Beware bank service scam

By Jackie Pearson
I had a call on my home phone at lunch time today from a woman claiming to represent the Australian Bankers' Association.
She was asking me a series of questions about my satisfaction with my current financial institution.
I presumed she was carrying out genuine market research in the wake of the NAB payment system meltdown so I commenced answering her questions as sincerely as possible.
I am an NAB customer so, to be honest, she copped an absolute earful. I explained that I could not believe a highly-profitable financial institution with the brand-new customer-focussed slogan "Less take, more give" could have systems that would allow such chaos to ensue, leave customers stranded (not to mention customers from other instos) and then take out full-page newspaper ads to say gee I'm sorry before the problem was already fixed.
Anyway she only asked me two questions before hanging up. I can't quite figure out why the conversation didn't continue.
Then it occurred to me that maybe it wasn't the ABA calling at all. So I called them, as a consumer, not a journalist.
They told me the "research" call was definitely a scam. The ABA is not currently conducting phone-based market research to check on customer service satisfaction.
So if you get such a call, give no information, particularly your personal banking details, accounts, PINS etc.
We now know that even a bank as big as the NAB can "misplace" millions of payments and take five days to find them. However, we also know banks don't ever ask you for personal account details over the phone so never fall for the "market research" trick.

NAB PAYMENTS MELTDOWN MORE THAN A GLITCH

I cannot believe so many mainstream media outlets are continuing to refer to last week's meltdown of the National Australia Bank's payment system as a glitch. People were left stranded around the country with no cash.
The bank's solution was to offer "cash advances" of limited amounts if you could make it to a branch with proof of payment.
CHOICE has spoken out today (five days after the start of the problem) to say the payment systems our banks are relying on are out-of-date.
Surely this is a governance issue. As consumers we are essentially told to have our pay credited to our account automatically. That's the way the world works so I would think that puts a pretty strong onus on the institutions we entrust with our funds to ensure, even guarantee, access to those funds.
Perhaps it's time the banks used some of their enormous profits to actually build and provide the infrastructure and technology we supposedly pay all those fees to finance.
Or perhaps it's time consumers voted with their feets and, once restored and all funds make it into the accounts they should be in, we close our NAB accounts and find a more trustworthy keeper of our hard-earned money.