ATM Rage

One of the first things I did when I got to Hong Kong was sign up for Premier Banking Services. This is an invitation only, minimum balance service at the bank for good people like myself who have positive bank balances.

With the concentration of people in Hong Kong, queuing for use of an ATM is dire, especially at peak times. So my Premier Banking Service has its own machines for us nice people, inside the Premier Banking Service Centres so we don't queue out on to the street with the filth, for nice people who fund the bank so they can loan the deposits on to the people outside, many of whom can't afford their mortgage and will soon default when property prices drop. I digress.

So over the past few months I have noticed that people who are not obviously Premier customers, slipping inside the Service Centres they are not meant to go to in order to use our machines.

I can spot these wankers. They are usually poorly dressed, older than Winston Peters and line up and take a good three minutes to perform a transaction and come out with a clean fresh $HK100 note. Now this in New Zealand money is less than $20. But the wankers are allowed to walk into the nice people's Premier Service Centre and use the machines in there. No one has been stopping them. Worse still, despite having no obvious employment, they all descend on the ATM's the same time as the workers do - lunchtime and right after work. They have got ALL DAY to perform their transactions. Why the fuck do they come at lunch or after work?

HSBC tried to solve this problem last year for the poor and tightfisted and introduced a $HK300 (less than $NZ50) minimum withdrawal (up from the $100). There was outrage in the streets as old people and maids were up in arms so they chicken shitted out and we are stuck with millions of transactions where less than $NZ20 is taken at a time from these damn machines.

Well hello, why the hell would you want these people as customers? If you have that little money, why do you need to put it in a bank? Leave it under your bloody mattress. It would cost a bank more to have these customers than it gets out of them.

The only time I can get to the bank is lunchtime. So out I go, into the Premier Service Centre to count not 1 but 5 of these prospective wankers in front of me in the queue. The security guard did nothing when I asked him whether these people had the lovely Premier card that I was waving at him.

So I had an attack of the Ed Murray's, walked to the front of the line, pushed with my arm and inserted my Premier card to use the ATM that I pay for an earn with a high minimum balance.

I faced the wrath of a doo-gooder expat housewife in the next queue to which I shrugged her off by explaining when she had a job she may understand the value of time and how valuing time of her husband bought the ghastly Louis Vuitton bag she was wearing, until then she could remain silent. I was hissed at in fluent Cantonese (doesn't phase me in the slightest as I have no idea what they are saying) by these old $100 vultures and then had a little run in with the bank "customer services manager".

Whom I promptly told in no uncertain terms that next time I came back to the Branch I did not wish to see one non-Premier customer or I would be writing a letter of complaint. The same Muppet has been trying desperately to get me to load up with a bank mortgage for years and knows precisely who I am - the only suited blonde with a Kiwi accent I am sure who is in that area of town.

On my way back from trekking to get a sandwich I noticed a very large bilingual "Premier Customers Only" sign place in the front window.

As you know if you have been to Auckland, Chinese aren't the best at obeying signs and Hong Kong is an epi-centre of where they have learned their trade.

I look forward to writing the letter shortly.