feedback

for the fifth time today, i encashed a check at the Philippine National Bank branch at the corner of Lauan St. and Aurora Blvd. in Proj. 3, Quezon City.

i am not a depositor of the bank.  my parents are and i basically just go there to encash and to run errands for my mom.

i really haven't done a lot of encashments in my life.  i usually just deposit checks to my account.  traffic, however, is unbearably awful these days i've deemed it better to just encash the checks at a nearby bank instead of enduring the slooow vehicle crawl to my bank.

well, guess what.  i was able to avoid the traffic crawl but i have had to contend with slowness of some other kind.

so i go to PNB to encash a check in the morning and every single time i've done so (five times from july 1 to oct 7), they ask me to just come back for the money.  yes!  as in, i give them the check and my ID, wait for them to photocopy the two, get my ID when they're done, then go home and come back to claim the money after i receive their text message.  (their notifications have ranged from an earliest of 10:36 am to a latest of 3:34 pm.)

this morning i asked the teller whether they do that for every single encashment.

she replied, "ganu'n talaga." -->  that's really how it is.

she said some customers opt to wait though while others go out in the meantime.

i asked what the average processing time is.

her reply?  minimum of two hours, maximum of four.  whoa!

as far as i know, check encashment is a party-waiting transaction.  i never thought it was a come-back-when-we-text-you one.

i'm not really sure whether the problem is with the system or with the people.  i did notice that even just the photocopying of my ID they take quite a while.  as in, five minutes to as long as around twenty five minutes!

the times i've been there the bank is not at all full.  there'd just be a handful of customers and there was even a time there was just me.

you'd think being slow they would be thorough.  unfortunately, no.  there was this time i made an inter-branch deposit.  my fault, i did not check the receipt at the counter.  when i got home and scanned it, i noticed that they got my mom's middle initial wrong.  i told the teller about it the next time i came back.  i was surprised at how nonchalantly she brushed it off saying it's the account number that matters not the name.  wow!  coming from bank personnel that is alarming.  aren't they supposed to be a  stickler for correctness and accuracy?

they also should not be careless, right?  guess what, they just lost the plastic jacket of my ID!  i usually give them my driver's license but given their slowness, today i decided to just give them my TIN card.  when after five minutes they still were not done with photocopying, i told them i would just leave the ID with them and just get it when i come back for the money later.

i have had that TIN card since 2005.  i've shown and left it with so many offices and buildings before.  this is the first time the jacket got lost!  at a bank to boot!  ugh!

they actually have this feedback mechanism near the door.  it's a transparent box where customers are supposed to drop their queue numbers in one of the three holes:  Happy, Neutral, Sad.  all the queue numbers are in the Happy slot.  the Neutral and Sad slots are empty.  i do not believe that paints a truthful picture.

one time i was transacting with the teller, the guard walked over and picked up the used queue numbers on the teller's desk.  i didn't really think much of it.  i thought he was just going to throw them away.

then before leaving the bank, i asked the teller for my queue number as i was going to drop it in the box.

he said the guard has taken it.

i therefore asked the guard for my queue number.

the guard said he has dropped it in the box.

me:  'huh?!  where'd you drop it?'

the guard points to the box where only the Happy slot has contents.

me:  'why'd you drop mine in the Happy?  i wasn't satisfied with the service.'

the guard tells me to just get another queue number and drop again.

eh?

i wonder how many of those slips were actually dropped by customers themselves.  i further wonder whether the Sad slips are actually left intact.  lemme therefore just express my feedback through this blog.

may your process improve.