An open letter to OCBC Bank

Citizenship: World

An open letter to OCBC Bank

2 August 2010 5,322 views 11 Comments

Dear OCBC Bank,

Almost 3 weeks ago, I called your hotline and requested for a replacement of my Visa debit card, because the magnetic strip on my current one has been damaged. Your tele-customer service officer informed me that a new card had already been sent out, because it is expiring soon, anyway.

Over a week later, when I did not receive anything, I called the hotline again. Again, your tele-customer service officer assured me that it has already been sent out, and that I should be receiving it in the next couple of working days. I accepted his assurance.

Last Monday, I had to go overseas, and had to draw cash and carry a lot of it, because OCBC could not deliver their promise of getting my debit card to me on time. The inconvenience of it is surely something that any customer should not have to endure, especially after 2 weeks of turnaround time for your organization to react. Is that so difficult?

I returned from my trip on Saturday, and to my utter dismay, my card has still not been delivered. Of course, I called OCBC up again, and once more, your staff told me that my card has already been sent out. She told me that she will, however, check with the card issuance department, and get someone to call me back to arrange for a courier of my new card to me.

This morning, I received a call from another one of your staff, who has been assigned to handle my case. He informed me that the card had been sent out since 1 July 2010. He expressed his disbelief in the tone of his voice, when I told him that I have not received anything in the last one month.

So now we have a missing card out there, which has my existing Visa card number on it, and which can be used for any online purchase. Your staff not only did not apologize for that (nor my inconvenience of not having a Visa card), he also simply told me that he’ll arrange for a new card to be sent to me, by regular mail. When I insisted on having it couriered to me (do I really want to risk another missing card?), he informed me that I will have to bear the courier charges! Oh, I am indignant!

I then asked him to send it to me by registered mail, and he told me that OCBC doesn’t practise using registered mail, because out of their 1,000,000 customers, I’m the only one who didn’t receive my card. What? So it’s my fault that I didn’t receive the card? Or is there something wrong with OCBC’s ridiculous mailing policies?

If you cut down on all the junk mail that you send us:

One letter for every beneficiary or payee we add to our account via internet banking
One letter for every time we change our account details

then perhaps you could afford to use registered mail for each ATM / Debit / Credit Card that you send out to customers? I’m really shocked that you’d send a replacement card (which has a valid Visa card number and CVV, and is pre-activated) by regular, unregistered mail!

If your online banking system and its security is so good, then any transaction or changes I make via internet banking should NOT have to be confirmed by yet another letter that I do not need nor want to read. In addition, I’ve already received SMS confirmations of all these transactions, so why in the name of all things beautiful would I want another avenue to re-confirm it?

And did your other departments not receive the memo on OCBC’s green campaign to get customers to sign up for e-Statements? Why are you still sending countless paper mail to customers who have opted out of receiving paper statements? It’s like taking on a second job to earn more money to contribute to my housing fund, and then spending all that money on a shopping spree. Completely pointless and a waste of effort!

So please, get your act together.

I switched to OCBC from DBS about 5 years ago, simply because I believed that OCBC could provide better banking services for my needs, and because OCBC has so many ATMs islandwide that I never need to queue up to withdraw my own money (it’s ridiculous to have to queue up to get your own money, in my opinion). Right now, OCBC is just disappointing me with its inflexibility and mediocre service. It really should not take 1 whole month for a customer to get a replacement card, and a distressed customer sure does not need to feel patronized by rude customer service officers trying to push the blame.

Perhaps I don’t have enough money in my account for your bank staff to take me seriously. But if that’s really the case, maybe OCBC would like to inform me that I should move my money elsewhere, so I can stop wasting my time trying to communicate with your highly incompetent service staff, who think that it’s okay for banks to make mistakes, simply because I’m one out of a million customers who has been unfortunate enough to face the problem.

From your disappointed and indignant customer,
Daphne

Update: 1217hrs – OCBC staff says they’ll waive the courier charges to send my card to me, but says that they can only send it to my home address. I told him that nobody is at home to receive the courier delivery, so could they please send it to my office instead? He tells me that I’ll have to send them an authorization letter if I want it to be sent to another address. Fair enough. But I tell him that I will pass the authorization letter to the courier, together with a copy of my identification card, when they courier it to me. OCBC staff tells me:

We cannot do that

You can cancel your account if you are dissatisfied with our service

We do not have any direct contact with our courier people (Which means you just pass my Visa card to people who do not report back to you on deliveries?!)

If we send it to your house, and nobody is there, our courier will leave it under your door if you authorize us to do so. (WHAT?!)

So that means I’ll have to wait yet another week to get my card, cos I’ll have to take time to mail them an authorization letter before they can arrange for another card to be issued and delivered via courier to my office. Why does OCBC insist on inconveniencing me so?!

