THREE HOURS to talk to your bank
Part-time branches. Cashiers being axed. Customers turned away at the door. And if you try to ring instead, prepare to wait ...
BANKING customers unable to visit a branch are being forced to wait for hours on the phone, a Money Mail investigation reveals. It is the latest blow for customers struggling to get a basic banking service in the pandemic, thanks to heavily restricted hours at High Street branches.
Lloyds and NatWest have also paused or restricted their mobile branch services that were first introduced to help vulnerable customers bank if their local branch had closed.
Last week, Money Mail telephoned the main customer service lines of all the big banks to see how long it would take to get through.
In the worst cases, reporters were made to wait nearly 40 minutes to be connected to staff at Barclays, while Santander and HSBC kept us on hold for around half an hour.
However, some callers have reported waiting for more than three hours.
The coronavirus crisis has left bank call centres struggling to deal with demand, but critics say problems should have been solved by now. Yet, at times, customers are still being greeted with an automated telephone message to say their bank cannot take their call at all — before the caller is disconnected.
Every day last week, Money Mail tried the main phone lines of the six biggest banks: NatWest, Nationwide, Santander, Lloyds, HSBC and Barclays.
On two occasions, Lloyds said it could not answer the call and signposted customers online or to use the app. Mondays, Tuesdays and Wednesdays saw the longest waits — particularly around lunchtime and evenings.
Later in the week, hold times improved overall — but HSBC still took almost 28 minutes to answer on Thursday and Barclays kept us waiting for more than 26 minutes.
In contrast, call centre staff at Nationwide and NatWest answered within two minutes most times we rang.
MONEY Mail last week reported how customers were being forced to do their banking over the phone or online as a result of restricted branch opening hours.
Despite lockdown easing, no bank has extended their hours to pre-lockdown levels — leaving branches open for as few as four hours a day.
It has left customers queuing around the block, with some even being turned away if their requirements are not deemed ‘essential’.
And just this week it emerged that TSB was scrapping the traditional cashier role in its 500 branches in another blow to local banking.
Some 929 cashiers will either have to re-train, take voluntary redundancy, or lose their job.
Last week, Aris Tsinias spent two hours and 35 minutes on the phone to HSBC trying to get his online business account unlocked.
He says he was passed back and forth between different departments before being told he would need to go into a branch to get a resolution. But Aris, who runs a skincare company, says his local branch in Nantwich, Cheshire, has closed and his next nearest is in Crewe — a 12-mile round trip.
The latest phone call to his bank followed four others in the past month ranging between 35 minutes and more than an hour. Aris, 43, says: ‘It has become a farce and I feel very let down.
‘You are not telling me that HSBC does not have the money or
resources to put effective systems in place to manage customer service.’
Last month, children’s author Nat ReevesBilling waited more than three hours on the phone to Barclays before hanging up in frustration.
She needed to set up a new business account for her social enterprise that provides disadvantaged families with books to encourage storytelling and gifts before applying for funding.
For the first hour, she listened to saxophone music before it changed to a different track. By the third hour, it was back to the saxophone again.
Nat, 38, says it was so frustrating she almost burst into tears.
When she got off the phone she tried to make a complaint over live chat but was sitting there for 40 minutes with no response.
She then went through her phone contacts to try to remind herself of her bank manager’s name.
When she found it and called him he told her the bank was not accepting new applications for business accounts at the moment.
Nat, who lives in Merseyside, says: ‘It was almost the straw that broke the camel’s back. I would have taken my money elsewhere but could not face any more stress.’
After Nat complained, Barclays apologised and offered her £100 as a goodwill gesture. Banks are not the only businesses struggling to pick up customer calls. Families have also been forced to wait up to an hour to get through to energy firms and telecoms companies.
But with many households and small businesses facing serious financial distress, it has never been so important for customers to be able to reach their bank.
Laura Suter, personal finance analyst at investment platform AJ Bell, says after more than four months of the pandemic, banks should have been able to restore a normal phone service.
She says: ‘With banks still restricting access for people to go into branches, they need to make sure that customers can contact them online or on the phone without being on hold for hours.
‘Businesses have had to adapt to the new normal and banks should be no exception.’
Martyn James, from complaints website Resolver, adds: ‘There is really no excuse for call waiting times at banks to be so long.
Customers are being let down and this is unacceptable. It is vital that people should be able to get through quickly.
‘We are months into the pandemic and are facing an unemployment crisis. Banks could boost their call centre numbers and help people get back into work at the same time.’
Barclays says its average answer time is 12 minutes 44 seconds. More staff are taking calls and it expects longer waiting times to reduce throughout August.
HSBC is also bolstering its support team — but asks customers, where possible, to bank online. It claims average wait times are up to seven minutes.
Santander says its phone lines are busier than normal but staff are picking up calls in around four minutes, on average. It advises customers to use its website in the first instance.
Since the start of the pandemic, Lloyds says call volumes have increased significantly, with wait times varying from day to day.