I’ll put aside my having to wait over one and a half hours to speak to somebody over an urgent matter (paid for call charges in excess of £20) or the three day wait for a reply from their so called internal messaging system.
Right, here we go. My first problem started when I attempted to buy an expensive pair of binoculars for £700.00 My Co-op Credit card was rejected five times. I then tried to use my Debit Card which was also rejected. This was at 22:30 so nobody available at the bank to find out why. 24 Hour Credit Card hotline didn’t have a clue. As a last resort I tried my Capital One Credit Card - Whoosh! Straight through without any problems. Meantime...lots of apologetic emails to the binocular vendor who had his online payment system full of Not Paid notices.
Next, I had a major expense for a front door - £1,500.00. Given what happened with the binoculars and after a visit to the branch to find out why the block, I thought it would be wise to visit the branch and advise them of my intended purchase. And so I trekked down to the bank and spoke to the manager. They know me but as a wise precaution I took my passport, driving licence and all my account details. I advised the manager that I wanted a payment made today via a Fast Pay Bank Transfer. I showed her the invoice given to me when the door had been fitted on the Saturday previous. It had the installers full details including his bank details for the transfer of funds. No problem she said, I’ll put it through today. Off I go home quite happy knowing all the i’s had been dotted and the t’s crossed and I had honoured my promise to the installer.
When I returned home I logged on to my account and there it was, my account had been debited for £1,500.00 Great news! I was especially pleased because I had told the installer I would pay him as soon as the bank was open on the Monday. The following day - Tuesday - the installer telephoned me and said he had not received the money. I told him to give it 24 hours because maybe it was being processed and was showing as a debit on my account. I told him I had made a personal visit to the bank to avoid any problems. I checked my account online again and yes, it showed it had been debited from my account.
Wednesday, repeat the above but this time the installer was a bit pissed off. I sent him an email and an edited screen shot of my account showing the payment as well as explaining everything and told him if it had not gone through tonight I would go back to the bank tomorrow. I hoped this would pacify him. Thursday arrives and off I trek to the bank. Yes, the manager told me, she had put it through when I had made my visit in person on the Monday. By this time I was seriously angry. I told the installer I had been to the branch and they told me they had processed the payment. He said he had not received it. And yet again more apologetic emails to him.
Friday comes along. My account, yet again, shows I had been debited for £1,500.00 for the door. But no, it hadn’t. And so another visit to the bank. This time I was f......g fuming. Hours wasted, unnecessary journeys, emails, checking on-line and crucially, my reputation. If I tell somebody I will pay them on x date then I will honour my promise as I would expect them to honour theirs. The installer had every right to think I was pulling off a scam. The Co-op bank made my name dirt.
When I got to the bank I demanded to speak to the manager. I told her I wanted an answer now or else I will close my account today and kick up a fuss with the Ombudsman. She said she was sorry and told me she thought the Fraud Section may have blocked it but wasn’t sure.
Now read this carefully. I said can you contact them now so you can find out while I wait? I said I found it disturbing that the actions of a manger should be overrode by another section of the bank without telling him or her the reasons why. And now, the bizarre part. She told me that they don’t have a direct line to the Fraud Section. They have to use the same line as customers! But...she told me I could use their telephone - so very kind of her. 40 minutes later some clown from the Fraud Section answers. Not unlike the clown who had put a stop to my binocular purchase who blamed the block on Visa Europe!
Yes, this moron said, we put a stop on the payment. She couldn’t explain why it kept showing up as paid on my account. She then started asking questions. Do you know the door installer? I answer of course I f......g do! They are a long established local business with a highly regarded reputation. They are V.A.T. Registered. They have a fleet of vans. I told her the business was within spitting distance from the bank. The manager could walk to them in minutes. And, I sigh heavily, she asks, it wasn’t a door-to-door salesman who sold it to you? No it f.....g wasn’t. Do you always buy doors from them? But of course I do, I buy one a week except for bank holidays and Xmas when I buy double the amount. Stunned silence. Okay, thank you, I shall now put your payment through. We have to be very careful on behalf of our customers. Oh really says I, to her, or do you mean your are looking after your own backs? You are shit scared in case you have to pay out because of poor security and inefficiency. Never have I known a bank that undermines their manager let alone without telling her and then the truly insane situation of not having a direct line! Madness!
I closed the conversation with this. I told her I have been a Co-op member since I was a teenager. You are not the Co-op I know. You have had lots of scandals including your cocaine smoking crystal meth ex-Chairman. You advertise yourselves as ‘ethical’. You are not. You are not part of the Co-op Movement. Bank members no longer have a say. Your ethics are light years away from what they once were. You sold out. You are now owned by American Hedge Funds. Give me the names of each individual hedge fund investor and show me each of their portfolios. I’ll bet you £10,000.00 they have investments in non ethical products/services for that is how they make their money - as well as asset stripping. You are therefore not 100% ethical.
On that day, I told the Co-op bank to shove their ‘ethical bank’ up their arse as I was closing my account and going for a more customer friendly provider where the shareholders are the account holders.
Phew!
You want to know how really bad they are. Go to Trust Pilot and read the comments. Their rating is: Bad. Seems like nothing has changed including hours waiting on the phone.
There was a man on Trust Pilot who could not for the life of him understand why they didn’t send him an internal message as to why they had put a block on a payment. No, like myself, he had to go through endless time wasting hoops.
And so ends my saga with the bank that doesn’t know it’s arse from its elbow. Not fit for purpose. Certainly not deserving of the Co-op name and of its long and proud true ethical history.
God, the time lost has gone forever. It’s only when you are very unwell that you appreciate how much time really matters. Time to share with your loved ones, your friends and the nice folk that really matter. Don’t allow your precious time to be wasted by incompetent morons or people with name badges operating in a structure that can only be described as: truly f.......g terrible!
Be a Good. Take Care.
Their shops are much the same, overpriced, and have a monopoly here one big store and a smaller one on the high street same crap and I'll swear the near date stuff is shipped from the big to the smaller shop.
