Tim Blair: CBA bullies need to scrap their Bureau for Gouging

Tip to granny: move your funds into your eight-year-old grandson’s account. That’ll beat these ComBank bullies, writes Tim Blair.

Picture the scene. Deep within the Commonwealth Bank, the elite ComBank Bureau for Gouging and Incompetence meets to discuss how best to rob and alienate the bank’s most loyal customers.

They instantly identify the elderly as easy marks.

Sure, these people have been with the bank for practically their entire lives. Every loan they’ve ever taken out has been through the Commonwealth. They’ve generated massive Combank cash.

But they’re old, so let’s take them down. But how?

By imposing a ridiculous $3 withdrawal fee on customers who prefer to do their banking at an actual bank branch, that’s how. Face to face with actual people, if Combank staffers still identify as such.

The vast majority of the CBA’s in-branch customers are in the 60-plus age bracket.

Of course, even the Commonwealth Bank isn’t stupid enough to outright specify age as a qualifier for this vicious treatment. But they don’t need to.

They already know that the vast majority of their in-branch customers are in the 60-plus age bracket.

Announcing this latest gouge, ComBank said that its so-called “assisted withdrawal fee” would not be imposed “if you are under the age or 18, or you are reliant on over the counter services because of a disability”.

Tip to granny: move your funds into your eight-year-old grandson’s account. That’ll beat these ComBank bullies.

And a tip to the Commonwealth Bank.

Millions of loyal customers of Australia’s biggest bank are set to be slugged a $3 fee when they make a withdrawal.

When you have a committed and trusting customer base, an older customer base that has stuck with you throughout decades, don’t use it to score additional free cash on top of the $2.5 billion profit you’ve already pulled in during the first quarter of the financial year.

Instead of hitting these people with “assisted withdrawal fees”, how about you instead continue to offer “assisted withdrawal” – by which I mean simply handing over a customer’s money upon request.

And here’s another tip for the Commonwealth Bank.

Abolish that elite Bureau for Gouging and Incompetence. You’ll probably save about $3 billion in wages.