How many times when you have received a bad service have you been tempted to ring RTE and ‘Talk to Joe’?
If you need to get something done in Ireland, forget the politicians it seems a call to Liveline could just do the trick!
The bould Joe is bordering on more or less the People’s Ombudsman at this stage.
Case in point.
Remember Bank of Ireland telling customers caught out in a recent online scam there would be no refunds?
Lo and behold, now an announcement that ‘customers impacted by ‘smishing’ – which dropped fraudulent texts into a genuine Bank of Ireland text thread during Covid-19 – will be reimbursed’.
A boy Joe!
Commenting on the scam Gavin Kelly, CEO Retail Ireland, Bank of Ireland said:
‘We have carried out a review into a recent smishing attack which has managed to defraud a number of customers. These cases have involved criminals inserting a fraudulent text into a thread containing genuine text messages from the Bank. This tricked customers into divulging their confidential banking details. However, we also acknowledge that fraudsters have been particularly active during this period and as consumers, we have had many other pressing concerns to deal with through Covid-19. Therefore we will be reimbursing the customers for these losses and the Bank will absorb the financial impact.’
One less reason to hate the bank?
There is still the matter of charging interest to those on payment breaks from bank loans but lets not go there.
Regarding bank fraud they say “We know that Bank of Ireland can do more to build awareness around fraud and we are committed to doing that. Our new campaign, launching this week, will highlight some of the key threats and tactics. We will continue to focus on the issues around fraud, through our own channels and working collaboratively through the BPFI FraudSMART campaign.’
And a reminder.
‘Bank of Ireland will never text, send emails or call a customer looking for their confidential banking details. The process where a fraudster can drop a text into a thread of text messages from any company is a common tactic used by criminals against the customers of banks and other service providers. We continue to work with the telecoms sector on this. If anyone has any suspicions on fraud, we have a 24/7 freephone line to support customers.”
So another victory for Joe! 👏
Remember his name next time you need action on something, even if you don’t end up calling Liveline😉
