ValueIreland.com

Over the past week or so, I’ve encountered a couple of issues that have really annoyed me and caused me to question the customer service of a couple of companies – two banks actually.

It’s interesting that a lot has been made recently regarding companies that provide poor customer service – witness this discussion thread on AskAboutMoney, or this one particularly focused on NTL.

Having dealt with both PermanentTSB (via their ATM service) and Ulster Bank (via their telephone banking service) recently it seems to me that there’s situations where poor IT systems and process design is unnecessarily leading to poor customer service.

Take the PermanentTSB ATM for example. One day last week I actually wanted a receipt for a withdrawal. The process went something like this.

ATM: Would you like a receipt? Yes/No
Me: Yes
ATM: Are you sure you’d
like a receipt? Yes/No
Me: Yes
ATM: Do you realise receipts are bad for
the environment? Continue?
Me: I know, but I need one this time.
Continue!
ATM: PermanentTSB and other Irish banks are committed to reducing
litter. Continue?
Me: Yes, damn it, continue!
ATM: We apologies, but the
machine is out of paper, so we cannot provide a receipt. Continue?
Me: AAAAGGGHHHH!!!!

You can imagine the frustration at the end of that. For a simple transaction, I was asked 4 times to confirm my requirements, only to be totally pissed off at the end of it. Where does the IT system and process improvement come in here? Well, why couldn’t the system check itself at the beginning of this loop to see if it had any paper? It could then tell me at the start that it had no paper and would I like to continue the transaction, or go else where, instead of annoying me 4 times. Very simple!

To top that, I rang Ulster Bank to find out what my bank balance was (remember this for later - I was ringing to find out my balance). I was expecting a cheque to be lodged and just wanted to confirm it was there.

Ulster Bank: Of course sir, we just need to confirm who you are and complete the
security checks.
Me: Fine, I’m blah blah blah.
Ulster Bank: Thank you. Can
you please confirm your date of birth?
Me: Yes, it’s blah blah!
Ulster
Bank: Thank you. Finally, can you confirm your balance please?
Me: ??????

Ridiculous!!!!

I have this website bookmarked for quite a while now. I think I came across it while I was researching this article for ValueIreland, How to Avoid Financial Phishing. It’s quite a good site to explain the phenomonen of phishing (though with an American slant).

We also saw a couple of weeks ago that Allied Irish Banks (AIB) are being targetted by a new kind of phishing, which apparently is more sophisticated than previously seen, written about here on their site.

It seems a little ironic that this was discovered at pretty much the same time as AIB announced that it was rolling out a more secure way of banking for it’s business and corporate customers.

No word of this new more secure banking being made available to the hardpressed AIB personal customer.

There’s a question. Given every single thing publicised about how AIB operate, how do they still have any customers?

I noticed this article earlier in the week, and was reminded about it this morning as I crossed O’Connell Bridge in my bus.

The article speaks of how the people running the Port Tunnel are concerned that smaller trucks aren’t using the tunnel as much as would have been expected.

This morning, counting the largest kind of articulated lorries queuing on Burgh Quay all the way back to the IFSC, there were about 12 of these juggernauts, obviously heading west, and avoiding the Port Tunnel, or more probably avoiding the 8.30am backlog of traffic that has you going 5mph between the Ballymun and Lucan exits on the M50.

But sure all that will be fixed with the M50 upgrade. Oh, hang on, they’re not upgrading the north side of the toll bridge, but south of it.

Who made that decision? Lets not upgrade the bit that’s going to have the biggest increase in traffic immediately!! Madness.

I have a Google e-mail alert that sends me any up to date news daily where the term “rip off Ireland” might appear. Apart from the bizarre situation today where I had an e-mail telling me about the publication of one of my own blogs, there was recently this newspaper article in the Kilkenny Advertiser.

Now, if the journalists in the Kilkenny Advertiser are anything like those in the Athlone Advertiser, they won’t have put too much research into this article at all, but lets see what they had to say about this Fine Gael Consumer Week - I was intrigued.

They talk about a Consumer Charter, and compensating consumers who loose utility services - hurting those suppliers who don’t provide good customer service. A noble plan, but where’s the detail of the Consumer Week?

A search of Google news, specifically this time for “Consumer Week” turns up nothing - well, something on FinFacts.Com, but like many users on AAM and Boards.ie, I don’t really hold much store in what’s published there.

Nothing on the Fine Gael website either, apart from this announcement about a bill to regulate so-called “ripoffs” in professional services such as estate agents, dentists and insurance brokers.

Oh well, I tried, but nothing. As I said below regarding the relaunch of www.ripoff.ie, the consumer doesn’t care, and probably Fine Gael are beginning to find that out.

By the way, one of the most popular pages on ValueIreland at the moment is our anti-Eddie Hobbs “30 Things Not to Do with your SSIA”. Well, 10 actually, but you get the point. Check it out!

As a regular user of AskAboutMoney.com, it was obvious that the reaction to the most recent Eddie Hobbs production, 30 Things to do With Your SSIA, was not as well appreciated as the original “Rip Off Republic”. This could also be seen by the fact that for even such a topical thing as your SSIA money, no viewing records were broken by his latest show.

