Corporation (Un)Bank(able)

This post has been brewing for quite sometime now. Glad it has finally seen the light of the d(i)a(r)y (read blog) now.

I am absolutely frustrated by the (lack of) customer service provided by Corporation Bank. I’ve seen many bloggers rant about the services of companies that they have dealings with and have somehow believed that I’d probably not be so quick to throw mud on a company. I’ve believed that sometimes a little patience helps and that it is unfair on the customer’s part to be expected to be treated royally (at least not each and every time). I’ve also supposed that it would be incorrect to defame companies on such a wide-reaching system as a blog at the drop of a hat. Make that a straw hat. I am going to break the wall that I’ve constructed around myself and talk about the horrendous experience I am having with Corporation Bank. Because the last straw in the hat has been dropped. No more of the hat is left.

I repent the day I opened an account with the Corporation Bank Branch in Ashok Nagar, Chennai. The pointlessmore ranting starts here:

- I go all the way from Bangalore to Chennai to settle a few things with the branch there and ‘am made to wait no less that 2 hours for a 10-minute job despite there being only one person ahead of me in the queue to meet the Manager

- I get into the manager’s cabin and start explaining to him as to what I am there for and he interrupts me approximately 10-15 times in the next 1.5 hours to take phone calls and also invite other people who’ve come (later) to meet him. No concept of first come first serve is followed whatsoever. Also, most of the calls taken by the manager are personal in nature and he goes on to discuss personal matters while making his clients wait indefinitely.

- Even before he gets to listen to me about why I am there, the bank manager starts enquiring about an acquaintance of mine who has not repaid his loan with the bank. Despite my telling him that the loan defaulter is someone I do not know anything about except that I’d contacted him for some information earlier, the manager goes on to question me again and again about the former.

- I finally get frustrated and tell him that I am there for just one day and need to catch up with other things as well in response to which he says he can’t let go of other ‘important’ things for a client! He finally gets down to providing the information I need but stops in between and asks me to collect the rest of the information from one of the bank executives.

- The executive that I am to meet has equally pathetic listening skills and tells me to cut short my question and simply tells me to do what she thinks I should be doing. She has no time to find out what happened and why I was not able to find a solution to my problem in their Bangalore branch. Overall, this lady’s behaviour is just what one would call snappy.

- In response to another simple request that would not take more than 10 minutes she asks me to come back in the afternoon to pick up the document and I go back in the evening after calling her up to check whether the document is ready and find that she has prepared it incorrectly - true to her listening skills. Also, when I call her on the phone to check if the document is ready, she shows her inherent snappy behaviour and says “You come!” in a tone that sounded unjustly intimidating. When I tell her that she has not prepared the document the way I asked it to be, she realizes her mistake and grudgingly asks me to wait and gives the correct document after about 10 minutes. Wonderful! Unbelievable!

- I finally come off without completing 1 other task as I have almost made up my mind to transfer the account to some other bank.

- One of the requests I had was an ATM card which for some reason was not a default provision.

- I come back to Bangalore and get the ATM Pin by courier after 10 days or so.

- It’s 20 days since the first mail arrived but the card has not yet arrived. I call up the branch and all they have to say is “It will come”. No assurance of follow-up, no verification of what the issue is, no apparent concern about the card being delayed.

I’ve avowed to myself that this is the last time I shall (as far as it is under my control) have anything to do with Corporation Bank. Whew! That makes me feel slightly better…