DBS' letter of unfulfilled promise

The turnover of DBS' relationship managers (RM) must be giving the bank a bit of a headache. Each time someone leaves a job like this, it has to introduce the replacement to its customers. 
      I get a letter every few months to inform me that I will be having a new RM and a promise that he "will be in touch with you soon".   I know this will not happen as I have received many such letters in my years as a customer. To date I have not been contacted by any of the new kids on the block.
       I do not know the reason for the lapse but I would like to assume that it is because I no longer use the bank for my financial and investment matters.
So, if there is no business to be done, why bother?
       I guess it is really a practical approach.  Just cut off those who are happy keeping their money with the bank and only need service occasionally.
       If that's the case, it should refrain from routinely sending out these letters on the assumption that the RMs would fulfil its promise of getting in touch!!!

For the Love of Laundry? Celine finds no evidence of that

For the Love of Laundry is a catchy business name no doubt. Unfortunately, it is not providing any tender loving care for one of its loyal customers.
     Looking at Celine's laundry list of complaints, she must have been pretty tolerant about the dry-cleaners' negligence and poor service...until now.
     The latest issue in the long saga over its awful service is the loss of her dress -- for more than a week.  "It's a big blue stiff dress, impossible to misplace," she whats-apped me. 
      I could imagine her exasperation when I read the list of her encounters with service neglect and indifferent attitude.
      But what really blew her top this time was the silent treatment she received when she emailed the company to find out what was happening.
      And when she finally found time to call the cleaners' office today,  she said "no one could tell me anything."
      Here are past issues she has had with them...
* spoilt a Zegna polo shirt; they said they "could not make it better" but it was rescued by another dry cleaner
* failed to return a belt from a dress after dry cleaning; they had it with them all the while but never bothered to let her know until she discovered it herself when she went to search for it.
* black streaky stains on her white shorts; again said they could not be removed without bothering to try, but the other cleaner did it for her.
* said they would repair her clothes; even wrote on the receipt but it was not done, and they did not even bother to tell her it was not possible.
* buttons on her suit cracked because they failed to wrap them up when cleaning.
* folded a man's work shirt when they were specifically told to hang it.
* put her clothes on the floor when she sent them in. When asked why, the woman there said "This is what we always do".
      Despite all these bad experiences, Celine continued to patronise them because the United Square location was  a convenient drop-off point and she was also hoping against hope they would change.
     Now, after this latest episode, she is having second thoughts.
     "They are supposed to be upmarket dry-cleaners but they never seem to learn from their mistakes," she said.
     For the Love of Laundry is said to be the first company here to use a toxin-free technology that is environmentally-friendly. It was started by banker Wee Cho Yaw's grandsons -- Teng Wen and Teng Chuen.

Johnn waits and waits for reply from SPH

       I can understand my friend Johnn Ong's frustration when he told me this morning about his attempts to give feedback to Singapore Press Holdings on his Straits Times' digital subscription and how he ended up without any sense of satisfaction.
      Johnn, a subscriber to both the print and online versions of the newspaper for many years, told me that his iPad service was abruptly cut off early this month.
       He subsequently learnt that his older model of the iPad was no longer compatible with the changes that had been made for the digital service of the newspaper.  But there no notification given about the changes, he said.
       His wife called SPH customer service and was "truly aggrieved by the services provided."  The people who attended to her were not able to answer her queries satisfactorily.
       Johnn said it took him a week before he realised that SPH was not able to service those subscribers who were using the older version of the iPad.
       As his iPad was still in good condition, he did not think he should buy a new one just to get his daily news from the tablet.  What irritated him was the fact that he was not made aware of the changes made to the delivery system that rendered his iPad obsolete.
       He tried to speak to a senior manager about his problem but somehow his attempts were blocked. So he decided to write an email to a customer service officer. That was on September 8. To date, he has not heard from SPH.
     Johnn now wants to know whether SPH would compensate him for the remaining part of his subscription as he believes it was not able to deliver a service that was part of the contract.






