Some people too stooopid to live
Due to some of my team being off ill and others being on holiday today I was on the front line of the calls for the first time in ages.
I had forgotten how utterly stupid some people can be but thankfully they were kind enough to remind me all day long.
Obviously I cant give details but it started with someone calling up shouting her head off at me because the bank hadnt sent her any money.
After 20mins spent calming her down I finally got the whole story from her.
It seems that over the weekend she went into a natwest branch to pay a check into her account but because there was a crowd had put the cheque into an envelope and put it into the auto credit machine.
Normally this would be fine however in this case there were two problems, firstly that she hadnt bothered to write any details on the envelope so we had no idea what account it was to be paid into, the second problem (and in my mind the vital one) was that she didnt have an account at all. Not just not no Natwest account but actually no accounts anywhere.
So somewhere there is a cheque with her name on that isnt going anywhere.
The day continued in this vein until I spoke with a customer who wanted to make a foreign payment.
This customer had received a letter telling him that he had won the Spanish national lottery of many many millions and all he had to do to claim it was contact some people, give them all his accounting details (including his PINs, Passwords and other security codes) and then transfer £1800.00 to a specified account to pay the administration charges. Then his winnings would be sent to him within the next 4-6 weeks.
Anyone see a problem so far?
The customer had already given these people all his security details and was trying to make the payment to them when I pointed out that it was most likely to be a fraud attempt and that he really shouldnt send anything without at least checking up. Unfortunately he still wanted to make the transfer so off it went.
An hour later he called back to say he had changed his mind when his wife got home and told him what a fool he was.
Its such a pity his accounts which originally had about £90k between all of them had been emptied before he called back.
I really do worry about these people sometimes.