Communication breakdown

A real-life horror story

My partner’s business account has been frozen for two months.

No money can come in and no money has gone out — apart from the fines for his cheques that have bounced, naturally.

The bank have told him it’s fraud prevention. He now needs two signatures on all his cheques.

They say they emailed him to tell him about this change twice — and the emails told him if he did nothing the changes would just happen.

He didn’t remember anything

When he asked what email address they had used to contact him, they went quiet. They didn't have one.

They then had to admit it was a round robin email that had been sent internally and had never left the confines of the bank.

When he asked who was supposed to counter sign the cheques, they didn't have an answer for that either.

His partner had died

His father, and partner in the business, died last year.

The bank had been informed.

They wrote everything down. They even helped my partner change his business from a partnership to a sole trader.

But, strangely, they had no record of this.

Then a disturbing letter arrived in the post

To try and resolve the issue, they had sent out a letter for his mother to sign.

Except his mother died 10 years ago.

And they had been informed about that, too. It was around the same time they upset his father by telling him her name would have to be removed from the business.

Again, this hadn’t been recorded.

Nobody could help him

In five days my partner made five long calls to the bank.

Hours spent on hold while they transferred him from one clueless department to another.

A different, faceless entity every time and nobody willing to take ownership of the problem or responsibility for sorting it out.

It seemed they were so wrapped up in their own red tape, they couldn't find the end to unravel it.

A ray of hope... cruelly dashed

Eventually the bank told him he would need to open another account.

They said it would take 48 hours.

But this quickly turned to 72 hours.

Then a week.

Then a month.

Nobody really seemed to know.

He went into the branch and they completed all the forms for him, under guidance from head office on the phone. They wanted to be sure there were no more mistakes.

But when several days passed with no news on his new account, he was told they had filled in the wrong forms.

A dying business?

The bank account may have been frozen, but time hadn’t stopped.

Bills were coming in and people needed to be paid — the tax bill, for one.

Suppliers whose cheques had bounced were demanding their money.

The business insurance was due — without which the business could no longer trade.

And customers couldn’t pay their bills, so there was no money coming in.

A lesser business could have crashed out and the bank would have just watched it burn.

But my partner was resourceful and dipped into his savings.

It still isn’t resolved

Two months on and he still keeps receiving paperwork.

‘Sign here’ it says on a cheerful yellow sticker.

So he dutifully signs and returns it.

Then, nothing. Until the next one arrives.

Is he any closer to having his account reopened? Or getting a new one?

Nobody seems to know.

When communication breaks down, EVERYTHING breaks down

This whole sorry mess has been the result of bad communication.

Information not being recorded properly or, in some cases, not being recorded at all.

Communications being sent to the wrong people, while the right people were never notified.

Then, when everything started to implode and people didn’t know what was going on, they passed the buck and ran away.

“Save yourselves!”

Leaving a valued customer standing in the wreckage of his business, with nobody willing to help him.

And while we don’t know when, or even if, normal service will be resumed, we do know who will be writing a strongly worded letter of complaint when all this is over.