HAS BELEAGUERED Ulster Bank got the tone of its radio apology right? Perhaps not, if these Twitter reactions are anything to go by.

“The Ulster Bank radio ad is sickening. Sounds like they’re banging their own drum ‘we’ve helped over 100k people’ What??” tweeted @GaryByrne4.

“Never miss an opportunity Big Banking. Ulster Bank radio ad to apologise for disruption ends up as self praise for how they’ve handled it,” wrote @DiarmuidLyng.

And it gets worse. “I’m not even an Ulster Bank customer and that Jim Ryan apology radio ad irritates me beyond all reason,” tweeted @neasaconneally. Continuing on the theme, writer @barbarascully responded: “Omg that Ulster Bank is going to make me throw my radio out the window soon . . . And I’m not an Ulster Bank customer.”

Other listeners are wearying of the frequency of the apology – though that’s not a radio advertising issue unique to Ulster Bank – while other Twitter reactions invoke the same colourful vocabulary that Teleprinter imagines its customers resort to each time they check their account and find it isn’t fixed.

As of yesterday lunchtime, Ulster Bank’s website promised that “there will be gradual, but significant and noticeable, improvements throughout the week” and that the majority of customers would see their accounts return to normal by next week.

The bank’s apology ad campaign began on June 23rd, with the radio element, which runs on the main national stations and some regional stations, beginning on July 5th. “Advertising will continue for the next couple of weeks with messaging changing, as it has been since it began,” a spokesman said. The current radio apology, voiced by Ulster Bank’s managing director of branch banking Jim Ryan, refers to a “technical issue” and seeks to assure customers that its branch and call centre staff are working hard to resolve it.

“We made a promise that no customer will be left permanently out of pocket and we intend to keep it,” he asserts. But consumer trust in the brand following those difficult temporary out- of-pocket moments is, it seems, at a low ebb.

“It never occurred to me that the #UlsterBank computer catastrophe could leave me out of pocket until their radio ad promised me it wouldn’t,” tweeted author Damien Owens (@owensdamien). The final word goes to PR consultant and Evening Herald columnist Derek Mooney (@dsmooney): “Shouldn’t the new #UlsterBank radio ad say: ‘calls may be recorded . . . but we may also lose track of those recordings too’.”