Pressure from the Finance Sector Union (FSU) has forced the National Australia Bank to back down on its decision to refuse to accept credit card payments from its customers at NAB branches.
The NAB is claiming that its direction to staff to send customers to Post Offices to pay credit card bills was a misunderstanding.
FSU members have told the union that any cases of staff accepting credit card payments at NAB branches has resulted in staff being questioned and asked to ‘please explain why you accepted this payment?’
It is dishonest for the NAB to issue a media statement claiming the bank did not instruct staff to stop accepting credit card payments over the counter.
The NAB has been training its staff for several months to “educate” customers about better ways of paying credit card bills, including advice to pay bills at a Post Office.
Talkback radio and media stories have revealed NAB customers have been complaining about the changes since the NAB brought them in last Monday.
Quotes attributable to Julia Angrisano FSU National Secretary
“We have heard from scores of members about how unpopular this decision was with customers and the NAB have now had the good sense to overturn it and accept credit card payments over-the-counter.”
“It is an outrageous slur for NAB’s senior management to blame staff for not explaining this unpopular policy correctly to their customers. It was only a short time ago these loyal front office staff were keeping the bank open during a pandemic.”
“The FSU will remain vigilant to make sure NAB customers are not inconvenienced in future and are able to transact the full range of banking services they need at NAB branches.”
“This policy was designed to cut 800,000 over-the-counter transactions a year, which would have resulted in the bank closing even more branches and making even more staff redundant.”
“The Federal Government needs to step up and start taking a real interest in branch closures and service reduction. Banking is an essential service but instead of taking the issue of branch closures seriously, the Coalition has set up the Regional Bank Branch Closures Taskforce which is nothing but a pre-election stunt.”
