24 Hour Banking... The Hazards

Lesson learned... try not to bank in money into the teller machine on a non-working day. Cos if your money gets stuck... you have to wait until the next working day to know for sure whether your money has gone into your account.

And dealing with the countless so called bank officers. They expect us to understand, I expect them to do their job.. their machine jammed.. I did what I should... called their Call Centre....lodged the necessary complaints. Their job is to see to it... but there is never the ideal.

Now this is at Hong Leong Bank Teluk Wanjah... tried to bank in money via the CDM machine on a weekend and my cash got stuck. Their machines have this habit of doing this more often than usual, I understand. I immediately called the Service Centre in KL and was entertained by a sweet sounding lady... who could only asked me to understand. Only their machines and Customer Relations Officers work on weekends. No choice; so I waited.

Monday morning came... first thing I did was to remind Other Half to call. I was told at 9.30 a.m. that they had 'found' my money and will be making the deposit on my behalf soon.... I checked an hour later but no deposit yet.

So I called the bank again. Was greeted by a lady who told me that I must understand as the tellers were still not free to bank in my money yet. They said they had to count the money first... I thought the computer would have recorded the transactions. And the last bundle would have been identifiable... Took them the whole morning to count. A few calls and a lunch later, I checked my account. Again no deposit. Try to compare this to how fast they work when it's time to charge you interest.... and then frustrations will build up. The lady had the cheek tell me to understand. I hope the next time anything happens to her through no fault of hers and she is told to understand after being made to wait... she'll understand.

The money was in the bank all along... been stuck there over the weekend and now that they've counted.... the tellers are not free to bank in yet as they were busy entertaining the walk in clients.

I could compare HLB with Public Bank which is just down the same road whose service is fast and efficient. Counter service... you can have 3 people ahead of you in HLB... it's the same as having 6 people in PBB. That's how slow they are. Sometimes I think they do it on purpose so that people don't use the counter services. Noticed this pattern ever since their unions demanded for extra pay a while ago... when the civil servants got their pay raise.

Anyway, the last time something like this happened to me at HSBC, I didn't do any chasing.. The guard explained to me that it sometimes happens. After I got home, they called me to tell me that they were aware that the CDM jammed during my transaction. They asked for the amount and said my account would be deposited once they sorted it out. And even though I had to wait... I didn't mind. Cos they were on top of things.... this glokal bank of ours??? Still very local in their mindset and way of working.... dunno where the 'g' got sesat.

What to do... never mind... poor service... I supposed I could stop using their services also.. *sigh* Small people like us.... these banks behave like we owe it to them. Some semblance to a political party, don't you think...