End of the year. My bank sent me a survey asking me for my ‘honest opinion’.
Fair enough. My dishonest opinion wouldn’t be much use to them. Come to think of it, it wouldn’t be much use to me either, so honesty it turns out, was clearly the best policy.
I clicked through the screens.
Yes, yes, very good, very good, adequate, yes, no, no, adequate, yes, closing too many local branches, yes, and…
“Do you feel [the bank] has your best interests at heart?“
What an odd question. Of course they don’t! The bank, like every other business out there, like almost every person out there, has its own interests at heart, obviously. What kind of bank would it be, if my interests were top of its priority list? I’ll tell you. It would be my bank. I’d own it. And that would be awful.
My interests roughly align with ‘owning the home we live in’ - well that would be a lot easier if you just forgot about the interest rate on our mortgage. How about it, Mr Moneybags? Oh but my interests are literally my interests too, so you know that savings account that’s ticking over? You could just turn up the dial on that one, yes?
Oh. And how about that £1.7 billion you invested into nuclear weapons over the last two years? And the £12 billion into fossil fuel companies since 2016? That’s not exactly in my interest either. To be honest I’d rather you’d spent it on flowers, or maybe hospitals or something. Fancy switching tack and being a bit nicer to the planet?
No, I think the question was more about how positive a consumer-experience I’ve had, putting money in and taking money out - which is let’s be honest, it - the entire reason for the bank in the first place. I clicked disagree, out of principle. Though I actually think they do a pretty good job at the bits I interface with, even if they’d rather not talk about what goes on at the back of the shop.
Well they did ask for my ‘honest opinion’ after all. Maybe (and this is probably an unexpected result of their survey) they’ve convinced me it’s time to switch.
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