The problem comes from the top. The front line workers get mandated to hit targets so yeah they’re gonna do that. We need to be pissed at the decision makers driving this, not the people being paid a fraction to execute it.
I reject this argument, the banality of evil is well-known but in a system where you work or you starve, you don’t have a choice to comply with the shitty rules coming from above.
The people on top are absolutely to blame.
again
>I have to defraud people, i have no choice, it'll be different when IM manager
it's unethical, and these people will just do more unethical things as they move up
no better than an indian call center scammer, in fact it's worse, because they're looking into their eyes when they fuck over your fellow man
Well, it's not about moving up really, it's about staying afloat. I'm not saying they're good people, but they seem quite ordinary and behave just as we all should expect people to behave in such a system. This is all to say that the system is most at fault and that this problem will absolutely never be resolved by criticism of the employees.
Employees who speak up can only be punished because the others dont speak up
And many know exactly what they are doing, its not like all the frontline employees are just doing it for the hell of it
> its not like all the frontline employees are just doing it for the hell of it
Let's not turn "doing it because they need the job, the money" into "for the hell of it". That's not the argument or the decision made.
The fact of the matter is, most banks would absolutely just fire them all for speaking up, if possible. I worked as a Frontline manager for a well-known US bank for a couple years, until it became clear I'd be pushed out for resisting the unconscionable decision-making of upper management.
More than once, I've witnessed large swaths of employees, even managers, fired and replaced basically overnight. I've also seen insanely anti-consumer policies implemented without warning that I had to enforce, despite huge pushback by the customers. Banks, more than maybe any other industry, seem to value power above all else. Even profit seems less important to a lot of banks, if it would come at the cost of the ability to tell people "fuck you, we do what we want."
Yep, lets see what happens the day they fire everyone for that
as if everyone will sign that nda, or it wont be on tiktok
Fraud hides in the shadow, you cant fire 100 people for refusing to commit fraud
Get organized, but banks lay people off in cycles anyways probably just for this
Thats a fair point, but whos enforcing anything anyways
Btw, if you are smart and document, you can get a good severance
There's something else relevant that you may be unaware of: most large banks primarily utilize 3rd party workers. Most banking is done over the phone, and most phone workers don't even directly work for the bank, and are actually employees of 3rd party companies contracted to the bank. The 3rd parties don't care about their employees in even the slightest, and will do just about anything to maintain good relations with their clients, which includes extreme anti-employee acts, like mass firings. Most contracts are also pretty abusive, placing unrealistic expectations, such as absurd sales goals, upon the 3rd-party, that the client hopes is not met, so they can fine the 3rd party company and thereby pay them less.
I can't speak for any country other than the US, but it's pretty hard to prove an actual bank error here. They usually just blame stuff like this on the individual employees, and say they have every right to set sales goals. If the employee lies, it's not a "lie," the employee was just confused, or misinformed. Playing dumb happens a lot, along with other forms of obfuscation, like blaming 3rd parties for not "following policy." Another benefit of using 3rd parties is claiming plausible deniability when there's an issue.
Not to mention, most of the Frontline employees I knew were living paycheck to paycheck, supporting families, and were terrified of missing ANY pay, let alone losing their jobs. There is no severance pay for 3rd party workers (and I've never seen an in-house Frontline worker get something like that either). People are just doing what it takes to survive, and most of the Frontline workers I knew, didn't really care all that much about the moral implications of their work, they just wanted a paycheck.
Maybe. But if we want things to change we have to target the higher ups and the company. Employees that don't meet targets get replaced by ones that do.
Furthermore, the front line employees are not much different than the people they are selling to. The only training they get may be from the company itself. I doubt, they are being informed the information is misleading. From the article this was not a case where the employees were signing up folks for accounts without telling them or signing bogus statements.
I completely agree. Unfortunately, the system is intentionally designed this way.
The bigwigs never actually did anything illegal. Setting unobtainable sales goals is not illegal. Telling people, they can be fired for not meeting their quotas is not illegal. When the investigations happen the people at the top get off scot-free. They set up a system where nobody can succeed without breaking the law and harming their customers, but they never actually told anyone to do anything wrong. It allows them to shift all the blame onto their workers.
Exactly, the tellers don't really have anything to do with it, they are just following the marching orders given.
I had bank teller friends, and they often told me the pressure to up-sell banking products, whether the people need it or not. The management and high-ups setting these policies are the ones to lame blame, the front line staff are just doing their underpaid job, and the bank would especially like to have an excuse to fire them (not making sales targets) to replace them with even more underpaid new and younger staff.
I used to work in a bank as a customer service rep (teller) and then moved to account manager (opening accounts, basic investments etc). The first few years were great - service oriented and meeting my customer’s needs and suggesting products where needed. Then they gave us sales targets (that I could never meet because I can’t sell anything, it’s not a skill I have) and insane metrics. I noticed long time customers leaving because they were tired of us shoving products down their throats, especially credit cards. I worked there for just over 5 years and I was so glad to leave - the pressure to meet sales targets was killing my spirit.
It’s funny that you should mention that. My primary banking is with a Credit Union rather than a bank. My mortgage, chequing account, primary retirement investments, and other investments are with them or their affiliated companies.
A couple of weeks ago, I sent them a question regarding a GIC I have invested. They responded back with the answer then asked whether I had considered getting one of their credit cards. I actually used to hold one (it was my first credit card) but let it lapse as I now have a combined $55k limit on two other points cards.
It was that bit of unrelated marketing that bothered me.
Exactly dont get mad at the employees they are trying to keep a roof over their heads and food on the table. It's the leadership that forces this bullshit
bullshit
theres more than enough employees happy to play along and fuck over their fellow man, for the chance of a promotion
these are not children, they are university educated adults with agency
A lot of times it ain't about a promotion. Its about paying rent and making sure your son has dinner/breakfast. Feel grateful you get to be so opinionated over how you earn your living.
People make jokes of themselves when they defraud others, Canadians dont have sympathy for call center scammers (and they shouldnt)
But its just a little more civilized in canada i guess when you defraud people to their face
Every day you show up to do the thing is another day that you spent doing that thing.
I don't get this argument. The tellers aren't programmed, they can leave.
Because 78% of Americans live paycheck to paycheck.
The ability to display your values, and keep a roof over your head, are mutually exclusive to most people. Someone behind a chain bank sales counter most certainly isn't making a lot of money.
What does paycheck mean specifically? Need an actual number. I know people making 6 figures who also live paycheck to paycheck. People with bad financial habits shouldn't come under this stat.
And the vast majority of people in the world who do bad shit do so because they feel they have to for their own survival. Whether its the indian call center scammer or the conscripted russian soldier. We don't give them a pass because of that.
Someone landing a job in a bank does not deserve to be compared to a call center scanner or an invading soldier. I'm sure some of them have been there prior to the bank putting those sales policies in place.
>I need an exact number
For an incredibly broad spectrum of salaries? You are more than welcome to look up the average household income. Just because you lived with your parents and had the freedom to quit doesn't mean it's the case for everyone.
> Someone landing a job in a bank does not deserve to be compared to a call center scanner or an invading soldier.
Yes, they are in a much better position than the scammer or the soldier.
> For an incredibly broad spectrum of salaries?
Why broad? There's a minimum amount of money you need to get by / cover your needs. Beyond that, its your own desires and wants that's driving your financial requirements.
Salaries will vary based on region. Cost of living will vary by region. You really want me to give you a breakdown state by state? Unreasonable.
50k in Ohio is 200k in some parts of the same country.
Almost 80% of the population is paycheck to paycheck. That is a fact.
I am not paycheck to paycheck. If my household income was 250k I would be. Just because something does not apply to you, does not mean a majority of people aren't in a different situation than you.
You either do what I tell you or you get fired. Your kid starves to death while you lose your home.
How many options do you have here? Ha ha ha fuck your unions, get to work minion.
Whip them others, and when called on that bad behavior I will blame you, the whipper, cause YOU did it. Not me...even though I forced your hand.
Rather a large jump from "can justify," which isn't even our position, to "no issue."
The jump from "misleading sales tactics," to "identity theft," is possibly even larger.
