Responding to service issues?
Deutsche Bank is putting Postbank partner shops on hold
February 20, 2024, 6:59 p.m
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Postbank customers have been struggling with service problems for some time. There is no improvement in sight. The parent company has now announced that it will eliminate financial services in post office partner branches. Consumer advocates suspect that this will make existing problems worse.
Deutsche Bank wants to stop offering financial services from its subsidiary Postbank in postal partner branches by the end of 2025. “We have been observing for some time that customers are increasingly carrying out their banking transactions online and the proportion of cashless payments is increasing,” a spokesman for the institute told the “Handelsblatt”. “With this in mind, we have decided to gradually stop offering these banking services in Deutsche Post’s partner branches by the end of 2025.”
According to the newspaper, around 1,800 Swiss Post partner shops, such as stationery stores or other retailers, are affected by the measure. In addition to the services of Deutsche Post, they also offer financial services from Postbank, such as issuing cash. The closure could ensure that “Postbank’s customer service, which has been criticized for months, deteriorates further,” the “Handelsblatt” quotes Stephanie Heise, head of consumer finance at the North Rhine-Westphalia consumer center.
Serious problems
Many customers have been having problems with Postbank customer service for some time. The Federal Association of German Consumer Organizations reported that more than 1,500 complaints were received last year. The spectrum is wide, ranging from account closures to non-payment of rent transfers. A solution is often a long time coming.
Since an IT migration, when Deutsche Bank migrated twelve million pieces of data from its Postbank brand to the parent company’s IT platform, many Postbank customers have struggled with, among other things, a lack of accessibility to customer service. In 2023, the financial regulator Bafin appointed a special representative for Deutsche Bank due to the problems with converting the IT systems.
Deutsche Bank is thus reducing the presence of its Postbank subsidiary even further. In October, the financial institution announced that it would focus more on online banking at Postbank and thin out the network of 550 Postbank branches. Around 250 locations are expected to be closed by mid-2026.