Hideous customer service
When a member of Lloyds TSB branch staff said loudly, “aren’t you the Money Saving Expert?” the red mist flew and in a large and loud voice carrying through the busy Oxford street branch, I replied: “yes and I need to tell you, you work for the most abysmally run bank I’ve ever had the experience of. And frankly I would suggest everyone considering opening an account leaves.”
Now I’ve calmed down I do feel slightly guilty about being rude to the individual staff member. The problem is one of ineptitude on behalf of Lloyds TSB, not him. Though thankfully I kept my wrath in check and directed it at the institution not the individual.
Yet I’m glad people turned around and many smiled at me. I don’t usually go into bank branches as it can be awkward with the knowing looks and sometimes even requests for intervention I get (though listening to an overseas couple with poor English being wrongly told "you are not allowed to bank with us if you have any other accounts,” I was already feeling a little angry with the branch).
Lloyds TSB’s hideous customer service: trying to change contact info
Yet to fully understand why I lost my rag, you need to be aware of the context. ALL I wanted to do was change some of my key contact info details on a savings product and this is how it went …
Me: Wrote with my account number and details requesting the change.
Lloyds postal help: Replied saying “you need to include your sort code and branch”.
Me: Wrote back saying that info wasn’t on my literature, and as it was opened online I didn’t have a branch.
Lloyds potal help: Replied saying ” you need to include your sort code and branch”.
Me: I called the ‘help’ centre, was cut off twice and finally got through to what it said was ‘the right place’.
Lloyds call centre: “We can’t do anything on the phone without your sort code, you need go into a branch to find out”.
Me: Finally found the time to go into a branch, queued for what felt like 40 minutes, got to the front and explained what I wanted (and what’d already happened).
Lloyds branch staff: After five minutes checking, she found me on the system, but said “there’s no sort code listed, I’d better go and speak to my manager”.
Lloyds branch staff: Came back ten minutes later, after speaking to the manager and said “your account is a different one, you need to call the help centre”.
Me: Expained I’d already spoken to the help centre who sent me to her.
Lloyds branch staff: She said there was no option and provided a new phone number.
Me: I said after all the hassle, I would call there and then in branch, so if the call centre said I needed to speak to them I could do it (and that I wouldn’t be queueing again) and that I wanted to use their phone to do it in case I was fobbed off again. Then I called the number and explained what’d happened.
Lloyds call centre: They said “sorry sir, you’ll need to write in to get your address changed”.
Me: Explained I’d already written twice, and been rejected as I didn’t have the sort code, so asked whether she could give me the sort code.
Lloyds call centre: Told me there wasn’t really a sort code for this account and if I wrote to a special address it wasn’t needed.
Me: Went to borrow pen from a member of branch staff (not the one I’d spoken to before).
Lloyds branch staff: He said “certainly, aren’t you the Money Saving Expert?”
