The ATM card getting stuck inside the machine is every customer’s nightmare, but imagine being told by the bank that it would take five working days to retrieve it.
Yet this is exactly what happened to several customers who tried to withdraw money from a leading commercial bank’s ATM at the Fort railway station on Friday.
One customer, a regular reader of this newspaper, said the power cut came into effect just as his cash was about to be dispensed by the ATM.
The generator had kicked in almost immediately but the machine stayed on the blink. But much to his dismay, he found that the machine had retained his card when the power was restored and no cash was dispensed either.
He had immediately called the hotline indicated on the ATM kiosk and told the customer service representative of what had happened. The bank official’s curt reply had been that it would take a staggering five working days to get the card out.
The customer told the Sunday Observer that he was distraught by this reply, as he had come to the station to go to Jaffna with his wife and children for a funeral. He was left with no money and no card and had to call a relative living in Colombo to come to the railway station with some money, as he had no other bank account to withdraw money from.
The customer said the banks must pay more attention to their off-site standalone ATMs and deploy a separate team to attend to customer complaints on such ATMs without taking so long to do something as simple as retrieving a retained card. He said he could not even imagine the plight of other customers who may not have access to alternative funds in the intervening five days. Incidentally, the ATM machine was out even yesterday morning. Over to you, all banks.