Fings Ain’t What They Used Ter Be …

It wouldn’t surprise me at all if, in any list of the top 100 complaints about modern life compiled by any group of still mentally-competent senior citizens, that of “Why-oh-why can’t things just stay as they used to be?” wasn’t in the top 5 – if not the top 3.

Take banks, for example.

I don’t wish to bore anyone here but – back in the day, in this case the early 1950s, when my father needed a loan of £6,000 to be able to “buy” his partnership in an accountancy firm, he went to see his local bank manager.

Said individual listened to his request, considered his history with the bank concerned, took a view of the 26 year-old sitting before him – presumably reckoned him a sound, principled chap with a potentially successful future – and, off his own bat, without needing to consult anyone “higher up”, agreed to lend him the loot.

The loan – and indeed the confidence in him that the bank manager had displayed – duly set my father up for his future career in the City and elsewhere.

These days – as anyone will tell you – many UK banks tend to treat their customers like idiots to be exploited and everything is done by reference to computer-controlled protocols.

The old-fashioned “personal touch” (as set out in the example I described above) has gone AWOL – never to return.

About 18 months ago I endured my own brush with “personal banking” as it currently exists in the UK when a series of what I regarded as “external” enforced and unforeseen circumstances placed me in a position of considerable debt with apparently little (or possibly even no) means by which to escape from it.

Firstly, the agreed sale of my house for a then healthy market value confirmed by three separate reputable estate agents suddenly fell through in the week before contracts were supposed to be exchanged.

It then took another eleven months to unearth another buyer and complete its sale (and then for a value some £400,000 less than the supposed aforementioned market value).

Secondly, I was involved in an unfortunate “family” legal dispute – none of my making – which delayed the final disbursements due to the residual beneficiaries (including myself) by eighteen months.

In the meantime – now on the breadline, I had walked into my home branch of a well-known high street bank in order to explain my situation and then (hopefully) obtain some advice/assistance upon how I might proceed until matters improved.

However, after listening to my lengthy tale, the female bank staffer dealing with me politely explained that there was nobody at the branch who could advise or help me. I found this slightly odd, but nevertheless took her statement at face value and departed the premises to go home and consider what else I might to do resolve my temporary financial hardship.

Then, literally 48 hours later, out of the blue I received a text message from said bank asking me to take part in a survey upon how well it had dealt with me on my recent visit.

Specifically, firstly, it asked me (via giving marks out of 5) whether I had been able to achieve what I wanted during my visit. The answer to this was clearly negative, so I texted back a score of 1.

It then asked whether, based upon my recent experience of attending the bank, I would recommend it a family member or friend.

Well, clearly, the answer to that was that in all honesty I could not recommend anyone to use the bank in question because (it had appeared to me) that, if anyone I knew had a serious financial problem, it wouldn’t be able to assist them … so, again, I gave it a score of 1.

A week or two later, when I next visited the bank on a completely different matter, when it came to my turn to walk forward and be attended to by the same lady staffer that I had seen before – she strode towards me and in front of everyone in my vicinity announced that – in view of the “review” I had given her last time, she wanted me to know that she now refused ever to serve me again. This puzzled me somewhat – I hadn’t criticised her personally, as I duly pointed out –  but subsequently I waited patiently to be seen by someone else.

However, thinking about it afterwards, I decided to write to the chairman of the bank, copied to the manager of the branch concerned, and composed a suitable draft.

My purpose was partly to report the above incident but – more than that – to make some remarks about the bank’s “survey” system asking for feedback from customers upon their experiences of using its services.

In particular, I put it to the chairman that presumably the purpose of such a survey was to gain an insight into how the bank was performing – and, indeed perhaps, to identify areas in which it might improve its service.

In this context I made the point that in my view any negative feedback received would be at least as – if not more – valuable than “positive” feedback. I mentioned that because the latter would presumably about things that the bank was already doing well whereas, arguably, any negative feedback would be about areas in which it wasn’t doing so well and therefore might be able to improve.

Therefore (my point was) if a bank staffer – and/or indeed the bank itself – was to take exception and/or offence at any negative feedback it received, the only conclusion I – or indeed anyone possessed of half a brain – could reach was that they was only interested in receiving “positive” feedback, which surely completely undermined the purpose of conducting a survey in the first place?

I signed off by suggesting that if the bank couldn’t “see this” it was completely wasting its time and money in conducting a survey at all.

I haven’t changed my view since.