Bank Managed by a Bunch of Monkeys...

I think this would be just about the most appropriate picture I could find on the internet to represent just how "capable" the people working in **Bank is.

Reason
Roughly two weeks earlier, around end of Nov. 2012, I helped my brother go to this bank to inquire about his housing loan as it had been five years since he had been paying for the loan. And according to the contract, after a five year bond period, he should be allowed to do a full settlement without incurring any penalty.

And so after verifying with them that there will be no penalty, we followed the bank's procedures to apply for a full settlement by filling in some necessary forms and whatnot so that they can start calculating the amount that he needs to pay.

Naturally, after handing in the forms, they then told us that they will need to send these forms up to KL for the calculations and then we will have to wait for a letter from them (all this would roughly take up to two weeks according to them again).

So just yesterday, after two weeks have passed and no letter, I went to this bank again to help my brother inquire about the progress. And the person at the bank said that the amount to pay has been calculated and we can just settle the whole thing immediately by paying up the required amount.

Sounds okay up to this point? But here's the insane part...

Upon seeing the required amount to pay, we were shocked by the fact that it was roughly RM 9k more than what we had owed the bank (when we checked for the balance the last time two weeks ago before applying for the full settlement).

And upon questioning them about it.....the person actually told us to call to a certain number and that fella will explain to us why there was such a huge discrepancy in amount to pay. I refused to do so and questioned her further asking why she can't tell me the reasons herself. And after doing that, she gave an excuse of it being a penalty for breaking the contract early. But of course, I questioned her back and told her that we checked and confirmed earlier, two weeks ago, that there will be no penalty (the irony here is that she was the one who told us about there being no penalty).

So next, we demanded that she check to confirm whether there is a penalty or not...which she did and confirmed that there should be no penalty and that the sum calculated is wrong. So I asked her how could those people in KL calculate such a thing wrongly? And then some other excuses came up along the lines of "these were calculations done by the people in KL and they don't have the original contract" or something like that...which imo is just silly since how could they calculate and anyhow hit us with a penalty without even having or seeing the original contract (to confirm if there should be a penalty or not) in the first place?

So now, she wants us to give her a copy of the contract together with filling up the same forms a second time so that she can resubmit the application to "recalculate" the sums again.....when its clearly their own fault for calculating it wrongly in the first place? Now what would you call this? Sloppy work?

Without any choice, I guess we'll have to refill and sign the form, resubmit it and wait for them to recalculate it and hopefully no other wacky numbers get churned out...

Anyway, the most scary thing I can associate with this kind of experience is that they, the bank, have to rely on "US" the customers to point out their error in calculations?? What if we as customers don't realise the error and never brought it up to them? Would we just foolishly pay up whatever they said so they can eat us of our hard earned money?

- BuLaDiFu -