Naming & Shaming.

The problems I described re transferring money from the Coventry Building Society & Post Office Savings earlier this week moved on at a snails pace early this morning. I phoned & spoke to real people. Both assured me that the money had in fact been transferred. Hooray I thought! Out of the woods. But no.

My money goes into some sort of financial limbo land. Seemingly no one can access it, least of all me. My money will appear in my Santander current account by 4.30 tomorrow. This is because these companies do not comply with best practice & use immediate electronic transfer. They use their own antedeluvian FPS system. Why neither of them can transfer direct to my solicitor as others have done is beyond me.

I was even told an out & out "porky". I was told that I should contact Santander because it was down to them to retrieve the money. Not true, Santander have to wait for the money to arrive. When it does, the good news is that they will respond to my transfer request & the money will go immediately to my solicitor. Thank goodness one financial institution is operating in the 21st century. But, the bad news is that it will probably be last thing tomorrow afternoon & completion is the next day.

Then there is BT. I wrote them a letter of complaint about my house move on the 12th August. I won't bore you with the detail, but basically I just terminated my contract on the 29th on the house I have sold. I have a better deal with Plusnet for Phone & Broadband in the new house. I have not had any response whatsoever. I have had to speak to 4 different people & waste well over an hour on the phone, at different times, queuing trying to resolve this. I still don't know whether I'm going to have a problem in the new house with both BT & Plusnet supposedly providing my phone line. I was told by one of the people I spoke to that it wasn't possible to cancel my contract when I move! There is no facility to fax or email BT & there is a mega problem trying to get through to them on the phone.

Finally Co-Op Insurance who do my buildings & contents. Another letter of complaint sent on the 5th August because they didn't do what they are supposed to when I exchanged contracts. What should have happened is that my current house should have been put "on risk" because my purchaser became liable for insurance cover & I became liable for the house I'm buying. I can't tell you how many variations of that I was told to do by Co - Op call centre staff - all 5 of them! No answer to my letter & no one gave me the correct information & updated the policy. I spoke to a person today who said he couldn't deal with it & there is no phone number to call for complaints. However I did discover that my new house is not insured & my current house is. All I could do is send an email to "customer feedback". So, my letter of complaint has been acknowledged, but not acted on & I have not been covered by the appropriate insurance since the beginning of August. I will be moving in in 2 days time & I probably won't be insured.
 
It's a good job I don't have any senior representative of any of these companies in front of me. I think I might well do them physical harm! This is incompetence as well as negligence. It is the worst possible customer service & it ads hugely and unnecessarily to the stress of moving house. It really shouldn't be like this & it is all down to staff training, proper protocols & sufficient people in call centres being in place. Hundreds of people move house every day. There is no excuse for the change over not to be reasonably smooth & for companies not giving their customers the right information.

Once this is sorted & I have moved & have the time I am going to refer this to the relevant ombudsmen. I don't hold out much hope that it will make very much difference though. All any customer wants is staff who know their job & do it properly. If they don't, in my experience, it's often not their fault - It's the organisation itself & the systems it operates. They should be ashamed.