6 posts tagged “anz bank”

I don’t think Robin will like this. It’s ANZ’s new web ad, running at the moment on Digg in New Zealand. The broken-down car (the wheel comes off first in the animation) is clearly a Fiat Punto. Couldn’t they have come up with something more generic?

   Not unlike the Michael Keaton film Gung Ho (or Working Class Man) in 1986, about a Japanese car company buying a US plant and the inevitable culture clash. The cars being made by this fictional company were Fiat Regatas, from Italy.
   Note to Chrysler: don’t show this film during merger talks.

Is it just me or is it worrying that whomever wrote the copy for the ANZ ads running on Vox does not know that the word criteria is a plural? It’s in the legal fine print, which begins, ‘Eligibility criteria applies.’

I was voted TSB’s favourite customer here in Wellington—I kind of was at the ANZ before head office got greedy and nasty and the staffers I was close to began leaving—but the Taranaki bank gave me better booze last night. After leaving the Wellington branch at 9.30 p.m. last night, I headed into town and went to a few bars with some friends—not my usual course but I wanted to be sober before I got behind the wheel (i.e. I didn’t drink alcohol at the bars).
   The songs: two bars played the Grease ‘Mega-Mix’ of the early 1990s, one played ‘Dancing Queen’.
   Add to all the Xanadu posts yesterday and conversations at the office about Xanadu that led to them, and now, in the mail, a breast cancer media kit from Olivia Newton-John’s charity, I wonder what I am being told (other than Kiwi bars are stuck in the 1990s).

[Cross-posted] If you follow my ramblings, even when they don’t make sense, you know I had my knives out for the ANZ National Bank here in New Zealand for what I think is questionable practice. So it was interesting to meet a few people tonight who are employees of the bank, one of whom was very staunch about defending her workplace against my charges about, well, bank charges.
   Humble pie time first: Sir John Anderson left the bank as a director 18 months ago, so the criticisms I put at him were unfair. I apologize to Sir John.
   Tonight, I don’t know whether I should be applauding the ANZ for brainwashing its younger staff so effectively or whether I should be congratulating myself for closing the overwhelming majority of accounts held there, given that there are people who do not give a damn about the customer.
   While people should defend their positions, they should also be open to hearing others’ viewpoints. Respectfully. The customer is right. Not so, it seems, at the ANZ.
   ‘The bank must make a profit, so it should make it from the mass customer base,’ I was told. ‘How would you do it?’
   I answered, ‘Through investing, as you did years ago before charging us.’
   She argued the usual points of the bank providing a service, before I confronted her with some basic logic that I have stated here before.
   A deposit to the bank is, after all, my loan to the bank. When the bank loans to me, can I charge it a “Jack privilege fee”?
   Around this point I was asked if we could change the subject.
   There are several conclusions we can draw. First, an executive at the ANZ bank, a fairly high-up one, is not open to hearing from her customers. She has her own world, where she has been conveniently conned into thinking the monetarist solution is the only one, when history tell us it isn’t—and that the bank’s cutting of costs over the last 20 years should actually make it more efficient.
   Another member of the staff, a little older but I understand a little more junior, put forward her theory which made a bit more sense, about how mortgages no longer funded the bank’s costs as effectively. She did not know for sure.
   But this shows just how bad the ANZ brand is. Different answers from different people—but the higher up you go, the less they care.
   Front-line staff, as I discussed earlier, cannot offer a credible explanation about bank fees that any customer who has been there for 20 or more years can fathom. Fact: people do have memories.
   And it seems that it is accepted as gospel that customers are to be taken from even at a higher level, no questions asked.
   How well ANZ has managed to blind its staff.
   A good brand is one that listens to consumers about their concerns—and actually levels with internal and external audiences about its policies.
   This experience confirms that the ANZ cannot level to either executives or front-line branch personnel, which means consumers are too far down the food chain for it to reach.
   This Australian-owned bank has been profiting very well from everyday New Zealanders over the last few years, too.
   But I cannot see that continue.
   Any brand expert will tell you that for all the financial analyses that a client shrouds itself in, the minute the brand falters, the effects on the bottom line will be felt.
   One of the symptoms is what I describe above: one based around the hope that people simply do not remember how they behaved before they began cutting their services and putting up charges.
   It is a failure to be transparent and to tell the truth to those consumers—and it only takes one who is aged over 30 to be able to remember the good ol’ days versus what I consider to be the unethical treatment that is metered out today.
   Just as I said a few months ago, the TSB Bank seems to be the only choice New Zealanders have, and at least the profits don’t make their way over to Sydney.
   It was my ‘prerogative’, said the executive, for me to do as I wished with my money, if I had gone to the TSB.
   No attempt to get it back—no promises to look into things. Even others have offered that to keep me on as a customer. Higher up, I guess, no one really cares. A lost customer isn’t important.
   Even if the lost customer is a stubborn bastard with a big mouth.
   If the ANZ wishes, I am happy to run a seminar for them to inform them of the niceties of listening to their customers. Unsurprisingly, I understand tonight that its profits are heading south this year.
   This problem won’t be fixed with advertising, rebranding or PR.
   It might be fixed by giving customers what they want and pursuing something other than short-term profit, which is exactly the message the ANZ has been sending me year after year.
   Because if banks aren’t looking at the long term, then what heck are we entrusting a penny to them?