Update: 1323 hrs – OCBC Customer Services Manager, Narayanam has called me. He has offered me an alternative (still, the courier is not authorized to collect any letter from me) that I can drop by an OCBC branch to pass them my authorization letter, to get my new card to be couriered to my office address, this Wednesday. I suppose I’ll just have to settle for that. Lucky for both parties, I have a branch close enough to the office, and I’m willing to do so just to avoid any further contact with their customer service personnel and to avoid prolonging the pain for both of us. Thank you, Nara.

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11 Comments »

Yuhui said:

Did you find out if OCBC has your latest address?

Also, I personally wouldn’t have mixed in the “green campaign” with this complaint. It’s like using one issue to pick a fight over another issue, which dilutes the purpose of highlighting both issues.
Yuhui recently blogged… Overflowing with durians

# 2 August 2010 at 11:21 am

daphnemaia (author) said:

@yuhui: that’s okay, i’m too lazy to write another letter. hah. might as well raise all my dissatisfactions at one shot! and yes, they definitely have my latest address, because i received all those statements of payees/beneficiaries added, which i didn’t want.
daphnemaia recently blogged… An open letter to OCBC Bank

# 2 August 2010 at 11:23 am

daphnemaia (author) said:

and oh, every customer service staff i spoke to has verified my address too. 3 times can’t be wrong!
daphnemaia recently blogged… An open letter to OCBC Bank

# 2 August 2010 at 11:24 am

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# 2 August 2010 at 11:49 am

Sylvia said:

I can’t say I hate OCBC (yet) but I do think their “paperless” campaign is ridiculous. Yeah, right, paperless.

True that they now already adopt electronic statements for customers. But that still hasn’t changed other business processes, it seems. Like you, I had letters mailed to me everytime I add new beneficiaries (in internet banking), or when I change my PIN. But the thing is they already sent me an e-mail! So those letters are really unnecessary. I didn’t even read them – I immediately ripped them and sent them to recycle bin (green, right? ).

Once, I had 3 different letters sent for adding 3 different beneficiaries. And then another 2 to confirm my fund transfer via internet banking. I mean, doh? Such a waste of paper/time/money/energy! Especially when you have already sent me a notification e-mail.

I’ve experienced this since I signed up for OCBC – that was 3 years ago. I hope there’s something ongoing to change/eradicate this mailed notifications process. It’s cost-saving and it’s greener – I don’t see why they shouldn’t do it.
Sylvia recently blogged… Contests-Giveaways from other blogs

# 2 August 2010 at 4:04 pm

Kitty said:

Why are all these customer service people from the bank so fucking retarded? It’s a serious waste of time and advertising dollars if they can’t invest in better people at the frontline. What’s the bloody point of running promotions and expanding your market share if you can’t even service your current base of customers properly?

I had a bad experience with DBS a few months back. Out of anger (hence pepppered with a lot of swearing), I blogged about it here – http://service-gripes.blogspot.com/
Kitty recently blogged… How To Deal With A Date Who Is Late

# 3 August 2010 at 12:20 am

Isman Tanuri said:

Shucks! Sorry to hear about your nightmare experience with OCBC but good to hear that it is almost resolved. There’s a lot of fluff at OCBC, huh?

I think it boils down to whether customer service are empowered to the extent that they are able to say ‘hey, let’s solve this once and for all’ and proceed with the courier delivery. You’ve been waiting after all. Instead it took a manager to get into the picture (and I’m sure he did a background check on you via Google etc, realised too critical to ignore, hence the olive branch.)

Isn’t OCBC the bank that ‘gave away’ birthday cakes on Sunday? Haha. There was a good case study on that one.

A lot of fluff, huh.
Isman Tanuri recently blogged… ‘Cool’ is A Powerful Marketing and Social Force

# 3 August 2010 at 9:10 am

kaela said:

Hi Daphne,

Wherever and whenever, I don’t think no instituition would want to have an unhappy customer. It takes more to acquire a customer than to retain them.

Perhaps some of us are not aware that there are some rules that govern how a bank functions. For security and audit reasons, the bank was not able to take the route which you suggested (i.e, you passing the authorisation letter for change of mailing address to the courier and then have the courier passed to the bank). Personally, I’d have opted for that route too but I think there are risks involved. Couriers are after all, third party vendors. Isn’t it better to play safe than to fight it out if things screw up?

Verification of address is a way of identifying customer’s identity since the issue was not dealt with face to face. I don’t think they meant to irritate you by verifying that detail thrice.

As to Yuhui’s & Sylvia’s comment on the ‘green campaign’, I think it takes time for ‘greenery’ to happen. Everyone will be happy business owners if we could readily get information as to what kind of information customers would like to know more of. Nothing happens overnight. Information Technology only happens to some of us as quickly as we tweet without responsibilities.

