Dear Editor,
I recently went to a Republic Bank ATM to make a deposit, and after punching in my transaction request I did not receive an envelope in which to place my cash deposit. This has not been the first time that I have experienced such an inconvenience while attempting to make a deposit.
On a previous occasion in the recent past I made a deposit transaction and upon realizing that no envelope was available I cancelled the request. The AMT on the cancelled transaction was then withheld from my savings in my bank account until it was cleared by the bank on the next working day.
The process of deposit at a Republic Bank ATM is that you swipe your card and punch in the deposit request. An envelope should then come out of the machine in which you place the deposit. With no notice indicating the absence of envelopes in the machine, a customer has no way of cancelling the transaction at this point, since the deposit is already entered into the system.
The customer is then left to either deposit without an envelope (which the bank forbids) or suffer the consequence of having the amount punched into the machine withheld from your account until the bank rectifies the situation.
Neither of the two options is customer friendly, and the one where the money is withheld from your account against your will is very inconvenient and extremely annoying, since you are not at fault over the incomplete transaction.
Can’t the ATM machine be programmed to issue a prompt if no envelopes are available prior to punching in the transaction request? If this is too difficult for the bank to install, then the least they can do in the interest of proper customer service is to have envelopes available in the booth.
Our airwaves and phones are bombarded on a daily basis with adverts from Republic Bank preaching the virtues of its “excellent” customer service. Hopefully it will heed this complaint and rectify its ATM deposit service to comply with its mission statement.
Yours faithfully,
M Abraham