Commonwealth Bank customer is furious when his bank account balances disappear
- Chris Burdon complained about his account balances disappearing
- It took customer service two hours to fix the problem.
A Commonwealth Bank customer has vented his frustration at having to navigate customer service for two hours when his account balances disappeared.
Chris Burdon, who helps run the family business Nonesuch Distillery at Dodges Ferry east of Hobart in Tasmania, shared a video on social media on Thursday detailing his problem.
“So today I logged into the CommBank app to pay a couple of bills, nothing out of the ordinary there, except once I got in it’s a little weird, two of my accounts just vanished into thin air,” Burdon said.
Tasmanian Chris Burdon recently complained about his account balances on his CommBank app disappearing and he spent two hours trying to fix it.
CommBank, like all financial institutions, is required to collect data under government Know Your Customer requirements.
“I spent the next half hour trying to figure out what I did so he can’t see these accounts and where the thousands of dollars in them have disappeared.”
Mr. Burdon said he couldn’t figure out what happened, so he called CommBank customer service, but had to wait 45 minutes in line before he could speak to someone.
“I finally got through to the first person I spoke to this morning, who sent me to the second, who sent me to the third, who sent me to the fourth, then the fifth, and it wasn’t until the sixth department that I was really able to get help,” he said.
‘And you want to know what that problem was, ladies and gentlemen? I was flagged by CommBank for a KYC assessment.’
Under Australian Anti-Money Laundering and Terrorist Financing Act, financial institutions are required to apply Know Your Customer procedures to all of their customers.
The purpose of collecting the information is to satisfy financial institutions that the account holder is who they say they are.
“CommBank will send a notification to let you know you need to get in touch and update your details, but I didn’t receive such a notification,” Burdon said.
“Because I didn’t get any notification, I didn’t respond and that means they stopped my account and removed my access to it, including spending, receiving or even viewing my money.”
“So not only did I spend two hours trying to fix this problem, I also sit here wondering: Can I have any confidence when the bank wants to do one of these assessments again that they won’t take away my access to my money?”
Daily Mail Australia has contacted Commonwealth Bank for comment.
Mr. Burdon recently received a customer service award for his company Nonesuch Distillery
