Filed under: A Bit Of Inspiration, Attitude & Aptitude, Bank Ads, Business, Customer Service, Emotion, Empathy, Finance
This has been a week of big posts. And tomorrow is going to be mega-big … as I’m going to be away for a couple of weeks and given there’ll be no posts, I have a lot of stuff I need to bang on about before I get on that plane.
I know … I know … the thought of that fills you with dread [me too, to be honest] so to make us all feel ready for that nightmare situation, I thought I’d write something a bit smaller … a bit lighter. Albeit it revolves around identify theft. Specifically mine.
You see a few weeks ago, I received this:
It was real.
Apparently someone had got hold of my NZ Credit Card details and was attempting to buy stuff with it in the US. Specifically DoorDash food.
Personally, if someone is going to steal credit card info, you’d think they’d spend your cash on something massive and ridiculous … and certainly not something where you can easily trace where they are by simply following where their food is being delivered. I’m almost insulted to be honest. I remember the good, ol’ days where my credit cards were used to buy computers at Apple in NY and – best of all – tickets for the Orient Express.
But I digress … because in this situation, the bank noticed straight away and shut any spend down before they could go to extravagant.
So far, so good.
Understandably they wanted me to call them to confirm information … so I was just about to dial when I noticed their fraud departments ‘opening hours’.
I must admit, my first reaction was that it felt a bit strange.
Surely a fraud department would be open 24/7? Ready to respond.
But no.
Worse, as all this happened at 9:30pm on a Friday evening, I was in financial no-mans-land.
To be fair, when I called them the next morning, they were very helpful – but then they informed me that my card was now blocked forever and it would take approx 5 working days to get sent a new one.
Five days.
And just as I was about to plead with them to speed it up, I suddenly realised that this meant I wouldn’t be able to buy any more wifi/gadget trash off instagram. Given in the previous week, I’d purchased an ‘ink stamp’ of my cat, a wi-fi/automated Rubik’s cube and 500 stickers of Nottingham Forest … this was an act of mercy.
Which leads me to this.
Banks have a bad reputation.
A lot of it is entirely justified.
But sometimes – just sometimes – you feel they’re actually being proactive and it feels shocking. Good shocking … but still shocking. Maybe they should try it more often, they may be amazed what it does for their reputation and loyalty.