Business banking news review: week ending 6 Feb 2014
This week the news is absolutely brimming with stories regarding banks looking to reform their terribly tarnished reputations by any way they can.
It looks like the whole idea that ‘there’s no such thing as bad publicity’ has run its course in the personal and business bank account industry, considering how many lenders are looking to change the way customers think about them. A good example of this is how The Co-operative Bank has started to hand out £125 to any new customer that switches to one of its current accounts. Not only that but The Co-op will be donating an additional £25 to charity for every new current account customer as well.
If any bank might be in need of a bit of reputation reform it’s definitely The Co-op, especially when you look back at its corporate policies that have gotten it in hot water. Granted that individual Co-op branches are usually noted for their high levels of customer service, it’s hard to capitalise on that if the news is constantly filled with reports of wrongdoing and malfeasance on a corporate levels, isn’t it?
So £125 for a new customer isn’t bad. I wouldn’t sneeze at a bank offering me a little gift like that, would you? Well, what if you lost something like £68,000 in a phishing scam and your bank replaced every last penny?
Sounds completely implausible but it just happened. 65 year old Jenny Parkinson ended up emptying out her Barclays accounts after she was targeted by scammers posing as bank staff. The scam was rather elaborate – she was told that the money where she had her existing banks had been compromised and was guided through a process where she withdrew the cash from both a Tesco Bank account and a Santander account and deposited in to Barclays accounts, which the scammers then drained.
Naturally, Mrs Parkinson spoke to both the police and the Financial Ombudsman Service about the issue- and then the almost unbelievable happened. Barclays actually refunded the 65 year old grandmother’s money as a gesture of goodwill! I’m pleasantly surprised by this on a serious level. Sure it was most likely a public relations stunt but who cares – Mrs Parkinson has her retirement savings back and Barclays just scored some serious points.