PTSB Current account interest not being paid

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DMcL1971

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In order to avoid bank fees I, like many others, switched my current account to PTSB earlier this year. The PTSB current account is supposed to pay 1% interest on balances up to 1,500. Any accrued interest should be paid to the account on 31/12/2013. I have not received my interest yet, so I contacted PTSB.

They informed me today that there was an IT glitch and that interest had not been paid on any PTSB current accounts.

Has anyone received their interest? I am wondering if this is only affecting customers who switched or whether it affects all their current accounts.

N.B. Interest on savings accounts in PTSB is paid in November so this should only affect current accounts.
 
Has anyone received their interest?
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I got my tiny interest for value date 31 December 2013. I have a PTSB Switch current account which pays 0.25% on the first 1,500 EUR. This product is not open to new applicants.

Maybe the issue only affects those with the 'new' PTSB current account product. Did PTSB say when the issue would be fixed?

N.B. Interest on savings accounts in PTSB is paid in November so this should only affect current accounts.
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Some pay in November, not all.

Some PTSB savings interest is paid on 31 December. For example, the PTSB Bonus Booster account pays bonus interest on 31 December. Also, a lot of the PTSB Northern Rock and PTSB INBS legacy products pay on 31 December.

I wonder did those with these accounts all get paid?
 
I suspect that this may only affect the new switch customers. If my memory serves me right I think the new account was launched in March.

When I spoke to them, they had only just realised that there was an issue, as a few complaints had come in today. They had no timeline for a fix yet. They promised to ring me on Wednesday afternoon with an update. Though if it is an IT oversight it may be a simple fix (hopefully).
 
PTSB offered a current account product called 'Switch' for years then PTSB offered a current account produced called 'Every Day' and since April 2013 PTSB have offered a current account product simply called 'Current Account'.

'Switch' and 'Current Account' pay interest but 'Every Day' does not pay interest.
 
CiaranT said:
Some PTSB savings interest is paid on 31 December. For example, the PTSB Bonus Booster account pays bonus interest on 31 December. Also, a lot of the PTSB Northern Rock and PTSB INBS legacy products pay on 31 December.

I wonder did those with these accounts all get paid?
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Yes, I got Bonus Booster interest on 2nd Jan 2014.
 
When I switched to PTSB a few years ago, I recall having to apply for the current account interest on PTSB online. Just did it once, and the interest has been added each year since then.

Might be worth checking out.
 
Yeah, the PTSB Switch product required opt-in interest.

I don't think the same applies to the PTSB Current Account product.
 
gipimann said:
When I switched to PTSB a few years ago, I recall having to apply for the current account interest on PTSB online. Just did it once, and the interest has been added each year since then.

Might be worth checking out.
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They did mention this.

Here is the full story of the series of lies and guesses PTSB staff tried to fob me off with over the course of a whole day, half a dozen phone calls and finally a visit to the branch.

I asked why my interest had not been paid. They told me current accounts don't pay interest. So I got them to look at their own website where it states that they do pay interest.

They then told me that the interest is only paid out in November. I pointed out that, firstly, I didn't receive any interest in November and that, secondly, if they look at the T&C's on their website it clearly states that interest will be paid on the first working day after 31st December.

They then told me that interest payments on all their accounts are not credited automatically. I should expect to receive my interest by cheque in the post in a few days.

I asked why the interest on my savings account had been automatically credited to my savings account back in November, if it is all done by cheque. They said that, actually it was only current accounts that paid interest by cheque.

I said that was ridiculous and that they should pay automatically into the current account. At that point they said that there was an option on Open24 to choose to have interest paid into the account instead of by cheque.

They talked me through choosing this option, at which point we discovered that this option was already active on my account.

They then checked and said (as CiaranT has just pointed out) that the option was out-dated and was now automatically on for all new accounts.

This brought me back to, where is my interest then.

They told me they would escalate this and get someone from the local branch to contact me directly to resolve this.

