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Monday, May 14, 2007
Reasons to Leave Romania #1
It seems people in the Romanian banking system have no idea how to do their job! They show no respect for all their customers and are generally never worried about time and how much it values. How did I reach this conclusion? Well, a few examples might help:

Example 1: Most banks have their work hours proudly displayed on their doors. Most switch their sign from Closed to Open at 9.am. Why is it then that if you are their first customer you go in and are asked to wait in a bitter voice, as if you are disturbing them? They come in earlier and everything is supposed to be ready by 9 am. But noooo! This just happened today at Volksbank. Was I annoyed? You bet!

Example 2: Assigning different priorities to customers may be understandable. But when corporate customers have a higher priority at all your desks, this becomes a problem. The common customers are as important, at least to themselves...This is BRD's policy in at least one of their branches.

Example 3: Volksbank again...Their system is returning errors for about 8 months (as far as I know), and they still have not fixed it. Besides that, when it's not working, the cashier is angry and tells customers to come back later. Apologies? Are you crazy? No way!

I have a long term loan from Volksbank. But I swore never to work with them on anything else. I don't care if their offer is better than others. I would like to actually be able to pay what I owe while facing less problems. And I'd like them to treat me better actually...

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posted by Alina @ 10:37 AM  
8 Comments:
  • At 5/14/2007 11:36 AM, Anonymous Anonymous said…

    Unfortunately this does not happen only in Romania, it happens all over the world. It's true that banks are more organized and that they treat you better but when you need to go to the hospital or buy a train ticket you can really feel like in Romania...

     
  • At 5/14/2007 1:28 PM, Blogger Beatrice said…

    Well, I totally find myself in your complaints. First paragraph happened to me literally, when I was back in Romania, 4 months ago.
    But the here it comes "the good news", as Sim said, it happens all over the world. In The Netherlands, they treated me quite bad actually when I wanted to change a 100 euro bill, saying that we don't do these kind of things. I told them "hey you are a bank and these in my hand are money and I need to change them urgently as no shop receives them. Besides, I have changed before with the same bank, ABN Amro, that is, another 100 euro bill. The woman at the help desk told me that it was no legal that they have changed my bill in the first place. I left in owe.

    Yeah, here most of the shops treat you like an oddity if you handle them a bigger than 50 euro bill, refusing to serve you and shaking their head in disapproval like you actually steal money and not give them. :)

     
  • At 5/14/2007 2:35 PM, Blogger Alina said…

    Sim, if they start on time, I am happier. If their systems don't crash every other minute, again, I am happier. Apologizing when its their fault, even better! :)

    Trisi, that is awful, really. But I know they have issues with larger bills everywhere. In the US and Canada, they are freaked out because people use cards (credit mostly) to pay larger amounts.

     
  • At 5/15/2007 10:55 AM, Blogger alex. said…

    relax girl, you should see the treatment you get in Spain, or Portugal.. or even better: great customer treatment in UK, but bad bad services.. all in all, i think it's a good sign - things are moving in the right direction; when comparing, I actually see better features in romania, because the technology gap has been overcome and people are getting (still) 'hungry and wild' capitalist.

     
  • At 5/15/2007 5:30 PM, Blogger Alina said…

    So Alex, are you telling me that a British bank would do nothing about a computer program managing payments that crashes every other day? I somehow find that hard to believe. As for the great customer treatment, that sometimes makes a big difference.

     
  • At 5/17/2007 1:00 AM, Anonymous Anonymous said…

    Alina, Volksbank is something special. I'm a Volksbank client here, in Germany, and I have no problems with them in Trier. I had plenty of problems in Morbach. The reason is simple: they function on franchise base. Strange but true. The bank in Trier shares with the bank in Morbach just the brand and the brand standards. The rest... is history. So it's not only in Romania. ;)

     
  • At 5/28/2007 11:35 AM, Anonymous Anonymous said…

    I also had a long term loan with Volksbank. Can you believe that they lost my papers? I payed it in advance, and when I wanted to finish the procedure and take my file from there, it took them a long time to find it. And that lady from the bank was smiling to me: "we just can't find your papers...". Finally they managed to find them, but I was negatively impressed by their standards.

     
  • At 5/28/2007 11:45 AM, Blogger Alina said…

    Well, yes, their system seems to be running from time to time only...But hey, at least she smiled, she was not bitter, as if it were your fault...

     
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Name: Alina
Home: Bucharest, Bucharest, Romania
About Me: "This is my church. This is where I heal my hurts". It's also where I feel free and my preferred means of expression.
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