// Index
Oh For Crying Out Bleeding Loud…
Some of you will be aware of the fact that I was, at the end of January, the victim of telephone banking fraud. Someone had verified they had my bank account details correct by making a small deposit on my account – in Forest Gate of all places – and then rang up Abbey and transferred a substantial sum of money out of my account.
I won’t bore you with the saga – Abbey basically are hopelessly understaffed and overworked as far as I can tell – but it took six weeks all told to get my money refunded and for an account to be made available to me again. (I am so switching accounts once the dust has cleared I tell you.) But what is irritating is the fact that other institutions with whom I have financial dealings aren’t apparently any better.
Whilst I was on holiday for example I started getting phone calls from Amex pointing out that I have missed payments and can I pay them now please? On the first day I said no, and explained why and they seemed quite happy. In fact they unfroze my cards in case I’d need them and made sure the case notes reflected this. This was a good thing and I was mightily impressed by their efforts.
It’s just a shame that no-one at Amex ever read the case notes before giving me the next phone call two days later. Or the one after that. Finally, on my return – once I’d been able to go to the bank and pick up my new card which (naturally) turned up while I was on my way through airport security the week before – they rang up asking me to pay without actually checking whether I had.
In fact I’d beaten them to it by half an hour. And their computers showed that clearly, apparently.
But then yesterday I had to deal with what I later described as “O2 / BT Vision Buggery Bollocks”. A shitty letter from O2, for example, complained I hadn’t paid and my phone was thus restricted. This was a surprise – they were one of direct debits who had acknowledged Abbey’s request to change the details – but it turns out that whilst they acknowledged the details they simply didn’t bother to action them.
BT Vision on the other hand, were given my bank details before I went away because a bill needed paying urgently. I got a new bill yesterday asking for me to make the next payment manually and when I rang them it turned out (after a lengthy time on hold) the details were in the system but whoever had taken them forgot to submit them to the billing department.
And no, I couldn’t pay it there and then because the payments system was down.
I despair I really do. Not so much that the person in question forgot, but that their computer system takes payment details but doesn’t automatically update the people responsible for taking it. The last two months while I’ve tried to sort my life out have basically been one system or process failure after another. Stupid inflexible processes, inefficient bureaucracy, or just simple bloody minded stupidity have probably well and truly shafted my credit record for the next couple of years.
It’s no wonder all these companies are going down the tubes. They either have lax security procedures (I mean, Abbey’s is shockingly poor), or else give credit to people who have no means of paying and then make it stupendously difficult for those of us who can pay to actually do so.
Complete and utter fuckwads, I tell you. Arsewittery in the extreme.
Posted on March 19, 2008 | Filed Under My So-Called Life, The World we Live In
Comments
Response left by Emma on March 19th, 2008
Got something to say?
Ee gads it truly is astounding….I had a similar problem with Barclycard when I got a credit card as a student…I only got it for the freebie and had no intention of using it so when it arrived I cut it up. Heard nothing for month and the got a bill for ?Ǭ£5….confuzzled I gave them a ring and was shunted through half a dozen different departments and was told that I had insurance (on a card I’d cut up)….which I hadn’t checked the box for…..It took a further two months to sort out to close the account which involved talking to two departments at the same time and at the end of it I ended up with ?Ǭ£5 credit instead of a zero balance due to someone pressing a button twice I assume……2 and a half years later I got correspondence from Barclycard….I new credit card, which I don’t want, which I can’t use anyway because I don’t know the pin number and which I problem get a bill for the insurance in a month or two….the joy!!