Westpac call centre moved overseas

Anyone noticed WBG had recently moved its home loan call centre overseas (apparently in Asia)? What's your experience and do other banks also outsource their telephone customer service in the same way?

 

Two months ago I was incorrectly charged with an arrears notice fee. Made a call in and it took the guy with a local voice a few minutes to decide that there was a mistake in their IT system causing the mismatch between the amount automatically debited and the amount we own monthly, that the error would be rectified and the wrongly charged fee would be refunded. This month I've just received the same notice and another fee charged (for Sept & Oct), had to make a call again and was talking to a staffer apparently from a subcontinent country. It took her and her colleague about half an hour to tell me that they would need further investigation of my account but also agreed to refund the fee. So the conclusion is no conclusion..

 

I've had this as well. AGL added a fee to a bill once that was incorrect and the foreign sounding voice at the call centre kept telling me that it was correct. I stood my ground (I had the contract in front of me that explicitly said that I would not have to pay this fee) and eventually was transferred to another team. This person, with a "local" sounding voice knew straight away that it was wrong and fixed it within minutes.

Or... Maybe they just create an overseas call centre with instructions to "deny everything". I once had Suncorp insisting that they had sent me a letter saying that my loan payments were reducing (I got hit with penalty interest for paying too much on a fixed interest loan). I held my ground and they refunded the penalty "in the interest of customer service". Later they realised that they could have got more money out of customers, they sent a letter asking if I wanted to reborrow that extra payment as I overpaid due to them not sending me a letter saying my payments were reduced. The funny thing is that my original complaint was via email, so I have in writing their insistence that they sent the letter, as well as their admission that they didn't.

 

I did an over the counter deposit at Westpac, their computer system was down and needless to say, I was unimpressed.

I haven't been to Westpac since. (That was circa 1982).

 

Had similar experience too: was making an ATM deposit at a branch, the machine ate the money but refused to complete the transaction or do anything otherwise. Had to wait more than an hour for a person to come and retrieve the notes out.

 

It is frustrating, lot to do with their staff training.

Seems on par experience when dealing with Telstra call center

 

Super frustrating it is..