      


 


   


        

Newly-wed's letter to Ryanair -- 'The best complaint letter ever"

    

	I have just read a complaint letter to budget airline Ryanair that I would consider "the best complaint letter that I have read".   It is so brilliantly written that I thought I should share with you. It is pasted on Facebook and has garnered thousands of "like". Enjoy... James Lockley April 24 · Posted to Ryan Air today; Dear Sir/Madam, I am writing for the attention of your customer experience team. I am definitely a customer, and believe me, you didn’t fail providing us with an experience. My wife and I had booked to fly from Stansted on the Thursday 17th April, evening flight to Bratislava. After 2 hours of fun, fun, fun, stuck on the M25 doing 20 mph, we arrived at Stansted check in with just one hour until the flight. Knowing the strict Ryan Air policy on ‘check in closes 40 mins before the flight’ as you are the Low Fare Taxi of The Skies, we went straight to the Ryan Air assistant and explained our plight. She said we were still within the time and all would be fine but we had to make the attendant at check in aware and he would assist from there. We approached the attendant as instructed and explained. Unfortunately, in the main part, due to him being a child, and forgetting to bring his mother to work, he heard only half of the words before his brain fell apart like a wet cake.  He led us to the line for closing gates, advised we should wait and all would be ok. We stood patiently in the line for 20 minutes. We got to the front of the line and the lady, who we shall from this point refer to a Vacant, explained that she had literally just that second closed the flight and we had missed it. We complained that we had done as instructed and she said it was the child’s fault because he should have advised her that we were trying to board a closing flight and that because he hadn’t told her it was therefore our fault we had missed the plane. Confused by this process of blame apportioning, another check in clerk, who we shall refer to as Not That Bright, tried to blame us for not responding to the last call for the flight as we should have made ourselves known. I argued that the last call had not been made. Not That Bright then questioned Vacant on whether she had done a final call. Vacant did what she does best and looked, well,…… After establishing that the child had not informed Vacant we were here, and Vacant had forgotten to do a last call and that all of this was irreversible, and my fault, Not That Bright and Vacant conferred to agree this was not a problem they wished to deal with and told us to get in a very, very long line of very, very unhappy people at the quite wrongly titled ‘Customer Services Counter’ as it was in fact a Customer Shouting Desk. We complained and requested the attention of a manager. Out came Colin, a man so angry all his hair had literally fallen out. He was so aggressive I can only assume he had accidentally inserted something sharp into somewhere private and been unable to remove it before he came to work. He was definitely a middle Gimp. I know this as Vacant and Not That Bright were clearly quite scared of him, and he can’t have been a Big Cheese as he was talking directly to customers and we all know from the papers that no-one in Big Cheese management at Ryan Air has ever seen, let alone spoken to an actual customer. Middle Gimp had clearly listen hard at Ryan Air Middle Gimp school as he managed to take two perfectly calm and sane adults and in a matter of seconds reduce them to angry people considering violence. ‘Check in opens 3 hours before the flight’ he barked repeatedly as if it was the answer to every question in life. We tried to ask Middle Gimp direct questions about why it was necessary for us to miss the flight because the Child had forgotten to do his job, and Vacant had forgotten to do hers. ‘Why is this our fault, and why should we miss the flight because Ryan Air staff have admitted they made errors?. ‘Check in opens three hours before the flight’ ‘Do you acknowledge we have just cause for complaint as we tried to do the right thing and the only reason we are not on the plane is because of communication failures with Ryan Air Staff?’ ‘Check in opens three hours before the flight’ ‘What colour are my trousers?’ ‘Check in opens three hours before the flight’ ‘Do you think economic sanctions on Russia will diffuse the escalating situation in Ukraine?’ ‘Check in opens three hours before the flight’ ‘Were Man Utd right to fire David Moyes?’ ‘Check in opens three hours before the flight’ ‘My tinkle is hurting, could you take a look if I promise not to tell anyone?’ ‘Check in opens three hours before the flight’ Middle Gimp then conferred with Vacant and Not That Bright, and agreed that this was all our fault as we should have noticed that Child had made an error and we should have called the flight ourselves to assist Vacant in doing her job because she was clearly busy being, well,…... Middle Gimp then insisted we go to customer the Customer Shouting Desk, as he was definitely not going to do anything else. This was handy as the queue was very long so that by the time we would reach the front the plane would be half way to Bratislava and the problem would be solved. We waited patiently in line as customer after customer stood at the desk to hear the same song; ‘No, no, I can’t do that, no, there are no Middle Gimps available, no, no, sorry, no, give me all your money’ We got to the Customer Shouting Desk and explained our plight to the lady there (who was actually very nice and clearly should not be working for Ryan Air as a result). She apologised but explained that Middle Gimp had finished being angry for the day and had returned to his padded cage and there were no other Middle Gimps around.  We would have to book in to the flight for the next day and we would have to pay £110 each to change the ticket. When she tried to re-book the flight she said that the flight we had tried to get was actually delayed by 1 hour and still at the air port and that what we should do is run to the gate with all our luggage, she would call through and they would check our bags into the hold at the gate. We ran as fast as we could, which is not very fast because I am fat, to security to do as instructed. Security advised us that because our flight should have left, even though it hadn’t, the ticket machine would not open the barrier for us and we would need to return to the Customer Shouting Desk. We waited patiently in the very long queue yet again for about 40 minutes to discover the nice lady had also gone home now so we had to explain the whole thing again to a new lady that looked like all the joy had been removed from her life at birth. She recited the Ryan Air customer services song with a sterling level of apathy and dreariness, I am surprised she could muster the will just to breather and stay alive. ‘No, no, I can’t do that, no, there are no Middle Gimps available, no, no, sorry, no, give me all your money’ She recited it with perfection, Middle Gimps across the world would have been in awe and the effectiveness of the techniques taught in Middle Gimp School. Seeing no other option but to hand over all our cash and come back the next morning we happily paid and got new flights. As the new flight was at 6.25am in the morning we decided to get a hotel, we paid £79 for a room and got a taxi. So, our customer experience was insightful and liberating. From the incompetent Child with a brain so full of girls and Vauxhall Corsa modifications he couldn’t actually listen or speak, through Vacant and Not That Bright who decided on reflection that anything they did wrong was our fault for not pointing it out to them, right through Middle Gimp who made a Tasmanian Devil look calm and Zen like, and the sad one, oh so sad, having every last drop of life sucked out of her by her chosen career at the Ryan Air Customer Shouting Desk.  I very nearly jumped over the desk just to give her a cuddle and tell her everything would be alright if she could just muster the will to leave the Ryan Air Customer Shouting Desk and find a more fulfilling job, like starting the very first Israeli pork pie factory, or being a parking attendant in Tower Hamlets, or in fact just resigning herself to a slow and uncomfortable death would have been indistinguishable from the current position and would require much less effort. The net result of this ‘experience’ was; New Flights - £220 Hotel £79 Taxi x 2 £50 Worlds most expensive sandwich in the only hotel we could get £35 1 x significant breach of Tort Law (2008 as quoted by Lord Atkin) by Ryan Air, Google it, it’s a cracking read. I will leave you to decide the monetary value of this. 1 x very angry and upset wife, in particular with Middle Gimp for being so unbelievably rude. 1 x Missed wedding reception for our Slovakian family (sorry, forgot to mention this nugget earlier) who all turned up from all over the country to see us for an event we were forced to miss, because Child and Vacant are clueless at best and Middle Gimp has anger management issues. So, thank you Ryan Air for a comfortable and enjoyable experience. I have watched a program called the news so I fully expect this to land on the desk of the customer services team underneath the empty bottles and sandwich wrappers that you also file there. You treated us badly, you cost us money and made us miss our wedding reception through a display of incompetence I have not seen since Greece was allowed to have money and a cheque book. I sincerely doubt you will do anything about this, compensate us, apologise, or even respond according to the news, so I have sent this recorded and sign for delivery to absolutely confirm my opinion of Ryan Air and that it is not just ‘lost in the post’ Regards You bunch of……………. DJ Lockley P.S. Maybe Middle Gimp in particular, but Child, Not That Bright, and Vacant should purchase one of your reasonable priced tickets and go to Slovakia (assuming they were actually allowed on the plane. The Ryan Air employees there are smart, clever, bilingual, helpful, and polite and they should in my opinion experience an example of how they should do their job. The Slovak staff could explain it to them, but they wouldn’t be able to understand it for them, so it may be a waste of time after all.

