My line of work affords me fascinating and often horrifying fly-on-the-wall insight into the way companies deal with their customers.
I’m not in the room, of course, but I read their e-mail exchanges and often hear recordings of their verbal exchanges. Either the bosses aren’t bothering to check how their employees are engaging with their customers, or they’re instructing them to treat them like that — either way, it’s appalling.
Here’s a classic example: Mabel Nhlabathi bought two pairs of boots from Crocs SA online and received them November 17. One pair was too small, so she asked about an exchange. No problem, she was told, just pay a R70 collection fee, which she did, that day. The boots were promptly collected and then weeks went by with no boots and no response from Crocs SA. E-mail after e-mail was ignored.
Finally she got a response. It went like this: “We may not respond as quickly as you would like, we do apologise for any inconvenience in the delay, but please be assured your query is being ticketed.”
“We may not respond as quickly as you would like.” Are you kidding me? This after an entire month had passed since the too-small boots were collected for an exchange, and she hadn’t received her replacement pair, nor, more shockingly, any communication about that. (Nhlabathi has since been refunded.)
Distress and inconvenience could be awarded where a person spent an extraordinary amount of time trying to resolve an issue that could very easily have been resolved.
— Ombudsman for Banking Services assessments manager Edrich Buytendorp.
“We consider the matter closed,” is another middle finger frequently delivered to customers who most definitely don’t consider the matter closed and then turn to me to get them justice. In most cases I do just that, but it’s a battle to get the company to consider paying them interest on top of that long-awaited, very justified refund, let alone any compensation for the shocking way they’ve been treated for months.
To be honest, I’d long given up suggesting such compensation. But did you know that the Ombudsman for Banking Services frequently includes in its resolutions a recommendation that a bank not only reimburse their customer financially, but pay what they call D&I as well — that’s distress and/or inconvenience.
“It’s awarded or offered for a ‘loss’ that does not really have a determinable monetary value, like time taken, distress caused or dignity impaired,” says OBS’s assessments manager, Edrich Buytendorp.
“Distress and inconvenience could be awarded where a person spent an extraordinary amount of time trying to resolve an issue that could very easily have been resolved,” he explained.
The office’s monthly statistics reveal the amount which banks offered customers (in total for the month) when the OBS took up their complaints, and the amounts awarded to consumers by the OBS. That’s for both “patrimonial”, or actual, quantifiable losses, as well as D&I-related ones.
There is, unsurprisingly, quite a glaring difference between the two amounts when it comes to D&I. Let’s take a look at OBS’s December 2020 statistics.
In the case of First National Bank, the bank offered to pay clients who’d successfully complained to the OBS, a total of R3,573 for distress and inconvenience — this on top of the actual financial, contractual losses — and ended up paying R44,423, as recommended by the Ombud’s office. Absa offered R9,500 in D&I payments, and ended up paying R28,110. Capitec offered R2,605 and paid the R18,105 recommended by the OBS. Nedbank offered R3,500 and paid R23,500. Standard Bank offered R15,414 and paid R39,522.
“And in most cases, of course, the consumer feels they are entitled to much more than that after what they were put through,” says Banking Services Ombud Reana Steyn. “We are very conservative in our D&I recommendations. For example, R1,000 to a client who has battled for six months to resolve an issue, with multiple visits to the bank.”
So given those glaring discrepancies between what the bank felt was an appropriate amount to cover they trauma they’d put their clients through, and what the OBS recommended they pay, you can imagine how “conservative” the banks’ D&I offers were.
I just love that mistreated bank customers get some form of compensation for the unnecessary schlep and distress they are made to endure — over and above the easily quantifiable financial amounts they are owed — and I wish that all SA’s ombudsman offices did the same.
It’s a fitting admission and acknowledgment of the extent of the failure by the banks in those cases, because as anyone who has been on the receiving end of it knows, it’s not just about the actual financial loss — the pain and suffering, as they put it in the movies, is immense, and I think the acknowledgment of that, however small, does provide them with some measure of recognition and closure.
So from now on, when I take up one of those cases with a company; where a consumer has been messed around for months with regard to continued billing after cancelling a contract for example, I’m going to ask that a distress and inconvenience amount be added to the refund.
Let’s see how that pans out ...
CONTACT WENDY:
Twitter: @wendyknowler
Facebook: wendyknowlerconsumer
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