The following is a copy of an email I sent the ANZ bank.
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Sparse Customer Serice Team,
I am writing to you out of frustration at the way I have been treated as an ANZ customer. My wife and I have had two credit cards plus two additional cards, plus Business Banking, online share trading account, and access saver account and a V2 investment account. I have been a customer since the early 1990's. I have voted with my feet and closed everything with the ANZ bank. I have just recently got a business loan for a car and I am about to get a home loan. None of these loans were or will be with the ANZ for the following reasons;
My interest rate was around %18.95 and recently moved to %18.99 on a Qantas Telstra VISA and a GOLD VISA. I had a $1500 limit on the Qantas and $25,000 limit on the GOLD. Both of these cards for long periods of time sat at maximum levels. I was really struggling to get the balances down. I can't tell you how disappointing it was to receive mailout after mailout offering me a bigger balance. This was not helpful. Under the circumstances it was in your interest to have my balance increase but it was definitely not in my interest. Since I was struggling to reduce the balance I went into the branch at Maitland, NSW to speak to someone about reducing the rate on my card. I was informed by the teller that I should contact te CARDS dept on 13 22 73 to discuss my options. The best the branch could do was open another credit card for me but not transfer the balance. This was not suitable as it still left me with around $25,000 @%18.95 interest.
I called ANZ Cards. In short their answer was there was nothing they could do. Very unhelpful. At this point you lost me as a customer. I was determined to get away from the ANZ as the way I was treated was not very professional. Sometime after this I had a call from an ANZ representative performing some kind of survey if I was happy with the ANZ. I said to him,"do you really want to know what I think?", he said yes. I then set about retelling the story to the ANZ representative. To this date no one ever got back to me about this.
I contacted the local Maitland branch again. I was more upfront about not wanting to use the card and wanting to pay it off as quickly as possible. This time I was told something different again. I was told I should get a personal loan to pay the card out. I was given the card for the business banking associate and told to get my financials from my accountant and make an appointment. Well it was going to be several months before my financials were completed. By this stage I am hearing lots of advertising for credit cards with rates as low as 8%. I was so frustrated by ANZ Maitland and ANZ Cards that no-one would listen or help. I called ANZ Cards again, this time, very, very frustrated. Still they couldn't help.
So I knuckled down, saved and finally got my balance on my GOLD visa down to $10K outstanding. With one last push I was able to pay the GOLD Visa off. I still had my Qantas Visa but out of sheer disgust at the way I was treated I canceled it and every other account I could find with ANZ listed on it.
With great pleasure I called back CARDS to cancel my account. This time I was transfered to another division in CARDS. The representative went about trying to stop me from canceling my cards with ANZ. He then proceeded to offer to reduce my rate to 6.99% or something similar. I couldn't believe it! I still can't believe it. I asked him about the two visits to the local branch and four previous contacts with ANZ over the phone to try get me rate down. He said that they were the only team that had the ability to reduce rates.
Let me get this straight. You give your most powerful customer service, decision making, relationship marketing tools to your account closing department. Thats real dumb. I would fire whoever came up with t
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