I am writing to you in mirth regarding an article I saw in tmi concerning the BOV and their recent award of Maltese Bank of The Year. Cited amongst the reasons for this were ‘Customer Service’ which, as I am sure will become apparent is what made me chuckle. Firstly though allow me to congratulate BOV for beating off fierce competition from what in effect is a daunting single rival in the sector in HSBC. The justification for my somewhat amused outlook on this is due to a recent correspondence, or lack thereof with BOV. Having applied for a credit card in the branch, I was told that there was a good chance my application would be successful as there were no obvious barriers to overcome. What they failed to tell me was that my outgoings as a percentage of my income was too high for a credit card to be a viable option for me. This is fine, company policy is what it is, and as pointed out by yourself, it is this kind of monetary frugality that has served Malta well during a global financial crisis. However what irked me was the lack of research behind their decision making, as the calculations were incorrect in a number of different ways. This I attempted to point out to a member of staff at BOV, at which point I was emailed by the Customer Service Manager. She wrote me a short and again incorrect summary of the situation. I replied to the alleged ‘Customer Service’ Manager twice via email only to receive no response, despite the fact that I had made it very clear that I would bring this to the attention of the public and that I would be closing my BOV account. It appears that since BOV exists in a virtual oligopoly that they are not interested in customer retention, which is easy to understand since they are Bank of The Year for what I’m sure won’t be the last time. It is somewhat sad that a situation arises whereby a customer service manager either lacks the skills and intelligence to respond to a genuine customer gripe, or even sadder still is perhaps her lack of willingness to respond. On this final matter I am undecided.

Owen Jones

Mosta