ANZ Banking Corporation - Taking incompetence to new heights!
This proves beyond all doubt that you can still post record profits, even if your corporation is staffed by idiots!
After the debacle with my loan extension last xmas, I've had a particularly low opinion of ANZ and their shifty business practices. Now, they've excelled themselves again over the cancellation of my Merchant Services account and associated EFTPOS terminal machine. Back in October, before I closed my business, I contacted Merchant Services, arranged the cancellation of the account and organised to return the terminal to the local branch. After I closed, I dropped the terminal off, gave the guy the reference number and asked him to arrange for the machine to be returned to Merchant Services. At that point, I considered the matter closed and promptly forgot about it.
About a week ago, I got an account statement from Merchant Services, showing that the account was still open and I was still being charged a monthly fee for the terminal. To cut a very long story short, apparently the branch didn't bother to have the terminal collected. I lodged a complaint about the failure of that process and I've just been contacted by a guy from their complaints department who told me they've been unable to locate the terminal and that I would have to pay several hundred dollars for it! I said "Wait a minute.....I dropped the machine off at the local branch. They've lost it and now you want to charge me for it? Surely you can't be serious?!?" Apparently he was. I informed him that I would now be placing the matter in the hands of the Financial Ombudsman Service, at which point he asked me if I would like him to escalate the matter to a higher internal department to have it investigated more thoroughly. I kid you not. I said "I would have expected that to have been done already, before deciding to just lump me with the charges!!" I told him to go right ahead, but I've lodged a complaint with the FOS anyway.
Mind you, this is only the final part of a whole host of customer service failures. Simply trying to contact these people by phone sucked up 45minutes of my life that I will never get back, during which time I was disconnected twice, transferred to another department 3 times and then told that it was up to me to follow it up with the branch personally anyway. I said "I am following it up....I'm speaking to you, so sort it out!!" The excuse for why she couldn't contact the branch? "I'm sorry sir, this is an incoming call centre....I don't have a queue to put an outgoing call into." Seriously. I indelicately suggested that she find a piece of paper and a pen and simply write it down, but by that stage it was already obvious that I was dealing with someone of truly awesome ineptitude and I wasn't going to get anywhere. That's when I gave up and called their complaints number.
If I could extricate myself from any further involvement with ANZ, I'd do it without a second thought.....customer service? What a joke!
After the debacle with my loan extension last xmas, I've had a particularly low opinion of ANZ and their shifty business practices. Now, they've excelled themselves again over the cancellation of my Merchant Services account and associated EFTPOS terminal machine. Back in October, before I closed my business, I contacted Merchant Services, arranged the cancellation of the account and organised to return the terminal to the local branch. After I closed, I dropped the terminal off, gave the guy the reference number and asked him to arrange for the machine to be returned to Merchant Services. At that point, I considered the matter closed and promptly forgot about it.
About a week ago, I got an account statement from Merchant Services, showing that the account was still open and I was still being charged a monthly fee for the terminal. To cut a very long story short, apparently the branch didn't bother to have the terminal collected. I lodged a complaint about the failure of that process and I've just been contacted by a guy from their complaints department who told me they've been unable to locate the terminal and that I would have to pay several hundred dollars for it! I said "Wait a minute.....I dropped the machine off at the local branch. They've lost it and now you want to charge me for it? Surely you can't be serious?!?" Apparently he was. I informed him that I would now be placing the matter in the hands of the Financial Ombudsman Service, at which point he asked me if I would like him to escalate the matter to a higher internal department to have it investigated more thoroughly. I kid you not. I said "I would have expected that to have been done already, before deciding to just lump me with the charges!!" I told him to go right ahead, but I've lodged a complaint with the FOS anyway.
Mind you, this is only the final part of a whole host of customer service failures. Simply trying to contact these people by phone sucked up 45minutes of my life that I will never get back, during which time I was disconnected twice, transferred to another department 3 times and then told that it was up to me to follow it up with the branch personally anyway. I said "I am following it up....I'm speaking to you, so sort it out!!" The excuse for why she couldn't contact the branch? "I'm sorry sir, this is an incoming call centre....I don't have a queue to put an outgoing call into." Seriously. I indelicately suggested that she find a piece of paper and a pen and simply write it down, but by that stage it was already obvious that I was dealing with someone of truly awesome ineptitude and I wasn't going to get anywhere. That's when I gave up and called their complaints number.
If I could extricate myself from any further involvement with ANZ, I'd do it without a second thought.....customer service? What a joke!
posted by Unknown at 12/23/2011 01:13:00 pm
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