Rectifications (21) – Nefarious NAB – “Sign up to fight unfair banking”!!

Rectifications (21) – Nefarious NAB – "Sign up to fight unfair banking"!!
Torrey Orton– February 16, 2010

"Sign up to fight unfair banking"!!

… sighted on Burnley train platform, 11 Feb '10

I shouldn't have been but I was astounded by the above. Then I was mildly outraged that the bank which always takes and never gives but for a take elsewhere in the shadows at least the size of the give...the people with no people to talk to, the people who you can't even get their computer generated customer service voices without myriad seldom used numbers…all the garbage of postmodern productivity..the people I know I cannot escape by going to the competitors who also use the same spin to gain slivers of edge on each other…Arrgh! By writing this my mildness is overtaken with teeth gritting anger.


This is not dog-whistle. It's Orwellian distortion of natural orders.


"When you sign up for our everyday account there are no monthly account fees ever with no strings attached. It's just one of the ways we give our customers more." (NAB website) Plus you get NAB Visa Debit Card (and in four colours!!) at no extra cost and access to expanded range of ATMs. So where is the money made in this? In the transactions, of course. Do they say that in the adverts? No.


So, who are these banalitists ? Who pays for and who executes, apparently shamelessly (since the right to speak is on their side legally – but not morally!), the spinning of the bank's reputation for sneaky, self-interested, obscure profit-making by turning it on its head to suggest the bank is an institution committed to social and personal justice??


And when will they release the report(s) which led them to make this move towards social justice? Will these reports show that they have been scamming us in various ways for days, weeks, months, years, decades (choose your preferred standard )? Will they specify the means of scamming and the profits made from them? Will they show that the profit increments achieved by scamming are a slight proportion of total profits? No, none of these will occur because it's all commercial in confidence of course. And, if they did, their shareholders of institutional size will have a rather shady look, too. Especially the Board level ones.


Maybe it's just a counter-offensive to Westpac's bringing back the branch managers ploy? Who's the greater fake customer servicer? Anyway, they have no shame about substantive things like their dependence on public support (even our wonderfully regulated banks benefitted from such considerations last year). This isn't mentioned here as elsewhere in the international community of finance. Where the king is naked and no one sees, there's little lost by disregarding the facts.


And so, good night.