When You Have a Bad Experience, Fill Out the Survey

I recently had sort of a bad experience with a bank, and because I’m naturally a nice person and not willing to stir the pot or get people in trouble, I hemmed and hawed about whether to be totally honest about how the experience left me feeling, or sugar coating it, or not doing it at all, when I got a customer satisfaction survey in my email about my whole experience.

I really don’t like to give negative feedback, but sometimes when you are faced with something that can really let a company know how your experience was, and you might prevent the experience from happening to someone else, then it really may be worth your time to vent your frustrations. I gotta say, I was very relieved after filling it out. I felt that I was misled about some things with the process I went through, and then was forced to make a snap decision when we came down the final hours, not knowing for sure if this was going to truly benefit us in the long run or not.

The hardest part about providing feedback like this, is that the person who helped us out and initiated the whole loan process for us was a genuinely nice person. However, in the end, I felt that we were not adequately notified of the final terms of the loan, nor were we aware that we were being charged points to get a lower rate, until we literally had the closing company sitting at our dining room table explaining things to us.

It really enraged me when I thought about it, that I was forced to make a snap decision, knowing that a couple thousand dollars more had been added to our loan balance, and that the bank had made thousands off of us in closing costs and fees and points, and we are totally worthy of paying this bill every month. I realized that is how the banks make so much money through refinancing, at the expense of the consumer.

I guess I felt like I had just had enough, and wasn’t going to take it without offering my true, unapologetic feedback on how I felt about the whole experience. There really is something to be said for filling out these surveys truthfully and honestly, it took a load off my mind to express this since I never formally complained, except to the guy at the closing table, and it wasn’t his fault at all, it was really the fault of the bank and their terms and lack of communication up front.

Filling out customer satisfaction surveys serves more than the purpose of the company figuring out what they can do better, it serves as a place for you to be honest and truthful about how you were left feeling about your experience.