Ordinary Gweilo

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Still in the dark ages

My ATM card has been slightly broken for several months, but I’ve never quite got round to going to the bank to request a new one.  Well, it worked,  so why bother?

Until Sunday, that is, when the machine swallowed the card and was unable to return it to me.  I stood there for a few minutes, wondering why this advanced piece of machinery couldn’t tell me the nature of the problem, and also why it was refusing to give me my money, but it steadfastly refused to give me my money or my card back. 

So today I went back to pick up my card.  Not available.  Apparently it takes a couple of days for the card to travel 50 metres or so from the ATM machine to the customer service desk.  However, amazingly enough when I started screaming and shouting it suddenly appeared from nowhere.

Next problem is that there is every chance that the next time I try to use the card it will be swallowed again.  So how can we solve the problem?  Well. luckily I had some ideas.

I can see that it may take a few days to create a new card, so how about we set up my credit card (from the same bank) so that I can withdraw cash from my savings account?  Oh, and advise me of the PIN because I’ve forgotten it.  Shouldn’t take long, should it?  Oh no, sir, it probably can’t be done before Chinese New Year.  WTF?

Watching the staff try to deal with these simple requests is quite something.  My name and account number have to be manually copied from a computer screen on to a printed form so that I can sign it.  Then this paper request has ‘Top Urgent’ (= "shouting Gweilo") stamped on it and then I suppose it is passed across to the clerks with the quill pens to deal with it at their leisure    

Hey, guys, ever thought of designing a software program that could print out the form with my difficult Gweilo name and my account number on it?  Surely that can’t be too hard?  Then you could investigate automating the whole process so that the request is sent electronically to the appropriate person to deal with it.  Maybe it could be done in hours rather than days.   

No, I thought not.  Maybe all this technology stuff will never catch on – there’s nothing wrong with paper and pen, after all. 

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6 responses to “Still in the dark ages”

  1. BWG avatar
    BWG

    Hong Kong is second only to WWII’s Nazi Germany in its all-consuming need to document everything on paper and route it through as many levels of bureaucracy as possible.
    How they love the sound of a rubber stamp.

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  2. gunlaw avatar
    gunlaw

    The following is an explanation of the solution to the situation. It is a model of succinct lucidness and illustrates pre-eminent tweakability – always a desirable trait when grappling with an ATM.
    “Elitegroup has pledged to ship a budget ATI CrossFire-enabled motherboard for AMD’s Athlon 64 X2 dual-core processors by the end of the month.
    The RD480-A939 joins ECS’ other Socket 939/CrossFire combo mobo, the KA1 MVP. Like the older board, the new model is based on ATI’s Radeon Xpress 200-class RD480 North Bridge and SB480 South Bridge chips. The board includes two PCI Express x16 slots for the twin CrossFire graphics cards.
    The new board lacks the older model’s support for 3Gbps Serial ATA II devices, but can take four 1.5Gbps SATA peripherals and four parallel ATA-66/100/133 units, and supports RAID 0 and 1. The RD480-A939 sports a Realtek Gigabit Ethernet controller feeding a single LAN port. There are four USB 2.0 ports too, along withPS/2, serial and a variety of digital and analogue audio ports all fed by the board’s Realtek eight-channel audio chip.
    ECS claimed the RD480-A939 offers “enormous overclocking potential”. Board owners will be able to “tweak a wide array of settings including memory voltage, CPU core voltage and chipset voltage, among others, to maximise performance”, the firm said.”

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  3. Argleblaster avatar
    Argleblaster

    WWII Germany was notably faster with its red tape, though. Maybe HK bank workers have Italian trainers …

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  4. John avatar
    John

    I think you guys have been in HK too long. So here is just a couple of points to remember before getting angry …
    1. Try doing the same in a bank in the US or Europe. You will not get it any quicker, however hard you shout.
    2. No “bonus points” or special treatment for being a Gweilo in the US or Europe.
    3. The HK banking system is pretty efficient when compare to elsewhere in the world. I have unfortunately had to go back to the stone ages since returning to the west!

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  5. Chris avatar
    Chris

    Well, yes, but I don’t know why everyone assumes that I am either (1) comparing HK unfavourably with the UK or the States, or (2) expecting favourable treatment because I am a Gweilo.
    My point here was that the Customer Service people appeared to be somewhat helpless when faced with what doesn’t seem like a particularly unusual situation, and that paper forms and rubber stamps seem a bit old-fashioned. It may very well be that UK and US banks are just the same – I just don’t know!
    Also, I have to report that when I went to the bank today the new card and the PIN number were available, so stamping ‘Top Urgent’ on the forms seems to work.

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  6. 10dier avatar
    10dier

    Gimme me your CB, I will give you money.
    Yek yek yek!!

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