Dear Sir / Madam

I have read your paper on the Internet and I submit for you consideration a situation that faces my mother.

My mother is 84 and on a age pension which is paid into a bank account. We needed to make changes to her account recently and she was issued with an account that has a plastic card that can be used at ATM's and in simple terms has a fee for over the counter withdrawals.

After several attempts she could not get the card to work through the ATM. The problem is that she has been issued with what the Staff at the bank call a "Deeming" account, but when my mother goes to the ATM there is no button on the machine that says "Deeming" account. After several attempts to clarify this with the "Younger" staff in the bank, my mother has given up trying to resolve the issue she has given up and now does business over the counter, as a result incurs a fee for access to her pension.

As an observation this situation is fairly typical of the trend in financial institutions where the promotion of new initiatives is often done by younger marketing staff who in the main have university degrees and are all quite computer literate. Although these people are quite bright, they do not seem to understand that there are people in the world who use their services and they may not have the same level of computer literacy. This results in an inappropriate level of information being given to customers. I submit this as an example for your consideration in framing your report.

Sincerely

Howard Coleman
16 Long St
Mentone 3194