It's Time We Broke Up...

I've decided to break up with my bank.  "The Listening, Caring Financial Partner" is how Equity Bank touts itself and frankly, I can't believe how these idiots are able to post positive comps every year!  My issues with Equity are that they make the customer really work to put money into their bank.  I first signed up with Equity because my employer pays our salaries through the bank so of course I was left with no choice but to open an account.  To open an account, you need someone to introduce you, as in vouch for you (If you don't have any friends to do that sorry for you, you can use the under mattress banking system).  Then, if you need an ATM/Visa Card,  Check Books etc you wait until they send a text you for pickup at the branch where you opened the account.  That's fine with me but, it's the process after that I have a problem with.  When you get to the bank, there are a million people in the banking hall.  You make the line to collect your card, then once you are done you make another line where they give you your PIN number in one of those perforated secret envelopes.  At each of these lines, they have a humongous ledger book that you have to sign.  This thing is so big that they have to switch it on its side so that it can fit on their desks (remember what was used before computers?).  Anyway, so say then that you have some other business to do at the bank, you need to make a line for each item because the tellers are only trained for their ONE duty. Can we say inefficiency?  Why can't they just cross-train their tellers so that if you make the one line, you can get all your banking issues sorted at the one window?


At any rate, I've been dealing with them for about a year and half now and it is time to say sayonara!  There are many reasons for me to leave this bank but trust me, when you hear why, you will understand.  Case One: My apartments are owned by KTDA so we cannot pay our rent by personal check or cash, only bankers checks will do.  Instead, I have to go to my bank (Equity) stand in line, get a bankers check, wait about 45 minutes for the two signatures it requires to process the said bankers check.  Take the bankers check to another bank, in this case KCB (this is KTDAs bank) and stand in line for another 30 minutes to deposit the check.  Get the transaction slip and physically take it to KTDAs Agents office in Nairobi so that they can put a little check mark against my name for paying my rent.  Aaargghhh.... KTDA, get a clue you are supposed to make it easy for people to pay rent.  Ok, let's get back to Equity and their nonsense. Since I work in Thika, I usually go to the branch there to get the bankers check.  The dude at this window does not know how to manage his station and trust me, I have tried to enlighten him on how.  There is usually a mob of people in front of his window who come and go as they please and worse still, all stand over each other so there's like 10 people at the teller window.  Instead of the teller asking these shaggz people to make a line, he just sits behind the bullet-proof window looking like the weight of the world is on his shoulders.   As if the situation isn't bad enough, the bank puts all the forms you need to fill out in the counter cubby hole that's meant for discrete transactions!  I'm the only loser who always makes a line...yes, the line that is non-existent! So as I huff and puff in my non-existent line, and let's just say I've called Equity CSR, complaining about dude, more times than I care to remember. By the way, in Kenya you are not allowed to use your phone in the banking hall but I must have some sort of force field around me because none of the guards ever tell me not to use my phone - and I've seen plenty of other people hassled about it!  Sometimes the dude will disappear for 15 minutes while we are waiting and doesn't even say where he is going or how long it is going to be.   He sometimes serves people who have come AFTER me...and regardless of how many times I have asked him to tell everyone to make a line, he never seems to get it!  I even asked him how many people he could serve at once and like a dumbass he looks me square in the eye and says "one" and I was like....exactly!  Still clueless as ever.  Anyway, the other day as I was whining about how much time I take to get a bankers check when one of the ladies at the bank tells me that all I need to complete is a "Standing Order" form.  Which of course is a direct debit in the language that I'm used to.  I didn't know Equity offered that service and this dimwit at the bankers check station never even mentioned it to me once!  The form is very simple form and I complete it in about a minute.  The helpful lady says it will start the very next month and I don't ever have to come into the bank.  At that moment, she's my hero and I think to myself, okay maybe there's something to this listening, caring financial POS.  Two months into the standing order, I decide to go online and check my bank statements...to my horror, I realize that the listening caring financial partner has not paid my landlord (KTDA) for two months! The standing order is now sitting, sleeping, or in a coma because nothing has happened!  I thank God that my landlord is not an individual but a company...I would have been evicted pronto! So, I ask Jonathan to call the agents because he is chummy with the receptionist, Pauline, or someone and make sure we are not getting evicted.  Pauline says that she was wondering why we hadn't paid our rent because we are always on time (but she never called us to find out...ok more inefficiencies).  Jonathan tells her about the standing order mishap and she tells us we can make our 2-month payment the following day without incurring any late charges - YAY!