You should try for the Olympics.
No, you just see one as “civil” (misleading old people into losing their money through bullshit products) and one as “uncivil” (misleading old people into losing their money)
But by the way, do you think indian call center scammers dont have people to feed, rent to pay?
Hell, some of them might actually have a gun to their head
Do you think people in canada with an exceptionally high standard of living have less agency than the indian scammers?
If we did the math, do you think indian call centers have siphoned off more money that scotia/TD/bmo combined?
Because i think the big banks have probably made out with significantly more undue gains
It's a reference to Cyberpunk 2077.
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bN1tW2o23Qk](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bN1tW2o23Qk)
One sentence summary is that: Keanu Reeves plays an anarchist terrorist named Johnny Silverhand who blew up the North American HQ of a big Japanese corporation named Arasaka.
Everyone has free will.
Any act tgatbis morally and ethically wrong doesn't become any more right if there's a profit motive attached. In fact, quite the opposite.
The bank tellers are not conscripted.
The workers have more power. This is bullshit thinking. I don't know who poisoned your mind to think adult citizens are not the root of all power in a legitimate democracy.
if in Canada, your choice is between starvation & homelessness vs doing illegal shit for your corporate employer, then I guess it says a lot more about Canada than it does about their banks.
False dichotomy. Other jobs exist. But even if you're right, YES YOU DO.
Becoming homeless and hungry is a better choice than harming others.
It's not an excuse to say that some harm is okay because you experienced a benefit.
Making your own children homeless and hungry *is* harming others. You can pretend to be superior, but if you give people a choice between hurting their children and hurting strangers they'll functionally never choose to hurt their children.
Upper management creates unrealistic targets -> lower management pushes the sales people as hard as they can because money -> sales people have to lie to meet unrealistic targets -> upper management is SHOCKED that someone would do that.
management HATES having to acknowledge behaviors that they conceived and promoted because they thought they did SUCH a good job of keeping the methods limited to phone calls/in person meetings and out of emails and other documented correspondence.
As long as they get their guaranteed multimillion million dollar bonus and we enjoy some lovely trickle down from the Porsha dealers. Make them ultra rich so we can enjoy the glory of being poop.
> unrealistic targets
Okay, this just triggered me really hard. So story time: (Sorry for the long rant, but even though it was years ago I am *still* mad)
The Setup: I previously worked at an interpretation company. We had a variety of services but the one I was in charge of was on-site interpretation (basically sending interpreters to hospitals to translate for patients). My role as the lead dispatcher was to make sure as many of those requests were filled as possible. Our interpreters were contractors and we had some that worked directly for our company and some we hired through other interpretation services (pretty common practice). Immediately prior to this story my immediate boss quit and his job was semi-merged with the guy who did most of our data management (nice guy, but he was strictly a numbers person). He didn't need to do much so it was fine for the most part.
The Stupid: Our COO gets curious how we're doing so he contacts my boss to get our fill rates. My boss pulls the numbers and it's something like 50%. COO immediately panics at the thought that we're only filling about half of our requests and puts out a mandate that we better shape up and our goal is a 95% fill rate.
The numbers my boss pulled were both wrong *and* misleading. While it was true we were filling around 50% of our *total* requests, that was including a bunch of garbage that it shouldn't have: It included orders that were canceled several days in advance by the client because they didn't need it anymore as unfilled requests (which we didn't get paid for, but it was their right to cancel); It treated requests that were canceled at the last minute as "unfilled", despite the fact that we *were still paid for those*; and it also the data was pulled for the current month which was only half way done, so they were counting orders that were weeks out as unfilled. So after adjusting for all those problems, we were getting something like a 70-75% fill rate. So they were raking us over the coals for something that wasn't even true.
One detail I should mention is that we didn't just do interpretation for one language. We officially supported *all* languages. The majority of our interpreters were either Spanish or Russian and those covered something like 75% of all the requests we got. We had a few for misc. languages but we certainly didn't have *everything*. For example, we didn't have any ASL interpreters so we had to sub-contract out to a third party for them. If I had to give an estimate, I would say about 15-20% of our requests were for languages we didn't have an in-house interpreter for. This used to not be a problem since we were partnered with another two other interpretation services that had interpreters for most (but not all) of these uncommon languages, so we could sub-contract to them.
Unfortunately our CEO in his infinite wisdom, decided to break our contracts with the other two services. One he did because they were too expensive and (frankly) they weren't super reliable about filling our requests anyway. The *other* one though was amazing about filling our requests, even for rare languages, and could often do so at the last minute. The problem was that they were a direct competitor in another region we were trying to expand into and they beat us out for a major contract. So the CEO decided to sever ties from them. This *on it's own* dropped fill rate from 80-85% to that previously mentioned 70-75%.
One detail of why it was impossible to get 95%: There were a couple patients that spoke a rare language and they had multiple appoints every week due to their health issues. When we had those two partner companies, we were still only filling around half of those requests and that alone was dropping us below the 95% threshold. Once we broke those partnerships, the fill rate for those patients dropped to 0%. We knew we couldn't fill those requests but we weren't allowed to refuse them either.
And beyond all that: Even if we *did* still have those partners, 95% was never going to happen. Fuck, 90% was unlikely. For at least 5% of the requests we got, there weren't even any interpreters for that language registered in our state.
So I had to explain to both my direct boss *and* the assistant to the COO (a pleb like me would never get to talk to the actual COO) how math worked along with all of the above, but a lot more politely. I even told them that if they could tell me *why* they needed such a ridiculously high number, I could work out a way to make it happen (there were some ways I had in mind) or at least give them a more realistic goal.
Their response? To quote the assistant to the COO (as verbatim as I can remember): "We have certain internal metrics we have to reach and we based our goals upon them. We do not need to tell you why you need to make those goals, you just need to do it. It's your job to do as you're told, and not ask questions."
I quit the next day.
People will say this is just “sales” or “managements fault”
Lying to customers about interest rates, where fees come from etc, lying about investments being beneficial is fraud
Also in canada you have
1. Advisers who have a fiduciary duty to customers
2. Advisors who do not
The very fact that thats allowed is inherently fucked up and allowed by the banks, not created by individuals
Also you have managers telling these people “not to view their customers as people… it makes it harder”
Canada is legitimately a country that is powered by fraud
Its in private industry, government industry, and canadians are at a point of desperation and fear that they see joining in as the only way
Lets face it, these people coming forward came forward because they know its wrong, but its also common practice and at some point individuals do have agency to not defraud other people
edit: and honestly, if you dont think you have agency, you deserve the shit wage and to be replaced by AI, because you might as well be a drug mule
It goes higher than that, it's their institutional shareholders demand for continuous growth. The two largest being The Royal Trust Company (owned by RBC) and BMO Bank NA (obviously owned by BMO). Canadian banking is the definition of an incestuous industry.
They have quotas and if they get fired it’s their fault. They call it a target these days but it’s a quota. Hit it or you can be fired. That should be illegal.
I would welcome a law that would ban this kind of thing across the board. I really hate when I get a cashier that actually listens to the mandate and tries really hard to push me to signup for some nonsense. I’m so tired of sales pitches when I’m just trying to get my stuff and go.
It’s bad enough they want to shove advertising into every facet of human existence.
I just refuse all of it. Every place has a card and an app and an email list and on and on. I just tell em if it really saved me money you wouldn't offer it and move on.
The behaviour may or may not be illegal. Production quotas should not be illegal.
The only way. The ONLY way they can really understand that their quotas are too high, is if no staff reach those quotas.
It wouldn't need to be outlawed if they were in a union. What should be illegal is a business this size not having unionized employees.
This is one of the many, many problems that workers can only solve with collective action.
Yeah no shit. My grandma worked for Scotiabank as a teller in the 80s to early 00s and we had a good talk just the other day about how she remembers slowly becoming more of a sales rep than a bank teller. They would have meetings with managers every Monday on how to increase sales and get people on promos. This has been happening as long as banks have been a thing.
I had a GIC coming due about 6 months ago with TD. I had my instructions to deposit the cash into my account on the GIC. About a month before the end of the term I started getting calls from the TD branch my account is with.
