Bankers’ Checks

          I wanted to close my savings bank account in a multi-national bank. In spite of having ATMs at every other corner and petrol pump, there was no branch where I could go and apply for closure. Maximum City had only two offices mentioned on the internet, both inconveniently located for me. I sent the bank an email. It promptly froze my account, which meant I couldn’t withdraw my money, nor transfer it out.  

I phoned. The call-centre agent located on another coast told me the call was being recorded for ‘quality-control-purpose’. Quality? I echoed. Not yours, Ma’am, ours, the agent said, adding that I should get in touch with a relationship manager. I tried to get into a relationship with one of their managers. My phone-bills and chagrin went up. They smiled and waved papers at clients in television advertisements, but did not come into my life.

           Computer-generated responses to “…. ref my email dated so-and-so trailing below…” assured me they were looking into my ‘matter’. Thus for a couple of months a very rich bank earned interest off my very little balance whilst I helplessly wondered how to close my account. Then I met an ex-colleague whose friend worked in that bank. Indian methods zindabad. Promptly my account and this chapter-in-my-life were closed.

          The next time I needed to close an account, I withdrew all the money in it, handed over the form duly filled and signed, only to be told by the clerk that now he would have problems calculating the interest! Bad customer, always wrong, me.

          Now’s the season to file IT returns. Banks get the brunt of the quarrelsome moods. Those who have proof that they’ve submitted forms 15H/G discover that their taxes have been paid. Never mind who goofed, future running around for the refund has to be done. By the customer. Yelling and shouting follows in the bank lobby. “Human error, what to do, happens”, everyone agrees and the noise quietens down.

A law-abiding soiro of mine wanted tax to be deducted at source. Banks dutifully send taxes to the national treasury or wherever. But soiro’s bank had mistakenly fed his details into the computer and told it not to deduct tax. Last week, law-abiding soiro got a shock: bank hadn’t paid his tax and he had to unexpectedly cough up largish amount and maybe pay a fine. Puzzling, that a staffer uploaded something not submitted on paper. Human beings make creative errors; technology helps track through user-ids who the culprit was.  But can’t help to rectify the problem s/he caused. Technology has its limitations. Human capacity for erring has none. Funny, no?

Funnier things have happened. Nominees’ names have been entered as owners of accounts. Computers make mistakes, one anti-new-technology bank clerk told me. I spent time explaining to her that the computer’s a tool, depends on the fingers that type on the keyboard. “Naa,” she said, “Tey tashay naa.” Until a certain age-group retires, we will have to put up with illogic. I had a draft made with the amount in figures not matching the words and the person at the counter blamed the printer for it.

Recently, whilst accessing my account through internet banking, the virtual page showed the joint holder’s name first although mine was the first name printed on the passbook. The glitch was sorted out immediately.

For error-free banking, one has to self-audit. Numbers-challenged folk like me have to be prepared for sleepless afternoons. New-fangled banks don’t issue passbooks: if you can’t handle modern technology, maintain one of your own (an ordinary notebook will do, draw columns as required, use different inks for credits, debits and balances). Duplication of work, eh? Helps ward off insomnia and hypertension.

The passbook (bless that old-fashioned thing, whose updating requires us to stand in older-fashioned queues) is issued by those familiar institutions, the nationalized banks, bless them too, for they don’t ask me to keep too much money to keep the savings account alive.

Recently, I needed to get attested a copy of a deposit slip.

One Ms Smugness informed me, “We don’t do it.”

The manager said, “We do.”

That was when Smugness played her trump card: “We have a charge, you know, Rs 102.” If I was told that right at the beginning, it would have saved me the walk from her desk to his cabin and back.

Must end by saying this: the above are the exceptions to the rule. Most bankers, I’ve found, are helpful folk.