TSB - setting the bar for poor performance.
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- …
COMMENTS
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Friday 22nd November 2019 18:22 GMT Boris the Cockroach
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
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Friday 22nd November 2019 14:01 GMT 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!)
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Friday 22nd November 2019 14:35 GMT 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.
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Friday 22nd November 2019 17:02 GMT Robert Carnegie
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.
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Friday 22nd November 2019 22:13 GMT 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.)
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Saturday 23rd November 2019 12:04 GMT Robert Carnegie
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.
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Friday 22nd November 2019 19:58 GMT 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.
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Friday 22nd November 2019 21:20 GMT 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."
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Saturday 23rd November 2019 21:43 GMT Doctor Syntax
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.
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Sunday 24th November 2019 10:24 GMT 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.
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