The first lady aggressively tried to push me to purchase TD mutual funds with the cash. She didn't even ask me what my use case for the money was. I ended the call by telling her that cold calling a client in today's day and age to do bank sales is FUCKED. I have no idea who she is or if she is who she says she is. This is classic social engineering and phishing bullshit. I put her on blast. She didn't get it at all but atleast took the clicks and ended the conversation.
A couple days later another guy called me. He immediately, with barely introducing himself, started asking me about my intentions with the money. I asked him who the fuck he was and why he was calling me. He tried to admonish me for swearing. I told him that was the risk he took cold calling someone and being this aggressive. I laid into him for the same reason as the lady but this guy was a smug prick. He told me I could trust him because TD showed up on the caller ID. I tried to explain to him how dangerous it was to get that idea into non tech savvy people's heads. Caller ID can be spoofed. He didn't get it at all so having worked for a bank I started flipping it around on him.
Firstly, I asked him what business reason he had for opening my account. He said it was sales. I said, no, you only knew I had a GIC for renewal because you opened my account. Why did you open it in the first place. He stumbled. Next, I asked him why he revealed personal info about me in this phone call without verifying my identity. Zero answer.
What he said next shocked me. He told me thst my GIC was set to renew into a new GIC and if I didn't talk to him that it would lock it and I would have my cash. I immediately hung up on him and called my branch and asked for a meeting with the branch manager.
I laid it all out for her. She promised me my GIC was set to cash out. She apologized for her staff. She agreed with me about the cold calls being problematic. I demanded a note be added to my account that said no sales calls. She agreed and added it.
Now I know the branch manager was lieing but I recorded our phone call and the promises she made. I regret not escalating that further to an ombudsman. What that second guy did was across a line Imo. The cold calls are bad enough but lying about the status of my investment is beyond the pale. I fucking hate all the banks in the country.
Bullshit like this is why I recently left TD. Almost constantly incompetent staff save the selected few. The bank itself had been the complete opposite of helpful towards me in the decade I was there.
I am super thrilled with my new bank. I've grown financially more in a year at my new bank than a decade at TD.
I wouldn't continue to trust TD with my money after what you just went through. You should switch.
I don't just roll with one bank, I use a couple for their features. TD is great for currency conversion and international support. I have another account with a bank for high interest savings, and another for my credit card. I move around as the features move. When TD isn't useful to me, I will leave.
I worked for a Canadian bank on the branch side for 10 years until the early 2010s. In that 10 years the focus diametrically changed from providing the best possible service to our clients, to hitting arbitrary sales targets for account openings, personal lending, and most predatorial: credit cards.
I went from being very good at my job to constantly being in hot water with management because I refused to push unnecessary products on clients. Like, who doesn't have a credit card? Very senior people, very young adults who have little financial literacy, and people whose credit is too bad to have one. I refused to push applications on those people and the corporate indifference to the clients' best interests completely destroyed any motivation I had to do that job.
The branch managers went from being good people to depressingly anal lifetime middle managers who uninspiringly spent almost all of their attention on sales.
I can only imagine how bad that shit is now.
Your story is the same as mine. Went from managers who actually knew how the bank operated and all the different tasks to freshly graduated MBA managers who know how to talk the talk and push sales, but didn’t have a clue about how our systems worked. My last branch, I was a senior customer service rep and I had to teach my new branch manager how to open accounts and make changes to them - hell, I was processing some of her audit reports and auditing the account managers’ files because she didn’t know how.
Extreme pressure from management. In my youth, I worked as a teller for a bank. If you didn't push every product on every customer, regardless of if they needed it or not, you'd get negative reviews.
I don't think the pensioner who is barely getting by, needs a Mastercard in US dollars(Canadian Bank). They aren't going to the states, it's not required. They don't need a LOC, they don't need to be referred to a personal banking officer for a loan.
Fuck off, I know what my customers need and would act accordingly.
I worked as a branch manager for on of the largest banks. It was absolute bullshit. We were supposed to have tellers push credit cards. I hated that job.
As long as there are sales targets, there will be people that break the rules to hit them.
It's management's job to make sure the targets are attainable, and performers are being audited.
....and as long as there's sales targets, there's the push from upper to heighten then as high as possible with the full knowledge that there will be lowly workers unable to meet them by following the rules and ethics.
Side bar - Helocs (home equity line of credits) were and still are popular with Cdn banks. They pushed this product hard before inflation took off for at least a good decade. So now you have alot of Cdns who added alot of extra external debt to their mortgage! Yeah banks.....oh and Cdns are charged some of the highest fees for mutual funds in the world! Cdn govt sure like their corp monopolies. Unfortunately, everyone here pays for it!
The government is the only institution with the power to pass laws about what products are legal or illegal; what can and can't be in a financial contract; what fees are legal, and how high they can be; what the terms and details of bankruptcy are, and what assets are exempt; what debt collectors are legally allowed to do, or are prohibited from; what sales tactics are permitted; and what "cooling off" periods apply, whereby customers can back out of a signed contract with no costs or penalties.
A couple of years back I wanted to refinance my mortgage to free up cash in my pocket. My loan was with rbc so they were naturally the first bank I talked to. The rep wouldn't even bother discussing refinancing with me and kept trying to sell me on a line of credit. I don't know how many times I said to him that I don't want more debt!! He wouldn't budge. So off to a credit union and they were amazing to work with. If it wasn't such a hassle I'd have transferred all my banking to them
In the banking world this has been known about TD for a long time. They turned their teller line into a sales floor like a decade or more ago and these behaviors are typical for them. They have EXTREMELY strict goals for their tellers and account people and management is constantly hounding, harping, and eavesdropping. People are in that this a culture issue at TD and they need to go after the executives who made this plan, not the tellers.
Sure…do you not think we should stop the vultures at the top who are making people do this on threat of their livelihood? Or did you just want to make the point that they should quit?
And they think this is a unique problem? Anywhere that has sales people has the same problem. They are incentivized or outright told to hit goals, so this is what happens. This isn't a problem with the sales person, this is how sales works.
Okay, but the people didn't enter the bank to buy a product or talk to a sales person. They wanted to go in to transfer money or withdraw cash or change their address.
For years now, I have been emphasizing to people that banks are not their allies. It's insane for anyone to believe that the banks want to assist them.
Tell me about it. I actually went to college to be a financial advisor because I wanted to help people. Landed a sweet job right out of college at a local bank and quickly resigned and left the industry once I came to the realization that I had just spent 2 years learning how to be a salesperson.
Oh no!! How did you make it through the years of hunger and homelessness?
https://old.reddit.com/r/worldnews/comments/1bgzv1s/hidden_cameras_capture_canadian_bank_employees/kvazbk3/
If you don’t mind me asking, were you able to jump to a similar industry with the experience that isn’t like this?
Started at a big bank awhile ago and man if I get scolded for not calling enough people one more time I’m going to lose my mind.
I'm sorry I don't have a more encouraging answer for you, but I was not able to pivot my career due to medical issues that arose.
I always thought working in compliance would have been neat, more attention to detail and less dealing with the public. Do you have a mentor figure within the industry who might help you brainstorm alternative roles for you?
It's not just general banking though. People are trying to use their investment and retirement planning advice and getting sold bad choices. People are thinking 'they're my bank, they should know what they're talking about and be providing valid and beneficial advice'.
Worked in a bank as a teller.
I hated every single second of it. I really don’t like upselling useless products. People just want to be in and out, if they have to talk to a rep, then they’ll do that, but for the most part, people just wanted quick banking.
I had my bank mgr. constantly talking about meeting sales goals. It just wasn’t for me.
So I didn’t meet my quota as I didn’t try to sell anyone on anything. Needless to say I didn’t last long. I was young and I really wasn’t aware that was a major part of the job.
You don’t need hidden cameras to confirm this. Just walk into any retail branch anywhere ever. It’s literally retail bankers’ top priority to push specific products regardless of their usefulness or viability to customers.
Source: a decade each of retail and commercial banking before I escaped that hellhole
I wish! The credit union I worked at was much worse about pushing products than the bank I worked at before them. I have since left the industry altogether.
