Carded! Is the deck always stacked against the customer?

23-Nov-2006

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Stuart Lauchlan I had that nightmare moment this week. I lost my wallet in a taxi. That's not the nightmare part - that's irritating and annoying but not a nightmare. No, the nightmare was having to call the emergency card cancellation lines from the various credit card firms.

What ensued was a dreary and utterly depressing hour while I sat on hold on various lines waiting for one of our advisers/specialists who are currently helping other customers but please hold the line as my call is greatly valued.

At the end of the hour (was it really only an hour? It seemed more like a fortnight!) I was wound up, stressed out and card-less. The quality of response from the call centres was hugely variable. Top marks went to NatWest who answered the phone quickly, cancelled my card and noted that I had a Mint card as well and did I want that cancelled at the same time?

The absolute worst service came from MBNA who left me on the line for 22 minutes, during which time they played a never-ending loop of up-sell advertising. Shockingly bad - clearly there is no actual emergency card line at all and you're just queuing up with customers who just want to pay their bill.

Amex comes in for a special mention though. The Amex number to call was a Brighton one - in fact the Amex building is about 3 minutes from my front door. So I dialled this Brighton number and got a chap with a rather thick Indian accent who - bless him - had to ask me how to spell Brighton! Really Amex, if you're trying to kid us that you're using UK call centre staff at least make sure they know where they're supposed to be!

But Amex had other surprises up its corporate sleeve for me. A couple of days after cancelling all my cards I got a call from them saying that my payment hadn't been made that month. I pointed out that my cards had been lost and was waiting for new ones. Oh right, said the call centre woman, did I want to make a debit card payment? Err... my cards have been lost and I'm waiting for new ones, I repeated. I'm sorry to hear that, but do you want to make a debit card payment, was the reply. Where do they find these people? I told her that I would make the payment as soon as a debit card arrived which would be quicker that posting a cheque. She seemed finally to get the message and off she went.

I thought that would be the end of it - I thought my debit card would arrive, I would make a payment and away we'd go. Oh, how wrong I was! Six times they called in the next 3 days - 3 times in the one day! Every time I had the same conversation. The last call came 12 hours after I'd got my cards back and had made a debit card payment. So much for joined up customer management.

A couple of general observations:

1. Given that you're calling to report a lost or stolen card, is it really that unusual that you don't actually have the card number to hand to key in on your touch tone telephone before you can proceed any further?
2. And why should it cost more to report your lost card from a mobile phone? Surely you're going to report your lost card as soon as possible and that's likely to mean using a mobile. Still, boosts the revenue stream I guess...

Stuart Lauchlan
News & Analysis Editor
stuart.lauchlan@mycustomer.com

MyCustomer.com 23-Nov-2006
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Not if you use the tools provided

ross holbrook 26-Nov-2006 @ 21:52PM

I have several cards, including a corporate card, along with one of the cards was an insurance policy that took all the leg work out of lost or stolen cards, one call to them and all cards were cancelled and reissued. It pays to read the small print.

Sad Commentary on Business Model

David Mangen 24-Nov-2006 @ 15:16PM

Unfortunately, your experience sounds like a sad commentary on what too often is the business model that banks apply when dealing with their customers. Defining special "gotcha" clauses that trigger special fees, and indiscriminate (as opposed to modeled, probabilistic) upselling often appears to be the norm.

I recall working with one client who, on the basis of our research, elected to focus on a high-value/high touch segment of the market. When creating new product variations to target at this segment, they simply could not avoid the temptation to insert the "gotcha" clauses for trivial infractions into their product, thus increasing the odds that the targeted segment would quickly become alienated.

Don't get me wrong -- under some circumstances these clauses are clearly warranted and the financial institutions have every right to ensure that customers live up to their end of the contract -- but your experience sounds like a seriously botched opportunity to build loyalty with you. Imagine how different your response would be if, upon reporting the cards lost or stolen, they had pro-actively told you that your payment due date was extended without late fees for another 15 days to allow you to post a cheque to them. But this would require that the silo that divides fraud/theft from payments be broken down, and those silos are often quite impermeable in financial institutions.