Sunday 29 April 2012

Another rant against the banks

The SMH has an article about banks data mining to work out which of their customers might be "susceptible" to product offers such as investment funds, superannuation, or increased credit limits. While there are certainly cases of people getting into trouble with excessive/inappropriate levels of credit being provided by banks, I can't see that simply sending people information (when they've "opted in" to receiving it from their bank) about products they are likely to actually want to accept is such a bad thing. What does annoy me a bit is when I receive such product information in the mail, read and discard it, only to be phoned up a few days later by some sales rep wanting to confirm that I received the information. All too often I have to say several times that I don't want to product being offered, and eventually have to hang up on the call, as the sales rep keeps trying to "explain" the wonderful features of the product being pushed. Rather than ban product information/offers being sent to customers whose data suggest that are more likely than average to want the product, the more sensible regulation would be to enforce a "no means no" policy for sales staff. So if a sales rep doesn't terminate a sales call the first time a customers says "no thanks", you could make a complaint (and the recorded conversation would be checked by the relevant complaint authority to check the sales rep was following the guidelines).
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