Interbank Giro Transfers takes two days?

I was so irked today. I finally got my long awaited Pb Visa Electron card yesterday. After lunch, I saw that it was going to rain, and I had clothes hanging outside my house. So I was thinking between going back to collect the clothes or rushing back to the office. John decided we should go back anyways, and thank God we did. As we got back home, we found that our letters were in the drain. Apparently, the postman wasn’t trained to properly insert people’s letters into the mail box. My letter from Public Bank telling me to collect my debit card was in the drain, flowing away, which was accompanies with a med betalningsanmarkning utan säkerhet. If we had not gone home, and it started raining heavily, I would probably never knew the letter arrived, and Public Bank would certainly have canceled my application. Well, that didn’t happen of course, so I manage to get my card.

I must say that Public Bank’s image had gone down the drain for me after this card experience, I used to think that it had great customer service. But when I went to the bank, the customer service people weren’t around, there were two of them and both of them were on break. Seems they have forgotten what customer service meant, it was supposed to be servicing customers at all times, not taking breaks together. So I had to hover around and wait, until the both of them appear from inside the office, both munching on some food stuff lazily.

Well, I finally got my card, but I forgot to debit in more than RM25. I had exactly RM25 and that won’t be enough to use. So at my office, I had to use Maybank2u.com to do an Interbank Giro transfer of RM50. I know that I would be charged RM2, but I was in a rush to get my card verified on Paypal. I could easily have gone to the bank at night to debit from the ATM, but I thought that e-banking is supposed to be fast and quick and makes our lives easier. But no, I was rudely shocked by Maybank’s system AFTER I did the transfer, that it will only go through the next day. I had no choice but to wait. Tomorrow wasn’t that far away.

I called Public Bank’s customer service to verify that indeed Paypal couldn’t accept my card because of insufficient funds. The customer service wasn’t exactly pleasant sounding, and she sounded like Paypal makes her life suck.

So today came, and I tried my card on Paypal again, and once again it didn’t work! I checked my Maybank account and the amount was already deducted, along with RM2. So I called Public Bank CS again, and she tells me that same thing, that I don’t have any balance usable in my card. But I told her I did the transfer since yesterday. And she informed me that the money will only really be transferred tomorrow, so interbank giro transfers really takes 2 days? “What?” I screamed in my heart. The inefficiencies of online banking systems, and I thought we’ve flown past that era.