Staff have been contacting the Union all day to tell us about the number of customers coming into branches to complain about the IT migration this weekend. Members in the Bank’s Call Centres have also been inundated with irate customers complaining about the change over, with many of them threatening to move their TSB accounts. Whilst it doesn’t appear to be the melt-down that it could have been, although that could change if the systems are not put right quickly, TSB is being lambasted on all the social media sites by angry customers and the brand is being dragged through the mud by almost all the main media outlets. The story appeared on the BBC and ITV main news programmes. The reputational damage to TSB is unprecedented. Even the Bicester Advertiser has got in on the act. A customer tweeted Paul Pester, the Managing Director of TSB, directly saying:
“@PaulPester Paul, I logged into my @TSB @TSB_News account last night to see the account details of some random person. TSB have really dropped the ball with this. You really need to manage expectations here, your stock response is insulting.”
Many customers have complained that they were kept in the dark by TSB and weren’t aware of what was really happening. Moreover, many have said that they were told by TSB that it was an IT upgrade when in fact it was the migration of customers from the Lloyds Banking Group platform to the new Sabadell, Proteo4UK platform.
Customers are experiencing a range of problems: from being given access to other customers’ accounts, to being credited with large amounts of money and still not being able to log into their accounts well after the new system was supposed to be up and running. In response to a range of problems TSB is telling customers that the fix will either be ready at the end of April or it will be ‘Coming Soon’, whatever that means. The Financial Ombudsman has intervened advising customers to contact them with details of the problems they have experienced. Many customers have also written to the FCA about their migration problems.
No Bonuses Whatsoever
Members will recall that we previously touched on the payment of very large bonuses to Senior Executives following the debacle over the implementation of Proteo 4 UK last year. Our argument is a simple one. If Senior Executives in TSB have lost the business £70 million because they didn’t implement Proteo4UK on time and when they did eventually do it, it was such an unmitigated disaster then the last thing you would give them is a bonus. The Union wrote to Dame Sandra Dawson DBE, Chair of the TSB Remuneration Committee, regarding the payment of bonuses saying that:
“Paul Pester has said: “it was “appropriate” that TSB had withheld the bonuses. The time of “bankers and executives getting paid for not delivering” had passed”. Mr. Pester is right. He did not deliver the new platform on time and TSB has lost £70 million. The TSB Managing Director should not get any SIA grants for 2016 or 2017 and nor should any other executive. In fact, we would urge the Committee to look at previous grants because those should also be withheld for under performance.”
TSB has no compunction in threatening to sack staff for relatively minor rule breaches and any ordinary staff member who caused the Bank even a fraction of this level of reputational damage would definitely be dismissed. The responsibility for the Proteo system failures goes to the top of TSB and we wait to see whether accountability cuts the same way for top people as it does for their junior colleagues?
We will be writing to Dame Sandra Dawson again regarding the migration weekend.
In the meantime, we would like to hear from members about their experiences of migration. Members can contact the Union’s Bedford Office on 01234 716029 or email us at 24hours@tbuonline.co.uk.