The customer is always right, but try telling that to the banks. They don't want to know. Now, the regulator is trying to shame them into lifting their game Been to your BMW garage lately? At the one in Chelmsford in Essex, the sales representatives are helpful, friendly and polite. They aim for "10 out of 10" in customer service, according to the posters displayed around the showroom. They are not far off the mark, and when the bill comes, you can still smile.
The Chelmsford car dealership is not alone in the UK. Supermarket chains, landscape gardeners, the little corner shops - they are all doing their best to please the customer. If there is one thing that should benefit in the downturn, it is customer service. It is a simple logic that somehow has escaped the banks. About 7,000 complaints are lodged against the banks every day, according to the Financial Services Authority (FSA), the UK's financial regulator. In the first six months of this year, the banks received 1.3 million complaints, mainly for substandard service and poor advice on insurance and mortgages. And what do the banks do? They drag the issue for months until the customer gives up, or worse, they simply ignore them.
This is the first time the FSA has forced banks to reveal the number of complaints made against them in an effort to improve customer service. It is as damning as an earlier "name and shame" list published by the Financial Ombudsman Service (FOS), the independent watchdog. Lloyds Banking Group takes top spot on both lists. But based on complaint per customer, Barclays takes the cake, with the FSA report showing 250,667 gripes, about 1.19 per cent of its 21 million UK customers.
Lloyds received 288,717 complaints, about 0.96 per cent of its 30 million customers. Still, this is the bank 41 per cent owned by the taxpayers who bailed it out at a cost of £17 billion (Dh98.78bn) two years ago. A bit of gratitude would not go amiss. Just as ungrateful is the Royal Bank of Scotland (RBS), another state-backed bank, with 1.07 per cent of its 15.5 million UK customers making a complaint. This is followed by Santander, with grievances from 1.02 per cent of its 25 million customers.
The FOS also upheld more complaints against Barclays than any of its rivals: a whopping 61 per cent compared with 50 per cent against RBS and 45 per cent against Lloyds. The industry average is 44 per cent. So what must a customer with a serious, legitimate complaint do to get the bank's immediate attention? You could play the bank at its own game by robbing it. But you would end up in jail, for although it is legal for banks to fleece its customers, it is not for private citizens. You could defile its building, like the farmer who sprayed two Natwest bank branches with manure and won £300,000 in an out-of-court settlement in 2000. But this is a rather messy and smelly exercise.
There are easier and less violent ways. One is to write to a newspaper - preferably a national with a good consumer rights column that could shame the bank into accepting and redressing its errors, sometimes even with a goodwill gift. Another effective way is to take your complaint to the chief executive. Check out the website ceoemail.com for their email addresses. But really, a lot of anger and heartache could be spared if banks put customers before bottom lines and bonuses.
Both the FAS and FOS lists were meant to shame the banks into doing just that. The financial regulator in fact has backed it up with a recent rule that companies with more than 500 complaints over a six-month period must publish them on their own website. The FOS threat of public exposure for better service has failed. The FSA tactic appears to go down the same path, with media reports that these companies are hiding complaints data deep in their websites.
Perhaps it is the money-grabbing nature of the industry that makes it difficult for it to change. The much-dreaded double-dip recession might succeed where regulations fail to humble the banks. By then, perhaps BMW and other businesses that have adapted to the hard times will have diversified into banking, taking their happy customers with them. business@thenational.ae