January is when the annual card fee is due on my Commonwealth Gold MasterCard so I rang up today to cancel the card. I was half expecting them to offer to give me the card for another year without paying the annual fee as I've heard this is fairly common practice but that didn't happen.
The guy who answered it was friendly and curious touch is that they tell you where they're from - "Hello, Tom speaking from Hobart" (Tom wasn't actually his name, I've already forgotten that detail). I don't really know why that's useful except maybe to re-affirm that they haven't outsourced customer service overseas? Yet.
Overall the process wasn't bad but had a lot of room for improvement, especially compared to Westpac's service.
Where the Westpac chick was able to cancel the annual fee immediately I was told with the Commonwealth I would have to pay the fee, and then it would be refunded to me. This is partly my fault as I waited a few days too long to call up but given that Westpac is able to do it why can't the Commonwealth?
The other things I noted in my call to Westpac were notably missing - Commbank guy did not ask about my award points (which I had converted to Qantas Frequent Flyer points just 2 days ago, and I had checked they had made it through), nor did he ask if I had any direct debits set up against the card. And he didn't even ask why I'm closing the account - don't worry about improving the product or anything!