So, crisis is averted on the almost-eviction and now I need to scorch someone with my wrath. I dial one of my 5 Equity CSR numbers that are on my speed dial and get Philip who listens to my story.  He looks into his computer and tells me that the first standing order was done and reversed 2 days later with no explanation.  The second month's standing order wasn't even attempted.  Here I am thinking that a standing order is some automatic instruction to pay funds from one bank to another - silly me!  Back to Philip - he tells me to go to the branch and find out what the problem is because he cannot see any notes in the computer.  Wait a minute, "I"aka the customer, should go into the branch to talk to someone about why the standing order wasn't done when I'm on the phone with you?  Dear Lord, what are the requirements to get hired at this joint? "If you know how to pick up a phone please apply within."  I argue with Philip and tell him that I am not going to the branch because I gave orders to have the funds automatically sent to the other bank so they should do it.  At the end of back and forth calls for about an hour, Philip says there is no way to do anything over the phone.  I have to go into the branch, stand in line and get bankers checks done so that I can resolve the issue at hand and then find out what happened to my standing order.  I tell him that he better call the dimwit at the counter and tell him that as soon as he sees me, he should clear the counter and help me immediately.  That went as planned (yeah I was a little surprised too).  The dude at the bankers check counter tells me that I may have given a wrong account number for KTDA so I should fill out new standing order forms.  He hands me 3 forms but I only remember filling out one the first time so I ask what the other two are for - he says, you can keep one for yourself in case we mess up again and I will also keep one; the other will go to the head office in the normal way.  WHAT?!?!?  I'm foaming at the mouth at this point I ask him to point me to the Manager's Office.  Like the law-abiding citizen that I am, I make the line to see the Ops Mgr, where I'm in 4th place and patiently wait my turn all the time thinking how I could jump the APs (Administration Police) outside, disarm them and blow up the branch with their AK-47s. Anger is a bad bad thing. Within a couple of minutes though, I am sitting inside the Operations Manager's office and tell him that I would like to withdraw all my funds from this stupid and inefficient bank.  He is taken aback and asks me why.  He wants to know my issue so that he can resolve it for me and retain me as a customer *Cheshire grin*

I rant and rave like the lunatic that I am and seeing that he has a mental patient sitting across from him, he proceeds to dial from all three phones on his desk.  I don't know who he is dialing but they are not picking up! He apologizes and mutters under his breath "pick up!" Meanwhile, the door to his office opens and here comes the 4'11" pudgy Branch Manager with a paper request for the Ops Mgr to handle.  The Ops Mgr tells him to put the paper on his desk and that he will take care of it shortly.  I'm still fuming and the folks at Equity are not picking up the phones.  I then tell him that I don't care, please close my account and give me my money.  He says he cannot will not lose me as a customer (yawn).  Five minutes later the Manager walks into the office again, this time flanked by three customers.  He tells the Ops Mgr that these folks need help and it should only take a matter of minutes.  I am glaring at the Ops Mgr and I had this look that said "If you dare serve these people before resolving my issue, I will beat you to a pulp! " I guess that's the lethal look Jonathan's often told me about works - he asks the Manager to ask the tellers to handle it.  I exhale. Someone has answered the phone finally.  He asks the person to come to his office with some documents.  And guess who?  The teller from the bankers check counter.  This is the dude you've been trying to call?  The guy comes with an excel spreadsheet that shows that I did have the right account number for KTDA and that they are the ones who effed up but they still don't know why.  The Ops Mgr instructs the teller to do 2 bankers checks and oh, Ms. Waweru, we will waive the 100/- bankers check fee.  Oh, you think?  Wooptifuckingdo. Now I'm going to get the bankers checks after wasting 2 hours here and walk over to KCB branch, make another line, wait 30 minutes, get my transaction slip, go to agents office in Nairobi and give them the slip.  This was 3 weeks ago and I haven't heard a peep from them so we still don't know why the standing order didn't go through. I *love* this country. 

Example of a chip card

Case Two: Meanwhile, I've had this other issue since December when I got my brand new CHIP check card.  That is a regular credit card that has a microchip embedded in it and it is supposed to be more secure than the regular magnetic stripe cards.  I activated the card like I'm supposed to by going to an ATM and doing something random like printing a statement.  Cool, it works.  I didn't use my card for weeks after that but one day as I was shopping at Chandarana, I decided to use it.  I've bought a cart full of groceries and the cashier swipes my card and she gets some sort of message, which causes her to repeatedly swipe my card.  Customers behind me are getting agitated at having to wait in line and she finally instructs me take my card and receipt to customer service so that they can complete my transaction.  At customer service, the guy swipes my card and then inserts the chipped end into the smart card reader and he gets an error and tells me that the card has been declined.  I know that I have money in the bank so I tell him to swipe it again and of course, it is declined!  The print out has a line in Russian font and customer service doesn't know what it means.  I call Equity CSR and the rep who answers the phone tells me that her screen says that I had not used my card at all that day.  So how was my card getting declined if it wasn't even hitting the bank's servers?  At any rate, after waiting about 30 minutes for her to troubleshoot, I decide to ask the customer service guy at the supermarket whether he can try to swipe my card using one of the other banks card readers.  He used a KCB one and what do you know?  It swiped with no issues.  Two minutes later the Equity CSR calls me back and says "it should be fine now, I see from my screen that the transaction is successful." I inform him that although the transaction was successful, we had used a KCB card reader, not an equity one! That was the end of that.  This same situation has happened to me about 4 different times at different points of sale.  One of those times, I was at the Tuskys in Thika.  The cashier at the POS tried to swipe and insert the chip into the card reader and every time I put in my PIN it said "invalid pin"  but this is the same PIN that I have been using since I got the card.  One of the features of the card is that you are not able to change the PIN that was randomly generated when the card was issued.  The cashiers at the different POS have told me that they always have problems with the Equity machines.  At any rate, I call Equity CSR for the hundredth time and they ask me whether I'm using the right PIN number.  I confirm that I am and the lady says that she will reset the number of tries and cap it at 10X.  I go to an ATM and try it and voila! it works.  WTH?  I don't want a card that works 80% of the time, it's 100% or no deal!

