Minor rant against my bank

The BBQ Pit
1

A few days ago I converted a couple bank accounts into slightly different types of accounts. This broke online banking (got an error when I tried to view my accounts) and my ability to get cash from an ATM (got an error and a message to talk to bank representative.)

These issues were pretty quickly fixed, hence the minor nature of this rant. But c’mon folks, shouldn’t these changes be automated? Or even not hardcoded to look at particular accounts? Expecially the online one, shouldn’t they simply find out what accounts I have dynamically and display those, regardless of what they are?

It might have been a real pain the nuts if I tried to get money from the ATM tomorrow (Saturday) like I usually do, and not today. It would have at least made me have to return home to make a phone call, and have to go to the ATM again later, making an extra trip.

This online stuff and expecially ATMs have been around for years. Hell, the ATMs have been around at least since the 80’s. Isn’t about time to make these systems a bit more dynamic, and save yourselves money in the long run?

2

Hey, at least they fixed it promptly.

We had a vacations savings account. This meant that very time I went to get money from savings at the ATM I would tell it Withdrawl > Savings and give it the amount . . . . . . . . And it would call home to the mothership . . . . . . . … . . . . and come back with an extra screen asking whether I wanted it from regular savings or the vacation savings.

This was annoying enough that we actually closed down the vacation savings account. It had kind of out lived its usefulness anyway, but the delay and extra screen on the ATM was definitely the motivating factor.

Unfortunately, this didn’t get rid of the extra screen. Every single time, it asked if we wanted the money from regular savings or the (now non-existent) vacation account.

I tried three times to get it fixed. All three times they had to call to the main office and talk to the computer person. First time, they said, “Okay, it’s fixed,” and I happily went on my way, until the next time I tried to use the ATM and found that it wasn’t fixed. The second time I explained what had happened, and they called the computer guy, and told me, “He saw why it didn’t work the first time. It’s fixed now.” Skeptical, I went out to the ATM and tried it immediately. It was still asking me whether I wanted it from regular savings or vacation savings. I went back in, and told them, and they called the computer guy, and he said he’d work on it. Fast forward a couple months. It’s still wrong. I went back in and they called the computer guy, and they told me, “He says it can’t be fixed.”

“What do you mean, it can’t be fixed.”

“I don’t know for sure, but he says that the way the system is set up, it can’t be fixed.” :dubious: This does not give me a lot of faith in banking industry computer systems.

So it took me approximately twice as long to withdraw money from the ATM as it should have until a couple of years later, when they revamped their entire ATM system.

3

Part of the problem is that the software to support ATMs was often “bolted on” to the bank’s existing software, rather than being properly integrated into their systems. The existing software was designed for bank tellers and the old business processes, not for interactive 24-hour access from ATMs. The problem was how to add support for ATMs without making massive changes to their existing software. Most of these problems should have been solved by now.