I went to deposit, as I often do, a US dollar cheque into a New Zealand dollar account.
   The nice lady, Bev, tells me that there is now a $5 fee for depositing a foreign cheque.
   ANZ is totally f***ed up if it believes it can do this.
   I already have spoken to Lynne Russell at the TSB and I’ll be opening my account there at the end of March. It seems TSB is one of the few banks left in the country that understand what banking means.
   To Sir John Anderson and the other assholes making these decisions at the ANZ: when I deposit money with you, it is not a privilege for me. It is a privilege for you. I am loaning you money.
   For that, I expect you to pay me interest.
   You do not ask me for money.
   Why do you think I left the National Bank when Sir Spencer Russell retired? Because the last of the old guard went and all I saw were hot-shot assholes putting up bank charges across the board.
   You were there, Sir John. I know you are a nice guy in the regular scheme of things but why do you have to be the man at the top of banks that make these ridiculous plays?
   Dudes, you don’t realize that despite consolidation, you still ain’t the only game in town, though there should be more competition in banking.
   Banking management is, on the whole, incompetent in this country, though I understand we are still streets ahead of the UK. We certainly are when it comes to service, though in my experience the Swedes are well ahead again.
   You can tell when the Cheques Act 1993 needed to be drafted up because the banks were too incompetent to operate within the law up till that point. We have a perfectly functioning Bills of Exchange Act 1908 that covers cheques, but no—the banks were too confused about it.
   I still operate as though the 1993 act did not exist and mark my cheques based on the earlier act, which is still on the books.
   Most banks have refrained from charging me fees but they cannot do much about these head-office rules, so I will be withdrawing my deposits at, I mean, my loan to, the ANZ Bank and placing it with a New Zealand-owned operation that seems to understand banking and finance better.
   I’d encourage fellow New Zealanders to do the same. There is nothing morally acceptable about these bank fees, especially when it comes to deposits.
   When you borrow money from the bank, you pay them interest. When you lend money to the bank—which is technically what happens when you make a deposit—they should pay you. Even if they didn’t pay you and left it at a zero-sum game, that is still fine, but only just.
   Someone at ANZ forgot what banking is all about.

I am morally against bank fees, and the ANZ Bank has usually been very good at making sure that I am not charged them.
   However, since late last year, despite protests, they haven’t been able to rid me of a $5 per month charge on an account I have held with the bank since the 1990s.
   So, it’s time to leave.
   I understand that the Taranaki Savings Bank has a no-fee policy for balances over $5,000, and it may be time to go patriotic and support a non-foreign-owned place.
   The problem is: there is a single branch out on Lambton Quay here in Wellington. I have enquired before about how deposits are made but if there are Voxers in New Zealand out there banking with TSB, I’d like to learn how you’ve found the process in practice.
   I also have a US dollar-only account, which TSB told me I could have. It’s also fee-free, which beats the $20 per month charge ANZ makes. So how is TSB when it comes to crediting US dollar cheques for a US dollar account?
   ANZ needs to realize it needs to keep a promise. It said it would fix things. It said that with the demise of the old type of account I had, there would be no difference. On both occasions the bank lied.
   I can afford the $5 but it’s the principle. They are making money off my money. In essence, they are borrowing money from me.
   If I borrow from them, they charge me interest.
   If they borrow from me, I should expect at least that I am not penalized for my generosity.
   This is how banks work.
   Of course, with even banking lawyers fuzzy on their understanding of such fundamental laws as the Bills of Exchange Act 1908, I am not surprised that banks themselves operate on questionable advice.
   They have suckered New Zealanders into expecting that fees are normal. Kiwis, they are not normal. They are actually immoral.
   I don’t think you will find any banker who went through the traditional training who will agree that bank charges make sense.
   Why do you think there are seniors’ packages that are fee-free? Because the seniors remember what banking is really like. Treat them like someone not old enough to have a bus pass and a pension, then you can watch Grey Power revolt.
   TSB customers, give me a shout if you have some advice on how your bank is in real life.
   I want my bank to treat me like an OAP.

N.B.: This does not affect Lucire LLC, only Jack Yan & Associates. It will take me a few weeks to sort this out due to busy-ness, so if clients are reading this, don’t change your payment method just yet!—JY