 

 

 

 

 

Bouquet for Volvo's Doy Chan

It's nice when one is shown some goodwill that arises from an employee's ability to show his initiative. Better still if the recipient is yours truly.

It all started on Sunday when my three-year-old Volvo car decided to stall on me after I had dropped my golf bag at SICC Island Location.  Luckily I was able to nudge it to the side so that it would not be holding up traffic.

About two hours later, after the Automotive Association technician had pronounced it was not the battery but the alternator problem, it was towed to the Volvo workshop in Alexander Road.  It also meant the end of what I thought would be an enjoyable day on the golf course.

The next morning, Volvo's service consultant Catherine Lee, called. I told her what the AA said was the problem.  A subsequent call a few minutes later, she gave me the bad news -- the culprit was indeed the alternator and that it would cost me $1,600-plus to get it replaced.

I protested as I was not happy to have to pay for a new alternator because my three-year warranty had ended less than a month ago.

I argued that it was ridiculous that an alternator could last only three years, especially when the mileage of my car was so low. I asked that it be replaced free of charge.

It was apparent that Catherine was not in a position to grant my request, so I asked to speak to someone higher up.

In less than 30 minutes, a guy who identified himself as Doy called me. After I explained to him why I should be entitled to a free replacement, he, in a pleasant, non-defensive voice, said he understood what I was saying and agreed readily to my request.