From a business point of view, businesses want to extend and expand relationships with customers. Customers, however, on the other hand do not wish to be bothered. These are the challenges budding entrepreneurs face today. Maybe some of the deterrants from entering into the market knwoing how difficult human beings generally can get.

OCBC does not give out cakes on Sunday. They use to give birthday cakes to customers who visit the bank branch on their birthdays as a form of surprise. Of course, being Singaporeans, some went a bit too far and started to EXPECT/DEMAND for it. Is it right to walk into a bank and expect a cake when it is not their core business?

Of course, with new media sprouting everywhere, everyone of us have grew increasingly active in airing our views wide and far. The availability has somewhat ‘empowered’ us, given us identity and that few minutes of fame.

I guess at the end of the day, OCBC googled and found an unhappy customer. They did a service recovery because they care.

I think we need a little perspective here. Nothing is black & white, nothing is absolute except for absolution itself.

Give and take a little. Make the world out these a better place

Regards,
Sze Wei (your ex 4/1 classmate from AES)

# 20 August 2010 at 5:12 pm

daphnemaia (author) said:

Sze Wei: I don’t think that OCBC has any sort of security policy in place at all. I didn’t continue updating about this saga cos I got tied up with other matters, but here’s an insight to what happened afterwards.

- The OCBC courier failed to deliver during the time they had promised, and I was really upset. He called me then to arrange for a later delivery.
- Courier asked me where I am, so he can deliver it to me at any address that I specified. I told him I’ll be at a specific address between 5-6pm, so please deliver it there.
- Courier arrived at the location I specified, 30 mins before the time I specified. He rang the door bell, and I was not at that location yet. He left.
- Later a manager from OCBC called and told me that courier failed to make the delivery. I told him that he arrived too early, therefore I was not there. And I asked him, are you sure that you have security procedures in place, if your 3rd party vendor / courier is willing to just deliver the card to any address I specified? Obviously he couldn’t answer that.
- Eventually, after many many failed communication and attempts at courier due to either OCBC’s failure to communicate the severity of the situation to their courier, and the courier’s failure to deliver at specific location and times that I wanted (hey, I can’t be sitting around waiting for a courier the whole day, right? If I gotta move, I gotta move), I managed to collect the card from the OCBC branch nearest to my house.

Completely ridiculous. I don’t think I was being very unreasonable. OCBC said they couldn’t do one thing, yet their couriers did it. If they were so concerned about the security of my card, the card would’ve been delivered by registered mail in the first instance. If they were so concerned about the security of my card and if they understood the urgency of my getting the card ASAP, they would have asked a bank executive to deliver it right into my hands. *shrugs* Not that difficult, honestly. I wouldn’t even call it “going the extra mile”, but rather “doing what needs to be done”.

Perhaps I may not understand what exactly goes on behind closed doors in a bank, but I do understand what good service is, having been in the service line before. Give and take is completely possible, but not when a matter has already escalated to such proportions – I am no saint, no angel, and my patience and willingness to compromise has its limits too.

Well, I’m glad it’s all over now, and I have gotten the card finally, but I do hope I’ll never have to deal with an OCBC service staff ever again. Hope that all of OCBC’s banking services will be executable via internet banking in the near future.

# 22 August 2010 at 6:02 pm

kaela said:

Understand now. No, you are not being unreasonable. And yes, you may not understand exactly goes on behind closed doors in a bank but you think OCBC has no security policy in place at all. We all hope for all things to go online but there will always be room for improvements.

Sometimes, I wonder too how it is like from the receiving end or the contributing end but life is never fair. Would I have been in your shoes I might have been as angry or angrier but because I am looking in from the outsider, it looks like it is easy for me to just ‘comment’.

For one thing to happen or when one thing happens, many other events are taking place at the same time. Nobody will ever, ever have a complete view.

And life goes on….

# 22 August 2010 at 11:42 pm

Helene Mullins said:

I can’t say I hate OCBC (yet) but I do think their “paperless” campaign is ridiculous. Yeah, right, paperless. True that they now already adopt electronic statements for customers. But that still hasn’t changed other business processes, it seems. Like you, I had letters mailed to me everytime I add new beneficiaries (in internet banking), or when I change my PIN. But the thing is they already sent me an e-mail! So those letters are really unnecessary. I didn’t even read them – I immediately ripped them and sent them to recycle bin (green, right? ). Once, I had 3 different letters sent for adding 3 different beneficiaries. And then another 2 to confirm my fund transfer via internet banking. I mean, doh? Such a waste of paper/time/money/energy! Especially when you have already sent me a notification e-mail. I’ve experienced this since I signed up for OCBC – that was 3 years ago. I hope there’s something ongoing to change/eradicate this mailed notifications process. It’s cost-saving and it’s greener – I don’t see why they shouldn’t do it.

# 29 December 2010 at 4:58 pm