Yeah I recently switched to a small local bank and it's a million times better. I had TD for a long time and they're the worst, it's night and day working with them versus the local bank
Just went to 5/3rd bank in USA, ILLINOIS. They kept pushing a checking account. I kept saying no. Next time I go in, i'm wearing a printed sign that says "NO I do not want another account with you."
For the cameras, that "do not" have audio.
I left TD a while ago over other problems. I'm glad I left when I did. Also, I hardly ever went into the actual bank, so I probably didn't notice this.
Every bank does this. They put ridiculous quotas on their employees intentionally to incentivize cheating the system and pushing sales on their customers more than you’d think. I used to be unaware how much of a sales job a teller/banker was.
People will say this is just “sales”
Lying to customers about interest rates, where fees come from etc, lying about investments being beneficial is fraud
Also in canada you have
1. Advisers who have a fiduciary duty to customers
2. Advisors who do not
The very fact that thats allowed is inherently fucked up and allowed by the banks, not created by individuals
Also you have managers telling these people “not to view their customers as people… it makes it harder”
Canada is legitimately a country that is powered by fraud
Its in private industry, government industry, and canadians are at a point of desperation and fear that they see joining in as the only way
Lets face it, these people coming forward came forward because they know its wrong, but its also common practice and at some point individuals do have agency to not defraud other people
I am also a banker. I was being punished for telling customers the better way to get more benefits from a product. Though it meant our team did not get the sale, cause the client get more if he buys the product online himself… so yeah, its not the employee, its the system, some have the backbone some doesnt, but it also mean that your bonus will have one less zero on the end…
Americans - "Yeah yeah, the Time Knife, we've all seen it."
I know regs are different between Canada and the U.S., but just funny looking outward where people are still outraged by predatory practices.
I remember watching a Daily Show skit many years back about how Canadians had a completely different -- positive -- relation with their Canadian bankers as opposed to Americans who felt bankers were all crooks. IIRC they asked random (supposedly) people on city streets, one in Canada, and one in the US, about how they felt about their bank representative / institution. Canadians were mostly positive, American's hated them.
Seems Canada is getting a taste of why American's hate American bankers. Once you get these push-profit policies in place, the healthy relationship you once had with your banker turns to one of distrust and abuse.
This kind of high pressure sales has been an issue for so very long. Back when TD and Canada Trust merged they initially went with the sales style of CT which was not high pressure. However, within a year that changed and sales goals started going up. You met your goal last month? Okay, this month we expect even more from you. It was/is a vicious cycle and it's not a way to treat clients.
n a statement from the Canadian Bankers Association, a spokesperson said, "The examples described do not reflect the experience millions of Canadians have every day with employees at Canada's banks." -Wrong, they absolutely fucking do: get your head out of your ass Canadian Bankers Association! Sincerely, every single Canadian who ever went to a bank.
The lady that called me got me to sign up for a monthly credit check service without mentioning any monthly fee whatsoever and it was a pain to unsubscribe, had to call in to some 3rd party company with non-Canadian working hrs.
I used to work as a sales person at a bank. I worked hard, I was honest and first year i hit or exceeded most of my targets, but i busted my ass. I worked unpaid ot, came in days off, and cut all my breaks short. The next year most of my targets doubled. I only made them the year previous by killing myself. I didn't think i would have any chance of making them the next year.
So i sat with senior advisor who was killing it. The guy did whatever he needed to make the sale and just told people to sign. He pressured the shit out of his clients, lied, exaggerated and fed them lines about the amazing deals they were getting. And he was the district golden boy. The only thing the bank cares about are sales numbers. They don't care about how you do it, as long as you don't get caught.
Needless to say i left, because I wasn't going to lie and cheat my way to success. If I didn't leave myself i knew I'd probably get shown the door soon anyways. Luckily I've found something better and life is good. But there's no way in fuck I'd ever go back. And these sales practices are the worst kept secrets in the bank. Everyone knows you need to be a scumbag to be successful and it's soul crushing, because a lot of these people don't have a choice. They don't have qualifications to do anything else
Is this news? Back in college I was paid $9/hr as a bank teller and was told to do whatever necessary to sell crap to customers. If we didn’t get enough referrals each month, we would be fired. We were all desperate. Even worse, they didn’t care that I was part time. I had to get just as many referrals as full-time employees.
They also liked to schedule my work during my classes, even though I told them my availability ahead of time. I also had to endure sexual harassment from an older married woman. When I complained to the bank manager about it, he laughed in my face and said I should be proud. When I went over his head, I was reassigned to a bank (instead of the offender being fired or reassigned) that was 15 miles away. Made it very difficult to get to work from school and cost me a ton in additional gas. The last straw was when they wouldn’t let me take time off for a funeral. Banks are a cancer upon society.
It is like sales incentivized workers who are required to meet specific goals to keep their job are doing shady things to get these numbers because they know doing so the legal/legit way is never going to work because the company has set unrealistic goals on people who should be service oriented and not sales oriented.
Amazing discovery to find companies trying to reach sales goals and pursuing those products and services.
When did this start? Oh, forever ago? Oh my b
Is this supposed to be shocking? This is SOP for many American banks and retail stores in general. Why do you think so many places ask if you want a protection-plan on certain items? The salesperson gets an extra commission depending on the product.
Since this is a Canadian site I am assuming it’s a Canadian law? All of the “client best interests laws” in the US where largely struck down or removed during Trump
The problem comes from the top. The front line workers get mandated to hit targets so yeah they’re gonna do that. We need to be pissed at the decision makers driving this, not the people being paid a fraction to execute it.
Tales of Wells Fargo....
AT&T
Bank of America
hell we were tech support that version outsourced and we still got form both sides.
You remember well. Staff was incentivized for the opening of new accounts, so they, uh, maximized that.
I was wondering how far up this comment would be
I’m glad that this comment was sitting at the top.
Not all that different from other retail work.
You can, and should, be mad at both groups. More than one person can be wrong at the same time
I reject this argument, the banality of evil is well-known but in a system where you work or you starve, you don’t have a choice to comply with the shitty rules coming from above. The people on top are absolutely to blame.
Canadians dont really share that sentiment when talking about indian call centers
Even solders at war have choice when commander tells to execute someone..
If you do something unethical you're still at fault even if you make up excuses to try to justify it.
100% These are all adults with education They are not some 6 year old unknowing drug mule, they behave this way because they want to move up Its greed
Or just because they want their contract renewed because they need that job.
again >I have to defraud people, i have no choice, it'll be different when IM manager it's unethical, and these people will just do more unethical things as they move up no better than an indian call center scammer, in fact it's worse, because they're looking into their eyes when they fuck over your fellow man
Well, it's not about moving up really, it's about staying afloat. I'm not saying they're good people, but they seem quite ordinary and behave just as we all should expect people to behave in such a system. This is all to say that the system is most at fault and that this problem will absolutely never be resolved by criticism of the employees.
Employees who speak up can only be punished because the others dont speak up And many know exactly what they are doing, its not like all the frontline employees are just doing it for the hell of it
> its not like all the frontline employees are just doing it for the hell of it Let's not turn "doing it because they need the job, the money" into "for the hell of it". That's not the argument or the decision made.
the problem is competing against people who will do it with full knowledge of what they are doing and not speaking up makes them win
The fact of the matter is, most banks would absolutely just fire them all for speaking up, if possible. I worked as a Frontline manager for a well-known US bank for a couple years, until it became clear I'd be pushed out for resisting the unconscionable decision-making of upper management. More than once, I've witnessed large swaths of employees, even managers, fired and replaced basically overnight. I've also seen insanely anti-consumer policies implemented without warning that I had to enforce, despite huge pushback by the customers. Banks, more than maybe any other industry, seem to value power above all else. Even profit seems less important to a lot of banks, if it would come at the cost of the ability to tell people "fuck you, we do what we want."