Given some of the comments on AAM about Eddies plugging of investment property in Cape Verde, it seemed to me that people were beginning to think that he was going a little too far.

And now, we’re seeing that Eddies “stand up” shows planned for Dublin and Cork have been cancelled. Depending on whos version you believe - either from a lack of interest, or because the venues were too big and he wanted more intimate venues to provide his advice to the audience.

I actually find this new phase in his stand up career to be pretty bizarre. Here we have a financial advisor planning one man shows in the same locations where you’d go to see comedians or bands.

Is this entertainment? Or mass financial advice? Or the beginning of a new cult? Or religion?

I’ve noticed in the last week or so an increase in the amount of spam that I’ve been getting to my ValueIreland e-mail addresses that I have posted on the various contact pages and so on on the website.

The spam now however has a new slant to it - it’s making it look like I’m getting e-mails bounced back to me as being not delivered - until you see that the address I’m supposed to have sent the e-mail from is something completely random and not a proper address at all.

I was wondering what the angle was to these, but I’ve just noticed that the Norton Anti-Virus is doing it’s job and actually stripping out viruses from these spam messages.

Been a while since I’ve seen these being sent through. It’s mostly, as I’ve mentioned before, job offers from China, lottery wins, and the next big stock tip that I’ve been getting these days.

There’s been a few newspaper articles over the past couple of days about the “relauched” Fine Gael rip-off website, www.ripoff.ie. I’ve had a quick look and it’s pretty much just the same as before, with some of their out-of-date content removed, and a quick blurb from Enda Kenny about how much they’ve done (?) “on everything from utility prices to mobile phones, houses to funeral costs “.

Fine Gael have been pretty quiet on the whole rip-off front recently. Has the National Consumer Agency, set up by Minister Martin, stolen Phil Hogans thunder with regards to their proposed “Consumer Enforcer”?

It will be interesting to see what, if anything, Fine Gael will come up with in the forthcoming election with regards to consumer issues and consumer rights, particulary in the context where I believe consumers don’t really about “Rip Off Ireland” any more. Kind of means that the lacklustre “relaunch” of RipOff.ie matches the mood of the consumer I suppose.

A lady driver in Longford took the wing-mirror off my car last December by not estimating correctly how wide her car was. She was about to drive away, but given that she saw me stop, and reverse, she stopped too.

To cut a long story short, I had to call into Finglas Garda station to provide my insurance details the following week, and obviously I had to inform my insurance company that there’d been an “accident”.
My wing mirror glass was shattered, and the housing for the mirror was damaged. Her wing mirror glass and housing was destroyed (my big car vs her small car gave it no chance).

So, I call FBD, and now the fun starts. I fulfilled my responsibility to both my insurance company and to the Gardai. I wasn’t going to make a claim on either my own, or the lovely ladies insurance.
However, FBD became insistent that they ring the lovely ladies insurance company. When I asked why, I was told by my FBD person that he needed to “get it off his desk” and closed.

So, basically he was ringing Eagle Star to say “hello, we have a customer of ours here and we’d like to know would you like to make a claim against him”. How ridiculous is that! I tried to ask that this not be done, as if the lovely lady wanted to make a claim, surely she’d be able to initiate that for herself. But no, he’d have to make the call to “get it off his desk”.

Eventually I managed to get FBD not to make the call, and in the intervening month, the lovely lady in Longford didn’t make a claim.

But that’s not good enough for FBD. They’re no insisting that they still must ring Eagle Star to see if the lovely lady would like to make a claim.

The Garda reaction at the scene (the lovely lady from Longford insisted on calling the Gardai for damage to two wing mirrors) that given no witnesses the accident had to be called 50-50 – as much as I’d dispute this. So, even if there’s a claim, FBD will only pay out half anyway. And if there is a claim against me, my goodwill is gone out the window, and I’ll be claiming against the lovely ladies insurance with Eagle Star as well. And 50% of fully fixing my wing mirror is going to be a whole lot more than 50% of fixing hers.

I think this situation is absolutely ridiculous. It’s obvious that the lovely lady from Longford doesn’t want to make a claim, or we’d have heard by now. She’s either driving around illegally at the moment with no door mirror, or she’s already had it fixed (and obviously can’t claim retrospectively).
But yet, after fulfilling all my responsibilities in a minor minor accident that I didn’t cause, I’m being held to ransom still by my own insurance company going looking for a claim against me, seeking issues where no issues obviously exist.

I was in Arnotts last week and on the floor with their furniture there was a section with some art work. I was struck by a couple of paintings (I thought they were) of lower Manhattan skylines.

One of them was particularly striking and I was all set to buy it - for €380. There was 15% off, and I had a voucher as well that I had from Christmas.

But I decided to go home and check out the artist on line. However, I couldn’t find the artist anywhere. But I did find the name of the painting on art.com, where the “painting” was on sale as a print - for €80.

And for an extra couple of euros you could get it finished to have it actually be textured like the paintings in Arnotts.

Shop around, eh! Save yourself €300.