Wednesday 2 April 2014

The Singapore Spiral. This time it is the bankers' mindset

I have just got off the phone with a lady from the OCBC call centre.

Before writing this, I visited the BOO-N-BOUQUET blog (http://boo-n-bouquet.blogspot.sg/) to catch up on the latest before emailing it about my lousy experience with OCBC (NOT the fault of the lady at the call centre but of the bank’s boffins).

It’s ironical that the latest blog posts there have been about troubles with DBS' inflexibility and non-acceptance of property as an asset. And a complaint about HSBC.

A timely coincidence because OCBC has given me a severe pain in the butt!

Tonight I went to do my usual, regular transfer to cover outgoings for the next few months - especially as we are going to be out of town.

Lo and behold, I could not effect the transfer of funds simply because OCBC now ONLY offers FAST transfers - at a much lower transaction limit.

Instead of adding the FAST transfer facility as an additional option, OCBC has replaced the previous transfer option with FAST but LESSER transfer!

So what’s one to do?

OCBC suggests splitting the transfer amounts - which necessitates spending more time and effort to make the transfer than before!

Another alternative the call centre lady gave me was to make the transfer using the recurring or future dated facility. I had to inform here that when I went to the page for managing payees, I was faced with two options - DELETE payee or ADD payee.

And when I clicked on managing recurring or future transfers, it said I had none registered!

In the last few years OCBC has made cosmetic changes, essentially to the presentation of information.

But now they have fiddled with what was not broken and, in the process, broken it.

I thought online banking was for the consumer’s convenience, but how convenient is it to make multiple FAST transfers instead of one ‘normal’ transfer?

The thought passed through my mind to change banks, but if HSBC and DBS are as muddle-headed as OCBC what are the choices? It would seem that the odds are stacked against meeting a bank that does basic banking well in Singapore!

And to think that today’s newspaper proudly proclaimed that Singapore students are tops at problem solving!

Are we declining faster than I feared?