// June 27th, 2009 // No Comments » // FURY!, Money
So having sent my letter to Cahoot about their shitty customer service and inability to treat people like people, unless the people were on the “Process” stream I got a response about 70 minutes later that read…
“Dear Mr Pallatt,
I’m contacting you in response to your email in relation to your debit card.
I understand that you have had an issue with a debit card that had been sent, and as a result a new card had been ordered out for you.
As the first card was faulty, in order to enable you to have access to your funds we offered you a free of charge CHAPS transfer, which in your email you stated was of no use to you as you didn’t have access to another account.
With CHAPS transfers there is a cut off time of 11am, as it is a real time payment we have to process these payments by a certain time to ensure that all the payments are completed and sent off.
When you received your new card, it is necessary to activate your card, if done online you can use this immediately; however if you would like us to activate your card this can be done for you here but there is a wait of 24 hours before you can use the card as our system needs to update overnight.
Although we are a division of Abbey, Abbey accounts and cahoot accounts are dealt separately as a result when you requested a staff member from Abbey to activate your card this would not have been possible as they have different systems to ours.
In addition to this you would not be able to withdraw funds from Abbey either, as cahoot is an internet bank and also as stated previously cahoot and Abbey accounts are managed separately.
Please be assured I have carried out a full investigation for you. I hope you feel I have offered a fair response to all of the issues you raised. If you remain unhappy, you may refer your concerns to the Abbey Central Complaints Team within 8 weeks, the address to contact is:
Complaints
Abbey
PO Box 5129
Milton Keynes
MK9 2YN
You can find details of how to take your complaint further with Abbey at http://www.cahoot.com/legal/legal.html#importantInfo under the heading ‘Complaints policy which explains how we deal with complaints and, the role of the Financial Ombudsman Service. “
Which I thought pretty much just ignored every point I’d made - instead going for the old “it’s the process” tack that I’d got used to. So I sent a reply of my own…
“I’m not sure what I really expected in terns of a response, however the fact that this response took less than 60 minutes to arrive goes to the fact that nobody actually thought about my original email and you are simply trying to placate me by telling me the process again - your processes don’t work when things go wrong!
You have:
- not addressed my concerns and suggestions regarding the wording on replacement cards which are dispatched
- not addressed my concerns regarding your ability to fast track cards to people who you have failed by sending faulty cards
- completely misunderstood aspects such as a member of Abbey should be able and more importantly WILLING to give me access to a PC so that I can activate my card - I don’t want them to give me access to Abbey accounts, just a web browser!
- failed to convince me on CHAP transfers being real time - that kinda implies that they can be real time at any point in the day, not just before 11 - otherwise they’re not really that real time.
Again, I’m not sure what I expected but I do feel that you have done nothing, this has simply been passed onto a call center agent to “fob me off” with the same words about “process” that I’ve been hearing all week - and my point remains that your processes are wrong and only cater for when things go right. I want to speak to someone about why those processes exist, not just be told that I’m in the wrong because you send me a faulty card and deny me access to funds in my account for 7 days - which is why I wanted “the manager” to reply to me after considering my mail, not someone 30 minutes after I’ve sent the message regurgitating the same I’ve heard all week.
Thank you for the address to use to esculate this. Something right eventually.
Matt”
And then they sent me another little email…
“Dear Mr Pallatt
I am in receipt of your email sent in response to Maya’s email to you on 19th June.
I am sorry if you are unhappy with her response. As stated in my colleague’s email, in this case you need to escalate your complaint to Abbey Stage 2 via one of the following channels:
By post:
Complaints
Stage Two
PO Box 5129
Milton Keynes
MK9 2YN
By phone: 0845 600 6014*
By fax: 0845 600 1378
By e-mail: customerservices@abbey.com
We promise to send our final response within eight weeks of your original complaint to us, or write to you explaining why we haven’t completed our investigations and when we will have done so.
*Calls may be recorded or monitored. The maximum cost of a call for BT customers, from a landline is 4 pence per minute (ppm) (subject to a minimum call charge of 6.5p). The cost of calls for non-BT customers or from mobiles will vary.
kind regards
Richard Buddle “
Yeah, it’s all dull, and it’s all Cahoot giving me the run around over their “Processes” and me being an antagonistic pedantic fucktard - but doesn’t it seem that they could just have forwarded my email onto the new email address? Sooner I get my money out of their bank the better.
