A tale of two banks - 2
Thursday, February 15th, 2007The phone banking executive should have said ‘Hello’ a few times and decided to truncate the call! He dialed the phone banking number, standing outside the ATM.
The same ordeal started again. After dutifully pressing 1 and then and all other random numbers as directed by the IVR, he soon figured out he best way was to talk to phone banking executive yet again. So he dialed 9.
“Good morning sir, how may I help you.?” He was asked for his bank account number which stretched to 13 digits. Now, remembering 13 digits was always a challenge. He always had an old ATM transaction slip in his wallet for this purpose.
He was then asked for address confirmation blah blah.
And then he said, ‘I just want to know the balance in my account’
CC executive, ‘Sorry sir, for that you need to have your T-PIN number’
‘T-PIN number? What’s that?’
“Its telephone Personal identification number. If you don’t have one, we will help you generate a T-PIN of your own. Please hold the line sir”.
After some more Beep, Beeps, the girl asked him to enter a 6 digit number of his choice.
And then said, from now on he can check the balance over phone using that T-PIN number.
He decided to go back home. ‘Let me go home and try from my landline without any disturbance’ he thought. He came near home and tried recollecting the t-pin number that was just created but could not! That had already evaporated.
‘Not my day’, he thought.
When he came home, he was shocked to find the door being open.
His mom had already come, and what’s more had some cash and a pass book on the table. So she knew the balance and had withdrawn cash before he could without any of the paraphernalia that banks givenowadays! To add insult to injury, she was much more relaxed without any need to remember any arcane number and transaction.
He wanted to find out if his company offered a salary account in that old fashioned public sector bank. Enough of this crappy TPIN, IPIN and JPIN funda which was nothing but cognitive overload. Public sector banks operate from 8 to 8 nowadays. They offer a debit card but does not discourage you from approaching their branch office when needed. No Qs in front of their ATMs. No PINs, passwords, or tonnes of paper which we have to maintain for ever, lest we miss out on something. The more he thought about it, the more he liked it.
Save for NetBanking facility, nothing he had seen made any sense in this new age banking practices
If he had such a tough time handling all this, he just thought about his mother’s plight if at all he had to go abroad and his mom had to handle all the banking issues then.
Unless and until banks come up with a system which is easy to use yet safe and secure, there is no point fretting about T-PINs, Phone banking etc.
‘My old fashioned SBI, here I come’ he said to himself!