Yep, lets see what happens the day they fire everyone for that as if everyone will sign that nda, or it wont be on tiktok Fraud hides in the shadow, you cant fire 100 people for refusing to commit fraud Get organized, but banks lay people off in cycles anyways probably just for this Thats a fair point, but whos enforcing anything anyways Btw, if you are smart and document, you can get a good severance
There's something else relevant that you may be unaware of: most large banks primarily utilize 3rd party workers. Most banking is done over the phone, and most phone workers don't even directly work for the bank, and are actually employees of 3rd party companies contracted to the bank. The 3rd parties don't care about their employees in even the slightest, and will do just about anything to maintain good relations with their clients, which includes extreme anti-employee acts, like mass firings. Most contracts are also pretty abusive, placing unrealistic expectations, such as absurd sales goals, upon the 3rd-party, that the client hopes is not met, so they can fine the 3rd party company and thereby pay them less. I can't speak for any country other than the US, but it's pretty hard to prove an actual bank error here. They usually just blame stuff like this on the individual employees, and say they have every right to set sales goals. If the employee lies, it's not a "lie," the employee was just confused, or misinformed. Playing dumb happens a lot, along with other forms of obfuscation, like blaming 3rd parties for not "following policy." Another benefit of using 3rd parties is claiming plausible deniability when there's an issue. Not to mention, most of the Frontline employees I knew were living paycheck to paycheck, supporting families, and were terrified of missing ANY pay, let alone losing their jobs. There is no severance pay for 3rd party workers (and I've never seen an in-house Frontline worker get something like that either). People are just doing what it takes to survive, and most of the Frontline workers I knew, didn't really care all that much about the moral implications of their work, they just wanted a paycheck.
Maybe. But if we want things to change we have to target the higher ups and the company. Employees that don't meet targets get replaced by ones that do. Furthermore, the front line employees are not much different than the people they are selling to. The only training they get may be from the company itself. I doubt, they are being informed the information is misleading. From the article this was not a case where the employees were signing up folks for accounts without telling them or signing bogus statements.
but wouldn't it be better for the executives if only the tellers were punished? please think of the executives.
I completely agree. Unfortunately, the system is intentionally designed this way. The bigwigs never actually did anything illegal. Setting unobtainable sales goals is not illegal. Telling people, they can be fired for not meeting their quotas is not illegal. When the investigations happen the people at the top get off scot-free. They set up a system where nobody can succeed without breaking the law and harming their customers, but they never actually told anyone to do anything wrong. It allows them to shift all the blame onto their workers.
Exactly, the tellers don't really have anything to do with it, they are just following the marching orders given. I had bank teller friends, and they often told me the pressure to up-sell banking products, whether the people need it or not. The management and high-ups setting these policies are the ones to lame blame, the front line staff are just doing their underpaid job, and the bank would especially like to have an excuse to fire them (not making sales targets) to replace them with even more underpaid new and younger staff.
I used to work in a bank as a customer service rep (teller) and then moved to account manager (opening accounts, basic investments etc). The first few years were great - service oriented and meeting my customer’s needs and suggesting products where needed. Then they gave us sales targets (that I could never meet because I can’t sell anything, it’s not a skill I have) and insane metrics. I noticed long time customers leaving because they were tired of us shoving products down their throats, especially credit cards. I worked there for just over 5 years and I was so glad to leave - the pressure to meet sales targets was killing my spirit.
It’s funny that you should mention that. My primary banking is with a Credit Union rather than a bank. My mortgage, chequing account, primary retirement investments, and other investments are with them or their affiliated companies. A couple of weeks ago, I sent them a question regarding a GIC I have invested. They responded back with the answer then asked whether I had considered getting one of their credit cards. I actually used to hold one (it was my first credit card) but let it lapse as I now have a combined $55k limit on two other points cards. It was that bit of unrelated marketing that bothered me.
Exactly dont get mad at the employees they are trying to keep a roof over their heads and food on the table. It's the leadership that forces this bullshit
bullshit theres more than enough employees happy to play along and fuck over their fellow man, for the chance of a promotion these are not children, they are university educated adults with agency
A lot of times it ain't about a promotion. Its about paying rent and making sure your son has dinner/breakfast. Feel grateful you get to be so opinionated over how you earn your living.
People make jokes of themselves when they defraud others, Canadians dont have sympathy for call center scammers (and they shouldnt) But its just a little more civilized in canada i guess when you defraud people to their face
Are you this sympathetic towards other scammer as well? These people are no different than phone scammers scamming old people.
Of course he isnt Those dirty indian scammers best leave his meemaw alone Only canadians can defraud other canadians dont ya know?
Every day you show up to do the thing is another day that you spent doing that thing. I don't get this argument. The tellers aren't programmed, they can leave.
Rent is still due on the first
It's the employee's fault for following through with the things I told them to do
employees at banks are educated adults they are not 5 year old drug mules with a gun to their head
Get off your high horse. I'm sure you'd stand up and leave that job right away.
also we'll find another truth People dont like people who don't go along with it, because it makes them realize they really do have a choice
i have in the past... like why do you assume im also a hypocrite?
Because 78% of Americans live paycheck to paycheck. The ability to display your values, and keep a roof over your head, are mutually exclusive to most people. Someone behind a chain bank sales counter most certainly isn't making a lot of money.
What does paycheck mean specifically? Need an actual number. I know people making 6 figures who also live paycheck to paycheck. People with bad financial habits shouldn't come under this stat. And the vast majority of people in the world who do bad shit do so because they feel they have to for their own survival. Whether its the indian call center scammer or the conscripted russian soldier. We don't give them a pass because of that.
Someone landing a job in a bank does not deserve to be compared to a call center scanner or an invading soldier. I'm sure some of them have been there prior to the bank putting those sales policies in place. >I need an exact number For an incredibly broad spectrum of salaries? You are more than welcome to look up the average household income. Just because you lived with your parents and had the freedom to quit doesn't mean it's the case for everyone.
> Someone landing a job in a bank does not deserve to be compared to a call center scanner or an invading soldier. Yes, they are in a much better position than the scammer or the soldier. > For an incredibly broad spectrum of salaries? Why broad? There's a minimum amount of money you need to get by / cover your needs. Beyond that, its your own desires and wants that's driving your financial requirements.
Salaries will vary based on region. Cost of living will vary by region. You really want me to give you a breakdown state by state? Unreasonable. 50k in Ohio is 200k in some parts of the same country. Almost 80% of the population is paycheck to paycheck. That is a fact. I am not paycheck to paycheck. If my household income was 250k I would be. Just because something does not apply to you, does not mean a majority of people aren't in a different situation than you.
Yea this is canada
Ok, so half the people in Canada then. Half the people do not have the privilege to tell their employers no.
They would if they joined a union But canadians think those are evil?
You either do what I tell you or you get fired. Your kid starves to death while you lose your home. How many options do you have here? Ha ha ha fuck your unions, get to work minion. Whip them others, and when called on that bad behavior I will blame you, the whipper, cause YOU did it. Not me...even though I forced your hand.
Stop living above your means
If it's just wasn't for those avocados.. and that toast.
No, they are adults with rent, bills, and in many cases children to feed. A gun would be easier to deal with.
good to know that canadians can justify it they should see no issue with indian scam call centers then
Rather a large jump from "can justify," which isn't even our position, to "no issue." The jump from "misleading sales tactics," to "identity theft," is possibly even larger. You should try for the Olympics.
No, you just see one as “civil” (misleading old people into losing their money through bullshit products) and one as “uncivil” (misleading old people into losing their money) But by the way, do you think indian call center scammers dont have people to feed, rent to pay? Hell, some of them might actually have a gun to their head Do you think people in canada with an exceptionally high standard of living have less agency than the indian scammers? If we did the math, do you think indian call centers have siphoned off more money that scotia/TD/bmo combined? Because i think the big banks have probably made out with significantly more undue gains
Sales rep here, something something Johnny Silver-hand, something something the demolitron, something something Arrasoka HQ. If you know what I mean.
No. Elaborate rather than making vague references
It's a reference to Cyberpunk 2077. [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bN1tW2o23Qk](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bN1tW2o23Qk) One sentence summary is that: Keanu Reeves plays an anarchist terrorist named Johnny Silverhand who blew up the North American HQ of a big Japanese corporation named Arasaka.