After waiting for half a day, no one contacted me, so I went to the branch myself to complain. It was at this point that they informed me that IT had just discovered a glitch that had caused many people not to have automatically received their interest.
 
Well done for pushing the issue and not accepting anything you were told at face value.

It looks like PTSB have screwed up badly and forgot to apply interest to those with the new PTSB Current Account product.

However, to put this in context, you will not be getting a large sum of money.

Maximum 2013 interest:
1,500 EUR * 1.00% * (9/12) * (1-0.33) = 7.54 EUR.

Assumes:
(1) You never dropped your account balance below 1,500 EUR. Most peoples balance would have.
(2) You opened your account at the start of April 2014. Most people would have opened it later.
(3) PTSB apply 33% DIRT and not 41% DIRT which they may have to if the payment is made in 2014.
 
If they hadn't tried to fob me off with such obvious lies, I probably wouldn't have bothered even following it up. But they have really annoyed me. I have already spent far more on phone calls, petrol and parking, than the interest I'm due. It's a matter of principle.



Here follows a rant about customer service in general, as I'm in a bad mood tonight.

I get annoyed by poor customer service. Until recently I worked in a large telecommunications provider and sat within earshot of the customer service department.

I accept that in any business a customer service rep is usually a low paid worker, often with minimal training and limited access to customer information. They tend not to have permission to make any change that involve money. This is fine for answering the majority of questions that arise. In fact much of a customer service reps day is answering boring repetitive simple questions.

However, when they are faced with a question or problem they cannot answer, what they should do is gather as much information as possible and explain that they will have to pass the question on to someone else but that they will ring back with updates. They then become your point of contact and a go-between who will follow up the question internally on behalf of the customer until the customer is satisfied.

What seems to happen in most large companies these days is that a customer care reps success is based on the number of phone calls that they can answer in a day. So their work incentive is to answer calls as quickly as possible and get the customers off the line as quickly as possible. They get no extra credit for making the customer happy or fixing the problem and time spent ringing the customer back doesn't even show up.

In the company I worked for, all customer service efficiency reports were based on statistics coming from the phone system. Everything was geared towards making sure calls were in the queue for as short a time as possible and were answered as quickly as possible. There were no metrics measuring the quality of the service given once the call was answered.

If a customer rang up wanting to cancel (usually because of our dreadful customer service) they were passed to the retention team. These people did follow up and fix problems and save the customer. The problem with this is that the customers issue doesn't even get addressed until they are so annoyed that they wanted to cancel.

So being told ridiculously obvious lies by PTSB customer service in order to just get me off the line as quickly as possible, really wound me up.

Rant over!


Occasionally you do get good customer service though. Last year I a had a problem with one of my KBC accounts. The guy I spoke to said he couldn't fix the problem but would raise an internal issue and keep me updated. He gave me his E-Mail address and a complaint reference number so that I could contact him if I thought of anything else relevant. He then rang me once a day to give me an update, even if the update was that there was no progress that day. It took over a week but the problem was eventually fixed.

That worked, I was happy that I was listened to, the issue was taken seriously, it was being actioned, I could see visible progress, it got resolved. That made for a happy customer.
 
Well done DMcL1971 and keep at them - I may not even be due a €1 in interest but I will also make sure that I get it. A newspaper needs to run with this story.
 
Surprisingly, I did actually get a call back today from PTSB today.

They confirmed that the IT glitch related to all customers on their new current account offering that was launched back in April 2013. None of these customers received their annual interest. They said that the problem will be resolved in the next couple of days. Interest will automatically be applied to the accounts. They also confirmed that DIRT will be taken at the old 2013 rate of 33% and not at the current rate of 41%.
 
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Thanks for bringing this up DMcL1971. I also changed in 2013, and didn't get any interest. Hopefully I'll get my few cents this week.
 
Hi DMcL1971 do you mind me asking what wording actually shows up on your statement re interest applied. I looked through mine and cannot see any interest applied to my account.
 
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