Commonwealth Bank Sucks Ass

Gee the Commonwealth Bank are useless. I know, I should not be surprised after all this time, but the details are interesting.

It started back in 2000 - I had a personal loan and a small credit card with the commonwealth bank and had been banking with them since I was a child. I refinanced the personal loan - with them - and they sent me a letter telling me how great I was for always being in advance of the loan repayments, thanks for paying it out early, what a great bloke I was and how we'd always be mates, if I ever needed anything just give them a call and they'd be happy to help.

I should have known.

Young and naive, in 2001 I had accumulated some savings and some leave, so I took a month off work to travel around Australia. Towards the end of the trip, I was headed north out of Alice Springs towards Tennant Creek when the auto trans blew up. Left be stranded in Barrow Creek, where Joanne Lees and Peter Falconio were abducted a few months later. Barrow creek is about 300 km's from anywhere, but luckily we managed to limp back into Alice Springs and find a mechanic to replace the completely stuffed auto trans. Of course, I had spent my savings and had nearly maxed out the credit card, so I didn't have $2,000 lying around.

Not to worry, my very good friends at the Commonwealth Bank will be sure to help me out - they keep offering me $5,000 credit cards anyway, I was only 26 and my total debt would have then been $10,000 (if I borrowed another $2,000). I reckon I could probably find a way to pay this off sometime in the next 40 years of my working life, being an employed professional and all.

After messing me about for a week, re-applying several times due to conflicting advice, they finally declined to lend me the money. They would have left me stranded in the centre of Australia. Because they had stuffed me around so long I had managed to borrow the money from Dad (which was most unusual that he had that money available!) and was on the way home. As soon as I got back to Brisbane I closed all my accounts with the Commonwealth and swore blind I'd never deal with the pricks again.

I changed to the Bendigo Bank, who are absolutely fantastic. I thoroughly recommend them to anyone looking for a bank.


Soooooooooo, in late 2004 I was advised to obtain a personal loan from a bank that was not going to be my home loan bank. I knew for sure that the Commonwealth was not going to be my home loan bank, and they had a branch at work and closest to home, so I went against my better judgment and got a $15,000 unsecured personal loan with them. They were falling over themselves to lend to me. How times change.

In the six months following then, they proved their particular brand of bastardry in the following ways:

• Told me I absolutely had to have a Streamline account to make payments into the loan account. This wasn't true.
• * Told me the Streamline account would be fee-free. This wasn't true - if I had a "relationship" with them exceeding $20,000 the monthly account fee would be waived.
• Told me I could not make loan repayments by direct deposit. This wasn't true.
• Changed the $20,000 relationship level to $50,000. This is a nice way of telling small customers to go jump.
• Massively raised their Netbanking fees - 50c per transfer, 3 free per month. 3 per month is a cynical, cynical number, just too low to be useful, and 50c for the low cost Netbank is daylight robbery.

Even closing the Streamline account was a pain in the ass. Typical Commonwealth disorganisation.



Now, the coup d'etat: there has been a malfunction in Netbank.

A few weeks ago, I received an email thanking me for registering for BPAY view for Telstra bills through Netbank. Which is odd, because I didn't. Today, I receive an email telling me there's an item to view. Which is odd, because there isn't.

Helpdesk is typically useless - advising me to ring Telstra and de-register from that. BPAY view's not run by Commonwealth Bank. Netbank is only a portal. Email from bvaadmin@cba.com.au don't come from the Commonwealth bank. They have no record of which bill they think I have registered for. They can not tell me which item is triggering today's email. There is no record of me ever paying a Telstra bill with Netbank.

Telstra are about as helpful as the Commonwealth, of course. But it's not really their problem - I want to know about Commonwealth bank systems.

Makes you wonder about the security of the Netbank application. Phantom transactions, mystery advices, lost bills, no traceability. Wonder how they'd react to a press release "Commonwealth Bank insecure!"? At the moment I'm waiting for a Helldesk "Supervisor" to call me back.

As soon as I can, I'm closing the loan account with the Commonwealth and never, ever, ever, dealing with the bastards ever again.