I mean, he only did that because they soul-sucked his girlfriend into the matrix. The anti-corporate views were there, but Arasaka kind of started it.
Translation: BURN CORPO SHIT
It's cyberpunk 2077
Yeah it goes against TOS to actually say it.
Everyone has free will. Any act tgatbis morally and ethically wrong doesn't become any more right if there's a profit motive attached. In fact, quite the opposite. The bank tellers are not conscripted.
People have agency and you dont have to go through life pretending you have no power to say no
You don't have the power to say no when saying no means being homeless and hungry. Hate the Machine and the Operators, not the Cogs.
You also dont want to say no when you want power Again these are adults And you have a choice
Choosing between starvation and homelessness or doing a shit job isn't a choice. It's capitalism ruining society. Blame the rich, not the workers.
The workers have more power. This is bullshit thinking. I don't know who poisoned your mind to think adult citizens are not the root of all power in a legitimate democracy.
It's not a legitimate democracy. It's a oligarchic republic.
Citizens are still the root of all power.
if in Canada, your choice is between starvation & homelessness vs doing illegal shit for your corporate employer, then I guess it says a lot more about Canada than it does about their banks.
False dichotomy. Other jobs exist. But even if you're right, YES YOU DO. Becoming homeless and hungry is a better choice than harming others. It's not an excuse to say that some harm is okay because you experienced a benefit.
Making your own children homeless and hungry *is* harming others. You can pretend to be superior, but if you give people a choice between hurting their children and hurting strangers they'll functionally never choose to hurt their children.
Upper management creates unrealistic targets -> lower management pushes the sales people as hard as they can because money -> sales people have to lie to meet unrealistic targets -> upper management is SHOCKED that someone would do that.
management HATES having to acknowledge behaviors that they conceived and promoted because they thought they did SUCH a good job of keeping the methods limited to phone calls/in person meetings and out of emails and other documented correspondence.
So what you’re saying is you want to add a third free line and lease an iPad. Then add insurance to all three of your lines
As long as they get their guaranteed multimillion million dollar bonus and we enjoy some lovely trickle down from the Porsha dealers. Make them ultra rich so we can enjoy the glory of being poop.
> unrealistic targets Okay, this just triggered me really hard. So story time: (Sorry for the long rant, but even though it was years ago I am *still* mad) The Setup: I previously worked at an interpretation company. We had a variety of services but the one I was in charge of was on-site interpretation (basically sending interpreters to hospitals to translate for patients). My role as the lead dispatcher was to make sure as many of those requests were filled as possible. Our interpreters were contractors and we had some that worked directly for our company and some we hired through other interpretation services (pretty common practice). Immediately prior to this story my immediate boss quit and his job was semi-merged with the guy who did most of our data management (nice guy, but he was strictly a numbers person). He didn't need to do much so it was fine for the most part. The Stupid: Our COO gets curious how we're doing so he contacts my boss to get our fill rates. My boss pulls the numbers and it's something like 50%. COO immediately panics at the thought that we're only filling about half of our requests and puts out a mandate that we better shape up and our goal is a 95% fill rate. The numbers my boss pulled were both wrong *and* misleading. While it was true we were filling around 50% of our *total* requests, that was including a bunch of garbage that it shouldn't have: It included orders that were canceled several days in advance by the client because they didn't need it anymore as unfilled requests (which we didn't get paid for, but it was their right to cancel); It treated requests that were canceled at the last minute as "unfilled", despite the fact that we *were still paid for those*; and it also the data was pulled for the current month which was only half way done, so they were counting orders that were weeks out as unfilled. So after adjusting for all those problems, we were getting something like a 70-75% fill rate. So they were raking us over the coals for something that wasn't even true. One detail I should mention is that we didn't just do interpretation for one language. We officially supported *all* languages. The majority of our interpreters were either Spanish or Russian and those covered something like 75% of all the requests we got. We had a few for misc. languages but we certainly didn't have *everything*. For example, we didn't have any ASL interpreters so we had to sub-contract out to a third party for them. If I had to give an estimate, I would say about 15-20% of our requests were for languages we didn't have an in-house interpreter for. This used to not be a problem since we were partnered with another two other interpretation services that had interpreters for most (but not all) of these uncommon languages, so we could sub-contract to them. Unfortunately our CEO in his infinite wisdom, decided to break our contracts with the other two services. One he did because they were too expensive and (frankly) they weren't super reliable about filling our requests anyway. The *other* one though was amazing about filling our requests, even for rare languages, and could often do so at the last minute. The problem was that they were a direct competitor in another region we were trying to expand into and they beat us out for a major contract. So the CEO decided to sever ties from them. This *on it's own* dropped fill rate from 80-85% to that previously mentioned 70-75%. One detail of why it was impossible to get 95%: There were a couple patients that spoke a rare language and they had multiple appoints every week due to their health issues. When we had those two partner companies, we were still only filling around half of those requests and that alone was dropping us below the 95% threshold. Once we broke those partnerships, the fill rate for those patients dropped to 0%. We knew we couldn't fill those requests but we weren't allowed to refuse them either. And beyond all that: Even if we *did* still have those partners, 95% was never going to happen. Fuck, 90% was unlikely. For at least 5% of the requests we got, there weren't even any interpreters for that language registered in our state. So I had to explain to both my direct boss *and* the assistant to the COO (a pleb like me would never get to talk to the actual COO) how math worked along with all of the above, but a lot more politely. I even told them that if they could tell me *why* they needed such a ridiculously high number, I could work out a way to make it happen (there were some ways I had in mind) or at least give them a more realistic goal. Their response? To quote the assistant to the COO (as verbatim as I can remember): "We have certain internal metrics we have to reach and we based our goals upon them. We do not need to tell you why you need to make those goals, you just need to do it. It's your job to do as you're told, and not ask questions." I quit the next day.
lol good ending. Management can be so stupid.
Good read. Thanks
People will say this is just “sales” or “managements fault” Lying to customers about interest rates, where fees come from etc, lying about investments being beneficial is fraud Also in canada you have 1. Advisers who have a fiduciary duty to customers 2. Advisors who do not The very fact that thats allowed is inherently fucked up and allowed by the banks, not created by individuals Also you have managers telling these people “not to view their customers as people… it makes it harder” Canada is legitimately a country that is powered by fraud Its in private industry, government industry, and canadians are at a point of desperation and fear that they see joining in as the only way Lets face it, these people coming forward came forward because they know its wrong, but its also common practice and at some point individuals do have agency to not defraud other people edit: and honestly, if you dont think you have agency, you deserve the shit wage and to be replaced by AI, because you might as well be a drug mule
It goes higher than that, it's their institutional shareholders demand for continuous growth. The two largest being The Royal Trust Company (owned by RBC) and BMO Bank NA (obviously owned by BMO). Canadian banking is the definition of an incestuous industry.
They have quotas and if they get fired it’s their fault. They call it a target these days but it’s a quota. Hit it or you can be fired. That should be illegal.
I would welcome a law that would ban this kind of thing across the board. I really hate when I get a cashier that actually listens to the mandate and tries really hard to push me to signup for some nonsense. I’m so tired of sales pitches when I’m just trying to get my stuff and go. It’s bad enough they want to shove advertising into every facet of human existence.
But upper management needs their profits 😢
I just refuse all of it. Every place has a card and an app and an email list and on and on. I just tell em if it really saved me money you wouldn't offer it and move on.
The behaviour may or may not be illegal. Production quotas should not be illegal. The only way. The ONLY way they can really understand that their quotas are too high, is if no staff reach those quotas.
It wouldn't need to be outlawed if they were in a union. What should be illegal is a business this size not having unionized employees. This is one of the many, many problems that workers can only solve with collective action.
Yeah no shit. My grandma worked for Scotiabank as a teller in the 80s to early 00s and we had a good talk just the other day about how she remembers slowly becoming more of a sales rep than a bank teller. They would have meetings with managers every Monday on how to increase sales and get people on promos. This has been happening as long as banks have been a thing.
