Bad Day at the Bank

Ahhh..I’m fuming and seething right now. What started out as a routine ATM withdrawal turned into something like a major crisis. This morning, I went to the regular bank branch opposite the Uni to withdraw my monthly share of allowance. So as usual, I put in the card, keyed in the amount and waited for the cash to come out. Alas, the machine spitted my card out, citing an error. I shrugged it as a regular ATM error and moved on to the next one. However, the next ATM machine refused to dispense any moolah, citing that the withdrawal limit has been reached. That’s when the horror struck me. This could only mean one thing – no cash but the computer had deducted the amount already from the account. I can’t be absolutely sure yet at that time, so I quickly made an emergency call to Mama. And it turns out that my suspicion were true! Mama confirmed that the amount in the account has been reduced. Argghhh..this is atrocious! That’s £490 under hostage and when converted to SGD, it’s more than $1000. There’s no way I’m going to let the matter rest and allow the bank to eat that sum of money.

After the call, I went back to the bank to check on the ATM. The first ATM that I had used was tagged as spoilt. I quickly went to one of the bank employees and told her what had transpired earlier. When she heard that my card is from the Singapore branch, she declined to do anything about it. She said that the UK branch cannot refund any money back to me and they would have to consult the CCTV and various documents which they cannot release to the public. Instead, she asked me to contact the Singapore office instead. Goshhhhhhh, I can see where this is going – months of red tape and bureaucracy. And the worst thing is that I didn’t request for a receipt during my disputed transaction. They would either have to rely on the CCTV or the ATM computer log.

Ahhhh..I can’t do anything right now but wait and it’s atrocious that a bank customer be ‘punished’ with losses for withdrawing money. I went to check about the problem online and it seems that such incidents are common in the UK. Amazing…mama and me have never encountered such cases in Malaysia but a first world country like Britain has this type of elementary problems. Most of the cases involve ATMs from different banks which made it more complicated to trace and sometimes, the customer in the end didn’t manage to recover back the sum. Well, perhaps I can take comfort that the ATM that I withdraw from is the same bank, merely different overseas branch. I’m crossing my fingers that the admin would be considerably smoother if compared to different banks communicating with each other. Hopefully it can be solved soon. It would be unconscionable for the bank to swallow SGD 1000 even if the sum is measly for them. It is certainly not measly for working class folks like us :(