26.point.1

My letter to Cahoot.

// June 19th, 2009 // FURY!, Random Stuff

Reads like this…

“Dear Manager (because I would really like this to go to a manager),

I am Matt Pallatt, I live in Leeds, and for the last week I have had more trouble and less help from Cahoot than any other company in my relatively short 32 year life span. On the back of the pretty horrendous experience I’ve had with you over the last week I’d like to make a few suggestions to you.

1. I suggest that you change the wording on your replacement card send outs to “Please check your new card before you destroy your old card” – instead of the lovely blanket and blindly followed “immediately destroy your old card” message.

2. Offers of free transfers to “other accounts” doesn’t help when people in those situations don’t have accessible other accounts – so to be constantly offered it is vaguely like rubbing salt in wounds.

3. 11am is a very early time to cut off such transfers when people eventually manage to make another account available. “There is a process in place…” is a really bad excuse for why it can’t be done too – especially when I’m trying to work around a problem you’ve caused.

4. I suggest that you find a way of fast-tracking new card services – some people who are getting card replacements can wait 5-7 days for their card to arrive after it’s “pressed” because they already have  card – others, who have received faulty cards from yourself and have no access to their money possibly can’t. It would be nice to get those sent out first class post the day that they’re made I’d have thought. “There is no process in place…” is a really bad excuse for why you can’t put it in a mailbox.

5. Not being able to have customer call center agents activate customer cards without a days notice is appalling – You really still run a system which is batched every night?! Do you use punch cards too?!

6. Speak to Abbey, ask them to work more closely with the public to be able to help with requests – when I asked a member of Abbey if I could activate my card in his branch using the internet I was sternly told I could not – they own you apparently, it would be nice if they played nice when their customers by proxy were having trouble.

7. Oh, and let me use my Cahoot card to withdraw money over the counter at Abbey – there is a genius idea. Not “Sorry sir no, but you can open an Abbey account if you want”!

So, in closing I’d like to say that it would be very good if I could get back the opinions on these suggestions from “The Manager” as opposed to another call center agency who purely knows what the processes are as opposed to why the processes are in place. At the moment I’m about 8 months from clearing all my accounts with you, and at the moment I have every intention of moving back to a high street bank – one who can give me help when I need it and one who can transfer cash in and out of my account without 4 days notice – though obviously they will still also put the interest on my current account down at the same time as they’re putting the interest on my credit accounts up… Just like you seemingly do on a monthy basis (oh, and the bank probably won’t be Santander).

This concludes the first letter of complaint that I’ve ever had to send,

I thank you for your time,

Mathew Pallatt

PS. I’m going to send a hard copy of this too, just in case you don’t manage to get it digitally, after all there might not be a process in place to allow an email to be forwarded.”