YOU HAVE YOUR SAY
EVERY week Money Mail receives hundreds of your letters and emails about our stories. Here’s what you had to say about our report on banks and insurers’ inflexible service, which leaves vulnerable customers in the lurch . . . I HAVE worked in a bank where computers make the decisions and have personally had to refuse loans to people who would most definitely pay it back and given them to those who would certainly struggle. This is what happens when you let machines make the decisions instead of staff.
A. S., Cirencester, Glos.
I USED to be a bank manager, and the old system before computers was far better.
We knew our customers, unlike today’s bank staff in call centres who have no expertise and just read from a script.
M. G., Dorset.
BANK staff are not trained to look after their customers, they are trained to obey what’s on their computer screens. Loans are not based on knowledge of their customer — it’s about pointscoring on an application.
D. T., Swansea.
IT SHOULDN’T be a case of the computer just saying yes or no — there needs to be understanding and flexibility to reach a sensible solution for all customers.
S. L., Kent.
WHEN the banks got into difficulty during the financial crisis, they would have gone out of business if they had received the same kind of treatment that they give to their customers.
M. K., East Anglia.
IT’S worth pointing out that it’s not the fault of bank staff — they are bound by very strict rules from which they are not allowed to deviate. Most of them would actually like to help.
R. H., Chester.
IT’S not just banks. Since everything has moved to central call centres, all services — from banking and insurance to utilities and telecoms — have gone downhill.
N. W., Leicester.
BANKS and building societies are in the business of making money, not serving the public.
But there is no point in letting someone get so deep in debt that they will never get out of it.
C. S., Torquay, Devon.