Influences

Ever wonder if you stay in a foreign country long enough, will you behave like one of the locals as well? Hmm, I think you will after all the influences surrounding you during the years you’ve spent in that country. Reason I’m bringing this up is because I encountered such incident couple of weeks back. Here’s the conversation back then.

M: poor ol’ me
F: foreigner

*usual call opening stuff*

F: I want to check on my account balance.
M: There’re still an amount of ***** outstanding in your account, m’am.
F: WHAT?! I’ve mailed a cheque for that amount 2 weeks ago and you guys still haven’t receive it yet?! What the hell is going on here?
M: I’m deeply sorry for that but it seems that we still have not reflected in our system yet. Have you check with your cheque issuing bank that the amount has been cleared from your account?
F: No, I haven’t. I’m very certain that I mailed the cheque already and I’m not going to check with my bank whatsoever. The cheque must have sitting pretty inside some of your officers’ drawer waiting for clearance. I’m not going to check with my bank. I want YOU to sort it out on your end. It’s not my problem!
M: What I can do for you, m’am is that I’ll check with our payment department and see if they receive such amount recently and at the meanwhile, I’d like you, m’am to check with your bank & see if that amount has been deducted from your account or not……
F: NO NO NO! I’m not going to do that. It’s not my fault that cheque is not cleared. It’s your duty to check on that. YOU check on that and come back to me on this matter ASAP or I’ll cancel off the account. WHAT KINDA SERVICE IS THIS!? Gosh.
M:But......
F: NO more buts. You check, and then get back to me on this. I demand an answer on this ASAP.
Bang! The phone got hung up by the customer. The caller originated from Scotland. You might be asking why or how do I know about this. Well, my favorite football team’s manager is a Scottish. I heard him a lot over the tele. Hence I know how a Scottish will sounds like.

The solution for this case? Yeah. The payment finally reflected, and cleared into her account on the 3rd week. Talk about efficiency of our local postal service eh? There was another case of the similar scenario as well. Customer mailed in a cheque for the payment. The cheque was cleared 3 weeks later. To be frank, these 2 scenarios are not new to me anymore. There’ve been numerous cases whereby our customers do not receive their statements, cards, redemption items on time because of our poor postal service locally. Hence, who will get the blame? Us, the customer service of course. Who else?

Stupid postal service! Argh!!!