Showing posts with label computer problem. Show all posts
Showing posts with label computer problem. Show all posts

Monday, September 18, 2017

What's wrong with this picture? v2

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. 


The surreal world we live in

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