All we seek is to have access to our father's account by phone or online.
It has been impossible to achieve after one month, 12 phone calls and 2 official complaints.
 
My brother and I have applied for access to our father's account as he has been deemed incapable of acting for himself. We sent all the necessary certified documentation on January 4th by registered mail and made our first call on January 8th to check the progress.

The bank wrote back by mail (the slowest option), not email or phone seeking for the access forms to be signed by pen and not by PDF sign. They also asked for certified copies of IDs. This means they acknowledged receipt of the court order.

The documents were sent by registered mail again and received a reply by email this time, meaning they acknowledged the applications forms being received. This time they again asked for a certified copy of the court order.

This was sent immediately by registered mail, but no reply has been received.

Here is where we experience the real trouble with AMP and its very bad service:

In the meantime, both on 8th Jan and today 2nd Feb we have attempted to go through the validation process which requires to give personal details. This means our details have been on the account from the beginning, so why so much trouble? Both times we were asked what the last transaction on the account was, requiring date, amount and to/by whom.

As we only have statements issued after the end of the previous month, there is no way to provide this information, Decembers statement was only received by mail on the 16th of Jan and last month’s statements will not be seen for a while. By the time statements are received, more payments will be made to the account, and we will have no way to provide that information.

We have pleaded for someone to acknowledge the absurdity of such a question, but we are told to put it in writing.
We have asked to have the matter escalated but were told this is not possible until we are validated.
We have asked for someone to call us to have the matter resolved but were told that there is nothing more they could do.

It has been one month now, and we are unable to pay mounting debts, we are unable to sign our father to a permanent aged care facility, and we are unable to move forward with costs involved with disposing of property and assets as we cannot gain access to this account. We have used our own money and now our savings are depleted, and we cannot move forward.

This is the real problem with dealing with a bank that has no physical presence, as there is no branch. Where it really fails is that customers can only deal with what seems to be outsourced customer service with no authority to act and no way to refer matters higher up.

Two complaints have been lodged, one by phone and the other online.

The conclusion is that this is a very uncaring, unsympathetic and disinterested bank that has no idea the damage it is causing us in this difficult time.

Way to go AMP!