There’s a tough looking geezer on the Permanent tsb homepage. His message to anyone dropping by? “Don’t make me say this again”

It seems to be the phrase around which they’ve built many aspects of their client communication plan.

We have our home mortgage with Permanent tsb and late last year changed our house insurance to Allianz. About a month ago we received a letter from Permanent tsb requesting that we ask Allianz to send them proof of our new policy. The arrival of the letter coincided with our daughter’s admittance to hospital so (mae culpa) we forgot to organise this.

This morning we received a second letter from Permanent tsb advising us that “As we have not received a reply to date, we have now arranged buildings cover on the above property. The premiums for this will be debited with your mortgage repayment.”

In other words “Don’t make me say this again”.

When I called their “Insurance Client line” (irony of ironies) the friendly guy on the end of the line told me there was no need for concern, they wouldn’t really have taken out additional insurance cover. He also apologised for what he called the “tersely worded” letter which is sent automatically in these situations.

Instead of the “Don’t make me say this again” letter we received today, wouldn’t it have been better for them to send a friendly reminder? The result for them would have been the same, and the client would be less likely to feel like shopping around for a new fixed rate mortgage in these times of increasing interest rates.