Weird phone conversation with CBA

Me: Thank you for your letter advising me that changes will be made to my IO home loans on 17th March 2017. What changes will these be?
CBA: Don't know.
Me: Well, will the interest rate be changing?
CBA: Don't know
Me: When will you know what changes are being made?
CBA: Don't know
Me: So what was the purpose of sending this letter?
CBA: So you are aware we will be making changes.
Me: How much notice will I get once you know what the changes will be?
CBA: Don't know.

 

You have got to be kidding me? I got no letter to date...

 

I got 10 letters today. One for each of my loans!

 

Someone new in their job. No idea what they are doing.

 

Are you sure it was the CBA, and not Centrelink?

 

10 x Centrelink letters .

Wouldn't that be great. When they retire, they could all be consolidated into one Age Pension letter .

 

Did you say "thanks for your help" ?

But really, ask to be put through to a supervisor.

 

As this letter appears to have gone to every IO loan client of CBAs I think there may be several more conversations of this type about to happen......

 

Strange communication strategy - but i guess their going with the 'lets tell everyone sooner and give notice early' approach.

Most lenders simply announce the changes and give a few weeks before effective date. CBA have chosen to let their customers and stakeholders know months in advance they'll be doing what most others already have, but without clear detail of what the changes are.

More info (speculative):

CBA, like Westpac/St George/NAB all in 2016, will be charging premiums for I/O lending. Likely to increase margins/pressure on funding costs - largely a move by regulators to incentivise people to move to P&I for overall health of financial stability.

As a guide, NAB were about 10 bps, St George/Westpac started with 4bps from memory and inched it further still in Nov/Dec by another 8bps.

So using their comparators as an example - it will likely be 8-15 bps, near March/April, for all interest only loans. Likely won't apply to fixed loans.

 

I was thinking the same as Redom. The fact that they are giving the pre warning makes me think it could be larger increase than some of the others to date. Hope not though.

 

I know that many large orgs will do this, they know what the score is, they may or may not have told some of the call staff, but they do direct staff to deny things.

CSR staff are always hit and miss in regard too info anyway.

 

I only got two letters but I have three loans! checked... the third one def still has four more years remaining interest only.

Also... just saw the increased by rate in December! From 4.29 to 4.36 !

 

And did they then ask at the end:

Is there anything else I can help with?

 

Where's my letter. Has someone been stealing my mail again

 

Dammit. I've got 10 of those letters.

 

Got a bunch of these letters today too. Man I hate getting them too, means I have to spend time to remove the personal information...so they can go into the recycling.

 

Just don't teach your kids how to use the shredder. Learnt from experience. They looooove shredding stuff.

 

I quite like the shredding service at Officeworks. Much easier than mucking about with a dinky little home shredder and having to buy oil sheets for it and such. Just turn up with a box of paper and have the good folks at Officeworks shove it through their shredder that can chew loads of pages at a time.