I need to open a company bank account in order to register for VAT and all that jazz so I have had a go at getting one with mixed versions of failure.
NATWEST
Great, online application, I already have a personal account there, should be quick and easy.
Wrong!
Paper forms arrive, I sign them where the big red X is printed and send them back only for them to have “some queries” and then the single person in the whole company willing and able to speak to me about my application is running a training course.
How about the phrase “single point of failure” ?
HSBC
Just for a giggle, try and phone them to open a business account, go on.
You’ll get an 08457 from the website rather than a real geographic number with lots of automated prompts inviting you repeatedly to enter your account number and sort code.
Rather off putting when as a new customer you dont actually have any of this and just want to speak to somebody.
Even when you get a somebody, its not the somebody you need to speak to, its a somebody who will email somebody else to call you back within 24 to 48 hours to make an appointment to start to open an account.
Co-Op
Sorry, unless you are a member of the federation of small businesses we cannot open a new account, until about september time.
No we dont care if you are a Smile customer already as we have to upgrade the mainframe to cope with any more accounts.
Computer says No…
Tomorrow I shall walk into Lloyds and ask a person if they would like an actual customer.
This whole online and call centre focussed nightmare has to end and soon.
[QUOTE=MrTFWitt;453469]Today I am mostly annoyed by banks.
I need to open a company bank account in order to register for VAT and all that jazz so I have had a go at getting one with mixed versions of failure.
NATWEST
Great, online application, I already have a personal account there, should be quick and easy.
Wrong!
Paper forms arrive, I sign them where the big red X is printed and send them back only for them to have “some queries” and then the single person in the whole company willing and able to speak to me about my application is running a training course.
How about the phrase “single point of failure” ?
HSBC
Just for a giggle, try and phone them to open a business account, go on.
You’ll get an 08457 from the website rather than a real geographic number with lots of automated prompts inviting you repeatedly to enter your account number and sort code.
Rather off putting when as a new customer you dont actually have any of this and just want to speak to somebody.
Even when you get a somebody, its not the somebody you need to speak to, its a somebody who will email somebody else to call you back within 24 to 48 hours to make an appointment to start to open an account.
Co-Op
Sorry, unless you are a member of the federation of small businesses we cannot open a new account, until about september time.
No we dont care if you are a Smile customer already as we have to upgrade the mainframe to cope with any more accounts.
Computer says No…
Tomorrow I shall walk into Lloyds and ask a person if they would like an actual customer.
This whole online and call centre focussed nightmare has to end and soon.[/QUOTE]
I recently closed all my Bank accounts because of similar nonsense, and the fee go round game. You guys got Credit Unions?
PS in the last couple month the CU actully paid me $60 to have money in my checking account! What a change!
I spent a year trying to open an account for my then 6 yr-old daughter. Halifax, NatWest, Barclays, Alliance&Leicester were useless. In the end I got a Post Office account, but that was only after 3 visits to local and general PO’s, 5 phone calls, and 3 sets of paperwork cos they kept sending me the wrong type of account application.
Halifax in particular were appalling, they had to track down a member of staff from another branch to come and discuss it with me, cancelled one appointment, she pissed off to lunch early for the second appointment leaving me to call back, then required enough information to open a library to prove my daughter was who she was. When a child turns round and uses the word ‘useless’ in front of, and about a person, I realised that they ARE that bad, and its not just me being a Wolram
we had the same experience with Halifax, we went to Chelsea Building Society and you are treated really well in there. If there is a long queue and you sit on the sofas, they bring you coffee and a paper to read
Finding out the garage have not yet started repairing my car, when it was due to be finished by this afternoon. Not at all helped by the fact I have plans to drive in to France on Thursday morning (which they are well aware of) - it’s cutting it far too fine for my liking.
Then in three months time you’ll find the seven filters that need to be handwashed to make it suck properly and coupled with your impromptu dust cloud experience chuck the damned thing in a recycling skip then buy a cleaner with a bag that just works.
Work computer broken - they reformatted it last night and seemed fine.
Today, BSOD’s are back.
They’re doing hardware diagnostics this afternoon/evening - hopefully they’ll find it’s bust somewhere as I’m fed up of not being able to use it properly!
Just had two new tyres fitted, and a new wheel after my blow out a few weeks back. NOW I discover through the Tyre fitter that my alloy is fixable via specialist welding. That would have been SO much cheaper than a new alloy. On well. Now I have a spare.
They seem nice enough when I sat around and spoke to them.
Uni policy on fixing laptops is wipe and reformat - far quicker and easier than diagnosing issues like mine. However sometimes something like mine does come up so it has to be diagnosed. In this case it passed the hardware tests they run but they think they may have missed something so it’s going back. And Toshiba will apparently only rip the guts out and put new ones in (same policy as Uni - cheaper and easier)
Then when it gets back, we can start playing with software again. Probably looking at FreeOTFE rather than Truecrypt - it offers a more portable solution (with the FreeOTFE Explorer software) so will be able to access data better where needed.
LOL everybody’s policy (including mine BTW) is wipe and reinstall, which is cool if you do the basics, have backups of data, don’t keep crucial information stored on your local drive yadda yadda yadda
What keeps old duffers like me busy with laptops and desktops is folks getting MP3 players, digital cameras, sooper-phones and other electrickery and then finding out that the ten year old machine linked up to seven USB hubs to support all the devices everyone plugs into it had died. Backups? Copies? No, it’s all on “there” (vague wave in direction of system unit). Please help, school project, stuff from work, pictures of new baby, cow eyes, quivering bottom lip, sweaty moment…
Course I explain each time about copies, backups, in the knowledge that when disaster has just struck people may be able to relate. I know of one from probably hundreds by now who has taken any notice, and a few who have had the loss (and resulting lecture) several times.
