Thursday, June 24, 2010

FastCash (for the skeesy bank!) and Incompetency

So the other night, I was in a a hurry to grab some cashola so I used the "FastCash" option on the NAB ATM. I wasn't sure I'd ever used it in the past, but I figured I needed cash and fast.

Boy was that a mistake, by default for me it took it out as a cash advance from my Credit Account. There is no way in hell I would've chosen that option normally. I got slugged a $1.75 cash advance fee and if I hadn't been able to transfer the balance due on my card I would've been charged interest on that as well!

There was no mention of a possible fee at all. Given that it was the first time I'd used the option I should have been given some sort of warning. Also, how about an option to select where the cash comes from the first time that you use the "FastCash" option? I guess it is too hard to shove that into the Cobol back-end or something.

Anyway, a few days later I was doing some internet banking and I thought, why not see if their feedback system is any good. To my surprise I got a good response from someone there and they gave me the option to change the card so that "FastCash" was against my Everyday account. Also, they apparently they:
I have also added your suggestions to our Customer Feedback Database. This is a critical database, which is updated and reviewed daily. We review each and every suggestion individually.
(I'll believe that when something changes......)

So, they where going to fix it and add it to the list of suggestions, that seemed pretty good to me. Until that is I tried to take some money out from an ATM a couple of days later. Being wary of the FastCash option I stuck with the tried and true method of "Withdrawal -> Savings" unfortunately I was presented with.
This account is not linked with this card.
Ummm, what?

So, today I had to go to the bank, this time I thought I'd better go to the branch (thankfully there is one close to work) and sort it out in person. It turns out that when they changed the "FastCash" option to my "savings" account, they also managed to change my "savings" account so it is now linked as a "cheque" account at the ATM. WTF?

I am yet to try the "Cheque" account option at the ATM, I'll let you know how it goes when I try to get out cash tonight.

Oh and there's no chance I'm going near the "FastCash" option again, turns out that saving two button presses on the ATM really isn't worth 3 emails to the bank, a trip to the branch and unlinking my savings account...

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