I wanted to find any ATM, but the closest was PrivatBank’s one.
I put the card in. I enter PIN-code. And…
What’s that? An unfamiliar screen with the text suggesting that I arranged a PrivatBank card. At the end of that offer there is a common option, ‘YES \ NO’. As I already have a card of this bank, and even more than one, I didn’t read the text very precisely and pushed the NO option, and there appeared the field to enter PIN-code.
It was weird. I repeat the actions, reading the text of the message more carefully. It turned out that in order to proceed, it was necessary to enter my telephone number which the bank manager would connect with me on. I enter the number (000) 000 – 00 – 00, push YES option, and go to the desired money withdrawal operation. The most surprising is not the fact that ATM skipped my trick with number, but the way the bank tried to get confidential information. I don’t think that an average person would enter a random set of numbers, but would enter their own number or some of their relatives’ one, or of his enemies’ one… I would also like to note that I spent several minutes of my time on those operations with ATM, and, fortunately, I had some time. But if a person is in a hurry to catch the train, or something…
I’m curious: if we draw attention of a bank’s responsible person to this ‘error’ – seeming freedom of choice at its absence – it’s highly probable that he / she will say, ‘Oh, what an unfortunate error! We will find out whose fault it is, and will punish them!’ But something will hardly change:(
The fact that it was not a mistake but purposeful bank’s new customer attraction strategy I found out after I had come back to my native Dnepropetrovsk. Standing in a line to a ‘cash rack’ I heard a couple of new words from a preceding girl with a baby. Judging by the text, before withdrawing the money she was offered to buy something, either a ticket, or something else. I didn’t manage to learn all details as she spit at the monitor and left saying, ‘Why on earth do I need this … ticket?!’ I didn’t want to experience the same misadventures, so I had to look for another ATM where I got ‘just’ an empty intermediate field displaying the clocks and one single option CONTINUE. I continued and withdrew the necessary amount.
After all this I understood why people become irritated when seeing young active guys or girls offering getting ‘a PrivatBank card here and free of charge’ on the central streets of Dnepropetrovsk.
From all above it becomes obvious that PrivatBank has started aggressive promotion of its services among all layers of society, not taking good care of their opinion, time and needs. It’s difficult for me to judge what such aggressiveness might lead to in the near future, but reduction of my communication with ATMs of this bank has already become a fact!
What ways of bank service promotion that left an unpleasant feeling have you met? Leave your comments to this blog.
