Customer Disservice

Although businesses in the Philippines are often inefficient and difficult to deal with, one of the last places I expected to find such a problem was in trying to contact a well known local financial institution,   Rizal Commercial Banking Corporation) (RCBC) Savings Bank.

Beginning several days ago, my wife Lydia and I could not get through by phone to the  branch where she conducts checking transactions. When calling, we would reach either a busy signal or no ring.   Finally, considering  that  that perhaps the phone number had been changed (which seems to happen frequently in Metro-Manila),  I attempted to to call the corporate office. But there's such no phone listing in the PLDT yellow pages, and ditto on the  RCBC Savings Bank website. On the latter there is  just a webmail contact form, which I submitted—and got an "invalid page" response.

I then decided to call RCBC headquarters. This is a separate operation from RCBC Savings Bank, but I figured that they must at least be affiliated. I was right; the operator furnished a couple number's for Lydia's branch and for the Savings Bank Office head office, all of which were turned out to be either disconnected, busy, no answer, or no ring.  After several tries on the latter, we finally got through to the branch, only to get confusing information regarding one of Lydia's inquiries.

I normally don't utilize this site to rant against a particular company.  But one, especially a bank,   that makes it extremely difficult to telephone them deserves to be taken to the proverbial woodshed.  If I find serious problems in dealing with other businesses, I will post that information as well.  Whether a foreigner or local, no consumer needs the aggravation of having to transact with companies that don't know how to serve the public that's paying  to keep them in business.  However, in order not to be completely negative I will on the other hand  also give shout-outs to firms that have gone out of their way to furnish exceptionally good service..

I would also like to hear from readers who have likewise encountered either poor or excellent service from businesses, especially on a consistent basis and who would like to share their stories.

Addeneum:. Coincidentally, as I was completing this entry,  one of Lydia's payees just came by to inform her that he had difficulty cashing her check because according to RCBC, her signature looked irregular. The  payee happened to be a banker himself and indicated that RCBC was remiss in not contacting Lydia to come in to the branch and update her signature card.

I rest my case.