Many people know that I am very unsatisfied with the service quality of consumer banking here in Australia. I think it is ludicrous that I am subjected to monthly bank fees to maintain an account, unreasonably low saving interest rate, inaccurate bank statements (is this possible? Oh yes! My recent credit card statement is an example) and unhelpful, misinformed phone customer service personnel. How is this possible? How can the Australian consumer stomach this sort of poor service level bewilders me?

Last weekend, my prepaid mobile carrier had undisclosed service outage (another example of poor service level) but I had to top up my phone call credits. The transaction was unsuccessful and so I rang my credit card company – NAB. Guess what? There was no one manning the phone on the weekends! Their service hours were limited to only Mon-Fri during business hours. Does that mean that as a credit card customer, I have to take a risk and use my credit card, knowing that I do not have recourse to my credit card company during the weekend? This is ridiculous!

People used credit cards for various reasons in various times; emergency/urgent circumstance is definitely one of them. If you want your customer to use their credit card on the weekend, then you must have staff available to support such a service.

Another matter that also irritates me is the lack of accountability from the bank and their call centre staffs. In my latest statement, I was credited with incorrect number of flyer miles. I had to ring up to three different staffs before I got one staff member to recognise that an error had occurred and promised to take action to get my matter addressed. NAB staffs were often too quick to dismiss a customer's concern even over the phone.

Final note, I personally recommend anyone NEVER to use any National Australia Bank “NAB” products. NAB phone centre customer service is unattentive and not customer focused, their commitment to customer satisfaction is lip-service at best, their marketing spend strategy is misguided (ie they spam their already unsatisfied customers with more marketing junk mails) and their fees schedule is unreasonable.

Come next year, I’m going to cancel my NAB credit card.

Related link: Australian banks 'fail' in online mission (SMH)