It has been sometime since I have wanted to close down my savings account and open up a current account under my name. So finally last week I got round to doing this on Thursday morning. Opening up a current account proved to be a smooth process. Since my VISA debit card as well as online banking accounts are all linked to the said saving account, I inquired regarding what is to be done in order to change both to my new current account. This too was taken care of once I filled out the necessary forms. The clerk then informed me that I had to go to the customer service counter and request them to transfer all my funds in the savings account to my current account and close the savings account under my name.

I headed down there and I was requested to send in a letter with my cheque book requesting all that to be done to my account. I managed to send in the letter with a friend of mine during my lunch break hour and at around 14:00 hours in the afternoon I received a call from the bank requesting that since there was a pending payment of some Rf 113.00 or so, they wouldn’t be able to transfer all my money as requested and close the savings account and that I was to come back and retrieve the letter of request that I had sent in upon their request. I was like *What the f***?*. Whoever heard of anyplace on earth that asks you to go in and retrieve a letter of request from a service provider? And the personnel who spoke on the phone managed to tell me that it was my responsibility to check whether the card centre has processed my payment and then again get back to the branch where my account was opened. I was like ugh! What kind of a service provider is BML if their customer has to toggle and communicate between two branches of its bank, and that also within this godforsaken teeny weeny island of Male’?

Upon my protests, the personnel on the telephone said she would check again on Sunday whether the transaction of the payment has been completed and let me know. So to my surprise she calls me up again today and tells me to come and collect my letter quoting that if I didn’t then the letter would just lie around meaning no one would remember to attend to it and check whether my request has been completed. What sort of shit-assed service was this I wondered and told that her that it sounded ridiculous to me that I had to call up the card center and check whether the payment has been made from my account. She replied that the card center wouldn’t let them know any information regarding payments made unless I myself made an enquiry.

Even before all this I had half the mind to move my account to some place much hassle free such as HSBC. But the thought that the convenience of paying all my bills online would be a foregone conclusion at this stage I decided to keep my account in BML regardless of the fact that people always continue to talk about the horrendous amounts of lost money and all other shitty service related stories about BML.

I believe that BML should have much sounder policies and procedures in place so that the customer doesn’t have to be the one who has to run between two separate service providers under their name and get drawn into the bureaucracy surrounding their archaic procedures. I am so pissed off with them that I can’t really be bothered to call up one branch and the next trying to find out whether they have gotten round to fulfilling an official request of mine that I made in writing. Ugh!