One of the very large ("too big to fail"
national banks did exactly that - they opened accounts without the permission of the customers. The bankers were incentivized to open accounts. They have been under Federal sanction for this and other things for years now. The scenario is really realistic and I think that it is part of their compliance actions - to see if they are escalating these complaints correctly. This is the bank the shops are being done for.
I just searched and found this quotation from a reputable source online: "... the bank fired thousands of employees and hired a third-party investigative team which determined that there may have been as many as 3.5 million unauthorized accounts, 1.4 million more than originally reported." I suggest that the wackiness was on the part of the former bank executives who dreamt up this scheme.
If the current people do their job correctly, the complaint is escalated to a special team. When the escalation team calls (a day or so later by your request), you tell them that it was part of a mystery shop. I have done a few. You can literally hear their relief that it wasn't real. They wipe the records clean.
@sandyf wrote:
I have been tempted to take a new account shop to become a customer and then do the complaint shops. There are many more of those for customers than non-customers that they seem to pay better bonuses but I was wondering how awful the complaint would be. A computer in the lobby would be really easy for me.But they opened (my own account?) without my knowledge sounds wacky. Are there other scenarios and did anyone else other than pambam57 find they could pull up your previous complaints when you came in? If I can only do a few shops I would not bother to open an acct witih them.
Shopping Southeast Pennsylvania, Delaware above the canal, and South Jersey since 2008