2010 was a year of change for us. We moved full time to Suffolk, changed power company, changed IT provider, changed car and changed bank.
Banks admit that customers rarely change banks. Many, if not most people, are dissatisfied with the service they get, but are reluctant to change – which is one of the reasons why banks are so complacent and their service so lousy. We have not been at all happy with the awful performance of NatWest for years, but like others have stuck with them, because the competition is little, if any better and because of the hassle any such change would involve. What finally pressed us into a move was the location of our nearest branches – half an hour away at either Woodbridge or Beccles.
For most things, branch location is not a worry at all. Most transactions can be effected over the phone or Internet. The problem comes with cheques, like my £6-50p dividend from dear old Adnams. It would cost considerably more in fuel alone to drive to Woodbridge and back than the value of the cheque.
The decision to change was not taken lightly – I had been with NatWest (and the Westminster before it) for 45 years.
We decided against First Direct (you can pay in cheques at HSBC) notwithstanding the online plaudits, because we wanted a person we could talk to face-to-face – an old-fashioned bank manager.
We settled on Barclays, which has branches at Leiston and Saxmundham (as well as Southwold, Aldeburgh and Halesworth).
Banks tell us that it is easy to change; just give them your account details and, no worries, they’ll do the rest. We stressed how important it was to transfer the standing orders from our sole accounts to our joint account otherwise we would quickly clock up a large overdraft. We got lists of direct debits and standing orders to check, ticked them off, sat back and forgot about it, until two days ago. We tried to pay our horrendous domestic fuel oil bill by our Barclays joint debit card. (Never ever moan to us about the price of gas or electricity – the domestic fuel oil racket will be the subject of another blog.) The payment was rejected, so we paid by another card.
Puzzled as to why the card had been rejected we went to our accounts on line and saw that Barclays had taken money out of our sole accounts, but paid it in to our old NatWest joint account, leaving us embarrassingly overdrawn at Barclays. So we phoned our old-fashioned bank manager who was very apologetic and told us she would fix it, but for this month we had to pay a cheque from our NatWest account to transfer the money back into our Barclays account. If you are not confused by now I’d be surprised.
It took an hour and a half to check our accounts on line. We had a raft of other more minor problems, which I’m sure will be fixed in time. However for some reason, our mobile phone payment to Vodafone fell down a hole between the two banks. Soon after discovering the problem, we received a stroppy text message from the company threatening to cut us off. After two or three calls to Latvian ladies, “Why can’t you take it out of the new account – the direct debit is in place?”
“Can you pay by some other means?”
“Yes but please answer my question.”
“You’ll have to fill in a new direct debit form.”
“No I won’t.”
“Yes you will…..”
And so it went on, with Vodafone eventually acknowledging our direct debit, but insisting we paid our last bill by card.
So what have we learned from all of this. First, I remain convinced that banks would offer a better service if more customers voted with their feet. But secondly, if you do change banks, what can go wrong will go wrong … and make sure you have a friendly face that can put things right.