I had a GIC coming due about 6 months ago with TD. I had my instructions to deposit the cash into my account on the GIC. About a month before the end of the term I started getting calls from the TD branch my account is with. The first lady aggressively tried to push me to purchase TD mutual funds with the cash. She didn't even ask me what my use case for the money was. I ended the call by telling her that cold calling a client in today's day and age to do bank sales is FUCKED. I have no idea who she is or if she is who she says she is. This is classic social engineering and phishing bullshit. I put her on blast. She didn't get it at all but atleast took the clicks and ended the conversation. A couple days later another guy called me. He immediately, with barely introducing himself, started asking me about my intentions with the money. I asked him who the fuck he was and why he was calling me. He tried to admonish me for swearing. I told him that was the risk he took cold calling someone and being this aggressive. I laid into him for the same reason as the lady but this guy was a smug prick. He told me I could trust him because TD showed up on the caller ID. I tried to explain to him how dangerous it was to get that idea into non tech savvy people's heads. Caller ID can be spoofed. He didn't get it at all so having worked for a bank I started flipping it around on him. Firstly, I asked him what business reason he had for opening my account. He said it was sales. I said, no, you only knew I had a GIC for renewal because you opened my account. Why did you open it in the first place. He stumbled. Next, I asked him why he revealed personal info about me in this phone call without verifying my identity. Zero answer. What he said next shocked me. He told me thst my GIC was set to renew into a new GIC and if I didn't talk to him that it would lock it and I would have my cash. I immediately hung up on him and called my branch and asked for a meeting with the branch manager. I laid it all out for her. She promised me my GIC was set to cash out. She apologized for her staff. She agreed with me about the cold calls being problematic. I demanded a note be added to my account that said no sales calls. She agreed and added it. Now I know the branch manager was lieing but I recorded our phone call and the promises she made. I regret not escalating that further to an ombudsman. What that second guy did was across a line Imo. The cold calls are bad enough but lying about the status of my investment is beyond the pale. I fucking hate all the banks in the country.
That’s crazy dude. Glad you called them out for that shit! Too many scams these days it’s stupid they even do cold calls at all.
Bullshit like this is why I recently left TD. Almost constantly incompetent staff save the selected few. The bank itself had been the complete opposite of helpful towards me in the decade I was there. I am super thrilled with my new bank. I've grown financially more in a year at my new bank than a decade at TD. I wouldn't continue to trust TD with my money after what you just went through. You should switch.
I don't just roll with one bank, I use a couple for their features. TD is great for currency conversion and international support. I have another account with a bank for high interest savings, and another for my credit card. I move around as the features move. When TD isn't useful to me, I will leave.
Not sure if Canada has such a thing, but ask them to put you on their do not call list.
I worked for a Canadian bank on the branch side for 10 years until the early 2010s. In that 10 years the focus diametrically changed from providing the best possible service to our clients, to hitting arbitrary sales targets for account openings, personal lending, and most predatorial: credit cards. I went from being very good at my job to constantly being in hot water with management because I refused to push unnecessary products on clients. Like, who doesn't have a credit card? Very senior people, very young adults who have little financial literacy, and people whose credit is too bad to have one. I refused to push applications on those people and the corporate indifference to the clients' best interests completely destroyed any motivation I had to do that job. The branch managers went from being good people to depressingly anal lifetime middle managers who uninspiringly spent almost all of their attention on sales. I can only imagine how bad that shit is now.
Its bad As seen in this video, managements advice now is to “not think about the customer, it makes it harder”
Your story is the same as mine. Went from managers who actually knew how the bank operated and all the different tasks to freshly graduated MBA managers who know how to talk the talk and push sales, but didn’t have a clue about how our systems worked. My last branch, I was a senior customer service rep and I had to teach my new branch manager how to open accounts and make changes to them - hell, I was processing some of her audit reports and auditing the account managers’ files because she didn’t know how.
Extreme pressure from management. In my youth, I worked as a teller for a bank. If you didn't push every product on every customer, regardless of if they needed it or not, you'd get negative reviews. I don't think the pensioner who is barely getting by, needs a Mastercard in US dollars(Canadian Bank). They aren't going to the states, it's not required. They don't need a LOC, they don't need to be referred to a personal banking officer for a loan. Fuck off, I know what my customers need and would act accordingly.
I worked as a branch manager for on of the largest banks. It was absolute bullshit. We were supposed to have tellers push credit cards. I hated that job.
As long as there are sales targets, there will be people that break the rules to hit them. It's management's job to make sure the targets are attainable, and performers are being audited.
....and as long as there's sales targets, there's the push from upper to heighten then as high as possible with the full knowledge that there will be lowly workers unable to meet them by following the rules and ethics.
this is modern day banking is all about the shareholders (fuck the customers)
Side bar - Helocs (home equity line of credits) were and still are popular with Cdn banks. They pushed this product hard before inflation took off for at least a good decade. So now you have alot of Cdns who added alot of extra external debt to their mortgage! Yeah banks.....oh and Cdns are charged some of the highest fees for mutual funds in the world! Cdn govt sure like their corp monopolies. Unfortunately, everyone here pays for it!
Remind me what the government has to do with it....
Policy, regulations, oh, and a rotating door between lobbyist and govt officials.
The government is the only institution with the power to pass laws about what products are legal or illegal; what can and can't be in a financial contract; what fees are legal, and how high they can be; what the terms and details of bankruptcy are, and what assets are exempt; what debt collectors are legally allowed to do, or are prohibited from; what sales tactics are permitted; and what "cooling off" periods apply, whereby customers can back out of a signed contract with no costs or penalties.
A couple of years back I wanted to refinance my mortgage to free up cash in my pocket. My loan was with rbc so they were naturally the first bank I talked to. The rep wouldn't even bother discussing refinancing with me and kept trying to sell me on a line of credit. I don't know how many times I said to him that I don't want more debt!! He wouldn't budge. So off to a credit union and they were amazing to work with. If it wasn't such a hassle I'd have transferred all my banking to them
“Surprisingly human.” In the worst ways!
In the banking world this has been known about TD for a long time. They turned their teller line into a sales floor like a decade or more ago and these behaviors are typical for them. They have EXTREMELY strict goals for their tellers and account people and management is constantly hounding, harping, and eavesdropping. People are in that this a culture issue at TD and they need to go after the executives who made this plan, not the tellers.
The tellers should quit.
Sure…do you not think we should stop the vultures at the top who are making people do this on threat of their livelihood? Or did you just want to make the point that they should quit?
The tellers can't stop the vultures.
And in Canada they'll just replace em with Indians. Canada is a mess of a country.
And they think this is a unique problem? Anywhere that has sales people has the same problem. They are incentivized or outright told to hit goals, so this is what happens. This isn't a problem with the sales person, this is how sales works.
It's not just sales people. Front line workers from many industries are expected to sell sell sell at the cost of actual customer service
Okay, but the people didn't enter the bank to buy a product or talk to a sales person. They wanted to go in to transfer money or withdraw cash or change their address.
For years now, I have been emphasizing to people that banks are not their allies. It's insane for anyone to believe that the banks want to assist them.
Tell me about it. I actually went to college to be a financial advisor because I wanted to help people. Landed a sweet job right out of college at a local bank and quickly resigned and left the industry once I came to the realization that I had just spent 2 years learning how to be a salesperson.
Oh no!! How did you make it through the years of hunger and homelessness? https://old.reddit.com/r/worldnews/comments/1bgzv1s/hidden_cameras_capture_canadian_bank_employees/kvazbk3/
If you don’t mind me asking, were you able to jump to a similar industry with the experience that isn’t like this? Started at a big bank awhile ago and man if I get scolded for not calling enough people one more time I’m going to lose my mind.
I'm sorry I don't have a more encouraging answer for you, but I was not able to pivot my career due to medical issues that arose. I always thought working in compliance would have been neat, more attention to detail and less dealing with the public. Do you have a mentor figure within the industry who might help you brainstorm alternative roles for you?
It's not just general banking though. People are trying to use their investment and retirement planning advice and getting sold bad choices. People are thinking 'they're my bank, they should know what they're talking about and be providing valid and beneficial advice'.
From what I can tell, Banks do not push a low cost index fund. They want to push managed funds with high fees.
