The southern stretch of the Robb Street pavement between Camp Street and Avenue of the Republic is, next to much of Regent Street, probably the busiest expanse of road for foot traffic in the capital. People pound that expanse of pavement relentlessly, all day, during the week, for a host of reasons.
Roughly half way between Camp Street and Wellington Street on that very stretch of pavement, there is a Scotiabank Automated Teller Machine (ATM) on the premises of the Courtyard Mall.
The value of the ATM reposes in the option it offers to the enormous amount of time spent waiting in queues in banks to access basic services like money withdrawals and deposits, bill payments, transfers and checking balances. Securing those services inside banks wastes time and can stretch patience to the limit. But for ATMs many people would probably be sorely tempted to return to the fibre mattress or buried tin cup savings routine. On the whole, ATMs have worked to the point where we witness periodic clamours for more of them. The buildout has been painfully slow.
ATMs, however, are no panacea. Sometimes they become afflicted by withdrawals of service. These withdrawals of service occur when the cash that they store for dispensing simply runs out or else, for some other presumably malfunction-related reason. In instances of exhaustion of cash immediate-term refills cannot be anticipated. At best it takes hours, sometimes longer. The refilling process is manual. Fixing breakdowns not related to cash exhaustion have been known to take several days.
One can be forgiven for thinking that the Scotiabank ATM service in The Courtyard Mall on Robb Street possesses a will of its own. Time was when it used to ‘break down’ with monotonous regularity and the problem did not always have to do with empty cash dispensers. The frequency of the ‘out of order’ notices has been reduced in recent times (some time ago the Bank installed a new ATM) but the withdrawal of service is still frequent and still decidedly infuriating to customers.
Scotiabank should pay considerably greater attention to ensuring that its Courtyard Mall ATM is invariably providing a reliable service. The particular ‘vulnerability’ of the Courtyard Mall ATM reposes in the fact that it sits there inside a tiny kiosk, singular and uniquely vulnerable to the relentless demands of the vast armies of customers who use it. The traffic is a day and night affair, unrelenting. It defies belief that the Bank has opted not to place more ATMs there.
Last Friday could not have been Scotiabank’s proudest day insofar as customer service is concerned. Friday marked the start of one of those so-called month-end-weekends when two, sometimes three sets of pay periods clash, so that the demand for cash becomes voracious and the demand for functioning ATMs is at a premium. At some point in time relatively early in the day on Friday the Courtyard Mall’s ATM withdrew its service. The queue that had built up disassembled, some cursing, others grumbling, most of them heading further west towards the Scotia branch on Robb Street where the queue to use the roughly half a dozen or so machines inside the bank sometimes ‘snakes’ even farther west, towards Avenue of the Republic.
Up to the time when darkness had long fallen on Friday, people were still coming and going, in and out of the Courtyard Mall, some muttering or sometimes shouting obscenities. The ATM was still in an ‘out of service’ condition.
When you factor into your calculations the certainty that an ATM would provide you with the service you need the disappointment of a `Not In Service’ notice can be unbearable. On Friday last, the start of a month-end-weekend, mind you, that condition prevailed at the Courtyard Mall ATM at least until early evening. After that we withdrew our vigil.
ATM machines ‘packing up’ during periods when the public demand for its services is higher than usual amounts to a kind of public relations meltdown. People become angry. Some believe that the bank simply doesn’t care. They assume a posture of indignation particularly when they get it into their heads that they are being denied access to their “own money.”
We have raised this issue with the Bank previously. We have tried to impress upon the Bank that it is much more the frequency than the fact of these ‘out of service’ occurrences that is unacceptable. One understands the inevitability of occasional malfunctions. A profusion of these, however, is an altogether different matter.
There is another problem. Getting through to the Carmichael Street branch of the Bank (which is where we telephone when the Courtyard Mall ATM ‘acts up,’) is not easy. Frequently, you have to talk to a disembodied recording. Once or twice we have spoken to real people. On those occasions that the disembodied voices have asked that we leave messages, we have not troubled ourselves to do so. In an environment in which many ordinary people still see commercial banks as institutions that dwell in Ivory Towers, seemingly unmindful of the quality of service that they provide and of the feelings of the greater numbers of their customers, Scotiabank may wish to reflect on the ‘up and down’ service which its ATM inside the Courtyard Mall provides. It can do a good deal better.
On the whole, however secure commercial banks may feel behind their multi-million dollar public relations firewalls it would do them enormous good to ‘have a listen’ to what people really think. Banks are seen by many people, particularly ordinary people, who do business with them, as either ‘sanitized’ spaces that keep their money safe, or else provide them with some of their own when the need arises. The truth is that there is every indication that as far as customer service is concerned, people have far less substantial expectations of banks than the banks think. The truth is, though many of us might be appalled at the very idea, banks, in large measure, are regarded as necessary evils. Those customers – possibly several hundreds of them – who left the Courtyard Mall Scotiabank ATM fuming and swearing for much of Friday are under no illusions that the same thing will probably happen again…and sooner rather than later. It would be good if Scotiabank can prove them wrong.
