Recently applied for ANZ credit card. The first time they sent the credit card, they sent it to an old address (which I changed 2 years ago), which was strange considering my statements are sent to my current address. Reported it to lost cards department and they sent replacement card to my updated address. However, the welcome package never came. Few days after receiving my card, called ANZ to activate my card but they send that I need to receive my welcome package before they can activate it. The female operator arranged a welcome package to be sent to me. One week later, still no welcome package, so called ANZ again today and the operator said they will send it out at highest priority. I'm really hoping to receive this package soon as it's holding up a lot of my payments which are due next week.
It's just so frustrating how inefficient people are nowadays.
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I'm currently residing in Scotland and recently decided to buy a property here. This necessitated re-mortgaging my Australian home to give me a deposit, and borrowing the balance of funds from a UK bank. I contacted the ANZ bank mortgage centre [based in Melbourne] – and everything appeared to be straight forward. I applied over the phone, I was told that the loan would be straight forward and was approved in principle – forms were posted to me in Scotland, which I duly completed and returned.
Easy bit over…..
On this understanding, I put an offer in on a property which was accepted, with a definite settlement date, 7 weeks after the offer. Plenty of time, one would have thought, given that I had approval from the ANZ bank.
On the basis of this ‘approval’, I went ahead with my UK loan application. Part of the approval requirement for my UK loan was [understandably] proof of my deposit. Basically, they just needed to ‘see the money’ or at least proof of where it was coming from.
The fun started.
ANZ bank THEN advised me that they would ONLY go ahead when they had proof of what the money was being used for [as if it is any concern of theirs, I would have thought]. I was remortgaging a property to the tune of $150,000 and paying their interest rates …… Anyway, as it was all above board, I advised them it was for the deposit on a property I was buying [to live in, not as an investment].
As an aside issue here – I was advised it would be “better to say it was an investment property – for tax purposes”. i.e. that I was not going to live in it, but rent it out! I have since been advised by my Australian accountant that this was BAD [and wrong] advice, and that banks had NO PLACE giving financial advice. My accountant was right – someone else in the Mortgage Department has since confirmed that the bank has no right giving advice like that, and in fact [because this particular ANZ staff member had an accounting background], that the advice was indeed wrong. Finally, the loan application was changed to reflect the true nature of the purpose of the loan, i.e. to finance the purchase of a property to LIVE in.
Back to my original gripe …….
What then developed was a real ‘Catch 22’ situation, with neither lending institution approving the loan until proof of other part of purchase price was provided. Without going into details [as this is turning into a long drawn out issue – and I’m fed up to the back teeth with it……] ….. this went on and on and on [on the part of the ANZ bank, not the UK bank], to the point where time was running out, settlement was looming, and still no funds from either source.
I have lost count of the emails and phone calls that | have had to make to the ANZ bank to get this sorted. Given the time difference between Scotland and Melbourne [9 hours], phone communication was a nightmare. And every time I did manage to make contact, another day had gone by, and time was getting to be a major issue. Despite explaining the time difference and setting up times for the bank to call me, on two occasions they got it badly wrong – they rang me once at 4.45am and once at 5am.
No matter how much I stressed the urgency of this application, no one was prepared to go out of their way to look beyond their rigid requirements and timelines. I was constantly told how busy they were, and they were a ‘little understaffed’ and that, yes, there was a backlog. And that “other customers’ applications were important too”.
In all fairness, I need to point out that the woman I dealt with initially has tried her best [albeit she was one of the people who got the phone times wrong ………..] – unfortunately she was on holidays for a period of time, and things fell badly in a heap in her absence. Interestingly, when she returned from leave, she wrote a scathing email to all members in her team (and cc:’d me into it], requesting that “SOMETHING BE DONE ABOUT THIS APPLICATION – BEFORE THIS CUSTOMER TAKES HER COMPLAINT
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