Traditional Banking Falls Short–Again.

After some hesitation, I'm finally sharing a frustrating encounter that left a sour taste. A reminder that some people can be quite unpleasant.

A few weeks ago, I had an urgent online task to complete, but first, I needed to visit the bank to renew my debit card and update my information. I arrived at the bank around 11:00 a.m, only to be greeted by a ridiculously long line. The friend I went with and I decided to update our information before requesting for the debit card, so we joined the queue. After waiting for two hours, I finally reached the front of the queue around 1:00pm.

I explained my situation to the customer care representative–Mr. Charles–and without even looking up, he said he couldn't help me because it was three minutes past 12:00p.m. I tried to reason with him, pointing out that I had been waiting in line for over two hours but he was being rudely dismissive. Since I was already fatigued and didn't want to escalate the situation, I left the bank after the friend had sorted herself out. My assumptions were "maybe he was having a bad day and the changes I needed probably took a lot of time" so I didn't pay much heed. Although I had wasted precious time.

The Friend
I returned home after the experience at the bank and during a conversation with my sister, she mentioned that she had visited two different banks on the same day to make the same changes I was trying to make and she was able to make the changes and still obtain her debit cards that very day. The interesting part? She went to the bank around 4pm. The banks she visited were different from mine and this led me to assume that the bank I visited had a different policy, which could explain the difficulties I was facing. However, I found it puzzling that she could complete the process well past noon while the customer care representative at my bank seemed very uncooperative.

Two days later, I returned to my bank very early in the morning. I left my house before 8:00a.m to ensures I arrived by opening time. Upon arrival, there was already a queue which I quietly joined. Eventually, I got to the front of the line and the same customer care representative was dismissive and unhelpful, citing network problems as the reason he could not assist me.

Fed up with Mr. Charles' attitude, I spoke with another bank official who confirmed that there was indeed a network outage. He gave me a seat and assured me that once the network was restored, he would inform me.

True to his words, he notified me when the connection was back and with this information, I approached Mr. Charles and politely requested that he attend to my matter, especially since it was nearing noon and I wasn't about to waste yet another day at the bank without being productive.

As I patiently waited, a customer from nowhere appeared and requested that Mr. Charles assists him with the same changes I needed. I expected Mr. Charles to handle both requests simultaneously but he did not! He attended to the man and I was still there, standing right in front of him. Time kept passing and noon was approaching, yet I was still being ignored.

Another customer standing nearby even had to ask why I was still at the bank since we had arrived around the same time and I explained the situation to him. He reassured me that I would soon be attended to but this reassurance felt hollow as Mr. Charles remained unresponsive. I had never felt so helpless in my life.

All I could do was remind this customer care representative about his previous statement about him not being able to assist me after noon, and this I did intermittently. While at it, I had to take deep breaths to calm my nerves lest I cause a scene at the bank.

About 20 minutes past noon, Mr. Charles asked for my bank details. After I provided them, he quickly verified the information on his work computer, printed a form and asked me to sign and make the necessary changes. Once completed, he informed me the changes would reflect soon and that I could leave. All of this happened in less than 5 minutes.

Although I was happy that it was all over, I was overwhelmed with frustration. How could a process that took only a few minutes have caused me to spend four hours at the bank? Moreover, Mr. Charles could have processed my request after 12:00p.m but chose not to on the first day, which felt unnecessarily obstructive.

Courtesy of similar past experiences in the same bank, I have tried to avoid in-person visits whenever possible. However, this particular situation was unavoidable and it reinforced my disappointment with the bank's service and the traditional banking system in general.

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^{Images used belong to me except stated otherwise.}

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LIEBE🤍