the mozo blog

Perhaps it’s the looming prospect of a few days break or maybe a few too many cups of eggnog at the Christmas party, but the banks’ proverbial sleighs really do seem to be a few reindeer short at the moment. Westpac’s banana smoothie video is an obvious case in point, but our video parody, Westpac Bank Bananas really says it all. With little more to add to the debate I decided to cast a wider net and look at what happens when the banks get a little carried away with their ideas on customer service.

I strolled down to a Westpac ATM and, upon instructing the machine to dispense my last $20, was greeted with an additional screen asking if I wanted the personal details of the bank manager. Partly intrigued and mostly bored, I wasted no time in pressing yes. I found out that the manager, Peta Cruickshank is, amongst other things, “pulling out all the stops”, “for blitzing fees” and is “dedicated to giving me fast answers”. In need of a fast answer as to what to buy my Dad for Christmas, I decided to call Peta on her mobile number. It went straight to: “you have reached the voice mailbox of ‘private number’. Beep”. She still hasn’t got back to me. Personal touch indeed.

It seems that this strive for customer service is rearing its ugly head at every turn. A friend who works for the financial services union told me that an unnamed bank’s renewed customer service push has seen quite a few complaints from staffers. Apparently the bank calls customers at random and asks them how the service was last time they were at the bank. If the rating is under 9/10, it impacts the staff member in question’s performance review. Here’s a particularly disturbing example: a customer was attempting to withdraw money and the ATM jammed so he had to go in to the branch to sort it out. The staff were very nice and helpful, but the customer gave the bank’s customer service a ’0′ due to the ATM inconvenience. The helpful staff member got given a ’0′ and a mark on her customer service record despite the incident being a result of a faulty machine. Don’t you just love it when the system works?

As an aside, would anyone else who’s seen the Commonwealth Bank’s most recent TV ad actually prefer their branch to have a basketball hoop instead of a customer service promise? Customer service should be a given and a basketball hoop would be a nice way to bide the time while the old woman in front of you counts change at the teller. Speaking of which, a male colleague of mine walked into a Commonwealth branch the other day, spoke to a young female teller and upon completing the transaction was asked to rate her out of ten. Cue awkward pause. He smiled, told her “11″ and bemusedly strolled off.

Ratings out of 10? Mobile numbers? Perhaps these lonely bank managers are fostering some kind of dating scene at branch level. Christmas is a time to spend with people you love after all!

Compare banks at Mozo.com.au

It’s not yet been a week since Mozo’s VICE Presidential race kicked off, and already Australians have confessed to a quarter of a billion dollars worth of spending sins. Who knew you were all so profligate?

Well, we kinda suspected…

But the big surprise has been the vices themselves, with Gadgets taking the lead on $77 million, closely followed by Shoes & Clothes.

Seems we’re a nation of chic geeks.

So what ever happened to the party-hard Aussie yobbo? After a strong start, Booze has drooped to a groggy $15m, and Ciggies are only coughing up $4.5m.

Of course, it’s early days yet, and having stepped over more than one xmas reveller on the way to work this morning, Mozo thinks there are a few sinners holding out on us…

So pop an aspirin and join the race to become Australia’s first VICE President.
http://mozo.com.au/vice-calculator

That five grand – and limitless kudos – could be yours!

The truth behind the comparison of banks and banana smoothies! Westpac tried to justify its interest rate increases by comparing themselves to a banana smoothie company. This video covers a few aspects that they forgot to mention…

Dear Mozonians,

Do you know how much your Vices are costing you? If you’re anything like us, you’ve got no idea just how bad it is. All those coffees each week, the shoes clogging up your cupboard, the night on the drink that mysteriously drained your whole bank account – and let’s not even get started on Christmas and New Years.

Truly, we are a viceful people.

But here’s the good news: We’re looking for Australia’s First Vice President! That’s right, we’re going to reward the vices you try so desperately to hide!

Simply head to our Vice Calculator, tot up that vicious spend and come up with a campaign promise to smite your vice. The candidate with the best promise will win $5000!

Follow the campaign trail on Facebook and Twitter to read and vote on your rivals’ promises, and be sure to boost your supporter base — get your friends to vote for you.

The VICE President will be inaugurated on Australia Day — so join the race and start campaigning today!

Team Mozo

Electoral Regulator

I warned you.  Westpac were off the mark early on Tuesday morning with an aggressive term deposit rate, and I blogged that it would put pressure on home loan rates to increase beyond the RBA.  Bingo!  Westpac was first out with that announcement as well, so clearly they’d planned the whole thing: put out the term deposit good news first to take the sting off the home loan bad news.

St George are matching the Westpac term deposit offer, so no prizes for guessing what their home loan rates will do.

Now watch the other sheep follow the leader.

Compare home loans at mozo.com.au

Compare term deposits at mozo.com.au

Westpac has just launched an astonishing 1 year term deposit rate this morning: 6.80%.  They’re not even waiting for the RBA announcement this afternoon.

A 1 year rate of 6.8% is an enormous rate, bigger than any 1 year or even 2 year term deposit rate in the market.  Yesterday the best 1 year rate around was an online special from Rural Bank of 6.25%, and the best the Big 4 offered was 5.5%.  You couldn’t get any more than 6.5% even if you locked your money away for 2 years!

It’s true that term deposit rates have been on the rise for a while.  Even before today’s announcement, the average 1 year TD rate was 1% higher than 12 months ago, even though the Reserve Bank rate is still much lower.  But up to now, it’s been the smaller players leading the charge on Term Deposits rates: yesterday’s leading 1 year deposit rates came from Rural Bank, AMP, Bank of Queensland and Bendigo.  That’s primarily because they’ve struggled to fund their lending compared to the Big Banks, and therefore need to attract more deposits.  So the fact that today’s aggressive move has come from Westpac is a real eye-opener.

We’ve been blogging here at Mozo for a while about the emerging savings account rate wars.  Now the conflict is spreading.  The other players will need to sharpen up their own term deposit rates in order to keep money coming in.  This is a great time to be saving!

But we have to wonder, at what cost to loan rates?  Last month, Commbank CEO Ralph Norris was blaming higher term deposit rates as one of the things driving up home loan funding costs, and one of the reasons why he wouldn’t rule out increasing variable home loan rates by more than the RBA increases.  This certainly isn’t going to help homeowners!

Compare term deposits with mozo.com.au