11.21.05
Well, I never!
This is a quick – personal post – or to be more precise, an outrage at one of our local banks here: Absa.
I have never in my life experienced such poor business etiquette as this last month through this “so called†upstanding South African bank.
I was quite impressed with them when they called me up about three weeks ago offering me a free evaluation to create a more competitive bond to my existing home loan with a competitor. All they had to do was a site inspection or property appraisal which was to be scheduled at my convenience. Of course I accepted this.
A couple of days passed and I received a call from one of their estimators who was the rudest person that I have ever spoken to in my life.
If ever someone had to go for “telephone etiquette training†or “how to communicate with clients†he should be forced to go.
He immediately launched at me with intrusive questions such as “confirm that this is youâ€, and “confirm that this is your propertyâ€, and “is there someone there” without informing me who he was, or where he was phoning from. Now anyone with the slightest training in customer service knows the basics in phone communication is to introduce yourself and the company that you are from to the customer first. Basic.
It took me 5 minutes to just get those details out of him. To make matters worse was that he demanded access to my property for the evaluation – giving me an hour notice – which I denied due to inconvenience.
Now the property is 30 minutes outside of where I work anyway, and I needed to confirm whether my tenants were at the property to let him in irrespective. I explained this to him in (very) plain English (which he must not have understood) as he never returned my call to confirm whether he could get access to the property.
I immediately telephoned the Absa consultant (who convinced me of this service) and informed her of the terrible experience and cancelled the property assessment entirely. It was the usual yada yada that she would look into it and get back to me with results and get a new property assessor to contact me for a well timed, scheduled appointment. I did not expect to hear anything back.
Two weeks pass until today, when Mr Rude’s superior calls me to assess what exactly he did that was so “rudeâ€. I ran through the whole story to which he answered laughingly “that is just the way he is†referring to Mr Rude. No apologies!! Which I made clear was totally unacceptable.
He then paused to ask me whether I knew the evaluation had been done…I almost fell of my chair. I had made (or thought that I had made) it crystal clear to Mr Rude as well as the Absa consultant that he would have NO access to my house – that is why I cancelled the assessment directly with head office in the first place.
Eventually Mr Rude himself calls me up – seemingly to apologise, but through his incessant yelling about how he is not in the wrong for entering my property without consent (since he called me the morning) whether I agreed or not he firmly believed that he was correct in his actions. Now I know I live in South Africa and that our crime rate is considered relatively high, but in my books that goes to “illegal entering†since he did not clarify that with the owner of the property, besides the fact that I had cancelled the assessment entirely.
After not being able to get a word through the yelling, I thanked him for his rudeness – and ever so politely told him that I would have no further dealings with his company or Absa for that matter.
I don’t think anything will come of this, as I very much doubt that he understood that either…
But what I learnt from my experience is that I will not consider Absa should I decide to take a second bond in future. If that is how they treat their potential clients, it is indicative of extremely poor business etiquette.
Does anyone know if Absa has a grievance site yet? (like hellkom.co.za ?)
Anyway – will get SEM info out there as soon as my ears stop ringing. Lol.