BPI Disregards its Own SOP (Ire)

Breaking one of my SOPs, which is to deposit only in ATMs that are attached to a bank, I decided to take a chance on a kiosk ATM (ATMs beside a small office where you can do a limited amount of bank transactions such as opening an account), the first attempt quite successful that it emboldened me to repeat the action in the ABS-CBN BPI kiosk on 17 January 2006 (Tuesday).

Since I deposited on a Tuesday evening, I gave it till Monday to clear, that’s 4 banking days, but, in reality, a week after I’ve made the deposit. But when the check still hasn’t cleared after that period, I called the 89-100 number to report the incident.

If you have any problems with an ATM deposit, be ready with the ATM deposit receipt because the location number of the BPI ATM will be required. It’s the number on the upper right corner beside where the BPI ATM site is stated.

After a couple of days, I called the 89-100 number again to follow it up, but all she can say was it’s in the process.

At this point, I felt it was necessary to pass by the kiosk that’s attached to the BPI ATM where I made the deposit. This was not exactly easy to do, since the BPI kiosk’s operating hours were different from the standard hours of a bank’s 9am-3pm. In this case, it was 11.30pm-7.30pm.

Aside from its different hours, the task was made more difficult by the fact that it’s not a BPI kiosk that was easily accessible to me, another mistake that I made, aside from not following my own SOP of not depositing in a BPI ATM attached to a bank.

When I did pass by, it was to learn that they have received a request regarding my case, but they also didn’t know yet what happened because the pick up from the ABS-CBN ATM was really the responsibility of the BPI West Triangle branch. They have to coordinate with Mr. Ramil de Leon, the officer of the bank in charge of the high counter and ATM transactions.

All I could do was leave my contact numbers and request that they update me ASAP.

Fortunately, I had some business in the area, because when they did call a couple of hours later with some information, I was able to pass by the ABS-CBN BPI kiosk again to clarify the situation.

According to Ms. Ana Manlapas, the kiosk head of ABS-CBN, my check has been received but they were unable to validate it because of a technicality— the check required two signatures.

When I asked why couldn’t they just call the company that issued the check, since it was also a BPI client, Ms. Manlapas said that couldn’t be done because of the Bank Secrecy Law of Deposit by the Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas.

So my query now is, “What is the SOP of BPI regarding this particular kind of case?”

The reply was, “The BPI SOP is to inform the depositor and to return the check to the depositor.”

My next question was. “Why didn’t the bank inform me?”

And here lies the crux of my frustrations. When I deposited on a Tuesday evening, and given the fact that it was a BPI to BPI transaction, they would have known by Wednesday what was wrong. Alright, at the latest, Thursday, just a couple of days after the deposit.

Yet, more than a week has passed, and letting me go through so much trouble to find out what happened, when a simple SMS would have alerted me to the situation, and would have given me the chance to correct it much earlier.

How could they have informed me? Simple, trace my bank account number to my branch, which would have my personal details. Ms, Manlapas said that there was an attempt, but I didn’t receive any alert, so I can’t verify that claim.

So what do we learn from this? Everyone should follow his SOPs. The company should have followed its 2-signature SOP for its checks. BPI should have followed its SOP of informing the depositor. I should have followed my SOP of depositing to an ATM attached to a bank that’s accessible to me.

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