NP: Where is the love – Black Eyed Peas

**ACTION**

*dusts blog space, sprays insecticide* this is a thriving blog 😐 inugo?

Welcome once again to Wana’s playbook. I know its been a while you had something to “Lol” at and comment on; well no one is to blame. The situation has been really life threatening, with Wana doing National time somewhere in Abeokuta (save his soul) and me trying to complete a very political degree, well you wouldn’t expect much.

Today is not one of those days I go all… “How to give head”, “how to set P”, how to rap better than Sina Rambo and blah blah blah. Today I’m going to be talking about something more in tune with reality. Talking about tunes, I picked the song where is the love because of the following phrase, “Practice what you preach”. And still talking tunes, download The Ises mixtape – Don’t tell mother I’m doing a review on it sometime soon.

Well enough with the music bickering. Can we get to business already? Hell yea!

A promise as defined by dictionary.com, is a noun that means amongst others, ” a declaration that something will or will not be done, given, etc., by one. What this means is that if I tell you, I’m gonna do a post every fortnight, you’re bound to expect at something from me at least twice every month and so on.

What is the relevance of a promise to what we are talking about? Well here we go.

Some weeks back, I opened an account with GTB, precisely a GTCre8. If you don’t know what a GTCre8 account is, it is a type of savings account that is 100% dependent on debit cards to function; you can’t withdraw cash over the counter. And is mainly for undergraduates. *Well couldn’t meet up the criteria for the full savings account and I needed funds to be transferred to me as soon as possible. Don’t judge me, yet*

So I gladly took the pains and opened the account, only to be told that I had to wait for two weeks before I could get a debit card, after charging me a thousand naira for the same card? Whoa! 2 weeks? For an account that is supposed to be run by a card? What was I going to be doing in two weeks? Playing nintendo? I was angry but that couldn’t solve my problem, so I waited for two weeks.

As someone who boasts of being able to use the least technology in any situation, I added a reminder on my Nokia 1280 to remind me in 15 days that I needed to pick up my card. But it would shock you to know that 4 weeks later, I still haven’t gotten my card and customer care isn’t friendly to me at all! I’ve had to visit the bank almost on a daily basis and all I get is, “your card has not come”. You don’t tell me when I’m going to get it or what I can do to access your services, seeing that the only medium by which your account operated has not been issued.

I’m not trying to blame or say GTB is not a good bank, but what I’m trying to say is that; firms/organizations should practice whatever gospel they preach; don’t deploy technology you cannot successfully implement. Its as simple as that. A lot of organizations just see their competitors doing stuff and without weighing the pros and cons, just join the bandwagon and do the same stuff without actually thinking about the fact that technology is driven by people and may not have the same kind of human resources that are available to their competitors.

The point I’m trying to make is this, Nigerians are going to continue suffering from poor service delivery until this issue is addressed. Imagine a situation in which GTB was the only account I operated, that would have left me stranded. Note that the same day I opened that account, I applied for a debit card from firstbank and it came well before the 2 weeks due date. My point? Firstbank has what it takes to deliver on its promises in terms of structures and doesn’t make bogus promises while GTB on the other hand, gives us aesthetic structures to cover the pain they cause customers. *You should see their E-Branch at University of Benin*

Not like firstbank is a saint on the matter either, because they ended up causing me greater pain. This story is going to amuse you but then, don’t blame me, I’m the customer here.

I mentioned earlier that I applied for a debit card from Firstbank. Well, that debit card was a mastercard that had the inscription, “For electronic use only”. Now I got a “mastercard” even though I already had a “Verve” card linked to my account which was still very functional, but I needed it to buy computer software online. Before leaving the bank, I asked the customer care guy if the card had been activated for online use and I got a response in the affirmative and so I got out of the bank.

Two days later, I had enough money to pay for my software and proceeded to the website of the software developer to pay for the software only to be told my account wasn’t activated for online payment even after I had been billed 750 naira to get that card. Well, like a gentleman I claim to be, I went back to the bank and told them to activate my card and was told it would now work. I was even asked to change my pin after which I confirmed from the ATM that it was “functional”.

Days later my brother-in-law was supposed to pay for his UNIBEN post utme and therefore in line with CBN’s “cashless policy”, all payments were to be made with Verve cards or Mastercards via the Interswitch platform. You would imagine how elated I was when I found out that I could use my mastercard to conclude the transaction at the comfort of my bunk. I proceeded online to pay for the form, only to be hit by another shocker, I had exceeded my withdrawal limit, even though I had not used the atm in the past few days and that meant I had to cough out another extra One thousand naira to a cyber cafe so they could pay for me bringing the total amount to N3000.

To cut the story short, on my way to the bank to get money from the atm, I lost my debit card. And when I called the firstbank customer care to complain, I was told that my card could not be used on local sites until I filled a form. Why? Why will the card work abroad and not work here? Why will I have to bother myself with all these activation?

Now here’s my grouse with FirstBank;

– Other banks allow their customers pay for goods on local sites using the default VERVE card issued.

– Why will I have to bother myself with all these activation? Didn’t they hear the part I said I wanted to use that card for online payments?

– They charged me N750 for a card that I couldn’t use because they had a bureaucracy that can be compared to that of Germany.

– if they had activated my card, it wouldn’t get missing, because I wouldn’t have left my house on a saturday with my debit card.

I could go on and on but then, I just wish I could muster courage and take them to court for some silly reason and get a big payout like Kelvin Hart in Soul Plane… I could go on and on about the ills of the banking sector and their inefficiencies you don’t even want to know what I went through to get another debit card. But then, this is Nigeria… Anything can happen excluding technology.

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Boring, informing, entertaining or exciting; let me know what you think by dropping a comment below. Follow me on twitter @DJNIRO_ *Yes, I follow back*.

*strolls out with babe rocking rubber slippers with grape fruits*

*cut*

WANA: Ogbeni pass the mic jor