And then there’s my bank. Another exercise in stupidity and
misinformation. Really, you couldn’t write these scenarios if you tried. Truth
is really stranger than fiction.
I received my new MasterCard in the mail from my bank at the
end of August. I’ve had a MasterCard account with them for over twenty years
now, and there’s never been a problem with my name being misspelled, etc. This
year, for the first time, they had spelled my last name wrong. So I called the
bank and spoke to a customer service rep who assured me that the problem would
be taken care and that he would correct the misspelling and send out a new
card. He spent all of about a minute telling me that, and the next few minutes
trying to convince me to invest my money in one of the bank’s stock market
accounts. When he realized I wasn’t going to bite, he switched over to trying
to get me to buy insurance. I politely told him that I was
considering many options concerning how to invest my money, but that the only
reason I had called was to get a new MasterCard. He backed off. I received
my new card about a week later, and the new card had the same misspelled last
name as the first card. So I called again, and another customer service rep
registered my complaint and the problem, and assured me that the mistake would
be corrected and a new card (#3) would be sent out to me. He said he had even
tested the computer system and that it ‘took’ my last name with no problems. A
week later I received the new card, and wouldn’t you know, my last name was
misspelled exactly as on the first two cards. So I called the bank again, and
this time I spoke to a female customer service rep who informed me that the
correct last name was registered in the system, but that there was a computer
error in the system such that they could not send out a new card. She also suggested that I just use the cards with my misspelled last name. When I informed her that this was not right and that I would not be allowed to use these cards by any of the companies I buy from online, she backed off. I asked why
the other two reps had not been aware of the problem that had existed for a
least a few weeks already according to her. Her reply was that they might not
have been aware of it. But how was that possible? This is just one bank with many customer service
reps. Don’t the employees communicate among themselves? Don’t the leaders
inform their employees of a major glitch in a computer system? Am I the only person to whom they've sent a new MasterCard? Surely the IT
department had informed the customer service reps of this problem so that they
in turn could inform the bank’s customers of the same? But no. Apparently with
all the means of communication available to them, they had not communicated to the
service reps that this was a problem. Folks, this is 2017. What is the problem
with these IT departments? Don’t they know how to communicate?
The end result of all my phone calls was that I now have
three MasterCards with a misspelled last name that are completely unusable. I
have no idea when I will receive a new card with a correctly-spelled last name because
the female rep I spoke to had no idea when the problem would be solved. At
least she was honest; I’ll give her that. But I did lodge a complaint, and it
was this—that the bank could have informed its customers that the computer
program responsible for creating new MasterCards was not functioning properly
and that issuance of new cards would be delayed. What is so difficult about
doing this? With all the means of communication at our disposal, there is no
communication at all. Either people don’t care anymore, or they are too wrapped
up in their smartphone apps to realize that customer service and real communication
have gone down the drain. I don’t want to invest in any of this bank’s stock
accounts, nor do I want to purchase any kind of insurance. I want my new
MasterCard, and that is all.
