/33610/tsb-to-take-technology-inhouse-after-it-meltdown

  13. ForthIsNotDead
    Coat

    Good luck

    Good luck TSB getting your on-going IT snafus sorted now that you have no contractors (IR35) to do the work.

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