Yesterday, I had to send someone money via MPESA so I had to withdraw money using the the closest ATM to my office (Standard Chartered or Barclays).  Insert card, enter PIN and next option that pops up on the ATM screen is "balance inquiry" and I'm thinking "that's strange, where are all the other options?" Anyway, I press the button since I might as well know my balance before I withdraw right?  As soon as I hit that button it displays a message on the screen that says that "my issuer has declined that transaction" and my card pops out.  I try it one more time, same message.  I then go to the Barclays ATM machine and insert card, enter PIN, it displays usual screens, pick cash withdrawal and hit my amount.  Couple seconds later a message displays "transaction declined" and out pops my card.  Ok, now I'm starting to get pissed off! I immediately call Equity CSR and tell them my latest saga.  Of course, they cannot see any transaction that I have tried to do but the lady aka Caroline asks me "do you have enough money in your account?"  No lady, I'm just trying to stick my card in ATMs to see if I'll have an Eagle Eye moment.  I tell her that there is money in the account and if there was not the message displayed would have been "you have insufficient funds for that transaction".  Trust me, I know that statement.  I've been broke before! In fact, I'm intimately familiar with the insufficient funds statement as I saw it quite a lot back in my college days!  Back to Caroline, she says that she doesn't know what could be causing it but she needs to "investigate" and she will get back to me.  I ask her how long I have to wait and she says 5 minutes.  Knowing how Equity is, I walk back to my office and about 30 minutes later a very well-spoken guy from Equity,Aaron, calls me and asks me what the problem is. Buddy you called me..I'm sure you know the deal but I explain to him what happened.  I repeat the story and he says that he is from the ICT side of Equity and the call was transferred from Customer Care.  He tells me that he is is investigating and he sees a very weird reason code on his end.  One that he hasn't seen a lot and he needs to figure out what it is and call me back.  Thanks.  Twenty minutes later another guy, Fred, rude as hell, calls me speaking in a mixture of English and Swahili, which gets on my nerves.  By this time, I'm pissed that my issue is just being passed on from agent to agent and I ask him what has been done.  He has the audacity to ask me, "are you sure you have money in your account?"  Yes, for real.  I was so angry and I asked him who the hell he was, why was he like the 5th person I was speaking to and he says, "you haven't spoken to 5 people!" Damn, he has a smart mouth.  Not smarter than mine though because I said "tell your boss to fire you, you rude mouthed boy" or something along those lines.  I said I no longer wanted to speak with him and would he put Aaron on the line.  In a huff he did it.  As soon as soft-spoken Aaron came on the phone I asked him to put in his notes verbatim "customer wants Fred fired for being rude to a customer.  Furthermore when a customer calls with an issue he shouldn't try and get smart-mouthed with the customer".  Aaron, bless his heart, tries to calm me down and I WOOSA for a couple seconds and he tells me that he has searched my name in the database and it is true that I have experienced a lot of problems with my new card and that he is doing everything he can to resolve.  I also remembered that in the morning, I had also tried to check my balance online and the system would not log me in either.  I had sent a message to ebanking@ebsafrica.co.ke but there was a mail delivery failure.  I had acquired another email ebankinghelpdesk@equitybank.co.ke and that went through but I had never received a response.  So I told Aaron to also find out what was going on.  I was beginning to feel that there was a vendetta against me! Wouldn't you?  Aaron calls me back at exactly 5pm and says that although there is no update on my card issues, he wanted to be sure to call me and give me an update (I like!) However, the ebanking issue had been sorted out and the system was back up.  So, as of right now, its anyone's guess whether my card will work properly the next time I try to use it. Of course no one at Equity has suggested that they could justsend me a new card...no, that would be too simple.