Banks!

Brilliant old me forgot to sign the cheque that I wrote to Citibank HK for expenses incurred on my CX Citibank card. When I called to try to rectify the situation, I obviously had to choose the English option 'Press 1 for Cantonese, 2 for English, 3 for Mandarin', you would think that if I pressed 2 for English, the person will be okay to talk to! I swear, the person almost made my blood boil coz at one point it doesn't look like she knew what I was talking about! In any case, I am going to try to call back again tomorrow when my cheque is due to arrive and if the Eng still cannot make it, I'll get my colleague to speak in Canto with the person. WOMIT BLOOD I TELL U!

Then my dad tells me that he has also received a bill from Citibank in SG demanding for my annual fee, and coz he didn't see it last month and didn't pay it, there is an additional late charge of S$40. So I called up Citibank on the international number I got from the website ('In HK, dial this number ____ ) just now to tell them that I want to cancel the card since I don't use it and I don't wanna pay the annual fee. The service standards were so different! THE PERSON ACTUALLY UNDERSTOOD ME! I asked her 'Am I calling HK or Singapore?' and she's like 'Singapore', I'm like 'No wonder you understand me, I called Citibank HK yesterday and she can't understand me' She laughed politely and said 'er yeah, Hong Kong, sometimes the English....' hahahahahahah! Anyway she said she will try to get a waiver for me this time and will call me back here in HK next week! That's service!

Alright - you would think I'd be sick of ranting about terrible English in HK but they never fail to surprise/annoy/perplex me. I told one of my colleague about it and she tried to stand up for her fellow cantos by saying sometimes these customer service centres are in Shenzhen so even when they call and speak in Canto, those people also don't understand them! But let's face it, even if it was based in HK, would the standard be any better? People with good English would be doing high flying jobs - why be a Call Centre person where random strangers call and scold you?

Ok done with ranting. Heh!