However, he said he would have to charge me for the labour cost, which I thought was a fair compromise.

But I really appreciate Doy's initiative and willingness to look at the problem from my point of view. 

I phoned Volvo's service centre today to find out more about him.  The man who answered my call said his full name was "Doy Chan".  Asked if his designation was a service manager, he quipped: "Not yet".

Doy is now a service supervisor, but if first impressions are anything to go by, I bet he will become a manager real soon.

A bouquet for Doy Chan!

OCBC gives Anne a pain in the butt

I thought I was the only one making noise about the short-sightedness of our consumer bankers when I posted my story yesterday about DBS Bank ("DBS leaves me breathless").

 

     Two days ago, my friend Anne Wong suddenly surfaced in my email to relate her unhappiness with OCBC online banking under the headline, "Mindset of Singapore bankers?"

 

     This was what she wrote:

 

"I have just got off the phone with a lady from the OCBC call centre.

Before writing this, I visited your blog to catch up on the latest before emailing about my lousy experience with OCBC (NOT the fault of the lady at the call centre but of the bank’s boffins).

It’s ironical that you have been having troubles with DBS and someone else was given the run around by HSBC. But timely too because OCBC is now giving me a severe pain in the butt!

Tonight I went to do my usual, regular transfer to cover outgoings for the next few months. Lo and behold, I could not effect the transfer of funds to an account because OCBC ONLY offers FAST transfers - at a much lower transaction limit.

Instead of adding the FAST transfer facility as an additional option, OCBC has replaced the previous transfer option with FAST but LESSER transfer!

So what’s one to do?

OCBC suggests splitting the transfer amounts -- which necessitates spending more time and effort to make the transfer than before!

Another alternative the call centre lady gave me was to make the transfer using the recurring or future dated facility. I had to inform her that when I went to the page for managing payees, I was faced with two options -- DELETE payee or ADD payee.

And when I clicked on managing recurring or future transfers, it said I had none registered!

In the last few years OCBC has made cosmetic changes, essentially to the presentation of information.

But now they have fiddled with what was not broken and, in the process, broken it.

I thought online banking was for the consumer’s convenience, but how convenient is it to make multiple FAST transfers instead of one ‘normal’ transfer?

The thought passed through my mind to change banks, but if HSBC and DBS are as muddle-headed as OCBC what are the choices? It would seem that the odds are stacked against meeting a bank that does basic banking well in Singapore!

And to think that today’s newspaper proudly proclaimed that Singapore students are tops at problem solving!

Are we declining faster than I feared?"

 

Well said, Anne.

DBS leaves me breathless!

It's confirmed.  DBS Bank does not consider personal assets exceeding $2 million to be good enough to grant retirees credit limits above the regulatory norm for their credit cards even though the Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS) has provided for this.

     And yet it says it is "in alignment with the MAS regulatory parameters on unsecured credit card limits."

     In his reply to my letter asking for an explanation why I could not qualify for a permanent credit limit increase, Mr Anthony Seow, the bank's executive director for Cards and Unsecured Loans, says:

    "A bank is indeed permitted to grant credit limits above the regulatory parameters on unsecured credit card limits of 2 months' or 4 months' income to a Singaporean cardholder whose total net personal assets exceed S$2 million or who receives an annual income of at least S$120,000.

     "Nonetheless, we also have in place further parameters that govern our respective credit policies and guidelines; these are proprietary to the Bank."

     Bottomline?  All retirees who do not have an annual income of $120,000 even though they may have assets worth more than $2 million, are not considered risk-worthy and therefore cannot get their credit limit increased without security.

    The bank does not care whether a retiree has been a customer for close to 50  years, a Treasures member since its inception (which means the bank would have utilised his  fairly substantial deposits over many years, paying pittance in interest) and has never defaulted on his credit card payments.

    Why is there  this prejudice against retirees who opt to take it easy as they have more than enough personal assets to see them through their sunset years?

    Why does the bank need to ask such people to place a minimum of $10,000 in fixed deposit as a security before it is willing to grant their requests? 

    Why isn't the trust reciprocated as these people have bank deposits that are worth much much more than the $10,000 being asked for? 

    Where is the convenience promised for Treasures members when a simple request like this one cannot be acceded to?

    The irony is that the bank is in fact making it more inconvenient by having its own "proprietory parameters" and yet has the cheek to declare that it is "in alignment with MAS regulatory parameters."

     What's even more annoying and mysterious is that the bank had never disclosed the MAS' criterion that it could grant our request based on personal assets until it was told to me by our regulators.

     From what I have experienced, DBS'  "Living, breathing Asia" tagline leaves me...breathless!!!