#111: workers strike to stay out of the office

Happy?Friday?and welcome to This Week in CX! We're bringing you our roundup of industry news summarised in an exclusive LinkedIn newsletter. For more detail on any news featured here, check out 'This week in CX' on the Customer Experience Magazine (CXM)?website .

This week, we’ve been looking at the latest research in consumer preferences, standards, and attitudes to AI usage.

Banks to put four-day hold on suspicious payments

Banks will have the power to pause payments for up to four days to give them more time to investigate fraud, the government has said.

Currently, transfers must be processed or declined by the end of the next business day, but the new law will allow an extension of three more days.

For years, banks have needed to have reasonable grounds to suspect fraud before being able to investigate but have also faced pressure from customers who want payments to be made instantly.

The long-proposed new regulations will come into force at the end of October – later than originally planned.The previous government’s draft legislation had proposed giving banks the new powers by 7 October, but now they will take effect from the end of the month.

Fraud is the most common offence in the country, accounting for a third of all crime in England and Wales.?

Workers are striking to dispute return to office mandate

Hundreds of Office for National Statistics (ONS) workers have voted to strike in a dispute over how often they come into the office.?

Members of the Public and Commercial Services Union (PCS), based at the Newport, Titchfield, London, Darlington, Manchester and Edinburgh ONS offices, voted by 92% in favour of action.

Since May, workers have been refusing to spend at least 40% of their time in the office, continuing to work from home. They recently escalated the dispute by refusing to work overtime, out of hours and out of grade.

PCS general secretary Fran Heathcote said “up until now our members have been taking action short of a strike but today they’ve voted to escalate this, which could involve an all-out strike. Our industrial action has until now had no tangible impact on the ONS’ outputs – which was the point.”

No strike dates have been announced but action short of strike will continue.?

• 亚马逊 is planning to ramp up ads across its television shows and movies on Prime Video next year, The Financial Times reports . A senior Amazon exec told the newspaper that “churn” — when a customer leaves the Prime service — has been “been much, much less than we anticipated” since introducing ads to the platform in January.
• eBay has eliminated private seller fees across all categories but motor vehicles in the UK, positioning itself to better compete with platforms such as Vinted, Depop and Facebook Marketplace. After removing fees for pre-owned clothes in April, which resulted in a double-digit surge in listings, the company is now extending this approach to attract more sellers and streamline the selling process, hoping to boost resale activity.
• When Elon Musk bought Twitter in 2022 he paid $44bn (€40bn, ￡33bn) for the company. The business, which he renamed to X, is now worth more than 75% less , according to a disclosure from an investment firm with equity in the social media platform. Fidelity’s Blue Chip Growth Fund says its stake has fallen from $19.6m at the time of the takeover to $5.5m in July this year, meaning X’s total valuation stands at around $9.4bn. That’s less than a quarter of what Musk paid for it in October 2022.

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