I thought I was the only one making noise about the short-sightedness of our consumer bankers when I posted my story yesterday about DBS Bank ("DBS leaves me breathless").
Two days ago, my friend Anne Wong suddenly surfaced in my email to relate her unhappiness with OCBC online banking under the headline, "Mindset of Singapore bankers?"
This was what she wrote:
"I have just got off the phone with a lady from the OCBC call centre.
Before writing this, I visited your blog to catch up on the latest before emailing 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 you have been having troubles with DBS and someone else was given the run around by HSBC. But timely too because OCBC is now giving me a severe pain in the butt!
Tonight I went to do my usual, regular transfer to cover outgoings for the next few months. Lo and behold, I could not effect the transfer of funds to an account because OCBC 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 her 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?"
Before writing this, I visited your blog to catch up on the latest before emailing 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 you have been having troubles with DBS and someone else was given the run around by HSBC. But timely too because OCBC is now giving me a severe pain in the butt!
Tonight I went to do my usual, regular transfer to cover outgoings for the next few months. Lo and behold, I could not effect the transfer of funds to an account because OCBC 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 her 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?"
Well said, Anne.
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