We need good service, not big favours

I'm so disappointed with banking services nowadays. Seems that the attitude of the staff is that they are doing us customers a big favour.

There I was at the CIMB Bank branch in Kampong Baru, Bukit Mertajam this afternoon to bank in a cheque through their cheque deposit machine. But the machine was not operable. Their operations officer said that their machine was jammed.

But never mind, she said. She could give me a cheque bank-in slip to fill in. "After you fill in the details, just come and give it back to me," she said. And that was what I did. She flipped over to the last sheet of paper in the bank-in slip, tore it off and returned it to me. Just like that.

I looked at her. Don't I get an acknowledgement from you? No rubber stamp to say "received"? Not even an initial from you? "No," she replied, "You are banking in the cheque before 4p.m. today and you can check your account tomorrow and see that it is in Hold One."

I told her, "no." I want her to acknowledge receipt of the cheque over the counter. "We don't do that any more," she replied. "Cheque receiving has already been outsourced to a third party and since the machine is jammed, we are only helping by collecting the cheques over the counter and passing them to the outsourced company when they come by later."

I told her again, "no." I insisted on an acknowledgement. Personally, I don't give two hoots whether their cheques receiving services had been outsourced or not. As far as I am concerned, I am dealing with the bank where I am maintaining my account. A bank and this branch can't simply ignore the time-honoured practice of giving an acknowledgement whenever a document of value passes hands to them.

She knew that I wasn't going to budge. "Okay, I will put the bank chop on the customer's copy for you," and she proceeded to do just that and for good measure, added a date chop as well. That's more like it. Was it too difficult to do just that in the very first place??

I wonder how the other banks will react to their customers if their machines are down for any reason.