The Captain's Blog ™

Despite receiving collective basic annual salaries of over £1.5m, Britannia Building Society’s board of directors is still apparently incapable of approving a sensible members’ survey.

As an addendum to their voting form for the 2008 AGM, the building society’s members’ survey reads as follows:

“We write to you every time the rate on your savings account changes. We have to write to each of our near 3 million members, even if this means several letters arriving at the same address. This costs a lot of money and uses a lot of paper. We could advertise savings rate changes in national newspapers instead.

Please tell us what you think by TICKING ONE OF THE FOLLOWING OPTIONS ON YOUR VOTING FORM.

- I’d like you to save money and paper by advertising savings rate changes in national newspapers instead of writing to me

OR

- I’d like you to write to tell me every time the rate on my savings account changes.”

That’s it. End of survey.

I know what you’re thinking. Exactly what I thought when I read it: where is the EMAIL OPTION?!

Email would solve the cost of postal mail, whilst also enabling Britannia to cut back on how much paper it uses. Email would also provide members with personal notification – something which may well be preferred by the many people who don’t read any national newspapers. A clear win-win all round, it would seem.

By omitting email as an option and forcing people to choose between two options, neither of which amounts to the ideal solution, they’ve risked voiding the validity of the whole exercise.

It certainly doesn’t take a genius to spot this issue, so how on earth did such a poorly designed survey get issued in the first place? It’s not the best supporting argument for re-election, that’s for sure.