Queueing Up Singapore

This post has little to do with investing, but I have included it here as I was opening bank accounts and rearranging my finances in order to sort out how much cash I have in case I find a new company that is worth investing.

Just a background. I had an HSBC account, POSB account and OCBC account. One was from my younger days, one was an expense account, and one was my share trading account.

When I returned to Singapore at the start of this year, I wanted to top up my cashcard as it was empty. I was at Vivo, and realised that there is no HSBC atm at Vivocity (according to the Information Counter), and the HSBC atm card does not have NETS. Frustrated, I decided to change my bank account to another bank which has the NETS facilities.

So the next day, I went to HSBC to close my account. I collected a queue number at Singtel, as I wanted to get the iPhone. I went to close my HSBC account, which went pretty smoothly, and went back to Singtel which had 3 people in front of me. The wait however, took approximately 20mins. Finally when it was my turn, I went to the counter and said i wanted the iPhone Black 16gb, only to find out that it was out of stock. The person said that the last set must have been taken when you were queueing up, and please come back tomorrow to queue again. I was shocked and after much argument, the next day I could come back and find one of the employees there.

After that I went to OCBC to do a bank transfer (I do not have internet banking for OCBC), and promptly waited half an hour just to reach the front of the queue. I did the changes, and went to DBS to open my bank account. At the receptionist, the person stated that there were 10 accounts waiting to be opened and it would take about 1.5hrs, and I could leave my phone number behind. I decided to hop over to UOB and there were only 3 people in front of me so I promptly opened my account with UOB.

I do not have a grudge against queueing, and I hope I do not come across as complaining for the sake of it, but I am pointing out the inefficiencies that exist.

1) Customers should be allowed to sign up for a new line with all their details, and collect the phone the next day. The form should be left open so that the IMEI number can be filled in. This would reduce the dissatisfaction of the customer.

2) Shops should have more counters, and streamline the process of opening accounts or doing bank transfers - the point that I would like to state that is I really wanted to open a DBS banking account to make it easier to transfer money from POSB to DBS, but instead now UOB has me as a customer. I don't contribute much money to them though. Even at OCBC, a counter closed when the queue was extremely long. I would have applied for an M1 account if I didn't have to wait just as long.
Alternatively I should just sign up for Internet Banking.

3) Have a message system - I am pleased that Singtel and DBS have a message system, but Singtel's message system informs the customer too far in advance.

Having said that, I am pleased with my new iPhone, and happy to have everything settled.