Banking Errors

We were discussing banks, and that Jules had recently experienced her local branch saying they no longer handled cash . That caused a flurry of listeners telling us about some of their experiences with banks

All of these where named  top 6 UK banks 

Business who’s monthly paper statements were being sent to the wrong person at the wrong address for 2 years . Only found out when the receiver complained to them that even after he moved abroad he was still getting them 

Bank that made a credit card payment when presented with a card that had been cancelled 18 months previously 

Bank that kept turning down payment of small amounts as suspicious ( contactless coffee purchases ) but approved and paid a £35k scam 

Business had account terminated for not providing safeguarding data, despite the fact they had provided it online, by email and in a recorded delivery 

Personal bank account , on wondering why they no longer got confirmation texts when setting up new payments found that the bank had the wrong email and phone number listed on their account. After a lot of time and identification processes they got it changed to the correct ones.

Next day it was back to the incorrect settings . After a long investigation it was found that the bank was pulling in data from a subsidiary over night which updated the details. The subsidiary ( mortgage co) had confused details of  two accounts held by people with the same name 

Bank that refused to deal with personal client as they couldn’t pass the “security questions” Turned out the bank had the wrong date of birth recorded , a human looking at this would have spotted it straight away as the account had been in existence 30 years but the incorrect DOB showed someone who would only be 20 years old

Bank that kept sending threatening letters to  ex mother-in-law about an outstanding debt her former son in law had run up as they had them listed as connected accounts in the database 

Customer who tried to switch bank accounts using Current Account Switching Service guaranteed to take 7 days , actually took 5 weeks as existing bank kept turning down the  request . Investigation showed that existing bank had listed a second name on the account as an account holder . This person was NOT an account holder on that account 

There is also a Facebook group with thousands of members highlighting their experiences of having their bank accounts closed SEE HERE

Of course banks have millions of customers and there will always be some issues that arise with that much data . However as banks become more automated, digitally interconnected and seem to offer less and less human based customer service it can be increasingly difficult to find the cause of problems and to get problems fixed

The widespread use of automated algorithms , no reply texts and emails exacerbates issues when you receive clearly incorrect messages but have no way of correcting other than to sit in a service queue on the phone for hours on end trying to get someone to understand the problem