I’m renting a place here in Fremantle for 3-4 months, and my first rental payment is due.
I dutifully (ok a few days late as we had not sorted out dates) send a Telegraphic Transfer request via BNZ’s internet banking email system. This is something I do quite a lot, with the last one being the deposit and bond for this place on the 12th of last month.
I get an email back:
I’m in Perth right now, and so to get a NetGuard card would require 3-5 business days (and there are only 4 this week in NZ) PLUS the time taken to get the card to me in Australia. Moreover, I’m guessing that BNZ won’t send or allow you to send this stupid card internationally (try couriering credit cards).
So the alternative to to use the handy ‘branch locator’, which I do:
That’s right. No BNZ in Perth, and no BNZ in Australia. This seems crazy to me - BNZ is a huge bank, and there are hundreds of thousands of Kiwis in Australia, including out here in Perth. (Mining pays well these days)
So maybe I’m just going about it the wrong way. So - another approach:
But that gets me this:
So I try bnz.com instead:
Not that useful.
So… why should I trust my money to a bank that can’t even own its own domains?
Why should I trust my money to a bank that requires me to carry around a card for online security?
What happens if I lose my wallet with credit card and stupid online card? - yup, I’d be locked out.
I looked back, and sure enough on my last TT request there was the following in the confirmation email:
“Lance, I would like to take this opportunity to advise that from 1 October all TTs will require you to have logged into Internet Banking using NetGuard before we will complete your request.”
Sadly it was beneath the fold (line 26) of the confirmation email, which I browsed quickly just to make sure the payment went through. So the first time I saw this was today. Yes - perhaps I should read my emails completely.
Banks have you locked in
They say that banks have 4 opportunities in life to get you to switch to them: At birth/christening, when you are about 10 or so (pocket money), when you leave home/start university (student loans), and when you get a mortgage.
They also say (ok I’ve observed through consulting) that losing banking customers is actually really difficult to do. You really have to go out of your way to annoy them, or lose serious credibility, before customers will leave.
For me BNZ has provided great personal service at the various branches in Wellington, but has failed, and failed consistently with its IT - online and back end.
BNZ has failed with their Credit Card product
- My credit card limit is a trivial % of my annual income, despite repeated requests for (mostly granted) increases.
- My BNZ credit card bounced my Perth motorcycle purchase transaction, while my infrequently used Amex worked just fine
- Indeed it’s not the first time or even second I’ve failed to buy a motorcycle with a BNZ credit card, and succeeded with Amex.
- I received more than one offer to ‘upgrade’ my Mastercard to a visa with identical features and higher cost.
BNZ has lousy Customer Service
- BNZ’s after hours (and it is always after hours from home here) help desk is completely unable to help me, which is sad because I recall being able to speak to a very helpful night banker, who made magic happen, from the UK when buying a motorcycle back in 1996. What has happened?
- The products offered to me (usually in a TT email) are completely irrelevant to my situation.
Don’t talk to me about use BNZ for money Transfers
- I cannot send an international transfer without recourse to email.
- I now cannot send international transfers at all.
-Â It takes a day for transfers to go from from my BNZ check account to my BNZ credit card account
- It takes a day for transfers to go from my BNZ account to another BNZ account
- It takes a day for transfers to go from my BNZ account to any other NZ based account
- I’m charged $25 for a NZ to Australia TT transfer
NONE of this is acceptable in this era.
But the big question is can any other bank offer better? I’m going to look around, but do let me know if your experiences elsewhere are better.
You can add this to your list:
Frequent “hopping/transfers” of their Personal Bankers!!
Over the past year i’ve had 4 different personal bankers handling my account at one branch!!
One left because he got promoted, one left because she didn’t want to be a personal banker anymore, another left because this particular branch was further to where he lived and the other I don’t know….retired or something…
So I think their Personal Bankers aren’t very personal after all…
Completely agree. To increase direct credit limits I need to print off and fax, yes fax, a request through which takes up 24 hours to be processed.
Can’t do international TT’s online so I have to walk into a branch, spend 30 minutes with a different staff member every time who doesn’t seem to be trained in the system. I have to walk them through each step. Switched to online forex dealers after realising BNZ were making $10k a year off me in their bloated currency margins.
Their online statements only go back 6 months, ASB’s go back 12 months. Is it really that difficult to increase?
Only with them because of their local monopoly over multi currency payment processing. When is another bank going to offer this??
Don’t even get me going on the merchant fees.
I switched from BNZ to ASB when I returned to NZ. I got sick of their seemingly random fees that were attached to every little thing.
ASB has been great so far - good online banking, great service, reasonable fees (at least understandable ones!).
The only hassle of switching has been trying to get the BNZ to close my account :)
I was a long-time ASB customer and a very happy one at that. When I moved to Australia, I went with Commonwealth Bank hoping that since they owned the ASB that they would have similar customer service. I was shocked by how poor their service is (similar to what you’re saying re: the BNZ). I’ve now since switched to ANZ (which I would never have considered in NZ).
Use travelex - they do TT’s for a $10 flat fee
I have accounts with ANZ, ASB and National. I have to say that ASB are the winners here in terms of Technology but National win in Terms of CS.
You would probably be better with ASB travelling between NZ and AU however because they have St George in AU which i’m pretty sure you can do in-branch banking with. ASB have their netcode security system, which involves sending a text message with a code to your NZ mobile to valdiate certain transactions, which could work for you if you still have your NZ mobile number. This is however still fully optional.
ASB also have instant ASB - ASB account payment and instant A/C - CC payments. No NZ bank has Bank - Other bank instant payment however as this relies on the InterBank system which clears payments between banks and the RBNZ at the end of each banking day.
Sorry to drag this old post up, but I just had to comment.
I have accounts with ASB, BNZ, RaboPlus and Westpac and have to agree with the BNZ sentiments. I’m in fact also only with them for the merchant account and credit card processing, and haven’t really taken the time to look around as to whether there are alternatives. From what Chris said in your comments though, it looks like I might be stuck with them too.
BNZ’s online presence has been appalling since day one. For such a long time - long after ASB for example was offering regular online banking as we know it now - they still required software be installed on the user’s computer to allow access to their Internet Banking. This meant that your chances of banking while on holiday or on the fly were virtually nil. Now, Netguard is also killing it for me.
With Westpac (whose DebitPlus card I absolutely love - NO MORE CREDIT CARDS FOR ME!!!), I can simply text “b” to 202 and have my balance sent back to me almost instantly. With the BNZ however, I have to whip out my Netguard card and go through all that rigmarole - or make a toll call from my mobile. What a pain.
One correction I would make however is that BNZ -> BNZ transfers are usually instant. Not sure why yours are taking a day, as I transfer money to and from my partner (who also mildly dislikes her BNZ account) all the time and it’s there immediately. Just yesterday I paid for her lunch at 12:11pm :)
I find banking in general to be very frustrating. The ridiculous opening hours make it nigh on impossible to get to a bank when you actually need to - although I do avoid the places as much as possible. Thank goodness some banks are starting to cotton on to Saturday opening. The delays on everything are also crazy - why in this day and age should I have to wait 24 hours for an electronic transaction to “be processed”!?!? Come on, get with the times. The banking sector needs a shake-up IMHO.