My Funny ANZ Complain

As you all know, we bought our first home early this year. The whole process was a complete nightmare that I keep putting it aside to write. I have a draft written since early this year, another notepad with all the points I'm going to write, but never had enough willingness to toughen up my heart to remember everything and put it to words. Because I know, I would have my blood pressure up and brain boiling while typing it all down.

However, this is a little bit too good not to be written straight away, so here we go :) *deep breath*

I have my home loan with ANZ, and they do have quite a big part in making the whole thing with buying my first home a headache. Therefore, I wrote a letter to them last Sunday and lodged a formal complaint.

In my letter, I said when I decided to take on ANZ homeloan, I felt I was in the good hand. Everywhere there is ANZ ads, there would be those awards badges on them too. So I thought I would be fine. However, from the very first chance, ANZ stuffed it up. 

1. My letter of offer had wrong interests rate on it.
2. I went to the bank to open an offset account to be linked to my loan account. I specifically told the guy, I wanted to open it for my offset account and gave him my account number. Next time I went back to the bank for other thing and casually mentioned it, guess what? My offset account hadn't been linked to my loan -_- AND, I got charged for account keeping fee as it wasn't linked to an mortgage account. This $10 was later on reimbursed.
3. I took home insurance with ANZ too, and later on I wanted to change the excess. So I emailed the woman who I took the insurance with, asking her if it's still possible and how much would it cost. It took her few days to reply and another few days to return and say she'd do it soon. But then she emailed me back saying she couldn't and that she'd get someone from insurance to contact me.
4. Time passed and I got a letter from ANZ saying they noticed that they haven't got my building insurance cover details. They sent me a form for me to fill out with the details. Refer to point 3 please. Duh??
5. Got a letter from them saying they will charge me $107 for registration fee on withdrawal of Caveat. What caveat???? No heads up or further information. Just that. This again was cancelled, after a lengthy chase done by me and my broker. During the whole process, they told my broker they would call me directly, but nope, not a single phone call.
6. In August, they increased the interests rate for investment loan. However, they only sent the letter in September. So by the time I got the letter, my interests charges were already increased.

I lodged this complain to ANZ using their complain form online. I thought hm... good, they have complain form. Plus, the textbox character limit was 10,000 chars, YES! My whole letter was 6000+ characters. So, I copy pasted it into that box. Then... yep, only 3/4 of it got in. Great.

So, while lodging my formal complain, I actually added point 7: Your complain form sucks. It says max 10,000 characters, but can't even take my 6,000 characters letter. 

I'm speechless.

Yesterday, I received a missed call from their complain department, and today too. So I called them back. Told the guy that I received missed call from this person and got this reference number. He then put me on hold and transferred me to that person.

The lady: "Hello Vicky"

Me: "... er... it's Purple Lady"

Awkward....

My name is completely different to Vicky.

Anyway we discussed about the whole thing. She was very nice and understanding and sympathetic and understood that I was furious with the whole thing. I actually felt bad for her and anyone who work in complain department. She tried to explain about the whole caveat thing, and about the interests rate. She explained how the increase was passed on by the government and there's nothing ANZ could do about it. I made it clear that my complain wasn't about the increase, but rather about their delay in notifying the customer and the way they word the letter to sound that it starts in October rather than August. She acknowledged it and promised to pass it on to relevant department. She also asked which branch I opened my offset account and the insurance cover, and said that she's passed my feedback about the complain form to their IT department.

Afterwards, she said as a goodwill gesture and since I've been a customer since 2004... *wrong answer buzzer honks* Another mistake ANZ, true I opened my saving account in 2004, but that account was non-active for almost its whole life! I closed it down few years ago completely. And plus, did she mean that have I not been a customer since "2004", she wouldn't offer me anything? OK, back to her words. "As a goodwill gesture, and because you've been our a customer since 2004, we're going to credit $375 - your Breakfree package fee - to your account, and we'll pass all your feedbacks to relevant departments." 

Honestly, when I heard about it, my thought was, all those headaches, energy, and stress they caused me are only worth $375????? It's worth WAY more than that! I actually felt a little bit insulted. And also, seems like my 11 years loyalty isn't that appreciated too. But that's the only thing she could do, and it's better than nothing. What else could I do?

She assured me this is not ANZ's standard of service. She also said that they would take my feedbacks and improve. To which I reply, yes I hope so too. Coz next time I get the chance, I'm leaving ANZ.

It's funny that when I was lodging a complain, I actually managed to add something to my complain list. And while on the phone with the complain department who's trying to deal with my complain, even they made a mistake on the "Hello", and ended it too on the wrong foot with "since you've been a customer since 2004". 1. I hardly used that account, so obviously they didn't check thoroughly. But well at least they checked something. I give you that. 2. As a goodwill and a customer since 2004, so what would happen if I weren't a customer since 2004? Do they only offer that $375 only if I was with them for 11 years? Hmm..

I'm not happy with the title of this post, but can't think of anything else really :/

The Speed of Gossip

We bought our first home :) yayyyy! After so many weeks of tears and sweat, headache and footache, fights and arguments, we bought our first home.

My broker and solicitor are so not proactive and a lot of time only answer my questions with yes and no (and if I'm on my unlucky days, they just decide to ignore me). So in summary, quite useless. My solicitor is just plain straight useless. My broker is nice, but she's not one to update you with all the progress all the time. You yourself have to ask for updates. You might think I'm just the anxious one, and that is true, I am the anxious one. However, what would you think of this scenario: I gave her a call on Sat to tell her we found the house, and sent her the contract to pass to solicitor. On Sat night, I had doubts, so told her to hold it. Sunday night I texted her saying to go ahead and send it to the solicitor. Monday afternoon, a solicitor called me telling me the points I need to discuss with the vendor, and told me that since my broker is already on holiday overseas, so I had to talk to the solicitor instead. WHAT??? I think you get the picture.

So, with that, and that this is our first property, I turned to my homeowners friends for advice. 1 of them is my friend's sister-in-law. One day, I asked her a lot of questions. Then that day lunchtime, I put an offer for the house. Short time after, it was accepted and I had to go and sign the contract. Before I left the office, I sent her an email, just to tell her my offer had been accepted. I thought, I've been bugging her all this time with Soooo many questions. The decent thing is to tell her myself instead of from other people. Afterall, we've just been talking hours before, right?

Then that night, at 9 PM, her sister-in-law, which is my friend, whatsapp me and asked, "Purple Lady, I heard you already bought a house?". I was laughing XD I was about to tell her, but she beat me to it :P I said "Yeah, who told you? Your brother?". She said, "No, my mum asked me." LOL to the max XD

So apparently, her sister-in-law told her husband about it after I told her. Then that late afternoon, he made his daily call to his mum in Jakarta and mentioned it to her. Then a few hours later, my friend (his sister) called her mum, and her mum asked her if this is true. ROTFL

That, is the speed of gossip my friend XD I knew it was gonna be fast, however I didn't think it would travel overseas to Jakarta, and back to Sydney again within 6 hours! XD I imagined simpler scenario ie. The wife told her husband, and the husband told the sister :P

Anyway, my friend was scolded by his brother because she asked me directly, so making him ember a.k.a gossiper. And his brother was scolded by his wife for talking to much or in short, again, ember :P

As for me, I'm happy to get a funny story and experience the speed of gossip myself :P It reminds me of when Amy and Sheldon tried to proof how fast news travels in The Big Bang Theory XP