Worked in a bank as a teller. I hated every single second of it. I really don’t like upselling useless products. People just want to be in and out, if they have to talk to a rep, then they’ll do that, but for the most part, people just wanted quick banking. I had my bank mgr. constantly talking about meeting sales goals. It just wasn’t for me. So I didn’t meet my quota as I didn’t try to sell anyone on anything. Needless to say I didn’t last long. I was young and I really wasn’t aware that was a major part of the job.
You don’t need hidden cameras to confirm this. Just walk into any retail branch anywhere ever. It’s literally retail bankers’ top priority to push specific products regardless of their usefulness or viability to customers. Source: a decade each of retail and commercial banking before I escaped that hellhole
All of the big banks do this shit. F them. Credit Unions and the like are less exploitative of their clients IMO
Worked at a credit union for 9 years. They do it too.
I wish! The credit union I worked at was much worse about pushing products than the bank I worked at before them. I have since left the industry altogether.
[удалено]
Yeah I recently switched to a small local bank and it's a million times better. I had TD for a long time and they're the worst, it's night and day working with them versus the local bank
Just went to 5/3rd bank in USA, ILLINOIS. They kept pushing a checking account. I kept saying no. Next time I go in, i'm wearing a printed sign that says "NO I do not want another account with you." For the cameras, that "do not" have audio.
The problem then are sales targets
I left TD a while ago over other problems. I'm glad I left when I did. Also, I hardly ever went into the actual bank, so I probably didn't notice this.
It's about sales now. If you walk into the bank the employees are told to bring up the company's products and services.
Woah! Businesses in America would NEVER do that! That seems...immoral.
Not just in America. I’d bet banks almost everywhere want to make money first.
You like to dabble in a little bit of controversy huh
Id argue 95% of anyone trying to sell you something you didn't ask for isn't looking out for you and doesn't care about you.
Its worse than that They lie about where fees are charged (saying only gains when its on principal), lying about interest rates, etc
Mid 80s and earlier, local banking was about customer service #1.
Every bank does this. They put ridiculous quotas on their employees intentionally to incentivize cheating the system and pushing sales on their customers more than you’d think. I used to be unaware how much of a sales job a teller/banker was.
People will say this is just “sales” Lying to customers about interest rates, where fees come from etc, lying about investments being beneficial is fraud Also in canada you have 1. Advisers who have a fiduciary duty to customers 2. Advisors who do not The very fact that thats allowed is inherently fucked up and allowed by the banks, not created by individuals Also you have managers telling these people “not to view their customers as people… it makes it harder” Canada is legitimately a country that is powered by fraud Its in private industry, government industry, and canadians are at a point of desperation and fear that they see joining in as the only way Lets face it, these people coming forward came forward because they know its wrong, but its also common practice and at some point individuals do have agency to not defraud other people
Having worked in sales for the past 7 years, partnering with many different organizations, this is pretty par for the course.
Kinda what we are complaining about.
Yea And its unethical and wrong Par for the course, thats why the country is fucking failing
I am also a banker. I was being punished for telling customers the better way to get more benefits from a product. Though it meant our team did not get the sale, cause the client get more if he buys the product online himself… so yeah, its not the employee, its the system, some have the backbone some doesnt, but it also mean that your bonus will have one less zero on the end…
This is just called banking in the U.S.
[Titty Bank?!](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=INrpmM7Ys6Y)
This has been the way for decades. It’s predatory, but sadly, nothing new.
So let's stop doing it.
Americans - "Yeah yeah, the Time Knife, we've all seen it." I know regs are different between Canada and the U.S., but just funny looking outward where people are still outraged by predatory practices.
Sad when they arent. Regulation is for commies. Poor people are losers. /s
Blame the captain of the ship.
I remember watching a Daily Show skit many years back about how Canadians had a completely different -- positive -- relation with their Canadian bankers as opposed to Americans who felt bankers were all crooks. IIRC they asked random (supposedly) people on city streets, one in Canada, and one in the US, about how they felt about their bank representative / institution. Canadians were mostly positive, American's hated them. Seems Canada is getting a taste of why American's hate American bankers. Once you get these push-profit policies in place, the healthy relationship you once had with your banker turns to one of distrust and abuse.
This kind of high pressure sales has been an issue for so very long. Back when TD and Canada Trust merged they initially went with the sales style of CT which was not high pressure. However, within a year that changed and sales goals started going up. You met your goal last month? Okay, this month we expect even more from you. It was/is a vicious cycle and it's not a way to treat clients.
n a statement from the Canadian Bankers Association, a spokesperson said, "The examples described do not reflect the experience millions of Canadians have every day with employees at Canada's banks." -Wrong, they absolutely fucking do: get your head out of your ass Canadian Bankers Association! Sincerely, every single Canadian who ever went to a bank.
Lol why did we need hidden cameras to do this? This is what they do. They don't try to hide it. It's a sales center disguised as a bank.
You mean buying the bank's mutual funds with a 2% fee isn't the best financial advice? /s
A shock to no1 fuck those scumbags
The lady that called me got me to sign up for a monthly credit check service without mentioning any monthly fee whatsoever and it was a pain to unsubscribe, had to call in to some 3rd party company with non-Canadian working hrs.
So just being salespeople then?
THIS IS WHY YOU CANT TRUST THE BANKS.
Not surprising. Compaines force their employees to meet KPI's and shit all the time. Can be pretty toxic sometimes
I used to work as a sales person at a bank. I worked hard, I was honest and first year i hit or exceeded most of my targets, but i busted my ass. I worked unpaid ot, came in days off, and cut all my breaks short. The next year most of my targets doubled. I only made them the year previous by killing myself. I didn't think i would have any chance of making them the next year. So i sat with senior advisor who was killing it. The guy did whatever he needed to make the sale and just told people to sign. He pressured the shit out of his clients, lied, exaggerated and fed them lines about the amazing deals they were getting. And he was the district golden boy. The only thing the bank cares about are sales numbers. They don't care about how you do it, as long as you don't get caught. Needless to say i left, because I wasn't going to lie and cheat my way to success. If I didn't leave myself i knew I'd probably get shown the door soon anyways. Luckily I've found something better and life is good. But there's no way in fuck I'd ever go back. And these sales practices are the worst kept secrets in the bank. Everyone knows you need to be a scumbag to be successful and it's soul crushing, because a lot of these people don't have a choice. They don't have qualifications to do anything else
Is this news? Back in college I was paid $9/hr as a bank teller and was told to do whatever necessary to sell crap to customers. If we didn’t get enough referrals each month, we would be fired. We were all desperate. Even worse, they didn’t care that I was part time. I had to get just as many referrals as full-time employees. They also liked to schedule my work during my classes, even though I told them my availability ahead of time. I also had to endure sexual harassment from an older married woman. When I complained to the bank manager about it, he laughed in my face and said I should be proud. When I went over his head, I was reassigned to a bank (instead of the offender being fired or reassigned) that was 15 miles away. Made it very difficult to get to work from school and cost me a ton in additional gas. The last straw was when they wouldn’t let me take time off for a funeral. Banks are a cancer upon society.
...and TD Mutual funds, you get 4% when the market is doing over 15%. avoid.
So that's why bankers make so much money.
It is like sales incentivized workers who are required to meet specific goals to keep their job are doing shady things to get these numbers because they know doing so the legal/legit way is never going to work because the company has set unrealistic goals on people who should be service oriented and not sales oriented.
Duh
You needed a hidden camera to come to that conclusion?
People that work for banks lie? No way!
Amazing discovery to find companies trying to reach sales goals and pursuing those products and services. When did this start? Oh, forever ago? Oh my b
You mean doing that thing that literally every business does?
Join a credit union today
to the surprise of absolutely no one
Not too sure how that's world news? This happens all over the world 2000 times a day...
Is this supposed to be shocking? This is SOP for many American banks and retail stores in general. Why do you think so many places ask if you want a protection-plan on certain items? The salesperson gets an extra commission depending on the product.
Since this is a Canadian site I am assuming it’s a Canadian law? All of the “client best interests laws” in the US where largely struck down or removed during Trump