CAF Bank has offered payments of £25 to several charities that have complained about the disruption they have experienced with its new service.
Since upgrading its online banking system on 9 June, CAF Bank has received calls from many of its more than 14,000 customers who have struggled to process transactions including bulk payments.
Waiting times for support have reduced since June as the charity-owned bank has hired more staff but some customers have reported ongoing issues with the new system and are planning to switch providers.
Charities that have experienced problems have also called for CAF Bank to compensate them for the extra hours their workers have had to spend navigating the issues, with some estimating thousands of pounds in additional costs.
Now, Alcohol Change UK, Support Staffordshire and Age UK Wandsworth have all told Civil Society that CAF Bank has offered them goodwill payments of £25 each, which none of the charities felt was sufficient compensation.
‘Insulting’
Alcohol Change UK’s chief executive Richard Piper said his charity was “thousands of pounds down” in extra pay to staff members taking four times as long to process payments on the new system.
Piper said his charity complained about the ongoing issues with bulk payments it was experiencing and CAF “had the temerity” to offer £25 as part of its response.
“I thought that that sum of £25 was insulting and showed no real understanding of the amount of stress and difficulty that me and my team have had to go through,” he said.
The bank also advised that Alcohol Change UK could also escalate its complaint to the ombudsman, Piper said, which it is now considering.
Alcohol Change UK is also “actively investigating” switching to alternative banks.
“I’ve always wanted to be supportive of CAF but I just feel that this has been so badly handled, it’s shaking my confidence in them,” said Piper.
CAF Bank: Upgrade ‘absolutely necessary’
CAF Bank did not confirm to how many charities it had offered £25 nor whether it is considering further compensation.
Director of customer and lending Richard Hunt said: “While it was absolutely necessary to upgrade our online service, I am very sorry for the personal stress and inconvenience this has caused for some. This was never our intention.
“CAF Bank is wholly owned by a charity, and we exist solely to serve social purpose organisations. With millions of pounds successfully being transferred across thousands of payments each working day, we understand how vital our work is to the sector and recognise the real-world implications any changes to our service can have on the charities we support.
“We are 100% focused on supporting customers and committed to fixing outstanding issues. Along with the rest of the team, I continue to work with customers who have been affected on one-to-one calls.
“One of the things that is special about CAF Bank is our telephone service, and while call wait times were too long when we launched, customers can now speak to someone on average in under five minutes.
“We really appreciate our customers working with us on this transition so that we can enhance and grow the specialist banking services we provide to the charity sector.
“We encourage any customer requiring our assistance to contact us.”
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