This morning we had to go into the bank as granny's debit card had been compromised. Two weeks ago she received a call from the banks fraud office querying a transaction. Someone was trying to pay with a cloned card and it was neither of us so we confirmed it was fraud and the transaction was denied.
A new card was ordered online with the bank which we have not received as yet and yesterday another fraud attempt happened this time on the new card which we do not have in our possession. The fraud office said it was best to go into the branch and collect the new debit cards.
This new attempt on a card we do not even have yet sounds ultra fishy as my mind tells me the fraud is happening from with in the bank as no one else would have the new card details. Whilst at the first branch we were informed they do not process the debit cards anymore and this is all done online and would have to go to another branch. At the second branch they were reluctant to issue new cards until I started telling them what I thought about their new policies and two new cards were processed rather quickly.
I guess it is time for a new bank as between the various departments they are sending mixed signals and no one has any idea what is actually going on. The women at the second branch realised very quickly the account was about to be shut and moved to a new bank. We were instructed to personally go into the branch by the fraud department and we were getting the run around for doing so.
I hate banks at the best of times, but for now they serve a purpose and that purpose is slowly running out. If there is no person prepared to help you with your issues in person then you may as well be doing it yourself and the obvious solution is crypto which is coming very quickly.
This morning turned into the afternoon before we were finally sorted and the only reason these fraud alerts happened is we had changed our spending limits down to a miserly $5. These can be adjusted when accepting the payments via the app when they are processed and seems like the safest way to operate for now.
Both branches had only one person working the customer support desk and each branch had a queue of people requiring assistance. I saw something similar when I was at the HSBC branch in England earlier this year which had a gentleman sitting on a couch with a laptop doing bookings via time slots for anyone with any queries. This just comes across as unprofessional when being told you can return in 2 hours. The only reason you are at the bank is for assistance and they should be supplying that service for their clients.
The decline of the branches is something that is obvious to see and there will be no branches within the next 5 years at the rate they are down sizing. Everything is going online and the ones who are going to be short changed are their customers. When this does happen banks that have no personal assistance will lose market share and crypto will start making in roads into the banking sector. Banks are done for and this will happen very fast.